#'he will be a nice conservative president let's put him in charge'

[irving-braxiatel]

For your AU prompts: Roll reversal AU with Romana/Brax ofc

I thought a lot about this AU and then realised I had way too much to fit into one fic. It took a while to narrow down where to place it in the timeline, and ended up settling on some post Time War angst

——-

Gallifrey had fallen five days ago. 

After this fact, the Time War had ended, now four days ago.

Romana’s TARDIS had landed on the green outside the mansion house of Braxiatel’s panetoid three days ago. 

It had been a busy week for the universe. For Romana, too. She had learned within minutes of her arrival that the planetoid’s owner had crashed his ship here two nights prior, as close to death as any being could be while still hoping to survive. 

Biology had never been her strongest subject, medicine even less so, but there was no one else left to advice the medics on how to save him. 

After a day he had woken up, but has made very little sense in his few waking moments. He was wounded, in such a way that regeneration was impossible, and feverish. 

Now another two days had passed and finally he was both awake and lucid. She has not been with him, far too busy repairing her TARDIS, but when she has heard naturally she had gone to see him. 

Braxiatel was sitting up in bed, sunlight and bird song and streaming in through an open window. 

“Ah, Good, you’re back. Look, if I must be confined in this bed, at least close that window, or I might have to get up and strangle that bird myself-” he finally realised that his guest was not who he had expected. “Romana,” he breathed, like he had just seen a ghost. 

“Braxiatel,” she greeted, moving a chair closer to his bed so she could sit next to him.

“Gallifrey is gone,” he said, without any grandeur. 

Romana nodded. “I know. I felt it.”

“You already knew it would happen,” he said matter-of-factly. “That was why you left, all those decades ago.”

“I didn’t know it would end like this,” she said, sighing deeply. 

He nodded, understanding. 

Romana had not given up on Gallifrey, only her people. She had left in the night, when it had become clear to her Gallifrey had become too corrupt for her to even start to make a difference. She had often thought Time Lords lived much too long, it was so easy to become jaded and cynical. 

“You knew too.” It was an accusation, perhaps, but not one with any ill feelings attached. 

He avoided her gaze. “I suspected. But if I had been certain I would have left sooner.”

“No word from future Braxiatel?” 

Now, he smiled. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about.”

“One would almost think your tutor at the academy had told you about the dangers of interacting with your own past or future selves.” 

“Oh I am certain she did,” he said. “She was rather brilliant.”

“Was?”

“Is,” he said, fondly. 

“That’s better.” 

This was nice. This worked. If they did not talk about what happened, they did not have to acknowledge the aching hollow in their minds Gallifrey’s collective presence had occupied until earlier this week. 

“I might have been a little enamoured by you, back in those days,” he admitted. 

Romana laughed. “I noticed.”

“I was trying to be subtle,” he protested.

“Trying being the operative word in that sentence.” 

“It was hard not to be. The youngest tutor in the history of the Prydonian Academy, only two decades older than I was, and yet you were the most brilliant person in all of the capital.”

Romana rolled her eyes. “Hardly.”

“To me you were.” 

Their eyes met and then, simultaneously they started laughing. Not because what she had said had been particularly funny, not because of their situation, but because here, after the dust of the war had settled, it was either that or crying, and neither of them was the type for that. 

Braxiatel studied Romana’s face carefully. If she had regenerated since he last saw her, it did not show. “Will you be staying for long, my lady?” he asked. 

“You sound very hopeful,” she commented. “And yes, I’m rather afraid I will have to. My TARDIS was very nearly pulled back to Gallifrey at the end. It took everything both of us had to escape. She needs time to recover.” 

“And you?” 

She raised and eyebrow. “I’m not the one on bed rest.” 

Braxiatel sighed, almost melodramatically. “I suppose you aren’t. Still, I will of course endeavour to ensure you enjoy your stay here at the Braxiatel Collection.” 

“You don’t have to,” she told him. “I will be on my way soon enough.” 

“Romana-” he said, he himself even surprised at the earnesty in his voice. “-I want you to stay. If you would like. I have missed you, over the last 200 years.” 

Romana took a deep breath, closed her eyes, as she suddenly found herself feeling very restless. 

“Braxiatel?” she asked. “What about now?” 

He frowned. “I’m sorry, my lady? I don’t follow where you are going.” 

“You said that when you were younger you were enamoured with me. What about now?” 

His next intake of breath was sharp, and she could see a tenseness in his jaw. 

“Only,” she said. “I missed you too, Braxiatel.” She put her hands on top of one of his, giving it a gentle squeeze. 

“You did?” There wasn’t hope in his voice, because he no longer needed hope. He had known Romana for so long, and in all that time, feelings had always been a topic she tried her best to avoid. So to him, she could not have more plainly stated her affections for him. She was right here with him, and she wanted him. 

They both leaned forward, only stopping one they could feel one another’s breath on their lips. 

“Well?” she asked. 

“You are as brilliant as ever. And just as beautiful. I have never met a being as intelligent, as fascinating, as enchanting as you, my lady.” 

He felt her breath on his skin as she chuckled. “Flatterer,” she said, and leaned closer. 

The kiss was short and sweet, but this was such a long time coming neither of them wanted to rush into it. 

“I think I wouldn’t mind terribly staying a little while,” Romana said, smiling, her eyes not leaving his.

——-

Send me one+ AUs from this list and some characters (taking any combination but I am in a Romana/Braxiatel mood so prompts about those to I am far likely to be inspired by) and I will write some fic

[arse-crack-thistle]

a firstprince meet-cute

the heroes of olympus au

in which the roman son of apollo meets the greek son of themis

Henry—the quiet son of Apollo and Centurion of the 3rd cohort—leads a team of five demigods through the Long Island woods. Their task: spy on the Greeks and bring information back to Octavian. The golden-haired boy wishes he could’ve refused, but anyone who goes against the Pontifex Maximus gets severely punished and he will not let any harm come to his legionaries. Not again.

The group weaves through the trees, dodging the sight of any patrols. Henry has no idea how he’ll get close enough to hear anything, but he might be able to interpret some battle strategy from the Greek’s night preparations. As his fellow soldiers fan out beside him, Henry inches up the hill. He’d say a prayer to his father if he thought it would help, but he doesn’t. After many unanswered prayers about his sexuality, about his rather fucked up influential family, he doesn’t bother with Apollo anymore.

Henry gestures for his right-hand man—Pez, son of Mercury and the only one who actually knows he’s gay—to peer over the hill with him; the others stay back, keeping watch. The Centurion readies an arrow just in case, while Pez has his hand on the hilt of his blade, and they watch Greek demigods reinforce their buildings, sharpen their weapons, and prepare medical tents. None of them are practicing formations, which doesn’t help Henry or Octavian at all. He has to come back with something, so he puts the arrow away and crawls forward.

This could be really stupid, but he has to try—not for Octavian but for New Rome. It’s the only place that’s felt like home to him. Back in England, there’s his grandmother, the CEO of an underwhelming home goods empire. The stuff is cheap, but they’re still the number one seller back home. His mother and brother have a part in it. His sister ran off a few years back, and he has no idea where she is or if she’s even alive. His father—or rather ex-step-father—hasn’t wanted much to do with him since about three years ago when he found out Henry’s mother had an affair at a music festival fourteen years before.

They had a scandalous divorce, covered by every major news outlet, and Henry found out his true identity when a handsome demigod knocked on his door and told him he was in danger and had to be take to California. Several monsters, a few thousand miles, and a few months with a wolf goddess later, he found himself at Camp Jupiter. Everything that happened to him up until then—the blurry images of creatures at the corner of his eyes every time he turned a corner, the dyslexia that made his passion for writing frustrating, the way he never really fit in with his family—finally made sense. He was a demigod! And when the sign of Apollo appeared over his head after he made his first bullseye at the archery range, he truly felt like he found where he belonged.

Pez whispers for him to come back, but Henry lifts a hand in warning. Just then, someone—a dryad probably—screams an alert to his enemy, and all Underworld breaks loose. His legionaries get in formation behind him, readying themselves for the Greeks. They were taught never to run from a fight, but Henry can’t allow this to happen. He’s been in enough battles to know when he can win and when he can’t. Eventually, they’ll be outnumbered because Octavian won’t send him reinforcements if he can help it. He doesn’t know how violent the Greeks will be, but if they willingly fired on New Rome when their defenses were down, then he can’t take the risk. And he won’t repeat what happened in the Titan war.

Henry orders his soldiers back, telling Pez to take temporary control of the cohort and share the minimal information they gathered with the Pontifex. If they’re to be any casualties tonight, it will only be Henry and the Greeks he can take down with him.

•••

The last thing Alex—the wise-ass son of Themis—wants to do in the middle of the night is go to a counsel meeting at the Big House. He wipes the sleep from his eyes as he walks up the creaky steps. Inside, Chiron and the other counsellors gather around a table. It’s times like this he wishes it was a year ago when the children of minor gods were left out of meetings and decision-making. But as soon as he slaps himself awake, he regains his undying need to get involved and raise hell—fair and just hell, of course.

He sits down next to Nora, the temporary head counsellor of the Athena cabin. She’s bouncing in her seat—no doubt high on caffeine and nectar and ready to get back to developing war strategy. She gives him a wink and taps her fingers like she’s back home typing on a computer. Chiron clears his throat and tells the demigods of a Roman scout team that was spotted an hour ago. Unfortunately, most of the soldiers got away, but they did manage to capture one. He’s being held in one of the Big House’s guest rooms.

Now it’s Alex’s turn to bounce. He’s been waiting for an opportunity like this. A prisoner of war means they’ll need to get information. There will need to be a lawyer present—or a lawyer in training that is. He can preside over the questioning, be the voice of justice, and maybe even get the Roman to see the right side is his. He can picture it now: Camp Half-Blood safe from the Romans and that dude reformed in his ways, joining them to stop Gaia. Yes, this is his chance to step out of his sister’s shadow.

He volunteers to mediate for whoever is charged with the interview. Alex ignores Chiron’s obvious hesitation; just because he can get a little heated—thank gods Leo isn’t here cracking a dumb pun joke at that, which would inevitably leave them both laughing on the floor—doesn’t mean he can’t be objective. So he hates the Romans’ guts and thinks they should go back to their stuck-up little camp, so what? Once he’s in the real world, going to college, running for congress like his father, he’ll have to deal with a shit-ton of people he doesn’t like. Looking at you, Bitch McConnell.

Just as Chiron decides he, Nora, Will Solace, and reluctantly Alex will talk to the Roman boy, a camper from the Aphrodite cabin bursts through the door and tells him one of the Hephaestus girls accidentally blew up a boy from the Ares cabin. Apparently, armor strapped with projectile explosives wasn’t the best idea. So Chiron declares they will talk to their guest in the morning, and in the meantime, they’ll take shifts in pairs guarding him. Alex raises his hand to get the first watch, but Chiron appoints Drew Tanaka and Connor Stoll. They both roll their eyes at the idea of being stuck together for the next few hours. Alex’s chest deflates.

Ever since his sister left—he and June are some of the rare demigods that have the same mortal and immortal parentage without being twins—the responsibility of the Themis cabin has fallen on his shoulders. He wanted it, of course, but his siblings also elected him to the head counsellor position, thinking he’d follow in June’s footsteps: ruling with truth, justice, and wisdom. Just like their mother.

Back in his cabin, Alex stares at the marble statue of her that presides over her children. Her iconic image—blindfolded, holding a sword in one hand and balancing a scale in the other—reminds him he’s definitely no June.

She was a leader of quests; Alex has never been on one. June was the voice of reason at counsel meetings; he struggles just to sit still, let alone calm a room with one enlightening sentence. When the children of minor gods were finally given their own cabins, there was no question who should run theirs. Now, he hears his siblings whisper whether they should hold another election. Gods, you call out your conservative brothers one time—it was way more than once—and suddenly, you’re imposing your opinion on everyone.

That’s not it though. Alex has never been given a chance to step up. No matter how many times he tries to convince the counsel they should establish a court system at camp—nothing settles an argument like a nice, fair trial—he always gets shot down.

Not anymore. He’s not going to sit back this time. Not when the threat to camp is this great. He’ll get what he needs from that Roman. If June were here, she would’ve been trusted to go ahead without Chiron, so Alex will do the same.

•••

Henry wakes up to angry whispers outside of his door. The twelve Greeks overtook him easily, but he did put up a good fight. At least, he did until he was knocked unconscious. On the table beside his bed, a note sits atop a plate of food.

Eat well. Hydrate. Rest. We’ll speak with you soon. -Chiron

A glass of juice spiked with nectar sits next to the plate. Why would those imbecilic Greeks give him what’s essentially strengthening serum? He intakes his surroundings: a bed, a table, a dresser, and a chair. Window to the left. Only door out to the right. There’s a clean set of clothes at the end of the bed, but Henry would rather go to Tartarus and back than put on another camp’s shirt.

He jimmies the window, but it’s locked and to hard to break. He lightly tries the doorknob, but it’s locked as well. By the sounds of it, three maybe four people argue outside his door. Romans never had this much trouble changing guard shifts. Henry fiddles about the room, looking for anything to 1. unlock the door and 2. use as a weapon. He can handle four Greeks, and he’ll do everything in his power to get back to his cohort.

Henry hears the click of the door unlocking. Gods, they’re thick, aren’t they? He grabs the wooden chair, and as the door swings open, he thwacks the person walking in with it. Just as he suspected, the chair breaks, and he uses one piece to press against the throat of the careless demigod he’s pinned to the floor.

The boy beneath him groans. He’s got light brown skin and dark curly hair, and if Henry weren’t about to kill him, he’d think he was quite cute.

“Gods, can you Greeks do anything with finesse? Even your hero, Percy Jackson, as talented as he may be, flies by the seed of his trousers.” Henry grits his teeth.

“Ha!” the boy coughs out. “Jumping to conclusions, are we? I thought you guys were supposed to be strictly trained soldiers. You miscalculated.”

He points behind him, and when Henry looks up, a girl stands battle-ready with a sword in her hand. The distraction is enough for the boy below to wrap his legs around Henry and flip them. The Greek holds a dagger to his neck.

“Listen here, pretty boy, are we going to talk or am I going to go all American Revolution on your British-ass?” He presses the dagger, and Henry yelps.

The boy’s brown eyes peer into Henry’s, and some strange part of him likes it. The Greek looks about his age and, while clearly not as capable as he, definitely has some fight in him.

“I’d like to see you try, graecus. But be forewarned, if you send me to the Underworld, I’ll drag you and your camp down with me.” He keeps his face plain and uncaring, though he can feel the heat in his cheeks. Apollo help him.

The girl interrupts them to remind her partner what they’re here to do. She sheaths her sword and closes the door.

He’s called Alex. Henry swallows. And they need information.

Alex releases him. The two get up off the ground. No one moves to sit or get more comfortable. The boys just stare at each other, long and cold.

Henry can tell this guy is a complete and total arse, and yet he can’t shake the swirling feeling in his stomach. A memory from a quest eighteen months ago flashes in his mind. In Vegas, a priest of Venus dressed like Elvis told him great tragedy would befall his love life, but with the goddess’s blessing, he’d find happiness again.

He already lost someone. The demigod who found him, Daniel, son of Ceres, his sponsor when he joined the camp, his Centurion. Everything was quiet between them—few words needed for mutual understanding. Daniel brought him fresh lavender; Henry played him a tune on the lute. But then the Titan war came. And Daniel disobeyed the Praetors’ orders to save the boy he loved. Henry barely had time to grieve before he took control of the 3rd cohort and lost four other demigods in the process. Not a day goes by when he doesn’t think of the five who died because of him. Because of love.

No. This feeling he has is the desire to beat the Greeks, nothing more. He doesn’t give a damn about happiness in love or this obnoxiously hot demigod before him. Like even as Alex breaks eye contact first, puts his sheathed dagger in his boot, ruffles his hair, puts his hands on his hips, and sighs, Henry feels nothing. Elvis can go fuck himself.

“So,” Alex says, “what do you have planned, and how can we convince you to stop? We’d really like to prevent another demigod civil war.”

Henry laughs, and even though nothing would make him happier than to stop fighting, to rest as Chiron suggested, he tells Alex, “You’re really a dickhead if you think I’m giving you anything.”

•••

“It was an accident!”

“You expect me to believe with our two camps in a centuries-long feud that the one time we let down our defenses, your lot just attacked us on accident? Right, and I suppose Pluto is actually a sweet guy once you get to know him, too?”

“My buddy Leo was being controlled by Gaia!”

“Your mate Leo should come up with a better lie.”

“You’re impossible!” Gods, Alex really hates this guy. “Nora, can’t we just—”

She shakes her head before he can finish. He’s not really sure what he was going to say. Have Drew come back and charmspeak him? Feed him to the harpies? Pin him down again? Wait—what?

“Listen, dude. We’re really on the same side here. Right now, both Greeks and Romans demigods—our friends—are fighting against a greater threat than the world has seen since the beginning of time. That’s got to count for something,” he says.

The Roman is quiet. Alex hates how he looks like a goddamn prince even after a fight. But maybe he got through to him. After all, it is true. For all the shit he talks about Romans, he knows they’re not bad, just different. They actually have more in common than they’d like to acknowledge. Jason Grace taught him that. If there was ever a Roman WASP he could get behind, it’s Jason.

So Alex tries a different approach. He gestures to the bed. “You want to?” The blond boy stiffens, and Alex clarifies, “Sit?”

“How about we start over?” He sits. Nora takes the opportunity to march to the other side and bellyflops onto the bed. “I’m Alex, son of Themis, the goddess of justice. And you are?”

He watches the Roman look from the undefended door to Alex and back again.

“You could run,” Alex says. “But then we’d have no chance to broker peace. Hera thought she could do it by trading heroes, but I think you and I both know it takes more than one person to heal two armies.”

Power swells in his chest. Alex can’t know for sure, but maybe his mother is looking out for him. This is how he can bring the demigods justice for Gaia’s destruction. June would be the better choice, but Alex is here and he has to try.

“Let’s work together. Or at least, get along long enough for the prophesized seven to come back home,” he says.

The Roman hesitates. Alex can see in his light blue eyes the number of strategies racing through his mind. But ultimately, he decides to sit. Nora snores next to them. Five a.m. and a caffeine/nectar crash will do that to you.

“So your name?” Alex asks. “It’s only fair.” Dumb pun but he winks.

The boy coughs, but then he looks into Alex’s eyes. “I’m—er—Henry, son of Apollo, Centurion of the 3rd cohort.”

so this is a little late but we’re just going to ignore that...

i just finished reading toa a couple of weeks ago, and i can’t stop thinking about it!! so when i saw the meet-cute prompt, i couldn’t resist a percy jackson-ish fic! i hope you enjoyed this little short piece. <3

rwrb romance week | @rwrb-fests

[phantomato]

Uber

Nottmort (Tom Riddle/Nott Sr.), Modern Muggle AU, ~2k words

Thanks to @yletylyf for kicking around this idea! Tom drives an Uber in the Bay Area. Thoros & co need a ride.

—

Abraxas and Orion are bickering over luggage in the background when your Uber pulls up. Black, of course, so it’s a Mercedes that will smell a little too much like leather cleaner when you get in, but none of you have ever ridden in an UberX or, god forbid, an Uber Pool, and you’re not about to start.

Your colleagues—never forget, you are not friends, no matter how much time you spend with them—slide into the back seat before you can even begin to help load bags into the trunk. You’re left alone with the driver, and though he offers to help, you haven’t let yourself sink that low as to make this man pile all of your shit in his car while you sit around and watch. And anyway, it feels like the polite thing to do. More than Abraxas or Orion, you’ve been raised to be polite.

So you fold yourself into the front passenger seat, too kind to push the seat all the way back and give yourself the leg room you need even if Orion, behind you, is just 5’8 to your 6’3, and smile at the driver as he confirms your destination.

He’s pretty. You’ve been in a lot of Ubers and you’ve never seen a driver this pretty. Is that classist?, you wonder to yourself, remembering something you read in Vox the other day. Probably. Nevertheless, you’re taken by the curve of his mouth, the sweep of his dark hair, and you throw a smirk over your shoulder at Abraxas who you know must have also noticed.

“Traffic to SFO will be busy,” he says regretfully, and you roll your eyes. Orion refuses to take the early morning flights, unwilling to wake at 3 AM, and you’re always stuck with these long, miserable Uber rides down from the city to the airport. “And Terminal 2—right in the middle of it. There’s construction around those doors, if you haven’t been there—”

“We know,” Orion butts in rudely, shutting up your driver for the few minutes it takes to get out of your neighborhood.

You use those few minutes to swipe through your phone. Email—nothing important. Messages—you clear the notifications. Your Instagram is alight with people reposting the same infographic about voting rights and you make a mental note to kick some money to that non-profit that’s been all over Twitter lately. You close out apps and end up back at Uber, watching your car’s laggy progress through the San Francisco streets. Your driver’s name is Tom, the app informs you. It’s a nice name.

You clear the side streets and Tom offers amenities. “If you want any water, there are bottles in the cooler between the seats,” he calls back to Abraxas and Orion, “and mints in the cup holder. You can adjust the air conditioning if you like, and there’s a charging cable attached to the back of my seat if you need it. Would you like to choose any music?”

“No,” Abraxas says, and whether he means the music or the entire spiel doesn’t really matter, given his withering tone. You look back at him, trying to convey ‘Be nice’ with just your eyebrows, but Abraxas is fussing with his hair and ignoring you.

Tom’s one of the chipper ones, it turns out, because he takes the rejection in stride and shifts to the dreaded personal conversation. “What do you all do for a living?”

“Ah, we invest in companies, mostly start-ups,” you say, trying to avoid—

“Venture capitalists!” Tom guesses, and he’s right but you hate the term and its connotations. So what if you are all white men whose family money has bankrolled tech speculation? It’s what anyone with half a brain would do. You donate, you read the liberal news—at least, you think that’s true for all of you, though Orion was friends with that Republican mayoral candidate and Abraxas’ father sponsors that conservative think-tank and…

Ah, fuck. “Yeah, pretty much,” you agree, hating yourself.

Behind you, Orion digs his AirPods out of his pocket. You hear the snap of the magnetic lid as he closes himself off to the world. Abraxas is slouching, the hem of his third-favorite cashmere cardigan catching on the seat behind him, and you realize that you’re alone in this conversation.

Well, fuck it. If those two pricks are going to make you call the Uber, deal with the reimbursement paperwork, and sit in the front seat, you’re going to talk to the driver and make this car conversation as painful as possible for them.

As if reading your thoughts, Tom does the one thing that guarantees a terrible ride: he pitches his app idea.

“You know, I’m also a software developer,” he says, which is at least more promising than when someone isn’t, “and if I had the kind of funding that companies like yours provide, I would absolutely make this app.” He proceeds to describe something completely inane, the type of exclusive, niche social networking app that hasn’t had legs since before the Trump presidency and you would be content to let him drone on, to let Abraxas keep melting into his own seat and to let Orion channel his anger through a knee driven into the back of yours, but—

But for all that Tom’s idea is stupid, he has the energy of the best pitches you see. His energy is infectious. His eyes light up, he gestures with one hand, and when he stops to take a drink (one of those water bottles with a built-in straw, which you associate with joggers and your lamest employees but which does very different things to you when it’s Tom’s mouth wrapped around the top) you’re transfixed by the wet sheen over his chapped lips.

And so, yes, maybe it’s mostly lust, and maybe this is a sign that you need to download Grindr again, even if only to jerk off to the dick pics you’ll get, but you start to actually talk to him.

“There’s no future in niche social networks,” you say, halting Tom in his tracks. “There will always be new ones, don’t misunderstand me, but the broader landscape is saturated by the top names, and they’ll buy out their competitors if they need to. Perhaps you can topple Tumblr, but that’s not a path to profit. If you want to impact the social market, you need to pinpoint the novel interaction model that you want to offer and make yourself buyable.”

“Buyable,” Tom repeats, like he’s never been interrupted before. He probably hasn’t. The first rule of Ubering around the Bay Area or the Valley is to never engage the app pitches, and Orion has started kicking your seat for your transgression.

“Yes,” you enunciate. “You want to be bought out and brought in at a high level. The giant that eats you may or may not use your idea, but you’ll make a comfortable sum as a consolation prize.” You’ve helped companies through this before. You’re flying out to New York this week in part because one of your investments is considering purchase offers and you want to strategize in-person. The founder is dallying, sending emails about independence and integrity, and Orion will bully him into selling while you and Abraxas negotiate the best terms for the contract.

You can feel Tom’s eyes on you. Abraxas might be calling “Thoros…” from the back seat, and Orion might be attempting to annihilate you with his gaze alone, but you’re smiling at that handsome face behind the wheel and hoping for an accident on the 101.

Unfortunately, you make it through San Bruno without running into more than the usual level of traffic, and Tom’s pulling up to your terminal much sooner than you would like. Abraxas and Orion jump out of the car with uncharacteristic speed when it stops, Orion even moving to stand by the trunk in readiness to take his bags. You delay.

“Do you have a business card?” you ask, when it’s clear Tom’s waiting on you.

He fumbles to pull a wallet from his jeans. You can’t quite get a view of his ass as he does, but that doesn’t stop you from looking.

His card is bent at the corner, printed cheaply, and probably from his last job. You’re pretty sure that company doesn’t exist anymore. Tom taps the phone number. “I can be reached here,” he says smoothly, but his professionalism cracks when he adds, “by call or by… text.”

You know what sort of texts you’d like to receive from him.

Pulling out your own card case, you hand him your card. “Text me,” you say, your voice just this side of appropriate, “any time.”

Tom visibly swallows and jumps out of the car. You take your time getting up, and if your cashmere sweater—Margaret Howell, not that Elder Statesman piece of shit Abraxas is wearing—ends up in the footwell of Tom’s passenger seat, well, you’ll be back in SF next week, won’t you?

“Thanks for the ride, Tom,” you tell him as you take the handle of your luggage, letting your fingers brush his. “I enjoyed our conversation.”

“Yeah,” he nods, and you don’t care that Abraxas is snorting behind you, he’s been judging you this whole trip and he lost out on a hot guy’s number as a result. “It was…”

“Thoros,” you interrupt him before he can ramble and psych himself out. “My name is Thoros, and I really would like to hear from you.”

Tom looks at you then, and you see him pull together the same sureness that drew you into his initial pitch. “I’ll text you about the app.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” you say, meaning it.

—

Bonus:

“You know,” Abraxas drawls as you sit in the United club lounge, gesturing lazily with his overpriced airport Fiji water, “if you tip him too much it’s like you’re paying him for sex.”

Orion looks up from his phone then, removing one earbud for the first time since he put them in. “I’ve paid more for sex with less attractive men.”

“Welcome back,” you say, “I didn’t realize you had paid any attention.”

“Someone would need to not have eyes in order to miss how hot that Uber driver was,” he bites back, returning to his phone.

“Well, I’m tipping him extra anyway,” you announce, confirming Tom’s five-star rating. Should you write a review? Is that too much?

Abraxas, with a grumble, declares, “I’m telling Alecto not to approve this expense.”

—

Bonus bonus:

Your phone buzzes at the end of dinner, the celebratory affair to close the sale which someone had insisted must be at Lilia, even though Abraxas doesn’t eat carbs and you would have preferred to grab a slice at Scarr’s rather than haul out to Williamsburg, anyway.

It’s Tom. Of course it’s Tom—you’ve been texting all week, and between a few late-night flirtations and one very bald statement of interest, you’ve got a date set for when you’re back home. You’re going to Mensho Tokyo, since he lives in the Tenderloin and you live… vaguely around the Tenderloin, at least, you tell people you live there when you want to seem cooler, and Tom is the type of guy that makes you excited to stand in line for hours to get seats. You’re already thinking about whether you might put your arm around him while you’re waiting, and you unlock your phone to see what he’s saying now.

It’s a picture message.

A picture of Tom, wearing your Howell sweater and no pants and oh god oh fuck—

“Was that Uber driver’s dick?” Abraxas whispers, next to you, and you curse your luck. “Remind me to call the next Uber, Jesus Christ.”

[alexsmitposts]

Conservative Americans Now Labeled “Domestic Terrorists” The long-awaited transition of power finally occurred in the United States on January 20, 2021 when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as president and vice president. Two weeks before on January 6, a large number of Donald Trump’s supporters rallied in Washington DC to protest what they believed to be a stolen election by the Democrats. A small fraction of the demonstrators were let into (or broke into) the Capitol Building and staged a riot which was eventually ended by security forces with a small number of casualties. It is clear that the media and political reactions and the possible long-term effects on freedom of speech are more interesting than the riot itself. Speaking with Geoff Young, a US antiwar activist who ran for the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2012, and several times for the US House of Representatives, and Governor of Kentucky in 2015 and 2019, some additional insight can be added. He hasn’t won any elections yet, but he has discovered in campaigning how corrupt the Democratic and Republican Parties are when it comes to vote rigging. He currently has active lawsuits against both the Kentucky “Democratic” Party (KDP) and the Republican Party of Kentucky (RPK). Mr. Young, what is going on here? One just has to carefully evaluate the media, not only MSM. It’s easy to notice that the framing of the “domestic terrorism” issue is being promoted by public television and radio stations as well as the usual mainstream media corporations, most of which are openly biased in favor of the Democrat Party. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in a January 19, 2021 article called, “The New Domestic War on Terror Is Coming,” “The more honest proponents of this new domestic War on Terror are explicitly admitting that they want to model it on the first one. A New York Times reporter noted on Monday that a “former intelligence official on PBS NewsHour” said “that the US should think about a ‘9/11 Commission’ for domestic extremism and consider applying some of the lessons from the fight against al-Qaeda here at home.” Are they suggesting that the CIA should fire missiles from drones at members of the Proud Boys and Antifa without any kind of legal due process? Greenwald went on to note that “former Facebook security official Alex Stamos” emphasized “the need for social media companies to use the same tactics against US citizens that they used to remove ISIS (banned in Russia) from the internet — in collaboration with law enforcement — and that those tactics should be directly aimed at what he calls extremist ‘conservative influencers’.” Glenn Greenwald: “Meanwhile, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) — not just one of the most dishonest members of Congress but also one of the most militaristic and authoritarian — has had a bill proposed since 2019 to simply amend the existing foreign anti-terrorism bill to allow the US Government to invoke exactly the same powers at home against ‘domestic terrorists’.” In a recent airing of Frontline: American Reckoning – A PBS NewsHour Special Report, the narrator said within the first 30 seconds of the show: “Provoking a mob of his supporters, President Trump upended a long tradition of peacefully transferring power.” That anti-Trump framing continued throughout the entire 57-minute broadcast. Do you buy this narrative? There’s no real evidence that Trump ever incited his supporters to break into the Capitol, however, and quite a bit of evidence that he urged them to remain peaceful, nonviolent and loud. If that is the case, then the Democrats’ second impeachment of Donald Trump was as constitutionally and legally unsound as the first one. Both impeachments were exercises in pure partisan politics designed to benefit the fortunes of the Democrat Establishment and damage Trump and the GOP as much as possible. With social media and government agencies working in tandem to restrict foreign and domestic news, and to label journalists who are not toeing the US line as foreign agents, the First Amendment is under attack. President Biden has not expressed any interest in dropping all charges against Julian Assange. Was this a false flag? It is not at all clear who turned the loud, outdoor demonstration on January 6, 2021 into a riot in the Capitol Building. It could have been the Trump supporters, but it could also have been the Capitol Police, other anti-Trump security forces, international experts in color revolutions such as George Soros, the Trump-hating FBI, the Trump-hating CIA, or the DNC. If anti-Trump organizations were the ones who got the large rally to turn violent, the riot would have been a coup against Donald Trump as an individual, not against the American republic. One is reminded of what happened in 1933 – the burning of the German Reichstag. When the German parliamentary building went up in flames, Hitler harnessed the incident to seize power – and that means gaining control of the media and cracking down with laws “to protect society,” and the Constitutional Order (“Ordnung” in German). For this reason, it is not only appropriate but necessary to revisit history, because whenever citizens and politicians feel threatened by executive overreach, the Reichstag Fire is referred to as a cautionary tale. Young concludes, “It seems likely that the Democrats are using the January 6 riot as an excuse to impose something like martial law on the American people and to stifle all criticism of the incoming Democrat administration (or regime).” Analysis and Commentary It is doubtful that any expected FBI investigation into the causes of the riot will ever incriminate the FBI or crisis actors but the very talk may be used to invoke some kind of crackdown on those who “take exception” with the new government and its policies and methods. It should be noted that the PBS broadcast also examined the impact of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric throughout his presidency and the government’s missed opportunities to manage the spread of misinformation and the rise of domestic terrorism. These are valid issues to be discussed; however, all who supported Trump cannot be labeled as fringe groups, totally disgruntled or domestic terrorists. As Time Magazine so accurately describes, “Rolling back those freedoms has served in other countries as a prelude to authoritarianism, and it is easy enough to imagine a future US President deciding to label his opponents terrorists before stripping them of their fundamental rights.” It is an overreaction to be calling for a domestic war on terrorism. Nonetheless, it is easy to collectively take words and actions of Trump’s supporters, even when they renounce the results of a [supposedly] free and fair election and label such discontents as being against the Constitution or legal order. However, let us not forget the double standard, and how former President Trump attempted “to designate Antifa, a loose band of left-wing radicals, as a terrorist organization, a move that civil liberties groups successfully resisted. The larger purpose, however, appears to paint all those groups in the wake of the storming of the Whitehouse on any group which supported Trump, and label all those who will not recant their support as potential domestic terrorists or conspiracy theorists. Even PBS admits there have been double standards in how such breaches of government building are addressed. It would be nice to believe that freedom of speech will continue to mean that people are free to engage in certain forms of protected speech, including criticizing the government and politicians, without control or reprisal by the government, provided they don’t call for direct violence or overthrow. However, that may be short lived, and now Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, plans to reintroduce the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which passed the House last fall but went nowhere in the Senate. Its purpose is to authorize dedicated domestic terrorism offices within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to analyze and monitor domestic terrorist activity and require the Federal Government to take steps to prevent domestic terrorism. Biden is keeping to the script, by stating soon thereafter, “don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, {they were] domestic terrorists: It’s that basic. It’s that simple.” However, it is not that simple, in light of the emotions running high in the US. These words may come back to haunt him and his administration, as a self-fulfilling prophesy. And now Biden is just as guilty as Trump for dividing an already divided people, with his own fiery rhetoric: “No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” the president-elect said The timing and choice of wording is most inopportune and inappropriate, as much of what the US has accused other nations of doing, controlling media, and its people, is fast becoming a US production. In fact it is as if Biden is borrowing pages from Trump own play book. This does not come at at good time, with social media and government agencies working in tandem in restricting foreign news and domestic news, and labeling journalists who are not toeing-the-US line as foreign agents. There have even been instances of where native born US citizens have been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department simply for writing articles and publishing them on Russian media sites. All the while, the plurality of the US media is at its lowest point ever, controlled, manipulated, bought and paid for. There is no longer a fine line between news and blatant propaganda. Being labeled as part of a group that really believes that the US election result was tainted now may put you on a list for a visit from Homeland Security or some anti-terrorist organization. There was no Trump Era! He was merely a papier-mâché cut out puppet, and who out of his bottomless narcissism reined over the corporate media news and talk shows with his Mad Hatter Tweets, using the same Twitter that mobilized the Arab Spring masses to screw up their countries too, a pre-test before fanning it out on a declining ready for figuratively beheading much of the US domestic population over their political preferences. The post Trump period is being compared on PBS to post Civil War, “incitement of insurrection,” and “how US President Grant realized how the KKK was an essential threat to everything that had been achieved by that bloody war, and various commentators claim that that is what the Federal Government is now facing. Those who stormed the White House are described (43:00) as “white nationalists, and there is a need to aggressively pursue and root out this cancerous menace of white nationalism and the “kind of” white extremist militias that are really a functionally revanchist movement in American Society.” All things considered, and the swing of the pendulum, things will not get better with Biden anytime soon, maybe even worse, because the ruling elite in their “close knit societies,” have it all mapped out in detail. It appears as some of the Capitol guards let the fed agent provocateurs, and if some of the crisis actors just waltz right in … and keep in mind that the Reichtag Fire was not engineered by the guards circling and within the Reichtag. There are too many unanswered questions, just look at the US Congress, most of the powerful have been in office for over 50 years, and never leave office, and the newbies, especially in the Democrat party, are former military or CIA trained or Intel Democrats, young and frisky. It is a threatening time (even more than during Trump), and that era is fading; however, it seems America may be in for some rough times with the crackdown on civil liberties because of COVID and the NEW domestic terrorist label. Protecting the American people from themselves is the NEW doublespeak.

[nevillelongsbottom]

the loop pairing: newt scamander/credence barebone word count: 1849 for the @hogwartsonline february quidditch

This is Newt’s fiftieth February 14; as he gets up, he wonders if he could count it as an anniversary. But it still doesn’t feel like something to celebrate, trapped in one Valentine’s Day for an interminable period of time.

He has bunked off school for the past twenty, so supposes he might as well attend today, even though he knows all of his lessons by heart now. He considers sneaking into other lessons, or spending his day in the library. He sighs.

He hopes he doesn’t die today. He doesn’t always, but he choked yesterday and he can still feel the ghost of it in his throat.

Maybe, he thinks as he scoops his cat Pippa from his bed so that he can make it, he should celebrate Valentine’s Day for his fiftieth day. He gave up a while ago, after eating too many chocolate caramel hearts. Nobody at school has bought himself anything for the chocolate exchange. It disappoints him a little every day, and he can’t tell if it’s because he’s half-jealous of Jacob and Queenie being such sweethearts or if he’s feeling a little lonely. He hums, kissing Pippa’s head.

He borrows his mum’s iPod before he leaves the house. As in almost every repeat of the day, he almost misses the bus: no matter what time he leaves the house, he seems eternally fated to have to run down the street, sitting at the back of the forty-two in a cloud of sweat. Today, he’s listening to Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett’s Lotta Sea Lice. He knows the words off by heart now; the first week or two of his loop, he mostly listened to David Bowie and Buddy Holly, but ever since he’s been jumping around his and his mother’s music tastes. He wonders if he’ll hate these songs if he leaves the loop, if they’ll remind him of the claustrophobia of being stuck.

But as of right now, he still loves Kurt Vile, loves the blues riff that hangs over his repeated day.

In the foyer, Seraphina and Abernathy are manning the Valentine’s chocolate stall. This is one of the only things that isn’t stagnant throughout his loops: the people in charge of the stall fluctuate with no discernible pattern, and Newt has never actually seen this particular pairing of student council members in charge of the stall before. Abernathy isn’t a fan of Valentine’s Day.

“Can I tempt you to buy someone some chocolates, Newt?” Seraphina asks, smiling wirily at him, knowing he’s more likely to say no. “They’re caramel hearts. They’re delicious. Everybody loves chocolate. Even Abernathy is sending some.”

“Hey,” Abernathy sniffs.

“To Gellert?” Newt asks. Abernathy sighs. His unrequited love for the student council vice president has never been particularly subtle. Newt smiles sympathetically. “I suppose I’ll send some.” He hands over a two-pound coin he’s spent on everything from sweets to a terrific bright red sale bowler from Primark.

“Who are you sending them to?” she asks, and with it, the implication of platonic or romantic?

“Credence Barebone,” Newt answers. Seraphina raises an eyebrow. Newt fixedly says nothing in return.

“And would you like to send a note?” she asks, proffering a piece of red card cut into the shape of a heart. “You can write it yourself. I don’t have to listen to your sweet nothings. But maybe refrain from any animal similes.”

“I’m not very romantic,” Newt admits, taking the Sharpie and musing for a few moments before writing carry on, my dear. fondly from Newt. Abernathy peers at it, but Seraphina is professional and turns it over, marking it with Credence’s name. “I hope he likes it.”

“Everybody likes chocolate,” Abernathy says. “Even Gellert.”

Newt has never told Credence that he liked him before. He’s not even sure that my dear and fondly count. But he’s done this day fifty times, watched Credence sit on his own at lunch time eating a pathetic excuse for a lunch, watched him shrink away when the Valentine’s chocolates get delivered.

And Newt can’t watch anymore, not even when he knows that this day will probably pass.

He doesn’t get to see his chocolates delivered - there are deliveries in the classes he shares with Credence, one in maths that the recipient shares around so they eat theirs together over rearranging equations. Credence understands this more than Newt does, still, even though he’s explained it repeatedly. Newt only gets a little better. He smiles at Credence as they eat. Perhaps he’ll never really get the intricacies of it all, or understand why certain things have to be done in maths, or get why he has to be given such stupidly difficult questions, but Credence will always be here to try and explain it through different paradigms.

“Do you wanna stop for a minute?” Credence asks softly, sensing Newt’s acute frustrations over a particularly vexing x. Newt nods, and they take the moment to eat.

“Thank you,” Newt says. “For helping me with maths. I know I’m not very good at it.”

Credence flushes. “That’s okay,” he says, and looks at Newt as if he wants to say something else, but doesn’t. He just finishes eating, turns back to the textbook, and asks if Newt has figured out what to do yet.

Newt’s last class of the day is a double of art, and he is currently occupied with carrying out a series of paintings of animals inspired by the style of John J. Audubon’s Birds of America. The one bonus of the loop, he thinks, is that he’s had time to improve his art, and learn from his mistakes. He’s starting to get adept at this particular painting of a cockatiel, knows exactly the best colours to mix and the best brushes to use.

What’s never happened before, assumedly because Newt has never sent chocolate before, is the arrival of Credence. The art department is relaxed, with students working all across the rooms with a variety of equipment, and so there isn’t a teacher to question his arrival: it’s just Newt, his Bluetooth speakers, and Horchata by Vampire Weekend.

“Hello,” he says, noticing Credence and setting down his brush.

“Hi,” says Credence. “Thank you for the chocolates. That was very nice - they were very nice.” Credence pauses for a moment, and Newt waits, lets his mind turn. “I kept some. I thought you could have some, too.”

“Oh, thank you very much.” Newt gestures to a nearby stool (art departments, of course, do not seem to understand the concept of chairs), which Credence pulls up. “I’m sorry. I know those chocolates were awfully forward.”

“No, I - I know I’m not supposed to like you like that, that it’s not right, but I…” Credence flushes. “I do.”

Newt raises his eyebrows. “Well, ah… that’s good.” He laughs. “I wasn’t expecting that. I’m sorry. Listen, do you want to talk about this more another time? Maybe over coffee? There’s that nice one across the street, the Blind Pig…”

Credence nods. “I would - like that.”

Newt beams. “Okay. Uhm, tomorrow’s Friday, so we could always go after school then, if you aren’t busy?”

“Ma expects me home in good time to go flyering,” Credence says, his voice quieting for a moment, “but I’m sure I can - maybe an hour.” He glances at the canvas. “I told my teacher I was sick, so can I… watch you paint, maybe? Or - or I don’t have to, if that’ll put you off.”

Newt smiles, popping a chocolate in his mouth and picking up his brush. He didn’t expect this day to go so well: what an anniversary, he thinks. The thing that saddens him is the idea that tomorrow isn’t going to come, that he’s never going to make it to that coffee date with Credence in the artisanal coffee shop opposite their school campus. He’s glad that Credence likes him back, that he isn’t completely overwhelmed by his heavily conservative Christian upbringing, that he’s willing to try it and risk it - for Newt.

Newt just has to enjoy the rest of the day as best he can. And tomorrow - the next February 14th - he’ll miss it.

The incredibly loud start to Harry Nilsson’s Gotta Get Up playing on Newt’s speakers jolts him awake, and he jolts out of bed, just catching himself before he topples to the floor. He groans. “God, Mum-”

“Do I look that much like her?” Theseus demands, and Newt looks up, rather surprised to see the tall figure of his brother standing in his doorframe. Nobody told him that Theseus was coming to visit from Durham, and furthermore - this hasn’t happened before. Theseus has never been here. Newt’s heart glimmers with hope.

“Well, when you had that long hair, you certainly did,” Newt answers, climbing out of bed and into Theseus’s obligatory bear hug, which he also uses as a chance to ruffle Newt’s already bedraggled hair. “When did you get here? Mum didn’t say you were coming.”

“I thought I would surprise you,” Theseus says. “Though mostly I’m here for the free lunches. My bank account looks like I’ve been through an economic crisis.”

“Stop buying fancy clothes and that’ll change.”

“I’m not going to be one of those students who shows up to their lectures in tracksuits. I’m here to learn. Seriously. And get drunk. Seriously. And also, I made breakfast, so get the fuck downstairs before it all goes cold and you better appreciate it. I haven’t used more than a microwave in about three months and I almost set fire to the house.”

Newt laughs, hurrying downstairs and sorting his hair as he goes; and as he does, he checks the clock in the living room, the one that has the date.

He’s scared to look, but he has to. Today already feels new.

Friday, February 15th.  

It always rains when Credence wakes up. He always wakes up early, has to make breakfast for himself and a good deal of the area’s children, and the thing that seems to characterise five in the morning is that there’s always a drizzle outside. He sighs, smoothing his hair down and quickly dressing: it isn’t as if he has much variety in outfits, only having a few pieces from thrift shops.

That loop went so well. It disappoints him that it’s over, and that Newt is probably going to go back to never giving him flowers again. It’s just going to be February 14, and Newt will either be there or he won’t, and nothing will change.

He wedges open his window, ignoring the rain.

“Here we go again,” he murmurs to himself, and, as he passes by it, checks his calendar out of habit. At the end of each day, he crosses the day off: it keeps him on top of things, lets him know what he has coming up, reduces his focus on the past. And he’s been doing it every day, every February 14th, just in case he ever makes it to the next day.

His breath hitches.

There’s a cross in the February 14 box.

[innuendostudios]

The newest installment of The Alt-Right Playbook, called The Death of a Euphemism. Here, we discuss what it means when politicians start getting overt about their racism, dissect the Southern Strategy, and put the 2016 election into some historical context.

You can keep this series coming out by backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, you’re a liberal journalist in the year Two Thousand and Sixteen of the Common Era. Your beat is covering the Republican primaries. A lot of people are vying for the Presidential nomination and so it falls to you to attend and write up their debates.

Part of your job is deciphering conservative euphemisms. When the subject of illegal immigration comes up, for instance, you’ll have to explain to your audience that the idea of “protecting American jobs from undocumented workers” is Republican doubletalk for hating Mexicans. No one is tightening security at the US-Canada border, no one’s pulling over white Europeans to check their visas, and undocumented workers contribute a massive amount to the economy while taxpayers don’t have to cover social security, unemployment, or Medicare for them. “Protecting jobs” has always been used to paper over racism.

So you’re sitting there watching the debate, all these factoids at the ready, when one of the candidates says he wants to tighten the borders because “Mexico is sending us rapists and thieves.”

I’m sorry, what? What just happened? That is not a thing Republicans are supposed to say out loud, it’s against the rules. You can’t just cop to believing Mexicans are degenerates after decades of calling border security a jobs issue. Also immigrants, legal or otherwise, aren’t soldiers, since when are they “sent” by anyone?

By the time you pull yourself out of that thought spiral, the debate has shifted. Now they’re talking about The War on Terror, so you, somewhat warily, prepare to contextualize another set of euphemisms. This is a subject almost always used to mask Islamophobia. Whenever an act of domestic terror is committed by someone of Palestinian descent, politicians try to link it to ISIS or Al Qaeda, where, if the bomber or shooter is a white Christian, the terrorist is referred to as a lone wolf, not part of any pattern despite there being significantly more white Christian “lone wolves” than Palestinian terrorists. This “War on Terror” never seems to expand beyond regions with oil deposits.

But then that same candidate pipes up and says, if elected, for the sake of security he wants to create a Muslim registry, and WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!

Politicians just don’t talk like this. Conventional wisdom is this kind of language will flare up the extremists in your party while alienating your base. Appealing to both at the same time is why we invented euphemisms.

And, sure enough, in the following months, you have Far Right pundits talking about a Muslim ban on national television, waxing nostalgic about the Japanese internment camps of the 1940’s like they weren’t a national disgrace. You’ve got that same candidate casting aspersions on the judge investigating him for fraud because the judge is Mexican-American. You’re sitting there with your pen ready to write an article about the alienation of the moderate Republican base, but that moment never seems to come. The guy seemingly tanking his candidacy by appealing to extremists is the one who finally secures the nomination.

You realize, with some shock, that, in each of these cases, you are witnessing the Death of a Euphemism. The death of a euphemism is a rare celestial event. Politicians only let a euphemism die when they don’t need it anymore. This does not imply good things for Mexicans or Muslims.

The circumstances under which a euphemism may die are often spelled out in the circumstances under which it is born. So, if we want to discuss it, we’ll have to start at the beginning.

Let’s talk about euphemistic racism in the Republican Party.

In the year Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-Four, there was a man. We’ll call him Barry, ah… Silver… milk. Silvermilk was the Republican nominee for President and, for various reasons, he was almost certainly going to lose the election. The Democrats were the incumbent party, they’d pretty much controlled Congress since the New Deal, and the country was still in mourning after the devastating assassination of a Democratic President. The United States wasn’t looking to change parties.

About the only thing Silvermilk had going for him was that the Democrats had just signed into law the Civil Rights Act, expanding the voting rights of Black citizens and desegregating a lot of American life. And a lot of white voters were pissed about it.

In those days, you couldn’t really claim Republicans or Democrats were “good on race,” and Black people, when they were allowed to vote at all, were much more evenly-split between Parties than they are today. However, a Democrat pushing through the Civil Rights Act had, intentionally or otherwise, made race a partisan issue. The upshot, Silvermilk realized, was that disgruntled white people might be willing to abandon the Democratic Party if given the right incentive.

In ‘64, Republicans didn’t have much of a coalition, not since Democratic tax policies had dragged America out of the Great Depression and, incidentally, created the greatest period of economic growth and prosperity in the history of the industrialized world, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. If Silvermilk could siphon white voters out of the Democratic Party, he might bring a strength to Republicans that they hadn’t seen in decades. But, to do that, he’d have to run his campaign on a pro-segregation platform.

Now, white racists have a complicated relationship to their own racism. They seemingly want the impossible: they want segregation without appearing to be segregationists, racist policy without the social repercussions. Possibly, they don’t even want to admit their racism to themselves. Silvermilk would need a framing that allowed the blithely racist, the overtly racist, and the non-racist to unite under a single banner.

For this purpose, Silvermilk landed on the long-enduring euphemism: “states’ rights.”

Now, obviously, the states’ rights argument didn’t originate in 1964 - it is very old, and, in fact, used to be more of a Democrat thing. We’re talking about the specific invocation of states’ rights as a defense of inequality. Silvermilk argued that desegregation - though certainly a nice idea - shouldn’t be enacted at the Federal level, because, no matter how acute the plight of Black Americans, the decision to desegregate should be left to the states. Of course, anyone embracing this rhetoric knew full well that many states would never in this lifetime desegregate unless forced to, but, you see, that’s not the aim, merely the side effect. In this framing, no one is officially pro-segregation, they’re simply anti-desegregation.

This brokered a compromise between the reactionaries and the centrists in the United States. It allowed moderate Republicans some deniability about what direction their party wais headed, and it allowed the Silvermilk campaign to secure the votes of white racists without having to publicly embrace them.

In spite of all of this, Silvermilk, as predicted, lost the election in a landslide. But it would be wrong to take that as a rejection of what he tried. This was the beginning of the modern Republican Party. This is where the Deep South, formerly a lock for the Democrats, first voted for the Party of Lincoln. This is where White Flight from the Democratic Party began, and why, today, we see white people - particularly white men - are the only demographic that consistently votes Republican. Silvermilk’s rhetoric was foundational to bringing Republicans back to power in the 80’s, finally breaking the Democrats’ hold over the House of Representatives.

Some will argue that Silvermilk did sincerely believe in states’ rights, and that rebuilding the Republican Party by appealing to white racists was not his intent. (And if you believe that, perhaps I can interest you in a very promising real estate venture in Florida.) But, regardless of what you believe about his intentions, that is how “states’ rights” has been used: as a cudgel in service of bigotry. States’ rights was invoked - and is still invoked - to defend anti-miscegenation laws, anti-abortion laws, same-sex marriage bans, trans bathroom bills, spousal rape, you name it. Every time there are gains for social minorities, the Republicans shore up the votes of bigots who find these gains offensive.

It’s hard for the Left to argue with the “states’ rights” argument because it’s not designed to make sense. Republicans will say we should leave an issue like same-sex marriage up to the states, but only after a Federal ban on same-sex marriage proves infeasible. Up until that moment, they are in favor of government overreach. So “states’ rights” has never been a consistent philosophy, but, then, why should it be? It’s a euphemism. Its sole purpose is bringing an extreme ideology into mainstream politics.

About the only blessing of a political euphemism is that the belief that can’t be spoken is a belief that is, to some extent, contained. The “states’ rights” argument makes bigotry more pervasive, but keeps it somewhat less draconian than the bigots might prefer. If you have to smuggle your marriage ban into a “states’ rights” argument, you’re painted into a corner should your state choose to legalize. Then, if you want to keep the homophobic vote secure, you’ve gotta find and popularize a different euphemism.

Managing an alliance between moderates and reactionaries, especially when you can’t acknowledge that one half of the alliance even exists, is a hard needle to thread, and, depending on who’s in charge of the Party at a given time, the alliance can be tenuous. The Far Right is often viewed by their own party as the madwoman in the attic: “We feed her, but we don’t talk about her.” Republican campaigners are somewhat known for going out and getting Far Right folks registered to vote and then talking shit about them when they’re out of earshot. I suspect they enjoy standing next to extremists because it makes them look moderate by comparison, though, we should be clear: if you need to stand next to someone whose bumper sticker that says “If I Had Known This I Would Have Picked My Own Cotton” to not look racist, your house is not in order.

And the Far Right knows this. Say what you want about them, they’re not all fools. Their Party often doesn’t respect them because it doesn’t have to; who the hell else are they gonna vote for? They are the necessary evil. But if what a person wants, what they actually want, is segregation, is a nationwide ban on same-sex marriage, is the mass deportation of Mexicans, is the closing of borders to all Muslim nations, this euphemistic “states’ rights,” “job security,” “War on Terror” half-measure bullshit isn’t going to cut it forever. When you court the vote of bigots, sooner or later it’s put up or shut up.

I don’t say this to generate sympathy for them. None of these are desires worth having and no nation calling itself a democracy should ever represent them, not even as watered-down euphemisms.

But, to bring us back to the recent past: I say this because, in 2016, it had been a long time since these people felt that any party had truly represented them. And this is why a candidate who doesn’t say “protecting jobs,” he says “Mexicans are rapists,” who doesn’t say “War on Terror,” he says “Muslim registry,” appeals to them. He says, in so many words, “The Islamophobes, the racists, the sexists, the segregationists, they are my base. I will not appeal to the moderates and treat them as the necessary evil. I will speak to them directly, without euphemism, because, honestly, I don’t know how euphemisms work. These are my people, and they are the ones the Republican Party should embrace with open arms.”

This is supposed to be political suicide.

In the months that follow, it looks like maybe it will be. All the other journalists are writing this up a fluke and an embarrassment. Him securing the nomination has doomed the Republican Party. The moderates will never elect him. Not only will he fail, he will lay bare the ugly truth about his entire Party. He lags in the polls. Republican lawmakers disavow him. The Republican National Committee revokes their endorsement. Statisticians say not only will he lose in the swing states, but some Republican strongholds might vote Democrat for the first time in forty years. They suspect he could drag Republicans in the House and Senate down with him; Democratic control of all three branches of government. His loss will be as sweeping as Silvermilk’s in ‘64, and the ensuing Republican realignment will be as dramatic.

But, when the day comes, that’s not the headline you have to write.

How do you make sense of this? You’re a political writer, you’re supposed to tell people what this means. How do you even begin?

It means party loyalty is one of the strongest things in politics today. Come Election Day, people who disavowed him was making phone calls on his behalf.

It means the Republican Party has drifted to the Right far enough that even the so-called moderates are more closely aligned with white nationalists than they are to the moderate Left.

It means, in all likelihood, the bigots are the base now, and the moderates the hangers-on. Politicians can be as racist as they want, because who the hell else are Republicans gonna vote for? That’s not the realignment you were expecting.

There’s no saying how long this state of affairs will last. One election doesn’t mean the Center Right and Far Right know how to build a coalition. Maybe a year or two from now, when this guy has passed a little legislation, the moderates will have buyer’s remorse and the extremists will feel their guy was more blunt talk than he was action. Everything will be worse and no one will be happy.

But that’s not much comfort, because it tells you almost nothing about how the next election will go. At this point, anything could happen.

A euphemism dies when it no longer works to disguise things that can’t be said, or when culture at large decides things that can’t be said are now sayable. In the last couple videos, we’ve talked about how the Far Right mainstreams a, for instance, racist idea by convincing people it’s not racist. What we’re seeing here is the endgame of that process: once the public embraces them as people, elects their politicians, and implements their policies, they begin, bit by bit, to drop the pretense. Because, if they want to close the borders once and for all, it’s in their best interest to stop pretending border control is about protecting jobs.

A sad truth about humans is they will often accept almost any justification to keep doing whatever they’re already doing. If someone has spent years favoring border security - they’ve voted for it, their taxes have paid for it, maybe they’ve even called ICE on someone - and one day you tell them, “Keep doing what you’re doing, but, by the way, it’s not about jobs anymore, now it’s about keeping Mexicans out,” a lot of them will roll with it. We like to think action follows belief, and sometimes it does, but at least as often it’s the reverse. And that’s a dangerous thing when given the choice to do something different or do the same thing only more.

To the Far Right, a euphemism is like a calf: something to be brought into this world or inherited, removed from its original context, raised to adolescence, and then slaughtered when the time is right. Historically, the first sign that things are about to get a lot worse for minorities is when the racism stops being euphemistic.

In a sense, the Far Right and the liberal journalist share a purpose. The journalist’s goal is to expose the truth behind the euphemism, in the hopes that people will abandon bigotry once it’s been made explicit. The Far Right does the same, hoping they won’t.

[sinrau]

“So I ask you to do me a favor. Suburban women: will you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK? The other thing: I don’t have that much time to be that nice. You know, I can do it, but I gotta go quickly.” — President Donald J. Trump

Welcome to the Countdown Journal. There are 20 days until Election Day and then 78 until the Inauguration.

Let’s start with this: The president retweeted a story suggesting that Barack Obama had Seal Team 6 murdered. And it hardly made a ripple in the news cycle, three weeks before the election.

As Bill Kristol notes in this morning’s Bulwark, “Deviancy has been defined so far down that President Donald Trump’s retweet at mid-day Tuesday was barely noticed.”

After all, what’s new? And who cares?

So what if the president of the United States brought to prominence an insane conspiracy theory that his predecessor, Barack Obama, arranged for four Americans to be killed at Benghazi to cover up an even bigger intentional blood-sacrifice of Navy SEALs—which in turn covered up the fact that Osama Bin Laden was still alive. Since it was a body-double who was in fact killed in 2011.

Or at least I think that’s the story Trump was amplifying. You’ll forgive me if I got some twists in the plot wrong.

Anyway, what’s the big deal? It’s just Trump being Trump. The important things were happening elsewhere, in the back and forth between Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett and various senators on Capitol Hill. That’s what serious conservatives were focused on. That’s what’s going to make a difference. If crazy tweets are the price we pay for an originalist justice, these people tell us, then it’s well worth it.

Speaking of crazy. Olivia Nuzzi reports that America’s Mayor “was in Philadelphia sounding like Livia Soprano.”

After claiming that Democrats used the pandemic to take away gun rights, which did not happen, he mentioned the McCloskeys, the couple who wielded guns on the porch of their St. Louis mansion in front of Black Lives Matter demonstrators who were passing by. Giuliani claimed, falsely, that the protesters had yelled, “ ’We want to rape your wife! We want to rape your wife! We want this for reparations! This is number one for reparations! Biggest house here! Reparations!’” He added, “Nobody knows this, but at the time, their daughter was upstairs under the bed because she was afraid they’re going to come in and they’re talking about rape and they’re going to rape the wife and they’re going to find the daughter.”

None of that was true.

And now we learn that Trump has chosen Rudy and Jay Sekulow to run his post-election operation. What could possibly go wrong?

How is Trump’s final act playing with women? Not well, apparently.

A reporter from the Economist who watched the focus group:

Easy questions. On balance, Amy Coney Barrett is doing as well as could be expected in the kabuki-theater hearings over her nomination. Senators bloviate and ask questions she won’t answer. She doesn’t use notes. We know how it ends.

But the thing about easy questions is that they are easy.

Questions like: Can the president unilaterally move the date of the election? The easy answer is no, he can’t. That requires an act of congress. It’s the law.

ACB’s answer:

“Well, Senator, if that question ever came before me, I’d need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues and go through the opinion-writing process,” she said. “So, you know, if I give off the cuff answers, then I would be basically a legal pundit, and I don’t think we want judges to be legal pundits. I think we want judges to approach cases thoughtfully and with an open mind.”

Here’s another one.

I’m not not a lawyer, but shouldn’t a constitutional “originalist” believe that the constitution requires a peaceful transfer of power? And that the founders kind of thought it was important? When did that become “political controversy”?

And, then there was this question about voter intimidation. “Sen. Amy Klobuchar brought up efforts by President Trump to get his supporters to the polls to observe voting activity and asked Judge Amy Coney Barrett if under federal law it is illegal to intimidate voters at the polls. “

“I can’t characterize the facts in a hypothetical situation, and I can’t apply the law to a hypothetical set of facts.”

She continued: “I can only decide cases as they come to me litigated by parties on a full record after fully engaging precedent, talking to colleagues, writing an opinion, and so I can’t answer questions like that.”

Easy answer: it is against the law to intimidate voters, and as a judge I believe in upholding the law.

Why is this so hard? (And, yes, that is a rhetorical question.)

Well, how about that. Biden says that he is “not a fan of court packing.”

“I’ve already spoken on — I’m not a fan of court packing, but I don’t want to get off on that whole issue. I want to keep focused,” the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee said in an interview with Cincinnati’s WKRC.

We are now free to get back to Hillary’s emails.

Not with a bang or even a whimper. “‘Unmasking’ probe commissioned by Barr concludes without charges or any public report.”

Or, as Tim Miller puts it in today’s Bulwark, “Another ‘Deep State’ non-scandal goes down the memory hole.”

Guess we can close the file on that one.

William Barr has quietly ended the probe into the supposed “unmasking” scandal which was only opened as fan service for Republican elected officials and conservative media in the first place. (Trump had suggested to Maria Bartiromo that the perpetrators be given 50 year sentences on Fox.)

I suspect that Barr had hoped that maybe, with a little luck, his investigation might snare somebody in some tangential wrongdoing. Or be able to do some strategic leaking. Or at least keep the issue open until after the election.

Alas, the president’s lawyer daddy struck out. Again. Thus bringing to a close a matter that—in a saner world—would have been the stupidest fake scandal in decade.

Romney sort of goes there. I blame myself a bit for this, because the other day I highlighted Keith Olbermann’s deranged rant. But I was just taking a cheap shot, not attempting to weigh the comparative insanity of the two sides of our political divide.

Which brings me to Romney, who put this out yesterday:

My thoughts on the current state of our politics:

This is good, sort of. This is the strongest denunciation of Trump’s toxic crackpottery from any Republican. (It may be the only one?) But what caught the most attention was Romney’s suggestions that there was some rough moral equivalency between comments by the president of the United States and a washed up sports guy on a YouTube video.

Both were bad. One has the nuclear codes.

So, unfortunately, this falls into the category of:Meant Well, But Actually Missed the Point.

Mitt Romney doesn’t want that to be his epitaph.

A final off-ramp for the GOP establishment?

As I mentioned on yesterday’s podcast, Politico’s Tim Alberta suggests that the GOP might still break with Trump… after the election. If the election is a blowout, he writes, “and Trump is flinging wild accusations about wide-scale fraud and deep-state conspiracies to take him down, Republicans will be forced to choose a side.

“They will either stand with a battered soon-to-be-former president whose days in office are numbered whether he likes it or not, or they will stand with the democratic norms that have guided the nation for 244 years.”

I suspect that he’s at least partly right. Some members of the GOP Old Guard might be willing to tell Trump to go. But Ted Cruz? Josh Hawley? Marco Rubio? Nikki Haley? Lindsey Graham? Forget about it.

Instead, backing Trump is more likely to become the new litmus test of tribal loyalty.

Foxconn turns out to be a massive boondoggle. Who knew?

Oh wait.

Something for the bedwetters. We’ve seen way too much hope and optimism lately, so I wanted to pass on this piece from Thomas Edsall, who warns that Biden is not yet out of the woods.

Here are some of the things causing anxiety among Democratic partisans, particularly political professionals.

One way to measure voter enthusiasm is to compare voter registration trends for each party. A Democratic strategist who closely follows the data on a day-to-day basis wrote in a privately circulated newsletter:

Since last week, the share of white non-college over 30 registrations in the battleground states has increased by 10 points compared to September 2016, and the Democratic margin dropped 10 points to just 6 points. And there are serious signs of political engagement by white non-college voters who had not cast ballots in previous elections.

But, but, but… Biden is now leading in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Arizona and the Economist Forecast gives him a 91 percent chance of winning the election. The FiveThirty Forecast has Biden at 87 percent.

The RealClearPolitics average now puts Biden’s lead at 10 points.

There are 20 days to go.

Quick Hits

Ok, sorry about the downer item above. As an antidote, make sure you read this piece by Mona Charen in today’s Bulwark.

We devote a lot of mental energy to things that are going wrong or could go wrong. It’s human nature. As the sociobiologists teach us, our ancestors were not the ones who heard a rustling in the grass and figured, “Eh, it’s probably nothing.” We are descended from the ones who said “ What the hell was that? Could be a cobra. Better run the other way.” Vigilance is our default mode.

But seven months after the start of this plague, we shouldn’t lose sight of the things that went more right than we expected for two reasons: 1) gratitude is good for the spirit and the soul, and 2) we must guard against catastrophizing.

Nicholas Grossman in today’s Bulwark:

Leaders, especially in law enforcement positions, can counter the president’s effort to stir up voter intimidation by making it clear they’ll prosecute election-related crimes, as Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford did after the debate.

Police should prepare for the possibility of armed intimidation at polling places. And concerned citizens should prepare for the unlikely, but not impossible, scenario in which some police are overwhelmed — or choose to look the other way — by being ready to calmly, peacefully escort any intimidated voters into polling places.

Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection recommends documenting what you see—if uniformed militia show up, photograph or take note of any insignias—and offers fact sheets on the relevant laws in 50 states, which you can find here.

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Deep Thoughts

Josh Kraushaar in the National Journal:

Republicans are now bracing for a punishing Election Night, resigned to losing the presidency, alarmed that Democrats will pad their House majority, and growing increasingly concerned that Chuck Schumer will be the next Senate majority leader. Most are hoping for a mere blue-wave election, rather than a potential tsunami that would wipe out some GOP members of Congress in reliably red states and districts. “He’s losing older Republicans over COVID,” said one alarmed senior Republican strategist. “They take their health seriously, and they see the nonsense out of the White House and it’s off-putting.”

So today’s column is something of a scorecard that will indicate just how bad the Election Night environment will be for Republicans. These are all races that, in normal times, should be fairly safe seats for the Republican Party. But they’re shaping up to be uncomfortably close. If Democrats win even one of these four races, it’s a sign of a big blue political wipeout.

A Tsunami of Trumpian Crazy

[gruntadminloch-moved]

So how did you reconcile him being Aether and him not having received an education?

Help Me Develop My Muse(s)! Ask questions about my OCs, even if they’ve been answered/discussed already.

I’M NOT SURE IF I’D CALL IT RECONCILIATION SO MUCH AS IT IS REALLY BAD JUSTIFICATION unless i used the term reconcile at some point which, knowing me, I probably did. Moving on.

TL;DR: the Pokémon world doesn’t rub me as someplace that you have to go to school. Particularly if you’re going to be working with Pokémon, especially as a trainer, education is advised, but not necessary.  I could go on about my school headcanons but that’s a bit extra.Many Pokémon Professors and Scientists aren’t formally educated–they are, however, recognized for their skills and knowledge and developments and discoveries and work and such. It’s like.  If you can do all of this in practice and explain it without, y’know, having had needed formal education, you don’t necessarily need to have had a formal education or a degree or anything. That’s just kind of the general view of it. Obviously there are places and positions where you do need to be able to produce a degree, but that’s individually based on the basis of, like, the company in question or the school or whatever.

So Loch’s family was Breeders and Daycare workers and have been for like. All of their family history. His surname, Kahu, even means ‘caretaker.’  They took on an occupational surname–as I recall, surnames aren’t common in native Hawaiian naming conventions(which reminds me that i need to change Loch’s birthname because he should probably have one of those really long and detailed names and just be Ua for short,) and they took on their surname long ago for the sake of, y’know, the…mainlanders to put it nicely. why am I putting it nicely? idk. they were invaders. don’t ask me for too much history i’m still VERY BAD AT THAT. Besides, they were typically associated with the term anyway, because, like I said, it’s an occupational surname.

MOVING ON Loch’s family has been breeders for forever, and he was raised the same.  As a result of that and expectations leading to a lot of personal study and personal experience, Loch became very knowledgeable about Pokémon biology, not just breeding patterns and such.  This heavily influenced his love for crossbreeds and variations, which you can see heavily reblogged onto this blog at times.

As stated earlier, one doesn’t need to have official school credentials to be able to be recognized for their work in the Pokémon world if they, y’know, produce work.  Loch joined the Aether Foundation and, obviously, just started as a regular employee, working heavily in the conservation area.

Hey! Backstory time!!

Loch’s only real personal interaction with Lusamine was what landed him a spot down in the basement(and, y;know, because his record stated his dependent tendencies and his eagerness to please and such. So clearly he’d be a good sheep/canon fodder/scapegoat and be able to keep a secret and just take the blame should something go wrong and still do his best to work for them as they desired. Like i’ve said before, Loch basically has a big neon sign over him that says “EASILY TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF.”

So in the conservation area, obviously they have to make sure Pokémon don’t go breeding recklessly.  Medications are usually applied shortly after they arrive in the Paradise to ensure they don’t go making eggs or anything crazy. Keeps hormones and populations in check as needed and lets them ensure all is well with the Pokémon before they go about their business.

Well, now and then timing isn’t right and some Pokémon didn’t get their medications in time and hey where’d that egg come from isn’t it weird how they just appear like that sometimes?

Obviously the Aether Foundation isn’t fucking PETA and isn’t gonna go killing eggs just because they weren’t meant to be there so the Conservation area staff had to attend to the egg. No big deal since they had to care for baby Pokémon anyway and all. It happens. Loch, of course, felt a little spark in him at something he knew lots about and eagerly jumped in to help caring for the egg, displaying all manner of breeder knowledge and being the one heavily in charge when things started to go wrong or things seemed off with the egg.

And those things happened often. Loch didn’t voice his suspicion as he didn’t want to seem like he was smarter than some of the scientists around for the suggestion(well, kinda, he does actually rather like being a bit of a knowitall) and not to mention the chances of such were slim so he didn’t blame them for not thinking of it… .

But one day the egg hatched into a semi-healthy crossbreed. I never decided what Pokémon it was crossbred between, but Loch, of course, rushed in to ensure it lived and grew to be healthier, shyly displaying his knowledge in the process.  Of course, when lusamine came around to check out the new addition to her lovely Pokémon family, the uncommon sight and the knowledgeable little fucker leading its care caught her attention. Mostly the Pokémon, of course.

When it was old enough, she said she would be taking it for her own care. Hybrid children often don’t live that long, even in captivity, so that Loch was able to get it to reach a stage where it was stable was an impressive display of his knowledge on the matter. Loch was okay with this, since he’d passed hybridized Pokémon off to trainers before, and politely and hesitantly and with her permission gave her instructions on how to ensure its best care, not that he thought in any way she would have trouble caring for it!! But he knew how much she loved Pokémon and she seemed okay with his sharing his knowledge with her.

Of course, one little display of biological know-how doesn’t get somebody to be an un-diploma’d scientist. Obviously he helped out in other areas. But his personal knowledge and skill used in practice combined with his attitude and personality and semi-reclusiveness(being that he was pretty much only friends with Hyde when he was in Aether, though he knew others, though not very well) meant he wouldn’t be terrible at keeping a secret.

And so they brought him down to the labs where he would be helping with some of the more…complicated aspects of Pokémon conservation and sciences and the like. No need to worry, they’d teach him anything he didn’t quite understand while he was there! He’d also be helping with some…additional projects that he’d likely be good at handling. He could surely handle the workload…don’t want to disappoint the President, now do we? She’s put so much trust in you, so come along with us to the labs below… .

…Did that explain everything? I feel like I got off track, but.

TL;DR: in my view of the Pokémon world schooling isn’t completely necessary for all the same things it is irl(obviously if you wanna be a doctor you’re gonna wanna go to school!! But not so much for some scientists) if you can prove your knowledge practically. Loch was able to do so at the Aether Foundation, which led to them making him a scientist to help out with work down there, Ultra Beast studies, and stabilization of Type: Full since he did have practical knowledge of hybrids and chimeras and was able to keep one alive for a good while.

Lusamine probably froze it. /shrug emoji) it’s beauty and uniqueness will be appreciated and salvaged forever… . 

[cynicalclassicist]

Personally I think SCOTUS should be moderate. No more right then Roberts, no more left then Ginsburg, on a philosophical point of view. After all, a Judge shouldn't be making decisions based on ideology. They should be interpreting the law. And not obsess over what people in the 18th century intended.

Merrick Garland seemed good for that but no... some ridiculous precedent, pulled out as convenient.

The West Wing going with this Judge is neutral so bad, we should have a conservative and liberal Judge appointed at same time for balance looks ridiculous now. It looks like what the BBC in the UK consider ‘balance’, which is so laughable.

It is of course impossible to be ideologically neutral. But the Judge should try rather then let their religion or whatever get in the way.

Like Jimmy Carter is not personally in favour of abortion... but supported Roe vs. Wade. Likewise Biden. Because it's not your decision, it should be up to the individual.

Putting people on the court basically just to overturn a previous decision is ridiculous. Like Barrett was rushed on just for being ridiculously anti-abortion. It's not even hidden, she calls it murder.

And Mitch Malebolge Mcconnell saying POTUS can't do it in final year of term... but can if their Party controls Senate, even in last few months of Presidency, is such blatant goalpost moving.

And hearing of them striking down the 1965 Voting Rights Act, flatout going against the whole principle of a rule and making Section 5 unenforcable.

Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) is blatantly going against these laws.

But of course, they are completely unaccountable.

The American political system is in some ways beautifully structured... speaking as a British person, where our political system is an absolute mess, so muchso the PM's office decides if the PM has broken the law.

But the SCOTUS is a nonsense. Lifetime positions go against the whole spirit of accountability and by the people.

Temporary positions would be much better.

And Clarence is a creep as well, like that Frollo Kavanaugh.

Doesn't even sound like a good Justice, not asking questions.

And so in four years this President who lost the popular vote has influenced the court for the next 30 or 40 or more years.

Even badly structured Britain looks fairer in its Supreme Court!

Anyway...

So we do have to assume history sort of keeps to a pattern as we don't know really what would have happened, October Surprises and so on.

Reagan being forced out does shift things up.

Bush might not run if he is tainted as well or would lose. Less of a Party line divide.

Oh... and Nixon might like VP Mondale in our timeline get an Ambassador role to China or something from a Republican.

Though would he still have tried to derail peace talks?

Could Carter do his own run again? Or maybe... well a nice scenario is him becoming a Secretary of State or Ambassador, work he would probably be better at. He does have some good diplomatic skills after all. I have a liking for JC even if he was one of the worst Presidents. As in poor at doing the job, not in a moral sense.

Mondale, the Humphrey Protege, wouldn't be bad in his own right for running. You could imagine him running with Carter as running-mate or making Carter his Secretary of State. Though at time Carter wouldn’t have the sort of experience you’d want in a Sec. of State so maybe not.

Maybe he still goes with Geraldine Ferraro. Although her finances... but if Reagan is so unpopular due to corruption scandal...

Though Carter might, like LBJ, be useful for purposes of Southern support. And might be seen as more honest and decent, in contrast to Reagan corruption.

Bush Sr. may still run.

Dubya might not be able to become Governor due to associations.

Newt and Cheney might still be significant within the House but never rise into the line of succession. Likely evangelicism is tailed off without Reagan, meaning less neoliberal voodoo. Democrats still have a Southern base of support.

Of course, there is always a risk someone might still get assassinated. Maybe whoever wins in 1980 still has an assassination attempt on them. Would that help Reagan against corruption charges?

Though he could still only do another term so wouldn't be candidate in 1984.

World politics... well, if catch onto Iran-Contra earlier less trouble for Nicaragua.

The special relationship?

Might not affect it as much as now. Even if Thatcher wins in 1979 her friend Reagan not being in and being disgraced might... affect things for her and the world stage. Though the British Left was in such a mess and she was already disliked at home so things might not change. So maybe things are similar for them.

If Biden doesn't plagarise Neil Kinnock's speech then he might still run... and so die from a brain aneurysm (which is sadly not too dissimilar to how his son died, even down to there being a similar age).

Soviet Union may have still collapsed. There would have been less risk of world blowing itself up too.

But less Reagan means less neoliberalism, a stronger Labour movement in the long-term.

Maybe if you want to push round a more moderate GOP, trying to distance themselves from Reagan, get back in with... McCain?

Though if you don't have New Democrats and the Third Way... then do you have New Labour? Blair might not be so friendly with America.

There is a lot to think about.

Alternate History: November 22, 1963

If John F. Kennedy survived his assassination attempt in 1963, he would almost certainly win re-election in 1964, so long as he kept Lyndon B. Johnson on as his VP. The Civil Rights Act would be stalled in Congress without Johnson as president to put pressure on conservative Democrats, but its still popular enough that it would become a campaign promise instead. Kennedy defeats Republican segregationist Barry Goldwater with a respectable majority, though not the 60-40 landslide of Johnson in our timeline. The Civil Rights Act passes in 1965 or 1966, and Kennedy commits fewer atrocities in Vietnam (his opponents call him soft or communism even though he was literally shot at by a communist sympathizer, he just doesn’t want to have another military failure like the Bay of Pigs in 62)

In 1968, the Democratic nomination is a two-way race between Lyndon B. Johnson and Kennedy’s own brother and Attorney General Bobby. Johnson and Bobby HATE each other, and they don’t pull any punches; Johnson had a history of opposing civil rights in the 50s, but he was instrumental in helping Kennedy secure the senate votes for filibuster cloture and passage in the 60s. Bobby Kennedy abused his post to act as his brothers personal lawyer, helping cover up some less than reputable decisions. It’s neck and neck going into the primaries. Johnson has more experience, but Bobby Kennedy is younger and more charismatic, and would have John’s endorsement. He would almost certainly be assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, same as in our timeline, because of his support for Israel. Sirhan was an anti-Zionist Palestinian, and in our timeline he killed Bobby when he was a senator running for president in 1968. If JFK was never assassinated, Bobby would stay on in his cabinet as AG instead of becoming a senator in 64; as AG, he was his brothers main advisor for foreign and domestic policy, so he would be at the forefront of the American response to the Six Day War in 1967 in which the Arab states tried to push Israel into the sea. Sirhan would have even greater motivation to kill him in this timeline for supporting Israel in the war, so Johnson would probably become the Democratic nominee. He would probably still pick Hubert Humphrey as his VP, as he did in our 1964, because Humphrey was a liberal civil rights activist in the senate, also instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act. Humphrey is closer in line to Bobby Kennedy, so Johnson is able to unite the party following his death.

The Republicans in 68 would be split between the moderates led by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and the conservatives led by California governor Ronald Reagan. In our timeline, following the total repudiation of Goldwater conservatism in 64, the Republicans picked the middle-of-the-road Richard Nixon (he was their nominee in 1960 but lost to JFK, then lost the governorship of California in 1962, after which he promised to leave politics forever, but rescinded that promise when he saw he could run as the anti-Goldwater with his former boss Eisenhower’s endorsement). In this timeline, he would be considered a political laughingstock for his defeats; everyone would compare him to his very popular and successful opponent JFK, so he wouldn’t stand a chance against either his brother or his VP in 68. In our timeline, Reagan came in second in the Republican primaries, followed by Rockefeller at a distant third. In this timeline, Rockefeller would rocket into first without competition from Nixon. Rockefeller was a liberal Republican (sounds like an oxymoron today, but they used to exist), so he would probably pick Reagan as his VP to balance the ticket, holding onto conservative voters.

1968: Johnson/Humphrey vs Rockefeller/Reagan, it would be very close and would depend heavily on ultraconservative segregationist George Wallace, who ran as a spoiler in our 68, splitting the Democratic vote and giving the presidency to Nixon. Humphrey was a Midwestern Democrat, Wallace a southerner, so they represented two very different sides of the party. In this timeline, both Johnson and Wallace are southerners, so Wallace wouldn’t stand nearly as much a chance; our Johnson and this Kennedy lost the south to Goldwater in 64, but this Johnson would probably be able to crowd Wallace out of the race and run without intraparty opposition. In this case, I think Johnson/Humphrey would win.

1972, Johnson is in very poor health, but the last president to choose not to run for re-election was Rutherford B. Hayes (1877 - 1881). Johnson/Humphrey would run again, this time against Ronald Reagan at the top of the Republican ticket. Reagan didn’t run in our 72 because Nixon was a popular incumbent, but he ran in our 76 and nearly unseated incumbent Ford because he was unpopular for pardoning Nixon. If Reagan picked a moderate as his VP, as he did in our timeline with George Bush, he would probably pick George W. Romney, the outgoing governor of Michigan (and father of Mitt). The Johnson/Humphrey ticket would have a slight incumbency advantage over the Reagan/Romney ticket, but Reagan is still super popular, so there’s probably even odds he gets elected. To make it interesting, let’s say that he wins the popular vote and loses the electoral college; this has never happened to a Republican, they have always been the beneficiary of these loopholes

1824: Democratic-Republican turned National Republican John Quincy Adams loses the popular vote to Democrat Andrew Jackson, but wins the electoral college. I actually approve of this one because Jackson was a genocidal warmonger who inspired Hitler (that’s not hyperbole or Godwin’s law, it’s true, look it up). Jackson won the rematch in 1828

1876: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel Tilden, and some closed-doors corruption gave him the electoral college by exactly one vote, on the condition that he end Reconstruction and allow the south to rule itself without federal oversight. This created Jim Crow, which haunts us to this day.

1888: Republican Benjamin Harrison loses the popular vote to Democratic President Grover Cleveland, the first and so far only sitting president to lost in such a manner. Cleveland would win the rematch in 1892, again becoming the first and so far only president to win a non-consecutive second term. Cleveland won the popular vote three times in a row, a feat only surpassed by FDR’s four terms 40 years later.

2000: Republican George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore. Bush would have lost the electoral college too, but his brother Jeb was the governor of Florida and illegally ordered the state to stop the federally mandated recount. The state was too close to call, and later investigations show that if the recount had continued it would have gone for Gore, giving him the presidency, but Jeb and he 5-4 conservative Supreme Court gave it to George on a technicality; “oh, it’s too late to restart the recount, sorry, better luck next time.”

2016: Republican Donald Trump loses the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump was divisive because he was an idiot racist sexual predator, and Clinton was divisive because she was a disingenuous career politician who a lot of people hated for a variety of valid but less substantial reasons (Banghazi wasn’t her fault, but she still acted as though she was entitled to the Democratic nomination, like it was her birthright, that anybody who dared challenge her was interfering in Herstory). She lost because of low voter turnout in the rust belt and disproportionate media attention paid to third party candidates; had Johnson and Stein not been taken seriously, she probably would have carried Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania (at least one, maybe two or all three), possibly winning the presidency. Now, whether or not Russia interfered on Trumps behalf and changed votes in those states is unconfirmed; I believed it for a while, but then Biden won them all in 2020, which shows that Clinton was just a historically weak candidate. If Russia could change votes to give Trump a victory in 2016, they absolutely would have done it again in 2020.

In this timeline’s 1972, Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson lost the popular vote to Republican Ronald Reagan, but eked by with a slim electoral college victory. Now, our Johnson died on January 22, 1973 of a heart attack, which would be just two days into this Johnson’s second term, but I believe he would have survived slightly longer in this timeline. The presidency ages you; inheriting it in 63 and holding it until 69 definitely put more stress on him than if he had remained VP under Kennedy the whole time. This version of Johnson didn’t fumble Vietnam, so he isn’t despised by the public as he was in our 68 (he was eligible to run for a third term, but chose not to because he didn’t think he had enough support to win). This Johnson would probably survive well into 1973 or maybe even 1974 before dying, giving the presidency to Hubert Humphrey.

In 1976, the Midwestern Humphrey would run with a southerner as his VP. In our timeline, he ran in 1968 and chose northerner Edmund Muskie of Maine, and lost because of southern opposition from Wallace. To secure he south, he would NEED a southerner; if he was going for a moderate he’d pick Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, if he was going for a conservative he’s go with Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia (he would almost certainly pick Carter because Byrd led the filibuster opposition against the Civil Rights Act which Humphrey fought for, making them rivals on the matter). Because Reagan was so popular and got more votes in 72, he would probably become the Republican nominee again; it’s not unlike what the Democrats did in the 50s, running Adlai Stephenson against Dwight Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956, or our timeline’s Republicans running Richard Nixon in 1960 and 1968. Reagan would pick a conservative as his running mate this time, probably Bob Dole; in our timeline, Gerald Ford picked fellow moderate Nelson Rockefeller as his VP in 74, but replaced him with Dole in 76 because he needed conservative support. I think that Reagan would shuck moderate support after losing in 68 and 72, in favor of a full conservative ticket. Reagan/Dole would defeat Humphrey/Carter in a landslide, ending 16 years of Democratic rule.

In 1980, Reagan/Dole would run for re-election against someone like Teddy Kennedy. In our timeline, Teddy challenged incumbent Carter in the primaries, and just barely lost. In this timeline, he would be he frontrunner, and would have his older brother’s endorsement. JFK would probably live into the early 1990s in this timeline; his sisters all lived to be in their 80s and 90s, but Teddy (his only surviving brother) died in his 70s. John was chronically unhealthy, suffering from Addison’s Disease, so he would probably die younger than Teddy, so 1994 at the latest. At this point, to see who wins we need to look at foreign policy; Vietnam is over, ended by Johnson or Humphrey, both of whom would be likely to reach detente with the Soviets and establish relations with the Chinese as our Nixon had. These are major achievements, but the election would come down to Iran; our Carter lost because he fumbled three Iranian crises in quick succession;

The Revolution: in the 1950s, Iran had a functioning democracy, and as an independent state it decided to distance itself from western powers to preserve Persian interests in the Middle East. Eisenhower overthrew the democracy and installed a pro-America puppet monarchy led by the Shah, who was in turn overthrown by religious extremists in 1979, installing the theocracy we know today run by the Ayatollah. Eisenhower destroyed Iran, and everyone up to and including Carter were complicit.

The Oil Shock: the new Islamic Republic of Iran decided it didn’t want to continue giving away oil to the United States as the puppet government had, so exports dried up, exacerbated by a war with Iraq the following year. Oil prices skyrocketed, and we were hit with a global recession.

The Hostage Crisis: a group of pro-revolutionary students took over the US Embassy in late 1979, holding 52 Americans hostage for over a year and a half. Carter eventually negotiated their release, but Reagan got all the credit because they weren’t let go until January 20, 1981, Reagan’s first day in office, making him look like he solved it all by himself.

Reagan was a warmonger who wanted to heat up the Cold War, and it was only because of his VP George Bush that we avoided the apocalypse. Bush specialized in foreign policy, and helped ease tensions with the USSR when he became president himself in our 1988, working with Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. In this timeline, no Bush means no detente, means we very likely would go to war with Iran over oil, becoming this timelines equivalent to the first Gulf War. Reagan would fight hard to restore the Shah, probably triggering a second revolution and an Iranian Civil War. This very same year, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to try and inch its way closer to the warm water ports of the Indian Ocean, which is an entirely new crisis for him to deal with. In our timeline, he responded to the Soviet invasion by giving money and weapons to the Mujahideen, an anti-communist militia led by none other than Osama Bin Laden. Bid Laden would turn against the US government in the 80s and 90s, bombing and eventually knocking down the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. If Eisenhower destroyed Iran, Reagan destroyed Afghanistan.

BUT, here’s the thing; Iran was our sworn enemy in the 1980s, but our Reagan decided they were a necessary evil in order for him to push his conservative agenda overseas. In 1985, Reagan decided he wanted to overthrow the left wing government of Nicaragua by funding the Contras, a right wing rebel group, but Congress told him he wasn’t allowed to do that. Instead of accepting it, he decided to fund them under the table, selling weapons to Iran to raise the money in secret. This was textbook Treason with a capital T, again literally, not hyperbole. Providing aid to our enemies is the definition of treason, a word that gets thrown around so often that people forget how serious a charge it is. By giving Iran weapons just a few years after the revolution and hostage crisis, Reagan could have gone to jail for life or been executed, but he shifted blame onto some underlings and covered it up, narrowly avoiding impeachment; he and VP Bush would go on to pardon their co-conspirators, so everyone got off scot free.

So, imagine Reagan in this 1980 gaming both sides of the Iran War; propping up a puppet monarchy AND selling weapons to the religious extremists AND sending money to Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan in place of the Nicaraguan Contras. In this timeline, we didn’t have a Nixon presidency, so there was no Watergate Scandal. Whatever Reagan gets into in 1980 would become this timeline’s equivalent, only worse because he wasn’t able to learn from Nixon’s mistakes and cover it all up as thoroughly. If this didn’t tank his re-election chances, he would almost certainly be impeached at the start of his second term. Dole was just some schmuck from Kansas, not the head of he CIA like Bush, so he wouldn’t be able to help Reagan out of this mess. If Reagan resigned like Nixon, Dole would pardon him like Ford, though I suspect Reagan would try to ride out impeachment because he’d rather be acquitted than quit. Our Nixon lost all support from even his own party after Watergate, so it’s likely that this Reagan would have the same disadvantage; our Reagan was beloved by Republicans, and still is to this day (they think he can do no wrong, even though he nuked the middle class and let the obscenely rich take control of every aspect of our lives, socially and economically), so maybe he would still have support, but not as much because in this timeline he would become Nixon. Nixon won in 1972 with a 49 state landslide, but resigned in shame just 2 years later; it’s very likely that his Reagan would follow suit, losing all credibility regardless of how much support he has at the start. It would depend on whether or not the Democrats had the balls to investigate him until they struck oil.

All this time I’ve been assuming that Congress would remain the same throughout this timeline, with longstanding Democratic majorities in both houses, but I failed to account for how vulnerable seats would change in the alternate 1972 and 1982 reapportionments. After 16 years of Democratic rule from 1961 to 1977, Congressional Republicans would likely gain support from the public, maybe even pushing the Republican Revolution of the 90s ahead by a decade or two. Johnson/Humphrey would become Bill Clinton, competent and popular, but the perfect boogeymen for the Republicans to rise up against.

I’ll continue this scenario tomorrow after doing more research to see what the alternate Congress would look like. Going forward from here depends heavily on which party is in power when Reagan goes for a second term during the Iran Crises.

[jswdmb1]

The Scientist

“I was just guessing At numbers and figures Pulling the puzzles apart”

- Coldplay

I feel a need to give an unsolicited opinion on the tax bill so I’m ending my break early to weigh in on this topic while things are still pending.   Wait, you say, didn’t the bill pass the Senate ending the debate? While that is true, but the bill is a long way from becoming law and I do not think the debate is over.  The Senate version still must be reconciled with the House version and then the consolidated bill has to be passed by both houses.  Since the Republicans are doing this with no bipartisan support (they aren’t even giving Democrats a copy of the bill), they should be able to accomplish that task. But, you never know in this political environment as the Senate bill passed 51-49 and the House is much harder to control.  There could be last minute provisions that were put into the Senate bill that a caucus of House members will balk at.  There is also the minor technically of having the president sign the bill into the law.  While at this point, I question his ability to read anything beyond 140 characters, and I’m certain he would sign a blank piece of paper if put in front of him, he is a true wild card and his support should never be considered a given.

But, let’s assume what we have in front of us graduates from bill to law (cue the Schoolhouse Rocks music!) and our tax code is revamped.  I’ll start by saying that I’ve worked with governments in a finance and accounting capacity at many levels for a number of years; so, I at least think it is an informed opinion. I’ll also qualify my comments by saying I haven’t read the pending legislation cover to cover (it is unlikely few in Congress or the White House have either), but I have read enough about it to give a macroeconomic perspective. Finally, I’ll state, for the record, that while my social views would be defined by most as liberal, my stance on fiscal policy skews conservative. I do believe in a central government that provides basic services to its citizens, social safety nets to those that need it, and a federal system that aids in the conservation of our natural resources to ensure a future for our country. Those are good things for which to raise taxes. What I am against is waste, special interest spending that doesn’t contribute to the common good, and inefficiency.

With that background, I would be voting no against any current version of the tax bill. A simplified explanation for my stance would be that no thought has been put into this bill, but that is not true. Actually, quite a bit of design by Republicans has been taking place for a long time to get to this point. No credit for that should be given to the current president, who would sign any bill just to say he did it. But, seasoned Republicans have been working on this for years waiting for their moment and they have it with their patsy in the Oval Office. The problem is that there are a few Republican senators left who can’t stomach the fact that this bill does nothing to fix the real problem with the tax code or the bigger issue of the dysfunctional way governments in this country approach finance and accounting. If any of them had real courage, they would not just ask for simple rate rollback triggers or settle for the last-minute throw-ins they got to support getting something passed.  Instead, they should be leading the charge for true tax reform in these three areas:

Tax Rates - I agree that rates could be reduced. I also think that elimination of the estate tax should also occur (if you have a fair system in place to get people’s money when they are alive then there is no reason to tax them after they die). A flat tax is regressive and hurts those in poverty terribly, but rates should be simplified.   I would have personal rates at two levels: 0% and 20%. The first $100,000 you earn is on the house.  Everything after that gets taxed at a flat 20%.  That creates an effective flat tax without being regressive.  Corporations get three rates.  They still get the first $100K on the house. That helps really small business that are essentially passing through their income to the owner. Everything after that up to $1,000,000 is taxed at 10%.  That will really stimulate the economy for the mid-sized companies that are the oil in our economic engine.  Everything over a million goes to the 20% rate.  I am also in favor of elimination of capital gains taxes and the alternative minimum tax. The first penalizes growth and investment and is unnecessary if you properly tax the initial income earned that was used for the investment. The second is plain and simple just a stupid political mechanism.  The reason no one understands AMT is because it is non-sensical, and it is completely unnecessary if your tax code is logical in the first place.  The current plans I have seen seem to unfairly skew the cuts to big corporations, special interests and the wealthy that feed the politicians piggy banks. There is enough to spread it around to give everyone a taste, so why not do it (that is a rhetorical question – they won’t do it because politicians do not care about anyone that doesn’t write them a check). That’s why growth under current plans is independently projected to only be 0.8%. If more money went back into the hands of consumers and small businesses that are really the backbone of the American economy that number would be higher and the shocking deficits being projected would be much lower.

Deductions - I’ll give you an insider tip: deductions are stupid. Really stupid. Think Kohl’s. They give you all these coupons and deals with 50% off but it’s all a marketing ploy to get you to buy marked up crap that you could probably get cheaper on a net basis somewhere else without all the markdowns. Deductions work the same way. They are just vehicles for politicians in both parties to give breaks to special interests. I would eliminate all deductions except for two - charitable contributions and the use of pre-tax earnings to pay for health insurance and flexible spending accounts. I keep those two not because I’m altruistic (though I think both are good things to encourage with a tax break) but because both directly keep costs down at the federal level by reducing the need for social services.  That’s it - everything else is gone.  This is where you start screaming at me through the computer (I can’t hear you by the way), but remember the first $100,000 is on the house in my plan. Most of us won’t need a deduction because most of what we make isn’t getting taxed.  Tax code is complicated mostly because of deductions.  Get rid of them, and that problem is solved along with the unfair nature of their use.

Revenue Expansion & Expense Reduction - We all look at taxes through the narrow prism of what we have to fork over, but income tax code is one of many components in the federal accounting of things.  I’ve lost most of you already with this post, so I won’t lose the rest with a detailed explanation of the way governmental accounting works, but it comes down to revenues are pluses and expenses are negatives.  If you have more of the first, you have a surplus.  If the opposite is true, you have a deficit.  If you end up with a deficit, you finance that with debt.  The federal government’s primary mechanism for that is issuing treasury bills and notes.  The amount raised through income tax is a huge source of revenue, but the federal government is leaving a lot on the table due to xenophobia and mock piety. By that I mean, a thoughtful immigration plan and legalization of drugs and gambling could boost revenues immensely. With immigration, having undocumented workers that may or may not pay their fair share leaves a decent amount of untaxed income a lot of which gets repatriated to their native countries and thus out of our economy.  It’s dumb to not and try and make some of these folks legal and keep that money here and tax it accordingly.  With the “sin” taxes available to allowing drugs and gambling to occur legally at the federal level, even more money could be raised.  I hear the objections to both already, but they will be handled in separate posts for each that also take into account the social issues both bring.   But, for the purposes of this post, it is a fact that our deficits could be greatly reduced if these untapped sources were brought into play.  The other side of the equation is cutting expenses.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t agree that we have waste at all levels of government.  Obviously, getting at this reduces the need for revenue and can allow for potentially more tax relief or reduction of debt.  Again, there is a whole separate post coming on this topic that I think you will enjoy ignoring.

So, there you go – tax reform solved in one blog post.  Don’t be fooled into being told it is more complicated than this.  Remember, we didn’t have an income tax for a long time and it was never intended to be this complicated.  If there is political will to really get something done that is useful to us citizens, burning the code and starting from scratch with a scaled down version can be easily accomplished.  This will never happen in my lifetime, but don’t think I blame only the Republicans.  Most Democrats hate this idea because they love to do two things: raise taxes and pretend that they didn’t.  The current tax code gives them plenty of cover to do both.  If you are really agreeing with me here, the best advice I can offer you is start looking at third parties who would be more inclined to take this into their platform.  I think that is going to be true for almost every issue we talk about going forward as the two major parties sold themselves out a long time ago and they are never coming back.

I hope you enjoyed your first post after coming back from my break.  Nice and dry, huh?  I’d like to think dry like a fine white wine on a summer day, but I’m guessing it was more like the dry you feel when you eat a sleeve of Saltines (Yes, I have done that and don’t ask why.  If I really want to tell you it will be coming in a post).  Don’t worry, I’ll make sure there are posts that come after the dry ones that wash things down nicely.

Cheers,

Jim

[silence-burns]

Imagine having an office affair with Percival Graves.

Fandom: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Requested by a lovely anon. I hope you’ll like it! Please tell me what you think.

[Masterlist]

The first time it all happened too quickly for either of you to think it through, but you surely weren’t regretting anything.

Both of you understood that there was no way of letting anyone know, which wasn’t an easy task.

You sometimes felt all the eyes in the room on you, like everyone knew why it took you so long in the Graves’ office, even though you always had a good excuse.

You tried to keep on acting like you used to. You weren’t sure if making everything official from the start would be a good thing, so both of you agreed to keep your relationship on the down low for now.

Even though not every wizard in MACUSA was conservative, in your time it was still unacceptable to have an affair. Marriage was still a very important step before taking any actions, and even though you’ve always thought Graves would be very strict against having an affair, he surprised you, not really bothered by it.

Of course, if it came to light, there would be many consequences that could threaten his position in MACUSA, so neither of you wanted to risk it.

Walking into his office was a challenge on its own, and not only because you had to come up with a good reason to do so and make sure there weren’t many people waiting in the line to get inside.

Even before the first knock your heartbeat would quicken.

Feeling his intense, heavy gaze on you felt as real as if they were real touches instead. The air was suddenly gone from the room.

The clicking of a closed door felt like complete isolation from the outside world. There were no people behind it, no staff rushing the corridors, no papers to fill. All that mattered was locked in his office.

The man sitting in front of you was the man in charge, the man used to being in control and used to having power over whoever entered his office. Intimidating, was the first thing that came to your mind all those months ago when you first met him. It surely wasn’t a bad thing, considering how your knees tend to melt every time he gives you that gaze.

“Hello, Mr. Graves. May I have a moment?” you would sweetly ask, approaching him slowly, not tearing your eyes away from him. Your prize would be that tiny crack in his stone-cold facade, an almost invisible rise of the corner of his mouth.

“If you ask nicely, I may give you more than just a moment,” he would murmur deeply, turning in his seat to face you.

“I’m not sure if I can be nice today.”

On normal days (which meant very busy days) there wouldn’t be many occasions for you to meet. You were working surrounded by Aurors who were always watching their backs and other workers’ actions unintentionally. They were always open-eyed and if you disappeared too often without a very good reason on a day like that, one of them would probably start to be suspicious. Besides, you were still a worker and you had to get things done. Many things.

Graves, as a head of the department, was also busy and often had to leave on a mission or on the meetings with other directors or Madame President.

Walking out of his office, he had to walk all the way between his workers’ desks to reach the corridor. You could feel his eyes on your back when he walked from behind you and when he passed you. He would sometimes exchange a few words with some random co-workers on his way, acting like there was nothing unusual in it, but you could see through him. You didn’t need much to understand if he wanted to meet you after the meeting or when he got back from a field mission.

Sometimes, when he was sure you wouldn’t be put in danger, he would ask you to come with him on the mission. On the official side, he would of course fill in all the paperwork it required, argumenting his decision with the need of your advice or your skills or to improve your experience.

Graves usually chose missions requiring investigating some shady places, and to do so you had to blur into the crowd and not bring anyone’s attention to you. Or, at least, not the attention MACUSA’s wizards would gain.

It wasn’t easy to focus on watching your surrounding if you couldn’t tear your eyes off Percival.

Especially if he had to wear a suit.

Particularly the graphite one. You almost drooled every time he chose it, and that bastard was perfectly aware of that.

Graves looked equally good in civilian clothes too, even though he couldn’t really get rid the of aura of the man in charge. Or maybe he wasn’t really trying since he chose the less important missions anyway.

It was like a date. Even if someone saw you together, they wouldn’t ask questions and even if they did, you had all the papers you needed. It was exciting to be able to act like a couple in public.

You weren’t the only one enjoying your little game.

[Masterlist]

If you want more headcanons, just leave a nice request :)

[mbtizone]

Prue Halliwell (Charmed): ESTJ

Dominant Extroverted Thinking [Te]: One of Prue’s trademark characteristics is her bossiness. She tends to be overly critical and domineering. Prue is good at giving orders to other people and can be a control freak. As a teenager, she was student body president and the head cheerleader. Prue needs facts and proof in order to believe something. It was harder for her to accept the existence of the supernatural than it was for her sisters, and only truly believed when she unintentionally used her power. She is blunt, direct, and knows how to take charge. Prue effortlessly slips into the leadership role and lays down rules for others to follow. She is practical, focused, organized, logical, and often clashes with Phoebe, who is more free-spirited and aimless. It’s nearly impossible for Prue to understand Phoebe’s lack of direction. Prue is extremely logical and typically follows her head instead of her heart. She doesn’t shy away from confrontation and doesn’t usually sugarcoat it when she has something unpleasant to say.

Auxiliary Introverted Sensing [Si]: Prue has difficulty letting go of the past. Water is her biggest fear because her mother drowned. She can’t say “I love you” to her sisters, because that was the last thing she ever said to their mom before she died. Prue’s past experiences shape all of her present feelings. Because she has such strong ties to her past, she tends to hold grudges for a very long time. She’s the least willing to give her dad a second chance when he attempts to be a part of their lives again. She doesn’t want anything to do with Phoebe because she mistakenly believes that Phoebe made a move on her ex-fiancé. And Prue never really trusts Cole again after learning that he was Balthazar, regardless of how many times he saves them or fights alongside them. Prue has a very good memory and is very detail-oriented. She is extremely responsible, even sacrificing her own childhood to help raise her two younger sisters. When Andy dies, Prue blames herself and has a hard time letting go. After his death, she never has a serious relationship again. Prue tends to be conservative, cautious, and dislikes surprises. The majority of Prue’s adult life was spent working in places that have strong ties to the past. When we first meet her, she is working at the Museum of Natural History. Then, she goes on to spend a year and a half identifying and authenticating various antiques at Buckland Auction House.

Tertiary Extroverted Intuition [Ne]: It’s easy for Prue to list all of the ways something might go wrong, which is a contrast from Phoebe, who tends to be more optimistic. Prue doesn’t think up possibilities as a way to entertain herself. If she’s coming up with ideas, it’s because her Te is requiring it. When there’s a problem, she can think about it and come up with connections. Eventually, Prue gets to a place where she is sick of her job at the auction house and spontaneously decides to quit and follow her former dream of becoming a photojournalist. Prue is usually good at thinking of a quick lie on the spot to cover for her being a witch.

Inferior Introverted Feeling [Fi]: It’s not easy for Prue to express her emotions. She cares about her sisters deeply, but has trouble putting her feelings into words. As previously mentioned, Prue is unable to tell her sisters that she loves them because of her painful past (Si-Fi). She has a firm sense of right and wrong, and is typically the one to enforce moral rules for the sisters to follow (Fi-Te). Of the three, Prue is usually the strictest about not using their powers for personal gain (though, when desperate, she breaks her own rule). Prue tends to internalize a lot of her feelings instead of dealing with them. She blames herself for Andy’s death, which manifests as her losing faith in her powers and wanting to get rid of them. She carries a lot of guilt for hurting Phoebe in a car accident when they were younger and holds onto that for many years (Si-Fi). Prue enjoys helping innocents and fighting evil. Being a force for good is an important part of her personal identity. She tends to see things as black and white. Death is the “ultimate evil” to her and she is hostile towards him when they meet, but, in reality, Death is an inevitability, and not good or bad.

Enneagram: 1w2 Sx/Sp

Quotes:

Prue: He’s dead, Phoebe. Phoebe: No, he moved from New York, but he’s very much alive. Prue: He isn’t to me. He died the day he moved out. Phoebe: What are you talking about? He’s always been a major button-pusher for you. You’re mad he’s alive, you’re mad that I tried to find him, and you’re mad that I moved back. Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad. (several shelves collapse, and Prue and Phoebe burst out laughing)

Prue: Our powers are not toys.

Victor: Always in a hurry, Prue. You skipped crawling and went straight to walking. Prue: Oh, we’re sharing memories. Well, I’ve got one of my own – your back walking out the door.

Phoebe: Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t we throw a party and charge admission. It’s a great way to make extra cash. Prue: Hey, I have an even better idea. Why don’t you just get a job?

Prue: Seasons change, people don’t… Phoebe: I changed. Do you remember what you thought of me before I walked back through that door? Prue: That’s different. Phoebe: How is that different? Prue: You’re my sister.

Phoebe: We can’t find anything about revearsing the Wendigo thing. Prue: Well, there’s got to be something. Oh, didn’t you check this at the bottom of the page? “c.f. Desiderata.” Phoebe: Yeah, like we’re supposed to know what that means. Prue: Well, it means “conferred desiderata.” It’s Latin for “look up things that are yearned for.” Piper: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re so very smart.

Phoebe: Well, if you can’t teach the dog new tricks, how about the owner? Just think on the money we’ll save on carpet cleaning alone. Prue: Phoebe, we can’t use our magic just to teach him or anybody else a lesson.

Prue: Piper, just help me look for it. Piper: Okay, relax, we’ll find it. Prue: You don’t know that! I mean, what if it’s lost? What if we can’t find it? Then we’re stuck in our future bodies, with no way of getting out of them, and no way of saving Phoebe!

Prue: I have no one to say goodbye to. My life…they didn’t even know who you were at the office, my own sister. If we die tonight, my tombstone will read “Here lies Prue, she worked hard.”

Prue: Well, the house is a mess again. I mean, how come we can’t fight the demon of cleanliness, or the demon of housekeeping, or even that bald Mr. Clean guy. I would so totally take him on.

Leo: We’ll help you out. Prue: No, no, no. I’ll hit the book alone. Your guys couple issues are really starting to hurt my head. Piper: Wait, we have couple issues? Prue: Resentment. Denial. Be nice!

Prue: Phoebe? Phoebe! Hi. I hate to interrupt your whole “staring off into space aimlessly” thing that you’ve got going on right now, but in case you forgot, evil Triad agent. Phoebe: Like you would ever let me forget, Prue.

Prue: Listen, here’s the deal. Balthazar killed the Triad, now the Source wants him dead. Krell is trying to suck up to the Source, so he wants to kill Balthazar.

Prue: I know somebody who can see anything. Phoebe: Oh, no. Wait a minute. You tiptoe around the subject of Mom, you deny looking like her, you can’t even go to the end of that dock because you’re afraid to walk in her footsteps and now you want me to relive her last moments? How is that fair? Prue: It’s not. None of this is. Mom’s death, Sam’s guilt. But I’m asking you to help me end it.

Prue: I don’t obsess. I think… intensely… anyway, I can’t really help it. I mean, we’ve seen so many bizarre things, why not a man in a painting?

Prue: Come on, why do you even care what those people think? Piper: Only a former cheerleader could ask that question.

Prue: You know, if this doesn’t work I can look back and pinpoint the exact moment where it all went wrong. Piper: And that moment’s name would be Dad? Prue, you gotta admit if he can open the door we kinda need him. Prue: It’s all about word choice Piper, we don’t need him, we need his utter lack of power. Right? He opens the door, we save the day, we get on with our lives. It’s a one time group effort. Piper: Glad to see you have a healthy handle on the situation, Prue. Prue: I think I do!

Prue: You don’t know me, you don’t know anything about me. Death: But I’ve seen it so many times before. The anger, the pain. You lock up your tears and angrily steel yourself against me as if I was the ultimate evil.

Prue: Alright, I am going to win this fight and save your ass. That way I can kick it myself later.

Prue: Listen, I shot a magazine cover yesterday, I had a date last night and this morning I’m searching for evil. You can’t get more balanced than that.

Piper: Ahh, what happened? Leo: You almost dead, that’s what happened. Piper: Yeah, what else is new? Prue: Oh, where’s Shax? Phoebe: I tried to use the vanquishing spell on him. But I think I just wounded him, he turned into the wind. Prue: Maybe the spell needs more than one witch for full effect. Ah, OK, come on. Piper: Come on, come on, where? Prue: Let’s go find him. So we can finish it off while he still hurt. Look, you just stay here with Griffiths, alright? If Shax comes back, say the spell to fend him off. OK, come on.

Prue: Oh my god.. and she’s been acting really.. and she left without saying.. and and the bottle, she wanted to destroy it. Phoebe: I’m trying to jump on your thought train but you’re moving a little too fast for me here.

Prue: I don’t get it. I have checked everything. There’s no reason why the chandelier should not be working. Piper: We’ve been talking about what to do with that spare room. I think you’re right, we do need a roommate. Prue: Well we could rent out a room at a reduced rate in exchange to help around the house.

Piper: Well, maybe this is our destiny, maybe it’s just not meant to be. Leo: You don’t believe that. Piper: Don’t I? Prue: I don’t. I mean, look, this whole year has just been a series of tests, right? To see what we’re made of. Well, maybe this is one more test. Which means we can’t give up, alright? So while the Elders are figuring out what we’re supposed to do, we still have work to do, okay? Piper: Dr. Griffiths? Prue: Yeah, if we don’t catch him before he gets out of surgery, Shax will. (to Leo) Unless you know something we don’t? Leo: No, you’re right, your powers aren’t enough to vanquish him. You’ll need the three of you to say the spell. Prue: Yeah, well, we only have two of us. Don’t ask, just orb us to the hospital, okay? Leo: I can’t. The Elders won’t let me. They don’t wanna risk exposing Whitelighters too. (Darryl comes back in) Piper: Cowards! Prue: Fine, we’ll just save him without your guys help. Let’s go. Darryl: Whoa, Prue, Prue. Even if you can save your innocent, that still doesn’t save yourselves. Prue: Yeah, I know that, Darryl, but first things first, alright? Try and buy us as much time as possible with your captain as you can. (to Leo) And you, why don’t you get back up there and White light a fire underneath your bosses butts.

Prue Halliwell (Charmed): ESTJ was originally published on MBTI Zone

[samanthasroberts]

So? Brett Kavanaugh’s high school classmate wrote a memoir about his alcoholism

The Democrats have been reaching for straws so much and so far they’re going to put their backs out if Judge Brett Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed pretty soon. Much of the news this week was centered around a letter that Sen. Dianne Feinstein had apparently been sitting on through Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearings and leaked only at the 11th hour. She turned it over to federal authorities, but the FBI took a look said it wasn’t going to investigate, and shoved the letter in Kavanaugh’s background file. That doesn’t mean that Democrats aren’t keeping hope alive, and Mother Jones is reporting that “Brett Kavanaugh’s high school friend isn’t helping the nominee’s case.” Um, what case? There is no case. Has he been arrested and charged with something?

But check this out. The other high-schooler alleged to be in the room with Kavanaugh at that party has written a memoir about his alcohol use.

The classmate accused of being in that room alongside Kavanaugh once wrote his own teenage drinking "reached the point where once I had the first beer, I found it impossible to stop until I was completely annihilated." https://t.co/nOqG2YtvwP pic.twitter.com/sqMzBTKJRE

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) September 15, 2018

Stephanie Mencimer writes:

The New York Times reported that the friend the woman alleged to be in the room with Kavanaugh was conservative writer Mark Judge, who attended Georgetown Prep with the nominee. On Friday, Judge told the Weekly Standard that no such incident took place. “It’s just absolutely nuts,” he said. “I never saw Brett act that way.”

But … what if he were blindingly drunk at the time? The book he wrote chronicles Judge’s time as a teenage alcoholic and Mencimer concludes that “the amount of drinking Judge describes himself undertaking might suggest that his memory of those days may not be entirely reliable.”

Kavanaugh’s still going to be confirmed, but let’s let the hot takes continue.

And we know this because we know who he is. Unlike the liar who is accusing them anonymously. https://t.co/TXcD2oXd8f

— RBe (@RBPundit) September 15, 2018

What's the name of the accuser? https://t.co/krpiB3k12b

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) September 15, 2018

Surprisingly, no one’s reporting that, as the alleged victim has asked not to be identified — although we’re pretty sure Judge wasn’t thrilled to be dragged into this either.

how is this relevant

— Confused Electorate (@Conf_Electorate) September 15, 2018

What on earth does this have to do with Kavanaugh?

— Nyarlathotep (@Nyarlat57298457) September 15, 2018

What is this supposed to prove? Now they are going after a private citizen to punish him for defending BK from an anonymous smear. Enough of this. Set the vote for Monday. https://t.co/lx8MrWy25t

— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) September 15, 2018

This is character assassination and you know it. Baseless accusations from an anonymous source to attack Kavanaugh and this irrelevant quote to attack his friend. GFY

— DemocratsSmear (@DestructiveChem) September 15, 2018

So now we are going to assassinate the character of anyone who dares defend Kavanaugh?

— Lenny Brisco (@skinnerj51) September 15, 2018

You guys are really messed up. Perhaps some introspection is in order, don't ya think?

— Still Nancy (@SameOldNancy) September 15, 2018

Drinking too much as a teen is now considered corroborating evidence for this smear. Every single one of you spreading this shit can GDIAF. 🖕🖕🖕 https://t.co/a8xm8yLGcV

— Carl Gustav, President of Whataboutism, Inc. (@CaptYonah) September 15, 2018

Nice defamation case coming if "anonymous" names this guy and can't back it though, isn't it?

— Honeybladger (@Honeybladger) September 15, 2018

I don’t ever EVER want to hear the left bemoan the state of our discourse ever again. Step on their neck. Don’t let them up. https://t.co/AszA0yX4qN

— EducatédHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) September 15, 2018

Extending the smear to his friend… Have media reached the bottom of the sewer; not even close.

— Marvin Boian (@BoianMarvin) September 15, 2018

Consider the source – smear machine is in full attack mode. Disgraceful

— Imelda Rheaume (@irheaum) September 15, 2018

This is the equivalent of ubsubstantiated gossip conveniently timed and brought up by one of our most corrupt politicians (Feinstein). A "guilty until proven innocent" stunt that diminishes the value of actual sexual assault victims who can safely go through due process.

— Tunnel Snakes Rule! (@TheTunnelSn8ke) September 15, 2018

Man, you guys are so desperate to smear BK that you will go after someone whose only crime was he knew BK in high school. Absolutely pathetic that you would try destroy this guy based on an anonymous accusation for over 39 years ago. Y’all are morally and ethically bankrupt

— LordKrispyKreme (@LordKreme) September 15, 2018

"In fact, everyone at this extremely conservative school stayed completely hammered, 24/7. Thus they excelled in sexual assault, which is the underpinning of all right wing teaching methods." – You know this is coming https://t.co/S4awYvhi0I

— K-Bob – Space Force Radioman (@K_Bob) September 15, 2018

I hope Kavanaugh does a keg stand right after his swearing in. https://t.co/27kgGoiY5w

— ( ) (@ARaised_Eyebrow) September 15, 2018

if ( (window.__aa_fraud_serve === undefined) || (window.__aa_fraud_serve == true) ) { googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(“div-gpt-300x250_1”); }); }

Source: http://allofbeer.com/so-brett-kavanaughs-high-school-classmate-wrote-a-memoir-about-his-alcoholism/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/01/07/so-brett-kavanaughs-high-school-classmate-wrote-a-memoir-about-his-alcoholism-2/

[adambstingus]

So? Brett Kavanaugh’s high school classmate wrote a memoir about his alcoholism

The Democrats have been reaching for straws so much and so far they’re going to put their backs out if Judge Brett Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed pretty soon. Much of the news this week was centered around a letter that Sen. Dianne Feinstein had apparently been sitting on through Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearings and leaked only at the 11th hour. She turned it over to federal authorities, but the FBI took a look said it wasn’t going to investigate, and shoved the letter in Kavanaugh’s background file. That doesn’t mean that Democrats aren’t keeping hope alive, and Mother Jones is reporting that “Brett Kavanaugh’s high school friend isn’t helping the nominee’s case.” Um, what case? There is no case. Has he been arrested and charged with something?

But check this out. The other high-schooler alleged to be in the room with Kavanaugh at that party has written a memoir about his alcohol use.

The classmate accused of being in that room alongside Kavanaugh once wrote his own teenage drinking “reached the point where once I had the first beer, I found it impossible to stop until I was completely annihilated.” https://t.co/nOqG2YtvwP pic.twitter.com/sqMzBTKJRE

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) September 15, 2018

Stephanie Mencimer writes:

The New York Times reported that the friend the woman alleged to be in the room with Kavanaugh was conservative writer Mark Judge, who attended Georgetown Prep with the nominee. On Friday, Judge told the Weekly Standard that no such incident took place. “It’s just absolutely nuts,” he said. “I never saw Brett act that way.”

But … what if he were blindingly drunk at the time? The book he wrote chronicles Judge’s time as a teenage alcoholic and Mencimer concludes that “the amount of drinking Judge describes himself undertaking might suggest that his memory of those days may not be entirely reliable.”

Kavanaugh’s still going to be confirmed, but let’s let the hot takes continue.

And we know this because we know who he is. Unlike the liar who is accusing them anonymously. https://t.co/TXcD2oXd8f

— RBe (@RBPundit) September 15, 2018

What’s the name of the accuser? https://t.co/krpiB3k12b

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) September 15, 2018

Surprisingly, no one’s reporting that, as the alleged victim has asked not to be identified — although we’re pretty sure Judge wasn’t thrilled to be dragged into this either.

how is this relevant

— Confused Electorate (@Conf_Electorate) September 15, 2018

What on earth does this have to do with Kavanaugh?

— Nyarlathotep (@Nyarlat57298457) September 15, 2018

What is this supposed to prove? Now they are going after a private citizen to punish him for defending BK from an anonymous smear. Enough of this. Set the vote for Monday. https://t.co/lx8MrWy25t

— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) September 15, 2018

This is character assassination and you know it. Baseless accusations from an anonymous source to attack Kavanaugh and this irrelevant quote to attack his friend. GFY

— DemocratsSmear (@DestructiveChem) September 15, 2018

So now we are going to assassinate the character of anyone who dares defend Kavanaugh?

— Lenny Brisco (@skinnerj51) September 15, 2018

You guys are really messed up. Perhaps some introspection is in order, don’t ya think?

— Still Nancy (@SameOldNancy) September 15, 2018

Drinking too much as a teen is now considered corroborating evidence for this smear. Every single one of you spreading this shit can GDIAF. 🖕🖕🖕 https://t.co/a8xm8yLGcV

— Carl Gustav, President of Whataboutism, Inc. (@CaptYonah) September 15, 2018

Nice defamation case coming if “anonymous” names this guy and can’t back it though, isn’t it?

— Honeybladger (@Honeybladger) September 15, 2018

I don’t ever EVER want to hear the left bemoan the state of our discourse ever again. Step on their neck. Don’t let them up. https://t.co/AszA0yX4qN

— EducatédHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) September 15, 2018

Extending the smear to his friend… Have media reached the bottom of the sewer; not even close.

— Marvin Boian (@BoianMarvin) September 15, 2018

Consider the source – smear machine is in full attack mode. Disgraceful

— Imelda Rheaume (@irheaum) September 15, 2018

This is the equivalent of ubsubstantiated gossip conveniently timed and brought up by one of our most corrupt politicians (Feinstein). A “guilty until proven innocent” stunt that diminishes the value of actual sexual assault victims who can safely go through due process.

— Tunnel Snakes Rule! (@TheTunnelSn8ke) September 15, 2018

Man, you guys are so desperate to smear BK that you will go after someone whose only crime was he knew BK in high school. Absolutely pathetic that you would try destroy this guy based on an anonymous accusation for over 39 years ago. Y’all are morally and ethically bankrupt

— LordKrispyKreme (@LordKreme) September 15, 2018

“In fact, everyone at this extremely conservative school stayed completely hammered, 24/7. Thus they excelled in sexual assault, which is the underpinning of all right wing teaching methods.” – You know this is coming https://t.co/S4awYvhi0I

— K-Bob – Space Force Radioman (@K_Bob) September 15, 2018

I hope Kavanaugh does a keg stand right after his swearing in. https://t.co/27kgGoiY5w

— ( ) (@ARaised_Eyebrow) September 15, 2018

if ( (window.__aa_fraud_serve === undefined) || (window.__aa_fraud_serve == true) ) { googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(“div-gpt-300x250_1”); }); }

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/so-brett-kavanaughs-high-school-classmate-wrote-a-memoir-about-his-alcoholism/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/181788763932

[allofbeercom]

So? Brett Kavanaugh’s high school classmate wrote a memoir about his alcoholism

The Democrats have been reaching for straws so much and so far they’re going to put their backs out if Judge Brett Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed pretty soon. Much of the news this week was centered around a letter that Sen. Dianne Feinstein had apparently been sitting on through Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearings and leaked only at the 11th hour. She turned it over to federal authorities, but the FBI took a look said it wasn’t going to investigate, and shoved the letter in Kavanaugh’s background file. That doesn’t mean that Democrats aren’t keeping hope alive, and Mother Jones is reporting that “Brett Kavanaugh’s high school friend isn’t helping the nominee’s case.” Um, what case? There is no case. Has he been arrested and charged with something?

But check this out. The other high-schooler alleged to be in the room with Kavanaugh at that party has written a memoir about his alcohol use.

The classmate accused of being in that room alongside Kavanaugh once wrote his own teenage drinking "reached the point where once I had the first beer, I found it impossible to stop until I was completely annihilated." https://t.co/nOqG2YtvwP pic.twitter.com/sqMzBTKJRE

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) September 15, 2018

Stephanie Mencimer writes:

The New York Times reported that the friend the woman alleged to be in the room with Kavanaugh was conservative writer Mark Judge, who attended Georgetown Prep with the nominee. On Friday, Judge told the Weekly Standard that no such incident took place. “It’s just absolutely nuts,” he said. “I never saw Brett act that way.”

But … what if he were blindingly drunk at the time? The book he wrote chronicles Judge’s time as a teenage alcoholic and Mencimer concludes that “the amount of drinking Judge describes himself undertaking might suggest that his memory of those days may not be entirely reliable.”

Kavanaugh’s still going to be confirmed, but let’s let the hot takes continue.

And we know this because we know who he is. Unlike the liar who is accusing them anonymously. https://t.co/TXcD2oXd8f

— RBe (@RBPundit) September 15, 2018

What's the name of the accuser? https://t.co/krpiB3k12b

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) September 15, 2018

Surprisingly, no one’s reporting that, as the alleged victim has asked not to be identified — although we’re pretty sure Judge wasn’t thrilled to be dragged into this either.

how is this relevant

— Confused Electorate (@Conf_Electorate) September 15, 2018

What on earth does this have to do with Kavanaugh?

— Nyarlathotep (@Nyarlat57298457) September 15, 2018

What is this supposed to prove? Now they are going after a private citizen to punish him for defending BK from an anonymous smear. Enough of this. Set the vote for Monday. https://t.co/lx8MrWy25t

— (((AG))) (@AG_Conservative) September 15, 2018

This is character assassination and you know it. Baseless accusations from an anonymous source to attack Kavanaugh and this irrelevant quote to attack his friend. GFY

— DemocratsSmear (@DestructiveChem) September 15, 2018

So now we are going to assassinate the character of anyone who dares defend Kavanaugh?

— Lenny Brisco (@skinnerj51) September 15, 2018

You guys are really messed up. Perhaps some introspection is in order, don't ya think?

— Still Nancy (@SameOldNancy) September 15, 2018

Drinking too much as a teen is now considered corroborating evidence for this smear. Every single one of you spreading this shit can GDIAF. 🖕🖕🖕 https://t.co/a8xm8yLGcV

— Carl Gustav, President of Whataboutism, Inc. (@CaptYonah) September 15, 2018

Nice defamation case coming if "anonymous" names this guy and can't back it though, isn't it?

— Honeybladger (@Honeybladger) September 15, 2018

I don’t ever EVER want to hear the left bemoan the state of our discourse ever again. Step on their neck. Don’t let them up. https://t.co/AszA0yX4qN

— EducatédHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) September 15, 2018

Extending the smear to his friend… Have media reached the bottom of the sewer; not even close.

— Marvin Boian (@BoianMarvin) September 15, 2018

Consider the source – smear machine is in full attack mode. Disgraceful

— Imelda Rheaume (@irheaum) September 15, 2018

This is the equivalent of ubsubstantiated gossip conveniently timed and brought up by one of our most corrupt politicians (Feinstein). A "guilty until proven innocent" stunt that diminishes the value of actual sexual assault victims who can safely go through due process.

— Tunnel Snakes Rule! (@TheTunnelSn8ke) September 15, 2018

Man, you guys are so desperate to smear BK that you will go after someone whose only crime was he knew BK in high school. Absolutely pathetic that you would try destroy this guy based on an anonymous accusation for over 39 years ago. Y’all are morally and ethically bankrupt

— LordKrispyKreme (@LordKreme) September 15, 2018

"In fact, everyone at this extremely conservative school stayed completely hammered, 24/7. Thus they excelled in sexual assault, which is the underpinning of all right wing teaching methods." – You know this is coming https://t.co/S4awYvhi0I

— K-Bob – Space Force Radioman (@K_Bob) September 15, 2018

I hope Kavanaugh does a keg stand right after his swearing in. https://t.co/27kgGoiY5w

— ( ) (@ARaised_Eyebrow) September 15, 2018

if ( (window.__aa_fraud_serve === undefined) || (window.__aa_fraud_serve == true) ) { googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(“div-gpt-300x250_1”); }); }

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/so-brett-kavanaughs-high-school-classmate-wrote-a-memoir-about-his-alcoholism/

[tkatsumi06j]

Land Deal For Right-Wing Elementary School Plagues Japanese Prime Minister

「日本の首相を悩ます極右小学校の土地取得問題」

2017年5月10日　NPR

大阪の裏通りに校舎を構える「塚本幼稚園」から，園児たちの声が聞こえてくる。建物正面のオレンジ色のファサードには，大きな置き時計と竹製の表札が立てられていて，園内の窓からは，『アストロ・ボーイ（鉄腕アトム）』が見下ろしている。その外観からはとても，この学園法人が日本の指導者が政治生命を賭した一大スキャンダルの震源地とは思えない。

On a back street in Osaka, the sound of schoolchildren floats out of Tsukamoto Kindergarten. A cuckoo clock and a stand of bamboo sit in front of the school building’s orange facade — and Astro Boy, a cartoon figure, looks down from a window.

From its exterior, there’s no visible sign that the school is at the center of a scandal on which the leader of Japan has staked his political future.

いまやスキャンダルまみれの塚本幼稚園に通う園児の保護者の中には，同園が提供する「伝統的な教育」に惹かれて子どもたちを入園させた者もいた。

Despite the scandal, Tsukamoto Kindergarten’s traditional teachings have been an attraction to some parents.

「息子をこの園に通わせようと思ったのは，将棋や剣道を教えていたからでした」と語るのは，保護者のサカモトさん。

「お昼もとても美味しいんですよ」

“I decided to send my son there because they teach shogi [Japanese chess] and kendo [Japanese swordsmanship],” says parent Mrs. Sakamoto. “And they serve nice lunches.”

サカモトさんは，学園の運営側と係争中のため，5歳になる息子を守るために姓のみの公開を希望した。

Mrs. Sakamoto asked that we not use her full name in order to protect her 5-year-old son, who was forced to leave the school after she got into a dispute with the school’s management.

サカモトさんによると，園内での躾はひじょうに厳しく，園児たちはトイレすら自由に行かせてもらえなかったという。それでも，同園に通わせ始めてから，「息子は自分のことをハッキリと主張する，礼儀正しい子になりました。それに，姿勢もすごくよくなったんです」と語る。

Sakamoto says discipline at the school was strict. Kids were only allowed to use the bathrooms at certain times. After attending the school, she adds, “My son became well-spoken and well-behaved. And his posture straightened up.”

サカモトさんを不安にさせたのは，同園が園児たちに古の「勅語」を暗唱させていたことだった。この勅語は1890年に明治天皇の名に於いて発布された。

One thing that made Sakamoto uncomfortable was that the kindergarten made kids memorize and recite an imperial decree, issued in the name of the Meiji Emperor in the year 1890.

『教育に関する勅語』と呼ばれるそれは，親を敬うこと，公序良俗のために行動することなど、園児たちに儒教的な価値を教えるものだった。

Called the Imperial Rescript on Education, it teaches the kids Confucian virtues: respect your parents; work for the public good.

「危険だと思ったんです」と，サカモトさん。

「よいことも言われているのでしょうけど，最終的には天皇のために死ねと言っているんですから」

“I think it’s dangerous,” she says. “There may be some good things in it, but in the end, it says you should die for the sake of the emperor.”

サカモトさんが言うには，勅語は古い言葉で書かれているため，園児も保護者もそのほとんどが理解できないという。だから，自分の子どもが暗唱していることには不安を覚えながらも，放置してきた。

Sakamoto explains that the decree is in classical Japanese, and most students and parents didn’t understand its meaning. So, although she didn’t like her child reciting it, she let it go.

勅語には，「非常事態の発生の場合は、真心を捧げて、国の平和と安全に奉仕しなければなりません」（明治神宮訳）と書かれている。※但し，英文を元に邦訳すると，「そして危急の事態が訪れたる際には，皇国にその身を捧げ，以て天地に轟く皇国皇室の栄華を守護し奉らん」という風に読める。

“Should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State,” the document reads, “and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth.”

第二次世界大戦後，米国は日本を占領。新たな憲法を起草し，天皇を象徴的な元首とし，勅語の詠唱を禁じた。

The U.S. occupied Japan after World War II. It drafted a new constitution, reducing the emperor to a figurehead. And it banned the decree’s recitation.

教育勅語が問題となるのは，それが半世紀にわたって続き，何百万もの命を奪った日本の軍国主義の思想的基礎であり，園児たちに，個の権利の尊重なしに，天皇の忠実な臣下となることを求めるものだからだ。

The decree is controversial because it laid the ideological basis for half a century of Japanese militarism that cost millions of lives. It instructs students to behave as the emperor’s obedient subjects without individual rights.

先月，安倍内閣は従来の政府方針を翻し，「教育勅語」を学校の教材に使用することを容認する決定を下した。日本の保守層はこの決定を歓迎した。

Last month, Japan’s cabinet reversed its position and allowed the use of the edict as a teaching material. Japanese conservatives have welcomed the decision.

首相の安倍晋三は，この塚本幼稚園の支持を表明していた。妻の昭恵夫人は，1年以上もの間，その名誉校長を務めていた。幼稚園の創始者の籠池泰典は，国会の証人喚問に応え，安倍首相が昭恵夫人を通じて約9,000ドル（およそ100万円）を寄付したと証言したが，安倍はこれを否定した。

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has expressed support for the kindergarten. His wife, Akie, served for more than a year as its honorary principal.

The kindergarten's founder, Yasunori Kagoike, testified before parliament that Abe donated $9,000 through his wife, although Abe denies this.

籠池も安倍も，そ��て閣僚のほとんどが，右翼団体「日本会議」のメンバーだ。日本会議は，安倍の保守的な政策に共鳴している。

Kagoike, Abe and most of Japan's cabinet ministers are all members of the right-wing Japan Conference, or Nippon Kaigi, which shares Abe's conservative agenda.

安倍内閣はこれまで学校教科書において，第二次世界大戦中の旧日本帝国陸軍による「性奴隷（sex slaves）」の使用や，日本軍兵士が30万人もの民間人，降伏した中国人兵士を殺戮し，何万人もの女性を慰みものにした1937～1938年の「南京大虐殺」に関する記述を矮小化してきた。

Abe's government has played down school textbook references to the Imperial Army's use of sex slaves during World War II and the 1937-1938 Nanking Massacre, in which Japanese soldiers slaughtered as many as 300,000 civilians and Chinese troops who had surrendered, and raped tens of thousands of women.

安倍内閣は「国家のアイデンティティ強化」のためだとして愛国教育を推進し，歴史の「正」の部分の認識を広め国旗抑揚や国歌斉唱等を優先的な施策に位置付けている。

The Abe government promotes patriotic education, defined as strengthening national identity, promoting the government's "positive" view of history and promoting use of the national flag and anthem, among other priorities.

安倍は日本の「軍（military）」を海外に派遣することに対する戦後の憲法上の制約を緩めており，現行の憲法を個人の権利よりも公共の秩序が優先されるものへと置き換えたいと考えている。

It has loosened postwar constitutional restrictions on deploying Japan's military overseas. And Abe wants to replace the current constitution with one that puts public security before individual rights.

「どうやら，首相に近しいイデオロギーを持ち，個人的に首相の伴侶と親しければ，不思議に何でも道が拓けてしまうという世界のようだ」

政治学者の中野晃一・上智大教授は，このスキャンダルの核心にある政治の腐敗についてこう語る。

"It seems if you're ideologically close to the prime minister, and have a good personal relationship with the spouse of the prime minister, then doors open mysteriously," says Sophia University political scientist Koichi Nakano. He's referring to the allegations of corruption that are at the heart of this scandal.

昨年，国有地を新しい小学校の用地として購入したとき，籠池泰典は90%近い値引きを受けた。政府は土壌が汚染されていたからだと説明したが，籠池自身は野党の国会議員らに政府が「特例 （special case） 」扱いしてくれたからだと語った。

Last year, when Yasunori Kagoike acquired state-owned land to build his new elementary school, he got a nearly 90 percent discount. The government explained that it was because the land was polluted. Kagoike told opposition party lawmakers that the government saw his as a "special case."

「財務省の担当者に，昭恵夫人に状況について報告していると伝えた」

籠池氏は語る。

「だから特例扱いになったんだと思っている」

"I told the person in charge of our case at the finance ministry that I was reporting back to Mrs. Abe about the process," he said. "I figured this is what resulted in our 'special case.'"

政府がスキャンダルで傷を負い始めると，籠池に賛同していた国粋主義者達は一斉に，「まるで厄介払いするかのように」彼を切り捨てていった（前出の中野教授）。日本会議の幹部らは2月にスキャンダルが発覚した辺りから籠池と距離を置き始め，安倍首相夫妻も2月辺りから距離を置き始めた。

As the scandal began to hurt the government, nationalist politicians who once supported Kagoike dropped him "like a hot potato," says political scientist Nakano. Nippon Kaigi officials began to distance themselves from Kagoike after the scandal broke in early February. The Abes distanced themselves in February, too.

東京で活動するフリーランス・ジャーナリストの菅野完は，「彼らは“リベラル”だと思われるのを避けようとしていただけだ」と，籠池に対する政治家達の賛同は「便宜的なものだった」と切り捨てる。

Tokyo-based freelance journalist Tamotsu Sugano argues that politicians' support for Kagoike was an alliance of convenience.

"They just wanted to avoid being labeled as liberals," he asserts.

現時点では，安倍が [国有地払い下げの] 決定に関与したという確固たる証拠はない。財務省は，土地取引に関する記録は破棄（destroy）したと主張している。法令により，政府は作成から１年が経過した記録は破棄してよいことになっている。

For now, there's no hard proof that either of the Abes influenced the decision. The finance ministry says it destroyed government records of the land sale. By law, the government is entitled to destroy some records after one year.

「財務省の説明は一貫していない」

用地取得に関する情報公開請求を行った民間のNPO法人「情報公開クリアリングハウス」の三木由希子理事長はこう語る。

「彼らは説明を少しだけ変えたりする。だから財務省の説明は常に疑ってかかる必要がある」

"The explanation of the ministry of finance is not so stable," argues Yukiko Miki, the head of Access-Info Clearinghouse Japan, a civic group that has requested government documents related to the land sale. "Sometimes they change the explanation slightly," she adds, "so we need to challenge the ministry of finance."

実際，彼女は法廷でそうするつもりでいる。但し理事長は，仮に土地取得に政治的便宜が働いてたとしても，それは政府の記録には残っていないだろうと認める。

She plans to do just that in court. She admits, though, that if political influence played a role in the land sale, it might not have been recorded in government documents.

いまのところ，安倍はほとんど無傷でいる。

So far, Abe remains mostly unscathed.

「彼はテフロン加工を施されている」と語るのは， 政治学者の岩井奉信・日大教授だ。岩井教授によると，安倍の野望は2020年東京五輪の開会式まで権力の座に居座り続けることにある。

"He's got a Teflon coating," says Nihon University political scientist Tomoaki Iwai. He says that Abe's ambition is to stay on and preside over the opening of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

安倍の支持率は依然として高く，与野党いずれも敵無しの状態にある。

岩井教授はこう語る。

Abe's ratings remain high, Iwai says. And he faces no challengers from within the ruling or opposition parties.

���安倍が復権した時には，彼のリーダーシップや政策で人びとは彼を支持した。しかし過去２年の世論調査が物語るのは，人びとは代わりがいないから彼を支持し続けているということだ」

"Since the start of Abe's term, people supported him for his leadership and his policies," he says. "But in the last two years, polls show people support him mainly because there's no alternative."

唯一問題があるとすれば，用地取得に何らかの関与があるとわかれば辞任すると安倍自身が誓約してしまったことだ。もしこの「決定的な証拠（smoking gun）」が見つかれば，彼はそうする他なくなるかもしれない。

The only problem, Iwai says, is that Abe has promised to resign if he's found to have had any involvement with the land deal. And if a smoking gun is ever found, he might have to do just that.