#1974 election

[retropopcult]

All The President's Men (1976)

[tomorrowusa]

50 years ago this month, Richard Nixon resigned as president and Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in to take his place. Nixon was the only president to have resigned but he's not the only one who should have. 😉

Ford was the last truly moderate Republican president. He was a decent and humble man from the Midwest who would be disgusted by the Putin-loving and freedom-hating cult the GOP has become over the past decade.

When he was narrowly defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1976 he graciously conceded and didn't try to instigate extremists to assault the US Capitol.

In the 1980s and 1990s Ford and Carter occasionally appeared together at forums where they both exuded congeniality.

No politician is perfect and Ford is no exception. But the more one learns about the Ford presidency and post-presidency, especially with the past decade's political backdrop, the more there is to respect about him and his devotion to the rule of law.

@fordlibrarymuseum

[jhsharman]

humble fumble, ballot boxed

Not sure what "try being popular" even means. I don't think Reggie ever wins these things.

The execution on "Ballot Boxed", where after seeing how everyone is swayed by Jughead's slogan posters for Archie's candidacy Reggie buys him off and you see the rest here, leaves something to be desired. It needs just a mite better slogans than "Archie By Cracky" for me to suspend disbelief and accept. On the soundness of the premise, I am reminded that in voting for asb positions, having nothing else to go by and no clear idea of what the heck I was voting for besides a good line for the candidates' college applications, I voted for whoever have me the most number of campaign stickers.

[djrobblog]

‘You Haven’t Done Nothin’’: Stevie Wonder’s 50-Year-Old Anthem Echoes into High-Stakes Election

‘You Haven’t Done Nothin’’: Stevie Wonder’s 50-Year-Old Anthem Echoes into 2024’s High-Stakes Presidential Election

(November 2, 2024). See if you can bump to this.   Fifty years ago today (Nov. 2, 1974), Stevie Wonder’s fiery single “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” bumped its way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (while having also done so on the soul chart). It was a scathing rebuke of then-recent president Richard Nixon, who had been impeached and then resigned from office that August amid the Watergate scandal…

[tomorrowusa]

There have been twists of fate in US politics which took less time than the rise of the House Stark.

Overreach is timeless. But not all overreachers overreach the same way.

A strictly metaphorical post. 🙂

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 11: Hephaestus, God Of Fire]

A/N: Only 1 chapter left!!! 🥰💜

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.4k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Here is our final interlude. Do you have the patience?

President Lyndon Baines Johnson has halted all U.S. attacks on North Vietnam: no bombs from the air, no infantry on the ground, no artillery shells launched by destroyers cruising in the South China Sea. The election will determine what happens next. If Nixon wins, military operations will resume until the South Vietnamese are in a sufficiently advantageous position to defend themselves from the communists. If Aemond is the victor, troop withdrawals will begin shortly after he is inaugurated on January 20th.

Regardless, it will not be until almost a full year from now, in October of 1969, that it becomes illegal for employers to reserve positions for men; the common practice of refusing to hire women with preschool-aged children will not be outlawed until 1971. Unmarried people will not be guaranteed access to contraception until 1972. Abortion will not be legalized across all fifty states until 1973. Women will not have a right to their own bank accounts or credit cards until 1974. It will not be illegal to exclude women from juries until 1975. The first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, will be appointed in 1981. There will be no female president of the United States, not for at least half a century after our story ends.

Each night on CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite recaps the latest poll numbers. Nixon appears to have a slight advantage, due in large part to pulling ahead in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and his home state of California. Aemond has comfortable leads in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. George Wallace will likely sweep the Deep South: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. From their hovels, the racists rejoice. From her grave, Lurleen Wallace rests uneasily, scratching at the lid of her coffin with the bones of her fingers, entombed in dark oblivion like all the rest of the world’s discarded wives.

~~~~~~~~~~

You go for the door, but Aemond is faster; he catches you just as your hand is twisting the handle and the hinges creak. He throws you against the wall so hard the paintings rattle: replicas of Monets and Warhols, Almond Blossoms, The Birth of Venus. You fight, clawing at him, ripping off the eyepatch that Alys must have at last convinced him was no defeat to wear. The hollow, gore-colored abyss of his left eye socket beckons you to fall in and be burned: Hestia’s eternal hearth, the volcanic forge of Hephaestus. He’s fire all the way down, hunger and fury, bones charred black and brittle. You think of the uninhabitable furnace of Jupiter’s moon Io, lethal radiation, poisoned air, lava bubbling up like blood through a bullet wound.

“You can’t hit me,” you gasp. “You need me for photos—”

His knuckles are in your belly, crosshairs made of scar tissue. The air collapses out of your lungs; your vision dims like twilight, like an eclipse. You’re on the floor and trying to crawl away from him. Aemond’s fingers hook into the fabric of your robe; it matches the silk nightgown you wear beneath, a pale anemic pink, something soft and young and desireless, something eternally at others’ mercy, something to be guarded or gutted. He’s dragging you towards him.

He’s going to hit me again, he might even kill me.

“Stop, stop,” you plead, still struggling to breathe. “What if I’m pregnant?!”

You almost certainly can’t be, but Aemond doesn’t know that. Yet his lone eye glints like metal, like coins, no weak mortal compassion. “I would have no way of being sure it was mine.” And then he tries to cover your mouth as you scream for help. You bite at his fingers; your bare feet kick the wall. Your hair, long and loose and wild, flows around you like a bride’s veil.

Too late, Aemond realizes that the door is still open a crack from when you grabbed the handle. There are footsteps and a voice that crescendos as it approaches: “What on earth is going on in here…?” Fosco appears in the threshold, yellow tweed jacket, tight olive green trousers. He stares thunderstruck down at where you and Aemond are entangled on the floor.

You beg: “Fosco, help me.”

“No, no, no,” Fosco says, jolting from his paralysis and holding a hand out towards Aemond. “No, you cannot do this, whatever has happened, you cannot touch her like—”

“She’s not your wife,” Aemond says. She’s not your property. Fosco hesitates; his large dark eyes shifting between the two of you from behind his glasses.

“Aemond, brother, listen to—”

“Get out.” Aemond’s voice is low, searing, malignant.

“Fosco, please don’t leave me,” you whimper. You try to pry Aemond’s fingers off your robe; they dig in deeper, bruising the flesh underneath. “Don’t leave me, don’t let him hurt me.”

Abruptly, Fosco turns and sprints out of the room.

“No!” you shout after him before Aemond grabs your face, his hand like a claw, fingernails leaving half-moon indents in your cheeks, crushing pressure on your jaw.

“You’re trying to sabotage this campaign.”

“I didn’t see the reporters, I swear to God.”

He knocks the back of your skull against the wall so hard that you see momentary flashes like stars, that all the words vanish from your throat, that words cease to exist at all. “You’re a traitor. Do you know the penalty for treason? The U.S. Army would have you executed by firing squad. Zeus would chain you to a rock so your liver could be carved out.”

“You betrayed me first,” you hiss through clenched teeth, your head pounding hot and maroon.

“I have been working for this since before you were born. You can’t take it away from me. I won’t let you.”

“I did everything right and you still couldn’t love me.” You swing at Aemond and he catches your wounded hand, squeezes it, digs his thumb into the spot where the doctors stitched you closed. The pain is excruciating, incapacitating. You wail as scarlet flowers bloom through the white of your bandaged palm.

Now the door flies open again and Aegon collides with Aemond, sends him sprawling, crouches over you. He’s screaming something at Aemond, gripping your shoulder to keep you under him, his too-long hair hanging in his face, black turtleneck sweater, one of Daeron’s frayed army jackets thrown over it, ripped jeans, bare feet. Aemond grabs his brother by the lapel of his army jacket and draws back his fist. His golden wedding ring flashes in the grey November sunlight that streams in through the windows. Aegon doesn’t flinch. He’s taken knuckles to the face before; you remember cleaning blood off his skin under a streetlight in Biloxi, you remember not wanting to wash him away.

“Don’t you see what it will look like?!” Fosco is saying, trying to coax Aemond to relent. “If he is photographed with a busted face after that story comes out? If she has bruises or a black eye? By harming them you are confirming what your enemies have printed, and the voters will believe it is the truth.”

“They already know it’s true!” Aemond snatches the Wall Street Journal off the table and hurls it at Fosco. Then he paces back and forth through the room, glaring at where you are still crumpled on the floor, sobbing, cradling your bleeding hand to your chest. “It’s right there, three goddamn photographs, and that’s all it will take to bring down a lifetime of work!”

Fosco studies the pictures again, shaking his head, one hand covering his mouth. At last he offers weakly: “It could be worse, Aemond.”

“How could it be worse?!”

Aegon scrambles to Fosco to rip the newspaper out of his hands, then returns to you. He hasn’t seen the front-page story yet. He skims it frantically. “This? This is what you’re losing your mind over? It’s dark, it’s blurry, they can’t even see what’s going on!”

“I have one fucking eye and I can see it!”

“So come up with another explanation, this doesn’t prove anything.”

“If she costs me the election—”

“If you lose, it won’t be because of her!” Aegon roars back. “It will be because the Democrats have held the White House for eight years and the world has gone to hell on our watch, it will be because of Kennedy, and Johnson, and Vietnam and the riots and the hippies and the drugs and the assassinations, it will be because Nixon is promising law and order in a time when nobody is safe, it will be because you just weren’t good enough. But she has given more to your cause than anyone. You hit her and you’ll lose your other eye.”

“They were in conversation,” Fosco says, meaning the photos. The four of you know that’s not true; it is a lie for the rest of the world, it is hope for Aemond’s campaign. “On the beach. They were whispering, comforting each other. Because of Mimi. That is all.”

Aemond scoffs, his remaining eye fierce and wrathful as it lands on you again. Aegon grips your shoulder, still crouching over you, still shielding you. “You bitch. I should have left you at that party in Manhattan to be the dope-smoking whore you were when I found you.”

“I shouldn’t have helped save your life in Palm Beach.”

And Aemond blinks at you, not hurt but bewildered, like he doesn’t understand your words, like what you said is impossible. He doesn’t believe you saved him. He believes it was God’s will.

Otto storms into the hotel room and takes in the scene: you and Aegon on the floor, Aemond pacing furiously, Fosco attempting to mediate. “Nobody says anything,” Otto commands, deep booming voice, black suit like he’s going to a funeral. “The Wall Street Journal hates Aemond. Everyone knows that, they’re probably the only national publication that would run the story. Our newspapers are already pushing the counternarrative, that this was a shameful, deceitful, desperate attempt to discredit Aemond right before the election. Our supporters will insist upon an innocent explanation. Nixon’s will use the photos as evidence of our degeneracy, our amorality, us immigrants with our strange faith and our progressive politics. Everyone else in the country will be warring over this headline. We will say nothing. We will conduct business as usual. The best thing we can do now is go out there and keep our schedule as planned.” He looks meaningfully at Aemond. “And your wife must be at your side. Smiling, unscathed, devoted.”

“I lost my composure,” Aemond says to you, more collected now, businesslike. He is smoothing any wrinkles out of his suit jacket. “I was wrong to put my hands on you. I apologize for that. It was beneath me.”

You reply: “Very little is beneath you, I’ve learned.”

“You have been.” A trace of a grin, crooked and cruel. “Plenty of times. And you will be again.”

Aegon is watching is brother, seething but terrified, sheltering you with power that is only illusory, never real. It is a mirage that Aemond or Otto could punch through at any moment. It is glass that would shatter into crystalline dust.

“If I win, you will beg on your knees for forgiveness,” Aemond tells you. “You will beg in private, you will be perfection in public, and I will magnanimously overlook this indiscretion in which you were taken advantage of by my notoriously dissolute brother. There was no affair. There was a fleeting moment of weakness on your part and depravity on Aegon’s. We will put it in the past. I will be the president of the United States and you will be my first lady. You will spend every second of your existence in service of my career, my country, and my legacy. You will give me children. You will obey me entirely. And you and Aegon will never be in a room alone together for the rest of your lives.”

“You can’t keep me away from her,” Aegon says.

“I just did. I make the rules here, I am the heir to this empire. If you wanted that responsibility, you should have seized it. You squandered it, you cursed it. It’s mine now.”

A whisper: “Aemond, it’ll kill me.”

“Then have the dignity to die quietly. It will be the most useful thing you’ve ever done.”

“Aegon must be seen in public too,” Fosco says, trying to sound like he isn’t defending him. “If you appear to be punishing or excluding him, it will be used as evidence of his guilt.”

Aemond nods, then turns to his brother. “As soon as the election is called, whichever way it goes, I want you gone. I don’t care where you go. I don’t care what happens to you once you’re there. You will disappear. We will say it was your choice, and if you comply you can keep your children and receive a modest amount of severance pay to get you started. And as long as you abide by my terms, my wife will not be harmed.”

Aegon doesn’t reply. His large Atlantic-blue eyes glisten, his lips tremble, his hand is still on your shoulder. You think through the throbbing pain of your bleeding palm: Is this the last time he’ll ever touch me?

Otto grabs Aegon, wrenches him away from you, drags him yowling and clawing at the carpet through the doorway.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your hand is freshly bandaged, pristine white gauze that people in the crowd jostle to touch like the relic of a saint, to pray over, to kiss. Men tell you how brave you are to bear the pain without weeping. Women give you komboskini, stained not with their husband’s blood but with only the clean, colorless ether of hope, faith, reverence, love.

Fosco and Helaena have been dispatched to accompany the children on a tour of the Franklin Institute, one of the oldest centers of science education in the nation. Aemond is giving a speech in front of the Liberty Bell at Independence Hall. You and the others are arranged around him like a starving crescent moon. You are standing immediately on Aemond’s left side, Aegon placed at his right. He looks drunk, he looks drugged; you aren’t sure if anyone else can tell, but you can. His cheeks are flushed. His eyes are pools of murky, desolate indigo like the night sky between stars. A few attendees give the two of you curious glances, but no mention is made of the accusations in the Wall Street Journal. You get the sense that if someone took it upon themselves to ask a question on the subject, they would be jeered, reviled, banished like President Johnson, who is currently besieged in the White House by the ghosts of Vietnam.

When you look to Aemond, you see his scar, his prosthetic eye, fierce and stoic determination in the lines of his face. He is quoting the inscription on the bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof…” The bronze metal has a crack in it like one of Zeus’s lightning bolts. The smile on your face is frozen, demure, humble. Aegon’s eyes accidentally catch on yours—a childlike vulnerability, a deep raw woundedness—and then swiftly dart away.

“America is the Land of Opportunity, but some have forgotten that,” Aemond says into the microphone, and vengeance creeps into his voice like a spider up a wall. “Unfortunately, for as long as new communities have arrived at our shores, vile and prejudiced lies have been used to demonize them. Greek immigrants have been crossing the Atlantic for over a century. In 1909, rioters violently expelled them from Omaha, Nebraska. In 1922, an anti-Greek initiative was launched by the Ku Klux Klan. In 1924, Congress drastically restricted my people’s entry in favor of migrants from Northwestern European nations like Britain and Germany. Greeks have been condemned as unintelligent, immoral, and unworthy of the glorious opportunities of this country. We have been barred from jobs and universities, we have been used as cannon fodder in the World Wars. Discrimination against any group is antithetical to the American Dream. I have given an eye for this nation, my wife has bled for it, my brother has—even in the midst of personal tragedy—uprooted his life and the lives of his children to fight alongside me for a better America, and I will not stand by silently as the Targaryen name is tarnished by bigoted falsehoods…”

Now you can no longer hear him over the thunder of the applause, and you remember all the other faces in all those other cities, their eyes illuminated as if by fire, as if by the sun. You imagine devotees of the Greek gods bowing low in temples of white marble and flickering torches, bringing offerings of gold and livestock, grain and blood, murmuring prayers, bargaining for miracles. Did the gods hear them? Do the gods love anyone but themselves?

Alicent and Criston are watching you and Aegon with the same eyes: large, dark, shimmering, a curious combination of horror and profound sympathy. You can feel yourself becoming a ghost, a legend, a myth. One day people will read about you in textbooks and academic journals, in plaques erected at Aemond’s alma mater, Columbia University, and your own, Manhattanville College; and they will know only the fabled version of you. Who you really were will fade into nothingness like Echo, like Icarus into the waves, like Eurydice when her lover Orpheus dared to glimpse back at her.

That night in your penthouse suite at the Ritz-Carlton, you get out of the bathtub—dewy with steam, donning your pink robe—and then go to your side of the king-sized bed and slide open the top drawer of the nightstand. The card Aegon gave you at Mount Sinai isn’t there. Your heartbeat quickens; your stomach lurches.

“What…?”

You get down on your knees to reach into the back of the drawer, to see if the card has snagged somewhere. You hear footsteps and whirl to see Aemond standing in the doorway between the bedroom and the living room. He is holding the card. The cartoon cow beams jubilantly at you. You recall what Aegon wrote inside after crossing out the manufacturer’s message: I thought this was blank…congrats on the new calf! As your eyes widen, Aemond rips the card down the middle.

“Don’t!” you scream, rushing for him. “Please don’t, it’s all I have from—!”

Aemond shoves you back and then, with a grin more like a wolf baring its teeth, tears through the remnants again and again until the card is nothing but shreds. He opens the sliding glass door that leads out onto the balcony and throws them into the cold night wind, where they scatter in a flurry like snowflakes, like bones turned to splinters by cluster bombs in the swamps of Vietnam.

The paper fragments spiral down thirty stories towards the zooming headlights on South Broad Street, and you think about following them. Then Aemond pulls you into his arms as frigid air blows through you and whispers: “You don’t need Aegon anymore. You just need me.”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Monday, November 4th, and you are walking alongside Ludwika on Broadway in Astoria, Queens, the part of New York City known as Greektown. She chats about the modelling jobs she did here before meeting Otto, her Louis Vuitton stilettos clicking on the sidewalk, her Camel cigarettes smudged with red Yardley lipstick. It is an act of kindness; she is trying to distract you. A few yards away, Fosco is telling Aegon about how he just won $500 by betting on the NASCAR Peach State 200, held at Jefco Speedway in Georgia. Aegon nods along, preoccupied, miserable. He has dark shadows around his eyes and is smoking one of his Lucky Strikes. He is wearing a green knit cap, windblown curls of his blonde hair escaping from underneath. You’re not supposed to stare at Aegon, but sometimes you can’t help it. You miss him. You’re worried about him.

The Targaryens have suites reserved at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, where the family will stay through Election Day to witness the results as they are tallied on the evening news. The children are there now, enjoying pizza from Little Italy with Helaena and the nannies. But you and the other adults are being photographed by flocks of journalists as you head for lunch at one of the oldest Greek diners in the United States, paying homage to Aemond’s ancestry. The candidate himself is locked in a fraught conversation with Otto and Criston: polls gaining here, polls slipping there, Nixon inching further ahead in Florida, the state you were supposed to help Aemond win.

“What should I order?” Ludwika asks you. “Not spinach pie, oh, horrible, worse than Hitler. Something else. Why can’t we go to a Polish restaurant for once? I will take you sometime. You will see. You will try a pierogi and never look back. We invented bagels, you know.”

“Beagles?” Fosco says. “What an accomplishment! They are so cute!”

“Bagels, stupido.”

“Do not bully me. I am suffering too. I should be back at the hotel eating a prosciutto pizza.”

As you pass an electronics shop with stacks of televisions in the windows, all turned to NBC news, the journalists begin to gasp and chatter excitedly amongst themselves. The flashbulbs strobe madly, shutters clicking and reporters shouting for Aemond to give them a comment. The youngest Targaryen brother has appeared on the screens, bruised and gaunt and missing teeth. He looks twenty years older than he is. His once-golden hair is turning white.

Otto sputters: “What…what the hell is that?!”

“Oh my God, Daeron!” Alicent howls, and then bursts into the shop so she can hear what her lost son is saying. The rest of you hurry after her, locking the front door behind you so the journalists can’t follow. Through the windows, they take photographs until Fosco and Ludwika lower the blinds.

Inside the maze of electronics, three adolescent employees gawk at the presidential candidate and his retinue. “Out,” Otto instructs them, and then, when they are too stunned to immediately vacate the premises: “I said, get out!” The teenagers scurry into the backroom and slam the door.

“Daeron,” Alicent moans in front of a Zenith color television. Tears flow torrentially from her huge, horrified eyes. Criston holds her, arms circling, his cheek pressed to hers, and you are reminded of how Aegon touched you in your hotel room in Houston, in his basement at Asteria, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

Daeron is saying: “The United States has committed war crimes in Vietnam. I am ashamed of the actions my country has taken here. We have burned children with napalm, executed innocent civilians, and interfered in matters that we have no legitimate jurisdiction over…”

“He is reading from a script,” Fosco says. “You can see his eyes following the words.”

“Shh,” Otto snaps.

Daeron continues: “The only honorable course of action now is to immediately withdrawal all American soldiers from Vietnam…”

“I think this will help us, actually,” Otto says. “People will know he’s being forced to make propaganda for the communists, and they will have sympathy for him and the family. They’ll want to rescue him and all the other servicemen too. He’s obviously…under duress.”

Aegon drops to his knees and puts his palm against the screen over Daeron’s face, just like the shadows of your fingers once fell over Ari as he fought for his life in an incubator in Mount Sinai Hospital. “Do you see what they’re doing to him?” He turns to Aemond with tears in his eyes. “What you did to him? You left him there, you abandoned him, and now he’s being tortured.”

Alicent looks to Aemond, puzzled, petrified. “You tried to get him out, didn’t you?” Aemond doesn’t answer. Otto averts his gaze, counting the tiles on the floor.

“Dear lord,” Ludwika mutters, lighting a fresh Camel cigarette and puffing on it anxiously.

“Was it worth it?” Aegon demands. “Selling your soul?”

Aemond is steely, resolved. “It’s almost over.”

“You were all right.” Aegon stands, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his green-striped sweater. “I don’t have what it takes to win the presidency. I couldn’t do something like this. Me, the perennial fuckup. Me, the godless degenerate.”

“Aegon,” Alicent whispers. “Please…please don’t…”

He turns to his mother, insurmountably sad. “Mom, I tried to stop him.” Alicent sobs and covers her face with both hands as Criston embraces her. She can’t even look at Aemond. She can’t believe what he’s become. Her long coppery hair flows like blood.

You reach for Aegon, your fingertips brushing his ruddy cheek, and immediately he folds into you, burying his face in the curve of your neck, breathing in your warmth as you inhale his smoke and rum and pain and terror. “Daeron will be home soon,” you say, not knowing if it’s true. Your bandaged hand aches; your throat burns.

“I should have gone instead. It should have been me.”

“No, Aegon. Your children need you, I need you. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

Then Aemond yanks you away, his grip on your wrist like an anchor, like chains.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Dad, play us something,” Orion says; and it is the first time you can remember him calling Aegon that. Aegon smiles. He’s sitting on one of the couches in the penthouse suite you share with Aemond, the Gibson guitar he bought back in July lying across his lap as he strums it absentmindedly. The television is on and turned to CBS News. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, November 5th, Election Day. The children are thrilled. It’s the one night they’re allowed to stay up as late as they’re physically able to. This allowance is not purely altruistic; Aemond wants them awake and ready for photographs as soon as the winner is announced.

“What should I play?”

“Frank Sinatra,” Fosco says. He is beside Aegon on the couch, smoking a cigar and flipping through the Sports section of the New York Times, which he’s not really reading.

“Marvin Gaye,” Ludwika suggests. They are both on your side of the room. Aemond, Otto, Sargent Shriver, and a number of campaign staffers are huddled around the television, transfixed by the ever-updating vote totals. Alicent and Criston are between your factions, murmuring back and forth to each other, flutes of golden champagne in their hands. Helaena is on the floor entertaining Violeta, Daphne, and Neaera with Crayolas and coloring books full of scenes from gardens. You recall how eerily calm Helaena had been the night Aemond was shot in Palm Beach, like she somehow already knew he’d survive. Now she is nervous, looking fretfully around the room, wringing her hands, filling outlines of butterflies with ten different shades of blue.

“The Beatles,” Orion tells Aegon, casting Fosco and Ludwika a judgmental teenage glance.

“Any particular song?”

“You can pick.”

Aegon sips at his rum, ice cubes clinking in the glass. He looks over to the coffee table, where you are embroiled in a game of Battleship with Cosmo. He’s getting better; he’s genuinely sunk your destroyer and submarine so far. Then Aegon’s eyes drop to his guitar strings and he plucks the opening notes of In My Life. His voice is soft and low, almost secretive.

“There are places I’ll remember

All my life, though some have changed

Some forever, not for better

Some have gone and some remain…”

Cosmo turns to watch his father. Orion, Spiro, Thaddeus, and Evangelos are gathered around Aegon’s feet, gazing up at him with admiration, with love.

“All these places had their moments

With lovers and friends, I still can recall

Some are dead and some are living

In my life, I’ve loved them all...”

Cheers erupt over by the television; Aemond has just won Michigan. But then tense, indistinct deliberations follow. Florida is still too close to call, a bad omen. You wonder where Alys is as she watches the results come in. There must be some part of her—however small, however smothered—that fears Aemond will win. If he captures the presidency, she could be separated from the man she loves for the better part of a decade. You drink your Pink Squirrel, wishing it was stronger. You think of sea sponge divers down in the depths and imagine what that first gulp of air tastes like when they resurface, when they shed their rubber suits and brass helmets and step back into sunlight, warmth, freedom like Persephone returning from the Underworld each spring.

“But of all these friends and lovers

There is no one compares with you

And these memories lose their meaning

When I think of love as something new…”

You wear a sapphire-colored gown that Aemond chose for you, strings of silver around your wrist and throat, diamond teardrops hanging from your ears. Your hair is up, your fingernails painted a tasteful opalescent shade, the aching of your bandaged hand dulled by booze and Vicodin.

“Though I know I’ll never lose affection

For people and things that went before

I know I’ll often stop and think about them

In my life, I love you more.”

More triumphant shouts and applause across the room by the television: Aemond has won Washington state. From his own suite at the St. Regis Hotel a few blocks south on 5th Avenue, Nixon’s people must be celebrating that he just secured Ohio’s 26 electoral votes. He needs 270 to be the next president of the United States.

Florida, you think. If Nixon can take Florida, I think he’ll win the whole thing.

As Aemond and Otto are distracted, as Fosco and Ludwika watch with pitying, knowing eyes, Aegon sets his guitar aside and walks by you with his rum in hand, taps your shoulder, disappears onto the balcony. You wait a few minutes—Cosmo wins Battleship and goes to color on the floor with Helaena—and then follow Aegon.

Outside the night sky is moonless, starless, thick with clouds. Rain is beginning to fall, soft hushed pattering. Far below taxis and limousines are still rushing and blowing their horns on West 59th Street. You can see the vast forested shadow of Central Park and streetlights like constellations. In apartments and office buildings, windows are illuminated as Americans sit numbing their fears with beer, wine, shots of liquor, smoldering hand-rolled joints.

Aegon is cross-legged at the ledge, one hand on the iron bars of the railing, staring out at the nightscape of Manhattan. His hair lashes in the cold November wind. His nose is pink, his eyes wet and faraway. He passes his Lucky Strike cigarette to you as you join him and says: “I don’t think Aemond can win without Florida.”

“No,” you agree, taking a drag.

Aegon snatches a rattling orange bottle from the pocket of his olive green army jacket, pops it open, and swallows three pills with a swig of straight rum, dark amber poison.

“Don’t do that,” you say, you plead.

“I need it, babe.”

“I want you to still be alive in ten years.”

Aegon smiles and reaches over to pat your cheek twice. “I think that ship might have sailed, little Io.” Can decades of self-destruction be undone, uninflicted, nullified like Heracles becoming immortal? Can the Underworld be escaped? “Come with me. No matter what happens tonight.”

“Aegon, I can’t.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“If I leave, he’ll hurt you. He’ll hurt me worse.”

“It’s not fair,” Aegon says, his voice breaking.

“Nothing is.”

There is an uproar inside the hotel room, screams that could be horror or triumph, realized dreams, breaking bones, bullets through flesh. You and Aegon are on your feet, hauling the balcony door open, stepping through the threshold into the rest of your lives.

Glasses are being toasted until champagne rains down onto the carpet. The telephone is ringing so Nixon can concede. On CBS News, Walter Cronkite is reporting that Aemond has won Florida and thereby accumulated 270 electoral votes. The blue text on the screen reads: Senator Targaryen will be the 37th president of the United States.

[simply-ivanka]

Why Trump’s Conviction Can’t Stand

It rests on an intent to violate a state law that is pre-empted by the Federal Election Campaign Act.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley Wall Street Journal

Donald Trump runs no risk of going to prison in the middle of his campaign, thanks to Judge Juan Merchan’s decision Friday to postpone sentencing until Nov. 26. The delay gives his lawyers more time to prepare an appeal. Fortunately for Mr. Trump, his trial was overwhelmingly flawed, and a well-constructed appeal would ensure its ultimate reversal.

A central problem for the prosecution and Judge Merchan lies in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which makes federal law the “supreme law of the land.” That pre-empts state law when it conflicts with federal law, including by asserting jurisdiction over areas in which the federal government has exclusive authority.

Mr. Trump’s conviction violates this principle because it hinges on alleged violations of state election law governing campaign spending and contributions. The Federal Election Campaign Act pre-empts these laws as applied to federal campaigns. If it didn’t, there would be chaos. Partisan state and local prosecutors could interfere in federal elections by entangling candidates in litigation, devouring precious time and resources.

That hasn’t happened except in the Trump case, because the Justice Department has always guarded its exclusive jurisdiction even when states have pushed back, as has happened in recent decades over immigration enforcement.

The normal approach would have been for the Justice Department to inform District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who was contemplating charges against Mr. Trump, of the FECA pre-emption issue. If Mr. Bragg didn’t follow the department’s guidance, it would have intervened at the start of the case to have it dismissed. Instead the department allowed a state prosecutor to interfere with the electoral prospects of the chief political rival of President Biden, the attorney general’s boss.

Mr. Trump was indicted under New York’s law prohibiting falsification of business records, which is a felony only if the accused intended “to commit another crime” via the false record. Judge Merchan instructed the jury that the other crime was Section 17-152 of New York election law, which makes it a misdemeanor to “conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Trump violated this law by conspiring with his lawyer, Michael Cohen, and Trump-related businesses to “promote” his presidential election by coding hush-money payments as “legal expenses” when they should have been disclosed publicly as campaign expenses or contributions—matters that are governed by FECA.

FECA declares that its provisions “supersede and preempt any provision of state law with respect to election to Federal office.” The 1974 congressional conference committee report accompanying enactment of FECA’s pre-emption language states: “It is clear that the Federal law occupies the field with respect to reporting and disclosure of political contributions and expenditures by Federal candidates.” Federal Election Commission regulations likewise declare that FECA “supersedes State law” concerning the “disclosure of receipts and expenditures by Federal candidates” and “limitation on contributions and expenditures regarding Federal candidates.”

The New York State Board of Elections agreed in a 2018 formal opinion that issues relating to disclosure of federal campaign contributions and expenditures are pre-empted because “Congress expressly articulated ‘field preemption’ of federal law over state law in this area” to avoid federal candidates’ “facing a patchwork of state and local filing requirements.”

In using New York’s election law to brand Mr. Trump a felon based on his actions with respect to a federal election, Mr. Bragg subverts FECA’s goal of providing predictable, uniform national rules regarding disclosure of federal campaign contributions and expenses, including penalties for noncompliance. Congress made its goals of uniformity and predictability clear not only in FECA’s sweeping pre-emption language but also in its grant of exclusive enforcement authority to the FEC for civil penalties and the Justice Department for criminal penalties. Both the FEC and Justice Department conducted yearslong investigations to ascertain whether Mr. Trump’s hush-money payments violated FECA, and both declined to seek any penalties.

Prior to Mr. Trump’s New York prosecution, it would have been unthinkable for a local or state prosecutor to prosecute a federal candidate predicated on whether or how his campaign reported—or failed to report—contributions or expenditures. In 2019 the FEC investigated whether Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign failed to disclose millions in contributions from an outside political action committee. The agency deadlocked, and no penalties were imposed. In 2022 the FEC levied $113,000 in civil penalties against Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for violating FECA because it improperly coded as “legal services,” rather than campaign expenditures, money paid to Christopher Steele for production of the “dossier” that fueled the Russia-collusion hoax. In neither instance did any state or local prosecutor indict Mrs. Clinton under state election law based on failure to disclose these contributions or expenditures properly. If New York’s Trump precedent stands, Mrs. Clinton could still be vulnerable to prosecution, depending on various states’ statutes of limitation and the Justice Department’s potential involvement.

Mr. Bragg’s prosecution of Mr. Trump is plagued by many reversible legal errors, of which the failure to accord pre-emptive force to FECA is the strongest grounds for its reversal on appeal. The prosecutor’s interference in the 2024 presidential election process has created legal and political problems. The Justice Department’s failure to intervene before the trial is a dereliction of duty.

The department aggressively prosecuted Mr. Cohen based on the same hush-money payments, so it was well aware that New York’s prosecution invaded its exclusive FECA jurisdiction. This is another stark example of the Biden administration’s incompetence—or, worse, the distortion of justice through a partisan lens. It is left to the appellate courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court, to clean up the mess Mr. Bragg and the Justice Department have made.

Mr. Rivkin served at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations. Ms. Foley is a professor of constitutional law at Florida International University College of Law. Both practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington.

[mariacallous]

A famous parable revolves around the troubled relationship between a scorpion and a frog. A scorpion needs to cross a river. Unable to swim, the scorpion asks a frog to carry him on his back. Listening to the request, the frog responds that he is hesitant because he fears that the scorpion will sting and kill him. After the scorpion assures his new friend that he would never do that, the frog agrees. Halfway through the journey, the scorpion stings the frog. Slowly dying, the frog asks, “Why did you do this?” The scorpion responds, “I’m sorry, but it’s in my nature.”

The story is a classic lesson about how dangerous people don’t usually change. Even when promising that they will act differently, the likelihood is that they won’t. It is also a tale about taking warning signs seriously. The frog understood the risks that he faced, yet he chose to ignore them.

U.S. presidential elections frequently involve warnings signs. Over the course of a campaign, voters learn a great deal about the candidates running and the potential costs of putting someone in office. Sometimes, a majority of voters decide to heed those warnings, yet there are other times in U.S. history when voters end up the frog.

In 2024, there are more warnings signs than usual about one of the major candidates: the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. There are big red flags from both his first term in office and his post-presidential years waving over and over about what Trump 2.0 would bring. Another one came on Wednesday, when the Washington, D.C., district judge handling the federal election conspiracy case against Trump unsealed a 165-page document with the fullest picture of what special counsel Jack Smith had found.

To understand how voters have the capacity to cover their ears to avoid hearing alarm bells, look back to 1972, when President Richard Nixon won reelection in a landslide victory against Democratic Sen. George McGovern. Too often, the story of Nixon’s reelection in 1972 and Watergate are treated separately. The thing is, there were, in fact, many people warning of who Nixon was as a politician and what he would likely do when freed from the restraints imposed by having to worry about reelection.

The familiar narrative on the 1972 election is that, riding high on diplomatic breakthroughs with the Soviet Union and China, Nixon defeated McGovern in a stunning victory that rivaled President Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition-building reelection win in 1936. There were many Americans who didn’t like Nixon or his policies, but it wasn’t until investigations in 1973 that his severe abuses of presidential power were revealed. Had the country only known more, so the story goes, the electorate could have averted the disaster they collectively faced on Aug. 9, 1974, when Nixon stepped onto a helicopter, leaving the White House in the middle of his second term.

In fact, numerous representatives and senators had been trying to expose Nixon’s nature even before that election. After Nixon announced on April 30, 1970, that he had secretly deployed troops to Cambodia and conducted a massive bombing campaign, there was a fierce outcry from Democrats about how he had lied and threatened the balance of power to accelerate a disastrous war. Idaho Sen. Frank Church and Kentucky Sen. John Sherman Cooper began drafting a bill to prohibit the president from using congressional funds for operations in Cambodia. Congressional critics railed against Nixon’s turn to impounding funds that they had appropriated and which he failed to veto. Soon after the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in June 1972, Democratic Rep. Wright Patman, a Texas populist, attempted to launch an investigation into the connections he suspected between the burglars and Nixon’s reelection campaign. The effort, covered by the press, was undercut by Nixon and his allies on Capitol Hill.

Journalists and public intellectuals were on Nixon’s case long before most voters cast their ballot. In 1971, the administration’s efforts to prevent the press from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department study exposing the lies told to justify the war in Vietnam, required the Supreme Court to intervene, culminating in the 6-3 decision in New York Times Company v. United States, which allowed publication. The media praised the decision as a blow to a president who was intent on stifling the press. In March 1972, Life published a story based on a nine-month investigation that accused the Nixon administration of having “seriously tampered with justice” to insulate supporters in San Diego from criminal prosecutions involving illegal campaign contributions. “The administration has in several instances taken steps to neutralize and frustrate its own law enforcement officials,” the magazine noted.

By mid-October 1972, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Time were publishing stories about an FBI investigation into whether Nixon’s reelection team was involved in sabotage operations, including the break-in at the Watergate building, against the Democratic campaign. On Oct. 16, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published a blockbuster story about how Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, revealed that he “was one of five persons authorized to approve payments from the Nixon campaign’s secret intelligence gathering and espionage fund.” Nixon campaign manager Clark McGregor was so frustrated with reporters that he accused the press of acting politically, stating, “the Post has maliciously sought to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White House and the Watergate, a charge the Post knows—and a half dozen investigations have found—to be false.”

And then there was McGovern, who made Nixon’s corruption a major theme in his final months on the campaign trail. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, McGovern said, “From secrecy and corruption in high places, come home, America.” In late September, during visits to three states on the East Coast, McGovern called Nixon “scandal-ridden” and “corrupt.” Speaking to labor leaders in Atlantic City, he warned that “If we let this Nixon-Agnew administration have another four years, I think they’ll make Warren G. Harding look like a Sunday school teacher.” McGovern called the Nixon administration the “trickiest, most deceitful” in U.S. history. On Oct. 17, he told a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, that Nixon was attempting to “escape responsibility” for the break-in and, in the process, “polluting the faith of the American people in government itself.”

McGovern’s emphasis on corruption intensified in the final weeks of his campaign. “As the net of truth closes tighter and tighter around the president himself,” he said, “they try to persuade us that the spying, and lying, and burglary, and sabotage will not affect the election because people expect these things of politicians.” If voters chose Nixon, he said, they would be selecting four years of “Watergate corruption.”

The problem was that McGovern was running against the wind. In mid-October, Gallup found that a minute percentage of Americans ranked corruption as a top issue; only 52 percent had even heard of the Watergate affair. The public concluded that both parties were equally corrupt, so it didn’t matter who was in office.

Nixon defeated McGovern by winning 49 states, including a sweep of the South, and 60.7 percent of the vote.

Today, the warning signs about Trump are all in broad daylight.

The first threat is Trump’s embrace of election denialism. The former president demonstrated that he is willing to destabilize the democratic system when election results don’t go his way. Multiple investigations have unpacked the systematic campaign by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the violence of Jan. 6, 2020. Since the insurrection, Trump has continued to deny the outcome—as did Sen. J.D. Vance during his debate against Gov. Tim Walz, when he refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won. Moreover, the Trump campaign has made several strategic moves, such as supporting a change of rules by Trump-allied members of the Georgia State Election Board that will make it easier for local officials to question and delay the counting of ballots; this could easily create a certification crisis.

During his time in office, Trump refused to accept that there were limitations on what a president could do. Surrounded by advisors who believed in the unitary executive theory, Trump did what he wanted to do until someone was able to stop him. Formal or informal guardrails were not his thing. Trump’s expansive, and dangerous, views of presidential power were clear during the first impeachment trial when the United States learned how he had threatened congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not agree to help dig up dirt on Biden and his son. Trump and his supporters were very clear that he will flex even more of that muscle should he be given another chance to do so. He has often spoken in public about collapsing the firewall that has separated the president from the Justice Department since Nixon’s downfall, and he has threatened to use that prosecutorial power to go after his opponents. In one Truth Social post about Smith’s investigation, Trump said that there would be “repercussions far greater than anything that Biden or his Thugs could understand.” Written by many high-level officials in Trump’s operation, including Stephen Miller, Project 2025 is a 900-page road map to a massive expansion of executive power.

Finally, Trump poses a serious risk to human rights. Between 2017 and 2021, undocumented immigrants were subject to intense and inhumane punitive measures, such as the separation of families, in an effort to disincentivize border crossings. In response to #BlackLivesMatter, Trump asked former Defense Secretary Mark Esper about shooting civil rights protesters in 2020. He famously had peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park cleared out with tear gas all so that he could get a photo-op. Finally, he was the instrumental force behind the creation of the 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The United States paid a high price for its decision in 1972. Nixon’s second term was consumed by the Watergate scandal, which rocked U.S. politics, traumatized and divided the nation, and resulted in decades of deep distrust of government. In 2024, will voters heed the warning signs?

[komsomolka]

Even though there were five political parties everyone knew that the real power lay with the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) and the other parties were largely subservient to it. The leading role of the SED was actually written into the constitution. That meant that even though these several parties existed, there was no official or recognised opposition in parliament. All parties stood in elections and acted as a bloc called ‘The National Front’ (a name reflecting the feeling of being under continual threat from the West during the Cold War). However, the composition of parliament was not based on party strengths alone; only two thirds of seats were designated for members of the parties and one third was taken by delegates from non-party mass organisations with the largest memberships being the FDGB (trade union federation), DFD (Democratic German women’s organisation), the FDJ (the national youth organisation) and Kulturbund (the cultural association).

However, people’s democratic rights in their communities and their workplaces were considerable and they could, in this way, often directly influence affairs that impinged directly on their lives. Most local issues, whether concerning building and planning, cultural issues or the organisation of public events, were usually open to public debate. While democratic rights, as understood in the West, were limited in the GDR, there was wide participation in democratic processes at grassroots level. For instance during the public discussions around the formulation of a new family law, over 33,000 public meetings took place up and down the country to discuss the proposed new legislation. There were also regular discussions in the press and on radio. A similar process took place during deliberations around the introduction of a new constitution in 1968 and around the draft of new legislation on the rights of young people in 1974.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It by Bruni de la Motte & John Green with Seumas Milne (Contributor), 2015.

[funnypages]

If people today think Marvel is getting too political, they should look at some of their stuff from the 1970s. In 1970s Captain America, a group known as the Committee to Re-Gain American Principles (a play on the Committee for the Re-Election of the President), begins launching a smear campaign against Captain America and other heroes, accusing them of being unpatriotic and a threat to society. Forced on the run, Cap discovers that CRAP (yep that’s the acronym) is a front for a group known as the Secret Empire, a fascist organization trying to overthrow the American government and enslave mutants. After a big battle, the leader of the Empire, the masked Number One, attempts to flee, going into the Oval Office of the White House. Cap follows, unmasking him to reveal he is the unseen, unnamed president. Rather than be arrested the President then turns a gun on himself killing himself.

While the president is never shown or named, it’s fairly obvious he is supposed to be Richard Nixon, as the story was published amidst the Watergate Scandal. However, it should be noted that this last issue was published in July 1974, with Nixon not resigning until August. 

[batboyblog]

A Tale of Two Judges

In federal court in Florida today a judge struck down a Florida law banning gender affirming care for minors as well as rules from the state's medical authority that set up barriers to trans adults seeking care

At the same time a federal court in Texas blocked guidance from the Biden Administration's Department of Education that Title IX should be understood as protecting trans students

And I think this is a great illustration that elections last LONG after they're finished, one judge blasted Florida's law as unconstitutional and quoted Dr. King in framing trans rights as the same as the struggle for racial equality and called on the courts to support them. The other gleefully sided with Republicans with Texas AG Ken Paxton declaring "“Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks"

The Judge in Florida was Senior Judge Robert Hinkle, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, Hinkle took the semi-retirement known as senior status in 2016, but still hears cases as he did here. Hinkle also ruled in 2014 that Florida's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

The Judge in Texas is Judge Reed O'Connor, He was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007. O'Connor is very active in the conservative Federalist Society, Conservative Lawyers and Texas Attorneys General try to file their insane, legally nonsense, show boat cases in his court because if they get him he'll rule for the Republican side and against the Democratic side no matter what. In 2016 he blocked Obama Admin rules that declared Title IX meant trans students should be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice. While the Obama team appealed, once Trump was elected the rule was pulled and the case died.... hm. O'Connor is best known as that crazy man who ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional in 2018, he was reversed, he ruled the Indian Child Welfare Act was unconstitutional, he ruled in 2022 the US Navy couldn't require Navy SEALS get Covid vaccines.

all to say when you get into a voting booth remember one of the things you vote for is Judges, who have a huge amount of power, and you can either get cool progressive minded judges who will still be making ground breaking rulings to protect civil rights 28 years after being nominated, or you can get conservative hacks who rule whatever wing nut thing they see on Fox 18 years after being nominated. During his Presidency Trump got to nominate 234 federal judges (Biden is currently at 201) including 3 Supreme Court Justices (Biden has 1) And those judges will be with us for years not like 10 years, or even 20, or even 30, no no no, Judge Albert Branson Maris was nominated by FDR in 1936 and served till his death at age 95 in 1989, JFK's last nominee, William Joseph Nealon Jr., passed away still hearing cases at the age of 95 in 2018 (the second to last passed away the year before in 2017) LBJ's last judge, Jack B. Weinstein, only passed away in 2021, there are at least 7 Nixon judges still hearing cases, 50 years after Nixon Resigned from office in 1974. We will be dealing with Trump's Judges for 40-50 maybe more years. So keep that in mind when you vote.

[cavedraconem]

Since there's a bit of interest in the Treaty of Waitangi right now around here...

I've just acquired this coins commemorating New Zealand Day, 1974. Now, those of you who are kiwis might be thinking, wait, what? The reason you're thinking that is because 1974 was both the first and penultimate New Zealand Day.

In the mid-20th century, there was quite a lot of agitation from Maori for more recognition of the Treaty of Waitangi (signed in 1840 between the tribal chiefs and the British crown). Among more substantive demands, one of the requests was for the anniversary of the signing (February 6th) to be recognised with a national public holiday.

In 1960, despite its election promise, the Labour government didn't declare a real public holiday: Waitangi Day was made a 'national day of thanksgiving and commemoration', and a region could choose to move one of its other public holidays to February 6th if they chose. Obviously no one but Northland (home of Waitangi itself) did so.

Finally another Labour government took the step of making it an actual public holiday... called New Zealand Day! Apparently this was already celebrated by kiwi diplomats overseas so it's not totally without precedent. The PM and Minister of Maori Affairs at the time considered this a unifying move, making the day a celebration of nationhood. The first New Zealand Day was the one commemorated by this very coin in 1974, and was celebrated with a massive theatrical display at Waitangi and televised throughout the land. ("'Imaginative pageantry or tasteless vulgarity?' asked the New Zealand Herald.")

After just one more New Zealand Day (much quieter), the concept was brought to an end by the incoming National government, and specifically its infamous PM Robert Muldoon (look up the NZ 1984 sometime). He renamed the day back to Waitangi Day, possibly as a sop to Maori activists who really would have preferred he got on with this new-fangled "Waitangi tribunal" that he was meant to be setting up to deal with their genuine grievances.

So that's the start and end of New Zealand Day (all info from NZ History dot govt). Would it have been more unifying than the Waitangi Day we have now? Probably not - certainly that hasn't worked for Australia Day, and there are plenty of issues both historical and present to protest.

By the way, if there are any kiwis reading, I absolutely recommend going to Waitangi sometime (and ideally knock around Paihia and Kerikeri and Russell a bit too while you're at it). The museum, marae and historical buildings there give you so much perspective on what the Treaty was and why it was signed. Plus the views out into the Bay of Islands are really nice - and maybe if you arrive early enough in the morning, you'll see a great heron taking off against the rising sun, just like on this coin.

[patriottruth]

American females outnumber American males by at least 6.1 million. The dominant American demographic deserves equal American human rights, civil rights, freedoms, privileges, and entitlements as the minority male population. Majority Rule via a Kamala Harris Presidency has been a long time coming since 1950.

It's common sense; and the minority male population of the United States would never tolerate the situation being flipped where they were the disadvantaged ones whose American human rights, civil rights, freedoms, privileges, and entitlements were being permanently erased.

It's as simple as treating people the way you'd want to be treated. Public Policy, Majority Rule, and the Law of Majorities demand that the majority female population of the United States be treated equally to the minority male population no matter how the minority male population might think or feel about it.

As the majority population of the United States, American females have a right to protect and defend their rights and interests against any and all attempts by the minority male population to weaken or destroy them.

In 2020, females continued to comprise a slightly larger share (50.9%) of the total U.S. population — 168.8 million compared with almost 162.7 million males (49.1%). Females have outnumbered males since the 1950 Census. Before that, males outnumbered females from the nation's earliest colonial times. (Census.gov)

American Women Have Only Had a Legal/Constitutional Right to Vote to Advance the Human and Civil Rights of All American Women and Girls Since August 26, 1920 (104 years).

American Women and Girls Have Only Had Access to Real Financial Independence Since October 28, 1974 (50 years).

American Women and Girls Have Only Had Access to Real Business Ownership Since October 25, 1988 (36 years).

The entire American story of real human and civil rights for American women and girls is only as old as most living American grandmothers and their daughters, granddaughters, and great granddaughters.

In the last 50 years of American history, when they've actually had the opportunities to do so, American women have pursued educations and financial independence from domestic slavery, forced breeding, sexual slavery, and child-rearing, and they now account for 77% of all teachers, 65% of psychologists, 62% of OB/Gyns, 59% of pediatricians, 42% of managers, 42% of business owners, 39% of attorneys, 38% of physicians, 35% of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields workforce, and 32% of business executives in the United States.

We need to keep growing forward and never go back to when women and girls had nearly no civil or human rights compared to the rights, privileges, and entitlements of American men and boys. "We The People" isn't a males-only country club; and "United" doesn't mean, "…fine print disclaimer…*** Excluding all American women and girls in the United States, of course! ***…"

For those who scream, "ALL LIVES MATTER!!!", accounting for all human life means no life is excluded; and "united" and "we" means everyone, with no exclusions; lest we be divided and conquered by hate and fear in all the same ways as every other civilization that fell and lost their lives and their homelands to colonizers and conquerors. Civilizations of the past experienced the same infestation and corruption of one of their political parties, who then caused massive division and hate on behalf of a foreign nation who wanted to conquer that civilization and take everything for themselves, immediately prior to the end of their civilization and nation.

Thankfully, American democracy, and the United States, itself, is being saved by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution THIS TIME, but we'll only have our American Republic for as long as we're willing to fight for it. Unfortunately, half the United States voted against all American women and girls and the U.S. Constitution in the 2024 election. Here's to hoping at least some of those people will improve their tolerance of coexisting with American women and girls of all ages, along with their basic K-12 civics and history education, between now and 2026 and 2028.

[jhsharman]

Moose for Prez

Campaign manager Dilton needing to reinvent Moose's political reputation after past campaigns.

Moose Manson? Inauspicious error.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON ― For Donald Trump, Tuesday’s election has come to this: It’s either the White House or the Big House. If he wins, the coup-attempting former president, already a convicted criminal, will be able to postpone his Georgia and New York state prosecutions until he is no longer in office. As for his two federal cases, he would be able to make them disappear forever by simply ordering his attorney general to dismiss them. “Those will be dismissed on Jan. 20. Both of them,” said Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer and onetime federal prosecutor who thinks his old boss deserves prison time. “There’s a compelling interest for the country to deter this treasonous bullshit and the mishandling of sensitive information.” Trump himself confirmed he would end the federal prosecutions by firing special counsel Jack Smith in an interview last month with pro-Trump radio host Hugh Hewitt. “It’s so easy — I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said. Smith has headed the election interference and classified documents investigations.

The New York and Georgia cases, meanwhile, would at best go into hibernation, lawyers said, because courts have ruled that presidents must have the ability to carry out their duties under the Constitution, notwithstanding state legal cases. “The state cases, because of the supremacy clause, nothing much will occur,” said Karen Agnifilio, a former prosecutor in Manhattan. “He can be sentenced in New York state, but he will not get anything that bleeds into his presidency. So maybe community service? A fine? Nothing?” A Trump victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris would mark the first time in American history that voters have put a literal criminal into office. Among former presidents, only Richard Nixon even came close to facing charges for his attempt to cheat in the 1972 presidential election and his subsequent attempts to cover it up. He was preemptively pardoned by newly sworn-in Gerald Ford days after Nixon resigned from office in 1974.

Trump, in contrast, already faces three active criminal cases against him: in state court in Georgia, for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss there; in federal court in Washington, D.C., for his actions leading up to and during his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt; and in New York state court, for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star days ahead of the 2016 election. There was a second federal prosecution, in South Florida based on Trump’s refusal to turn over secret documents he took with him to his Palm Beach country club upon leaving the White House, that was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Smith is appealing to have those charges reinstated. The New York case would be his most immediate threat, should he lose. A New York City jury in May found him guilty on every count. Sentencing is now set for Nov. 26. Though it is a white-collar crime and Trump is still legally a first-time offender, Judge Juan Merchan can consider Trump’s lack of remorse, the seriousness of the crime ― intended to sway the 2016 presidential election ― as well as Trump’s multiple violations of Merchan’s gag order forbidding the former president from attacking witnesses and court officers in the case.

Today, this election will determine the fate of any chance of whether Donald Trump will be held accountable for his crimes.

If he loses, he’ll be in a heap of legal trouble. If he wins, he’ll be off scot-free.

[officiallordvetinari]

Below are 10 featured Wikipedia articles. Links and descriptions are below the cut.

On February 17, 1974, U.S. Army Private First Class Robert Kenneth Preston (1953–2009) took off in a stolen Bell UH-1B Iroquois "Huey" helicopter from Tipton Field, Maryland, and landed it on the South Lawn of the White House in a significant breach of security. Preston had enlisted in the Army to become a helicopter pilot. However, he did not graduate from the helicopter training course and lost his opportunity to attain the rank of warrant officer pilot. His enlistment bound him to serve four years in the Army, and he was sent to Fort Meade as a helicopter mechanic. Preston believed this situation was unfair and later said he stole the helicopter to show his skill as a pilot.

J. R. R. Tolkien, a fantasy author and professional philologist, drew on the Old English poem Beowulf for multiple aspects of his Middle-earth legendarium, alongside other influences. He used elements such as names, monsters, and the structure of society in a heroic age. He emulated its style, creating an impression of depth and adopting an elegiac tone. Tolkien admired the way that Beowulf, written by a Christian looking back at a pagan past, just as he was, embodied a "large symbolism" without ever becoming allegorical. He worked to echo the symbolism of life's road and individual heroism in The Lord of the Rings.

The construction of the first World Trade Center complex in New York City was conceived as an urban renewal project to help revitalize Lower Manhattan spearheaded by David Rockefeller. The project was developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The idea for the World Trade Center arose after World War II as a way to supplement existing avenues of international commerce in the United States.

The Coterel gang (also Cotterill, fl. c. 1328 – 1333) was a 14th-century armed group that flourished in the North Midlands of England. It was led by James Coterel—after whom the gang is named—supported by his brothers Nicholas and John. It was one of several such groups that roamed across the English countryside in the late 1320s and early 1330s, a period of political upheaval with an associated increase in lawlessness in the provinces. Coterel and his immediate supporters were members of the gentry, and according to the tenets of the day were expected to assist the crown in the maintenance of law and order, rather than encourage its collapse.

Eunice Newton Foote (July 17, 1819 – September 30, 1888) was an American scientist, inventor, and women's rights campaigner. She was the first scientist to confirm that certain gases warm when exposed to sunlight, and that therefore rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels could increase atmospheric temperature and affect climate, a phenomenon now referred to as the Greenhouse effect. Born in Connecticut, Foote was raised in New York at the center of social and political movements of her day, such as the abolition of slavery, anti-alcohol activism, and women's rights. She attended the Troy Female Seminary and the Rensselaer School from age 17–19, gaining a broad education in scientific theory and practice.

Simonie Michael (Inuktitut: ᓴᐃᒨᓂ ᒪᐃᑯᓪ;  first name also spelled Simonee, alternative surnames Michel  or E7-551; March 2, 1933 – November 15, 2008) was a Canadian politician from the eastern Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) who was the first Inuk elected to a legislature in Canada. Before becoming involved in politics, Michael worked as a carpenter and business owner, and was one of very few translators between Inuktitut and English. He became a prominent member of the Inuit co-operative housing movement and a community activist in Iqaluit, and was appointed to a series of governing bodies, including the precursor to the Iqaluit City Council.

The St. Johns River (Spanish: Río San Juan) is the longest river in the U.S. state of Florida and it is the most significant one for commercial and recreational use. At 310 miles (500 km) long, it flows north and winds through or borders twelve counties. The drop in elevation from headwaters to mouth is less than 30 feet (9 m); like most Florida waterways, the St. Johns has a very slow flow speed of 0.3 mph (0.13 m/s), and is often described as "lazy".

Warlugulong is a 1977 acrylic on canvas painting by Indigenous Australian artist Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. Owned for many years by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the work was sold by art dealer Hank Ebes on 24 July 2007, setting a record price for a contemporary Indigenous Australian art work bought at auction when it was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for A$2.4 million. The painting illustrates the story of an ancestral being called Lungkata, together with eight other dreamings associated with localities about which Clifford Possum had traditional knowledge. It exemplifies a distinctive painting style developed by Papunya Tula artists in the 1970s, and blends representation of landscape with ceremonial iconography. Art critic Benjamin Genocchio describes it as "a work of real national significance [and] one of the most important 20th-century Australian paintings".

William Samuel Sadler (June 24, 1875 – April 26, 1969) was an American surgeon, self-trained psychiatrist, and author who helped publish The Urantia Book. The book is said to have resulted from Sadler's relationship with a man through whom he believed celestial beings spoke at night. It drew a following of people who studied its teachings.

Zebras (US: /ˈziːbrəz/, UK: /ˈzɛbrəz, ˈziː-/) (subgenus Hippotigris) are African equines with distinctive black-and-white striped coats. There are three living species: Grévy's zebra (Equus grevyi), the plains zebra (E. quagga), and the mountain zebra (E. zebra). Zebras share the genus Equus with horses and asses, the three groups being the only living members of the family Equidae. Zebra stripes come in different patterns, unique to each individual. Several theories have been proposed for the function of these patterns, with most evidence supporting them as a deterrent for biting flies. Zebras inhabit eastern and southern Africa and can be found in a variety of habitats such as savannahs, grasslands, woodlands, shrublands, and mountainous areas.