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thepapercutpost · 3 years

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Female Artists Fighting For Their Due Are Not Being Greedy; They’re Defending the Futures of Their Industries

"Scarlett Johansson" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (left). "File:191125 Taylor Swift at the 2019 American Music Awards (cropped).png" by Cosmopolitan UK is licensed under CC BY 3.0 (right)

In May of 2010, Iron Man 2 introduced Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

A few months later, Netflix—whose subscribers were, in majority, still receiving DVDs—began offering a standalone streaming subscription independent from its DVD rentals. It wasn’t until nearly ten years later that Disney, parent company of Marvel Entertainment, would launch its own streaming service, Disney+. And in 2021, after three pandemic-related delays, Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff’s solo film which fans had been demanding for 11 years, was finally released.

The long-awaited film garnered $80 million in North American theaters during its opening weekend, more than any other film released during the pandemic era. (In comparison, MCU’s last pre-pandemic release, Spider-Man: Far From Home, made $185 million). Because of the somewhat mercurial state of indoor gatherings around the world, Disney chose to make Black Widow available simultaneously in theaters and for an additional $30 fee for Disney+ subscribers. After opening weekend, in an unprecedented move in streaming service transparency, Disney revealed the film had grossed $60 million through Disney+’s Premier Access feature.

The next weekend, the film suffered a 67% drop in box office sales. Disney has not since released streaming numbers.

Within a month, news broke that Johansson was suing Disney over the film’s hybrid release. Her suit claims that her contract for the film guaranteed an exclusively theatrical release and that her compensation was largely tied to box office revenue, which was impacted by the film’s simultaneous availability on Disney+. The breach of contract is a serious allegation against the company, and it comes from the embodiment of one of the longest-standing pillars of its most successful franchise.

Disney’s response? Make her the bad guy. Paint her as the greedy, insensitive Hollywood prima donna. Publish her salary to prove it, despite a policy of “never publicly disclos[ing] salaries or deal terms.” And blame the pandemic.

In a statement, the company claimed Johansson’s suit had “no merit whatsoever” and called it “especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Their argument here is twofold: 1) the pandemic prevented them from releasing the movie in theaters, and 2) she should be happy with the millions she has already gotten.

We have all had to make concessions due to the pandemic, albeit most of us on a smaller scale. But Disney’s sudden overwhelming concern for public health and safety is less than convincing. Their claim that they couldn’t have released the film in theaters proves baseless on account of it, well, being released in theaters. What they seemingly meant was that the pandemic meant a smaller payday from movie theaters, so they found an additional method of distributing the film that just so happened to free them of the obligation of splitting its revenue with the star, not to mention movie theater companies.

Appealing to the sympathies of the billions of people in the world who can’t even fathom the amount of money Johansson and her movie star peers earn for each film they make is a slightly smarter move. After all, a jury who decides whether she wins her case will likely consist of non-millionaires who may be biased against a woman who out-earns them by two or three digits. Regardless of the amount of money in question or the wealth of the individual, a deal is a deal, and a written contract is legally binding. The bottom line is that Disney failed to honor the agreed-upon contingencies (ie. a theatrical release). Not to mention, this argument expects us to forget that Disney itself is a conglomerate worth hundreds of billions of dollars, hardly a poor, innocent victim of a rich woman’s greed.

In fact, Disney’s mentioning of “the $20 million she has received to date” only broadens the scope in Johansson’s favor. She is a Tony winner, two-time Oscar nominee, and one of the highest-grossing actors in box office history. If she retired today, her entire family would be able to live a life of luxury for generations to come without having to work a day. So why nitpick over the extra $50 million or so she could have earned with a theaters-only release, cause a Hollywood-sized fuss, and risk the company dragging her name through the mud, as they so predictably did?

Let’s ask Taylor Swift. The singer-songwriter shot to international superstardom in 2008, making her the face of pop music. In recent years, she has fiercely advocated for artists’ rights after experiencing her own long and ultimately failed attempt to buy back her master recordings from Big Machine Label Group, which was acquired by music manager Scooter Braun in 2019.

Similarly, Johansson’s representatives attempted to reach out to Disney after the announcement of Black Widow’s hybrid release, which could possibly have amended their agreement and avoided the lawsuit altogether. But, like Swift, she was ignored.

Swift famously writes her own music, often from her own experiences. Scott Borchetta, founder of Big Machine, claims that she had the opportunity to own her masters, but, from both his account and Swift’s, the offer was contingent upon her staying with the company. Seeing as doing business with his company was what landed her in this situation, she was not willing to accept this condition, nor did she later accept Braun’s offer to buy back her music, a deal from which Braun would have profited and which came with its own condition: an NDA.

Her claim that Braun’s deal “stripped [her] of [her] life’s work” ignited a highly publicized feud not just between Swift and Braun but between their friends, loyalists, and supporters. Swift’s team shared her stance on artists’ rights while Braun’s defended his nice guy image. Braun himself didn’t comment, instead allowing his allies to take shots at the singer. His wife, Yael Cohen Braun, in an Instagram post referred to Swift as a “bully” and to her claim as a “temper tantrum,” telling her, “the world has watched you collect and drop friends like wilted flowers.” Justin Bieber, a client of Braun’s, suggested Swift's intention when expressing her disgust over the deal was “to get sympathy.”

Even after selling her masters to a private equity firm for $300 million in November 2020, Braun continues to profit off every CD and every stream of every song from every one of the six studio albums Swift recorded while she was signed with Big Machine, an agreement she first entered into at age 15.

Where Johansson is clearly in the right legally, Swift is morally right. Borshetta and Braun were under no legal obligation to sell her the rights to the songs she wrote and created, but they should have.

Both Swift and Johansson have incited high profile disputes, and both have been called by critics the “wrong person” to serve as the figurehead for the big picture arguments based on how much money they make. Two multi-millionaires are hardly the best representatives of the little guy trying to make it in the entertainment industry. It’s no skin off either of their noses if they don’t revolutionize the way artists and actors are paid.

Actually, it makes them the best voices for their causes. The millions of dollars at stake in each of their deals, while massive amounts to the average onlooker, would be a drop in the bucket of their wealth. Yes, they both have huge platforms and established fanbases they can use to garner support, but the fact that they have no skin in the game is their real strength. They don’t need the money, which proves they’re not doing it for themselves.

Disney is trying to hide behind the pandemic to defend its decision to release Black Widow on Disney+, but the issue was present even before the pandemic started, evident in Johansson’s agreement that the film have an exclusively theatrical release. Her suit claims she insisted upon this contingency when the streaming service was launched.

Streaming changed the game. Johansson is likely not the only one to have lost out on media companies’ failure to compensate talent fairly in the wake of the streaming evolution, but she is the first to draw the amount of attention to it that she has. Her claim opens the eyes of fellow actors, film distributors, and the public to an issue that extends beyond her: if the film industry is capable of adapting their content to this new source of distribution, then they can accommodate the role of actors into the changing environment and pay them, and other individuals who make their films possible, what they’re owed.

Record companies can stand to shake things up, too. Contracts that grant an artist’s masters to the labels that produce their music, such as the one Swift signed with Big Machine in 2004, are the norm in the music industry. Hers is far from the first battle to be fought by artists over the rights to their own music. There was the famous Paul McCartney v. Prince debacle in the 1980s, for example. In most cases, revenue is doled out to the label, the producers, the managers, and, last and least, the artists. It’s a system that assumes the performers are just lucky to be there, to have the opportunity to become the next Taylor Swift.

But streaming isn’t just for the movies—it’s changing the music game, too. Artists used to be entirely dependent on record companies to promote their music and get it into the hands of radio stations, but streaming sites and social media have allowed artists to release music independently. Working with a record company is still highly advantageous to an up-and-coming artist, but the other options available to them leave some breathing room for an artist to negotiate and retain the rights to their own music.

So, will wins for Swift and Johansson mean making two rich people richer? Yes. But it also starts a conversation. It gets the word out to young artists and actors that they should expect more from the publishers and executives they work with. And it sends a message to CEOs and big corporations: change with the times.

Since leaving Big Machine, Swift has signed with Universal Music Publishing Group in an agreement that guarantees her the rights to the music she creates with them, from Lover on. She is also in the process of re-recording her first six albums, an endeavor that began with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in April and will continue with the scheduled release of Red (Taylor’s Version) in November.

“Hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation,” Swift wrote in a post. “You deserve to own the art you make.”

#opinion #entertainment #business #feature

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 4 years

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Spooky Stories at Camp Quarantine: The Tale of the Swift Boat

Campfire story (n): a ritual where we all sit under the vast darkness of a midnight sky and tell ourselves a story about the big, scary monster that isn’t lurking just out of sight. You know. Probably.

2004 was a dark and stormy year.

The world pulsed with the still-raw trauma of the September 11 attacks. It was an anxious year of denial and bargaining, a desperate search for the loophole after Sirius Black fell through the veil. The twentieth century was dying and the third millennium was struggling to be born. It was the time of the Swift Boat.

The Usurper Bush the Lesser was in a tough place. If you were paying attention, you could see the signs that his stolen presidency was going to end in disaster and disgrace. And it was an election year, so people were about to start paying attention. So he took a lesson from his dear old Dad: he would unleash the hired help to unload a relentless fusillade of lies against his opponent.

Lying was an important part of the strategy because he was up against a strong challenger. John Kerry of Massachusetts was one of the most liberal Democrats in the Senate; he was also a tall, fit, well-educated, impeccably diplomatic, Irish Catholic patrician who didn’t challenge anyone’s idea of what a president looked like. He talked like Barack Obama and looked like Mitt Romney. He was allowed to get pneumonia without anyone losing their goddamn minds, that’s how white and manly he was.

Most critically, though, he seemed to have almost unique standing to campaign against the Bush administration’s spectacular failure in Iraq. At the time, Republicans had – cynically, but effectively – made themselves synonymous with The Troops. Anyone who questioned their lies or challenged their reckless foreign policy was axiomatically discredited as “hating the troops.” Kerry, however, was A Troop, with a track record of telling the hard truth about an unjustified war. He had earned five medals in Vietnam and then used that moral authority to call for an end to the bloodshed. His service gave him a way to connect to a massive group of voters for whom the war had been a generational trauma – and it was a strong contrast to Bush, who had used his wealth and family connections to dodge the draft.

Enter the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This was a group of Vietnam veterans who, in mid-2004, collectively realized that Kerry had lied about his heroism, hoodwinked the military into giving him an award, not once but five times, and successfully covered up his perfidy for thirty-odd years, despite having been scrutinized by Massachusetts voters and press in half a dozen statewide elections. This fantastical tale was largely spun by Jerome Corsi, now known for spreading birtherism (the racist conspiracy theory that former President Obama was not an American citizen), narrowly escaping prosecution by special prosecutor Robert Mueller, and, most recently, hawking Trump’s favorite quack coronavirus cure. They were, naturally, bankrolled by obscenely wealthy Bush supporters.

Maybe these Swift boat veterans were purposefully lying; maybe they were sad old men whose trauma was manipulated by right-wing propagandists. But they did what they were supposed to do. Kerry’s campaign lost its footing and never quite got it back. Instead of being able to challenge Bush’s lies about about the war in Iraq that was happening at the time, he was stuck on the defensive against Bush’s lies about the Vietnam war, which had ended decades before. In one retrospectively critical moment of priming the conservative base for Donald “I like the people who weren’t captured” Trump, delegates at the Republican convention wore silly purple heart bandaids to mock the wounds Kerry received in combat.

We know how that ended. Bush won the popular vote by around 2%, which back in the day actually used to be enough to win the election. Thus, ISIS rose and New Orleans drowned.

The thing is, the bad guys don’t actually forget the past as easily as they hope you do. When a play works, they run it again. When a play almost works, they run it again but better. When a play doesn’t immediately work, it still rallies the right-wing base and softens up the general public for their authoritarian politics of lies and abuse, so they keep it in their back pocket. So we should probably try to understand the specific elements that made the Swift boat propaganda campaign particularly effective.

Imagine you’re an amoral Republican candidate and I’m your mercenary sociopath of a campaign manager. I’ve just said, “look, you’re getting your ass kicked, we’re going to have to swiftboat your opponent” and you’re like “what’s a swiftboat? Write me a memo!” So, here it is. (You may be thinking “but you don’t know anything about me, and I’d never be a Republican candidate for anything!” Lesson the first: it doesn’t matter, because your swiftboat attack has nothing to do with you.)

A swiftboat attack is bullshit. We like to think the truth is the most effective political weapon, but what if there really aren’t any disqualifying skeletons in your opponent’s closet? If you’re going to sabotage them anyway, that’s kind of liberating. After all, true stories depend on facts, which can be too boring to stick with people, and don’t have made-to-spec story arcs that conveniently fit with your campaign’s themes. Plus, if you’re relying on some actual truth that exists in the universe, you’re running the risk that there’s some mitigating factor out there, some witness who can give different context or a wronged party who can say they’ve buried the hatchet. Worse, your opponent already knows about stuff they actually did. Campaigns do a ton of background research into their own candidates, specifically so that they’re prepared for a predictable attack. They can’t prepare themselves for literally anything your army of political strategists can imagine, so you will always have the element of surprise.

Swiftboating isn’t an attack on your opponent’s policy. It’s an accusation that they’ve violated some taboo. There’s some sticky detail that people won’t quite be able to forget, even if they are exposed to the eventual debunking. The story, whatever it is, should be most upsetting to a large, important block of voters who are inclined to support your opponent.

The allegations don’t come from you, your campaign, or even a sympathetic journalist. They’re laundered through apparent private citizens who are part of a group of people that the general public tends to find sympathetic. This makes your story seem more credible to at first glance, wrong-foots anyone who wants to defend your opponent against the allegations, and lets you get credit for insincerely denouncing the attack while continuing to benefit from it.

This is a dick-swinging exercise, so be shameless. You’re not just putting your opponent in their place by showing you can get away with lying about them, and maddeningly rejecting responsibility for your lies. You’re showing off an authoritarian contempt for truth itself.

You need a relentless multimedia assault, impossible for people to miss. You might have to bully legitimate media into teaching the controversy, but they’re wimps. You’re not trying to convince most people that this specific story is true, you’re just trying to plant some seeds of doubt, and to sap time and enthusiasm from your opponent and their supporters. Make the election as miserable as possible and voters will reward you for it.

The most important thing is that you want your swiftboat attack to be on some area where you have a real liability and your opponent has a real strength. You want them to have to defend themselves on something they should get to use as a selling point. Even better, you neutralize a totally fair criticism of yourself – no matter how accurate they are or how ridiculous you sound, the press will dismiss it as “both sides point fingers.”

Kerry’s campaign gets used as some kind of object lesson about the futility of primary voters trying to pick a candidate they think will win: “Kerry was supposed to be electable and Kerry lost, so there.” (You’ve probably heard the even stupider cover version, “if Hillary was so electable, why’d she let herself get targeted by all those criminal conspiracies, HMMMM?”) This is 20/20 hindsight spiked with the just world fallacy. John Kerry seemed like a good candidate because he was, in fact, a good candidate, which is why he did significantly better expected, and he came pretty close to beating the odds. If there’s a lesson here, maybe it’s that swiftboating can keep a clearly electable candidate from being elected.

That’s a real buzzkill because it means we can’t treat the primaries like a round of playoffs where we root for the most exciting player and then kick back to watch the finals. But what it lacks in self-gratification, it makes up for with agency. If a swiftboat attack is supposed to affect how people respond to a candidate, then people get to choose whether or not we play along.

Trump, a textbook narcissist who instinctively projects his infinite failings onto others, is almost a swiftboating savant. His campaign is being handled by the professional Republican operatives behind the original Swift Boat campaign. (Literally, some of the same guys.) So as we move into the general election, know that this is in their bag of tricks. If you start to hear alarming stories about presumptive Democratic nominee former Vice President Biden or any other prominent Democrats on the ballot …. give it the smell test, is all I’m saying.

#disinformation #2004 election #2020 election #swiftboating #john kerry #george w bush

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luci-in-trenchcoats · 7 years

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Me & Cinderella

Summary: The reader always knew Dean Winchester was the one. But when her college quarterback boyfriend gets considered for the pros, they let each other drift apart so he could go after his dream. Seven years later, Dean realizes just what happened all those years ago...

Pairing: Football Player!Dean x reader

Word Count: 8,500ish

Warnings: language, angst, self-depreciation

A/N: Thank you to @imissyoualittlemoreeveryday for giving me the inspiration for this story! Written in split POV between Dean and the reader...

Seven Years Ago

“Howdy partner,” you teased from your usual spot, sat on top of the block of cement near the stadium.

“Howdy partner,” said Dean softly, stepping forward, planting his lips to yours. It was three in the morning, Dean exhausted after his long, whirlwind of a day. “I needed that, sweetheart.”

“Want to talk about...everything?” you asked, patting the worn football beside you. He hummed, grabbing it in one hand, his other wrapping around your hand, walking quietly over to the grassy quad. He separated from you, getting a little bit of distance before he lightly threw the ball over.

“So...I guess I did it,” he said quietly, the confident and collected young man from today all but gone.

“Hey,” you said, catching the ball, tucking it under your arm. You walked over and grabbed hold of him, plopping down on a nearby bench. “You won the bowl game. You’re a heisman nominee. You should be celebrating.”

“I thought it would stop,” he said, too serious for the day he’d had, the day he’d been looking forward to being over and done with for months. “It just feels worse somehow.”

“Baby,” you said, wrapping your arms around him, Dean shivering into you. “Dean, it’s just a game. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. You thought about going to work for your Uncle Bobby, build up the garage business. That was the whole point of you coming here, to college, right?”

“Y/N, I haven’t even seen you since I woke up at dawn. On this big stupid, bowl game day, I was told over and over how important it was that I didn’t lose, how many people depended on me, and jobs and the school and community and just...all of it came down to me throwing a stupid football. I don’t even know if it was worth it. I wanted today to be done, just to get that pressure to go away, but now it’s pro scouts and managers and I barely even said hi to my parents or Sam today and I just need a break, you know?” he said, Dean shaking beside you, trying to keep from breaking down completely.

“I thought you always dreamed of playing in the NFL,” you said, holding his hand.

“I do...I just, I need a break. I just need a day to relax and not think about this and...let’s just go, just run away somewhere and be a silly couple again. I’ve been the shittiest boyfriend on the planet lately,” he said. “I...please let’s go somewhere, anywhere, I don’t care.”

“You’ve been busy,” you said, resting your head on his shoulder. “My car is two blocks down if you really want to.”

“Yeah, let’s go sweetheart,” he said, tugging you upwards, smashing his lips to yours. “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you.”

Dean ended up driving for three hours, finding a hotel for the two of you to crash in outside of some tiny farming town. You watched old movies and he ate whatever food he wanted, didn’t worry about his exercise routine, playing and laughing together until you heard the life back in his voice. He loved you and told you in more than one way that day, Dean quietly thanking you for sticking by him those four years, for laughing when he tripped in front of you the first day of orientation and giving him something he couldn’t have possibly wished for.

He didn’t say it but you were positive he was the man you were going to spend the rest of your life with. You were sure he felt exactly the same.

Until he graduated a semester early that was. Until he ran off to a training camp where they promised him the world and you had to encourage him to go after his dream because you were scared of what would happen if you told him the truth. It was going to strain him worse than before and you’d still be at school, his support system all but gone. Even if you’d fixed that broken thing in him that one day...your talks slowly got shorter, slowly turned into feeling like a chore and that you were holding up his busy life. Then they stopped altogether, your end of the semester workload keeping you busy, a new big girl job lined up in June that had you stressed out...that’s when you called Dean one night and he didn’t answer.

And it finally felt like he’d stopped caring.

When he called one night a few weeks later, you didn’t answer. You saw the spark in his eyes on the tv screen, on the interviews and everyone where else you saw his face...he was genuinely happy and was getting the life he dreamt of. It was the life where when he got drafted, you knew his family wouldn't worry about money anymore and he’d always been so scared about that, about there not being enough for Sam to go have his dream too. You let Dean drift away and he did the same.

Well...at least you thought he’d drifted away. One piece of him managed to stick around.

Present Day (Dean’s POV)

“Ofmph,” I let out, smashing down onto the couch, groaning at my knee. “Ice, Winchester. Doc said gotta ice tonight.”

Today’s game had pretty much been a washout. Seeing the Dolphins pop up in the schedule normally didn’t cause any concern. They were a guaranteed win against for the most part so letting the rookie toss around a few in the fourth was more than okay in my book.

I sat up, stretching out just in time to hear the apartment bell ding.

“You better be a stripper...with alcohol...and pizza,” I grumbled, one of the guys mentioning something like that as an early birthday present for me.. “What is it?” I said into the intercom.

“Good evening, Mr. Winchester there’s-“

“For the gazillionth time Lou, it’s Dean,” I said, pressing the button, my tolerance for anything beside being a guy from Kansas at an all time low tonight. “What is it, Lou? I’m not expecting any company.”

“There’s a uh...a uh,” said Lou. “I’m not sure you were...you’ve never had a guest...it’s not any of my business, Mr. Winchester but-”

“He actually got a stripper, the son of a bitch,” I grumbled. “I’ll be right down.”

Maybe as a joke, I would have accepted it. A bachelor party? Again, I’d been to a few with them and okay, that was fair game to expect one there. But sending one to my freaking house? Benny was in for it tomorrow morning.

“Alright,” I said the second I got off the elevator, walking to the lobby seeing nothing but a confused looking Lou. “Did you kick her out? If so, you need a raise buddy.”

“Um your guest is still here…” he said, pointing down over the other edge of the counter. I scrunched up my face and peered around, spotting a little girl.

“Uh, I don’t know that kid,” I said, stepping over, kneeling down in front of her with a smile. She had an envelope taped to her chest that said “Dean Winchester,” the girl looking horribly confused. “Hi sweetie. Can you…”

She had big, green eyes staring at me, green eyes I’d seen a hundred thousand times in the mirror. Her hair though...that was all…

“What’s your mom’s name, sweetie?” I asked with a gulp, already recognizing the handwriting.

“Y/N. She said to give this to you and that you’d take care of me,” she said, peeling off the letter.

I made some sort of completely unmanly whimper, tearing open the letter as fast as possible.

I wouldn’t bring her to you unless I had to. She’s safe with you. Please take care of her until I can come back in three weeks. I’m back on the 27th at noon, I promise.

This is Penelope. Penny. She’s 6. She hates carrots so don’t try those. She’s also yours. I’ll try to explain when I see you again but please just take care of her for now.

It’s okay if you hate me for ruining your life, for not telling you. Just don’t take it out on her.

-Y/N

“Oh fuck,” I said, looking her over, spotting my freckles, Y/N’s lips, a million other things. “I’m your…”

“Dad?” she asked, my head nodding. “Mom said you’d be surprised.”

“She got that right,” I said, taking a deep swallow. “When...when did your mom drop you off, Penny?”

“Five minutes ago. She drove away. She said she’d come get me in a few weeks,” she said, looking up nervously. “It wasn’t safe at home she said.”

“Okay,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “Lou, can you call the cops so I can figure out what the hell is going on?”

About three hours later I had a DNA test results sheet in my hand, someone from the crime department explaining how this one squiggle meant I was her father. A detective cocking his head at me was the one I was focused on though.

“What now?” I asked, the detective flipping around his screen.

“You’re on her birth certificate as her father. You’re biologically her father. You have, according to every legal document we have, full parental rights over Penelope Winchester. The kid is yours. Unless you want to drop her with social services for three weeks, stick her in foster care temporarily, get her mother in an assload of trouble when she gets back from-“

“I got it,” I said, holding up my hand. “I’m taking the kid home I guess.”

“Good,” said the detective. “Figure out what’s going with the mother when you see her. If you see her again.”

“Isn’t that your job? I haven’t spoken to her in seven years but she she’s a good person. Something has to be wrong for her to just do this…” I said.

“You also didn’t know you had a kid, how good can she be?” asked the detective.

“I’m sure she had her reasons,” I said, standing up with the report. Penny seemed as thankful as I was to get out of there, crawling into the backseat of my SUV, her eyes wide when I got in my seat.

“Your truck is really nice,” she said, standing up in the seat to pull down the belt. I sighed, not having an absolute clue how to take care of a kid. “I’m hungry.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Pizza,” she said.

“Good. That’s what I was planning on having,” I said, heading for home, groaning when I pulled off the road. “Hey, besides that backpack you have, do you have any clothes? Or kid...stuff?”

“No. I’ll just wash what I got,” she said. “Like mom.”

“I guess we’re going to the store then,” I grumbled. I hated using it but for once the quarterback thing came in handy, some poor people at a target forced to stay open an extra fifteen minutes as I ran around, tossing random crap in a cart, getting out of there as fast as possible. I grabbed a pizza fast on the way home, dumping most everything by the front door, Penny just standing there unsure of herself. The kid was going to get to bed at midnight at this rate.

“You’re my dad, right?” she asked nervously. “Are you gonna take me to school? Mom drives me in the morning.”

“Um, sure,” I said, resting a hand on my head, trying to dish up some food for her. “Take off your shoes and coat, sweetie. Where’s your school?”

“In Austin,” she said, walking over slowly, pulling out a chair at the table to sit in.

“You’re in Dallas right now, Penny…” I said. “You gave me everything your mom gave you, right?”

“Oh, I forgot,” she said, pulling out a wadded up sheet from her pocket. “This one fell out of the envelope when I looked.”

“What…” I said, glancing it over. “She transferred you for the month to one a few blocks down.”

“Okay,” she said, sitting down patiently. “Can I have dinner now please?”

“Yeah,” I said, sliding a plate in front of her, finding a glass of water as I sat down across from her. “You’re nervous.”

“You’re nervous,” she said.

“Got me there,” I said, scratching my head. “Your mom didn’t say anything at all about why she brought you here? Why she never...”

“Maybe it was work? Mom works a lot. She‘s not happy lately,” said Penny. “I think a boy is being mean to her.”

“A boy at work?” I asked, Penny shrugging. “Does your mom ever talk about me?”

“Not a lot. She said you're a very good man and you play football on the tv. We watch sometimes,” she said. “It’s kind of boring to me.”

“Boring to me too sometimes,” I said, lifting up my food. She didn’t seem in the mood to answer anymore questions and my brain was wracked enough at the thought of Y/N after all these years. I hadn’t been in a long term relationship since. I hadn’t felt that ease, the being head over heels attracted to your best friend who you could do ridiculous things with and they wouldn’t judge you. No one had ever terrified me in the best way possible like she had. “Why did I let her slip away like that…”

“I’m sleepy. Can I have a story?” asked Penny, pushing her finished plate away.

“I don’t really have any stories,” I said, Penny frowning. “I can make something up though. Let’s find you a bed.”

I could only thank Y/N that this little girl was well behaved, getting into her pajamas without a fuss, climbing in a way too big queen sized guest bed, willing to try and go to sleep on her own because she obviously knew I didn’t have a clue what to do.

“Do you need anything?” I asked, Penny shaking her head. “If you do, I’m right at the end of the hall.”

“You wish I would go away, don’t you,” she said.

“What? No sweetie, that’s-“

“All the boys mom ever brings home don’t like me. Then they go away and mom gets sad and maybe you can help me figure out what they don’t like so they don’t do that anymore?” she asked.

“Your mom’s been choosing you over them, Penny. You’re not doing anything wrong,” I said. “Get some sleep and I’ll take you to school in the morning.”

“Goodnight Dad,” she said, curling into the bed again.

“Goodnight, Penny,” I said, closing her door, going straight to my room and groaning into a pillow. “What am I supposed to do with a kid?”

I woke up in the middle of the night to her poking at my shoulder, a wince on her face.

“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked, bouncing up and down. I grabbed her and put her in mine, sighing in relief when she got inside in time. She came out a minute later with a curious look on her face. “Your knee looks funny.”

“I forgot to ice it last night,” I said, inspecting the damage, a swollen bruise covering it. “Shit, Doc’s gonna be on my ass for this.”

“You’re not supposed to swear,” she said.

“You are right. You’re not supposed to do that,” I said, pointing at her. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I won’t tell mom,” she said, climbing up on top of my bed and over to the empty side.

“Penny, it’s four in the morning, you have to go back to sleep,” I said. She pouted, hugging the covers to her little chest.

“I’m scared,” she said. “Can I stay with you?”

“Penny, go back to bed,” I said, picking her up, earning a whine. “What’s wrong now?”

“I want mom,” she whined again, trying to push away.

“I don’t know where your mom is,” I said, setting her down on the bed. Her bottom lip quivered and I sighed. “Just...stay there.”

I went out to the living room, tearing open the bag that was meant for Sam’s nephew, writing a note to grab another one at work in the morning. I went back to my room, Penny, sniffling into a pillow.

“Hey, Pen,” I said, reaching out a hand, rubbing it up and down her back. She turned away, throwing the covers over her head. “I know you want your mom and I’m sorry I don’t know where she is but...I do have this.”

She carefully lifted the cover up, glancing up at me as I gave her a smile, holding out the teddy bear in a jersey to her.

“Do you want to keep him?” I asked, her head nodding, scooping it up and under the blankets with her. “Do you want to stay in here tonight?”

Her head moved under the covers, my own leaning back. She was a scared and confused kid and if my mom had dropped me off with a total stranger, I probably wouldn’t be handling it as well as she was.

“Goodnight Penny,” I said, getting back under the covers. She snuggled into my side, her arms clutched around the bear and into my shirt. “It’ll be okay.”

“Promise?” she mumbled.

“Yeah, I promise.”

When the alarm went off, I had the distinct feeling that a small child was using my chest as a pillow. I blinked open an eye, Penny sprawled out on top of me, her bear shoved next to my face.

“Where’s the instruction manual for you…” I said, swatting the alarm until it went off, shaking her gently to wake up. “Hey sleepy head. We have to get you ready for school.”

“School doesn’t start until later,” she grumbled, putting her head down. She certainly wasn’t a morning person, much like Y/N was.

“Does your mom let you sleep in?” I asked, her head nodding. “Are you lying, Penelope?”

“Yes,” she groaned, sitting upright. “I only get called that when I’m in trouble.”

“How about we don’t lie to each other and I’ll call you Penny,” I said, her shoulder shrug so like a hungover Y/N I had to bite my bottom lip. “Alright, up and at ‘em.”

“What do you do when you’re not on the tv?” she asked, plopping back down when I got out of the bed, the ache in my knee not as bad as the ass chewing I was going to get.

“I, little miss grumpy,” I said, picking her up and setting her on the floor, patting her to head for the guest room. “...Well sometimes it changes, depending on the time of the year or day of the week. It’s Monday and we had a home game yesterday so we’ll look at yesterday’s game, see where to improve and start prepping for next week’s game. I’ll do a workout in the morning, probably a interview thingy after that, have lunch, throw the ball around, do more prep, practice some plays with the guys and then I guess I’ll pick you up from school.”

“Can I be a quarterback? That sounds fun,” she said, perking up when I set her bear on the dresser in there.

“You’re a little too little, Penny,” I said. “I’m a big guy and I’m one of the littlest ones out there. You wouldn’t want to get hurt. Besides, if you’re anything like your mother, you’re very smart. You have to protect your brain.”

“Who protects your brain?” she asked.

“...huh. Good question,” I said, Penny undoing her backpack and dumping her clothes on the floor. “You get dressed and I will make us some breakfast, okay? And uh, brush your teeth or something too.”

“You’re not really good at this, are you,” she said, shaking her head.

“You are most certainly your mother’s daughter,” I said, shaking my own and heading to change for the day. She beat me to it, standing in the middle of the kitchen holding a hairbrush and tie, holding them out for me.

“I want a ponytail,” she said.

“Uh, can you do that?” I asked, her head shaking. “Do you know how to do it?”

“No,” she said, handing the items over, hoping onto a chair.

“Google. We need google,” I said, grabbing my computer, typing away for a second, finding a youtube channel for every other idiotic father out there that needed a tutorial. “One sec, Pen. I think we need to brush your hair first.”

“Yeah…” she said, like it was obvious.

“So much like your mother,” I muttered, not sure where to begin, getting a screech after a few tries. “Sorry.”

“Not so hard,” she said. “You gotta pat the top so it doesn’t pull.”

“Where’s that part in the video…” I asked, the two of us groaning and moaning and fumbling our way through it until she had a pony tail.

A pony tail that was apparently too loose.

“No, you gotta make it better,” she said, pulling the tie out, her hair falling down.

“I’ve never done this before. A little slack would be appreciated,” I said, rolling my eyes behind her as I started again.

“You can have an itty bitty bit of slack,” she said, a corny laugh in there as she sounded like she had a smile on her face. It went better this time, a nod of approval from a six year old strangely a better confidence booster than any award or accolade I’d received recently. “Now we do your hair.”

“My hair? My hair is done,” I said, running a hand through it.

“Are you sure?” she asked, giving me the stink eye.

“Yeah, I’m sure short stack,” I said, ruffling the top of her head. “You like scrambled eggs?”

“I like bacon,” she said. I laughed at her honesty, finding that bit of me in her tug at something in my chest.

“Bacon and eggs,” I said, whipping up a quick breakfast. Penny seemed to enjoy it, oblivious to my phone going off every five seconds from people wanting a hundred different things. “What grade are you in Penny?”

“First,” she said. “What’s your favorite color?”

“I like blue. Maroon too,” I said, giving her a smile. “You can ask me questions, it’s okay.”

“Why don’t you and mom live together?” she asked.

“We...I don’t know, Penny. I have a lot of questions for your mom. We’ll just have to wait to get some of those answers,” I said.

“Uh huh,” she said, going straight for her bacon first. I let her eat quietly, trying not to let anything towards Y/N come in my head and just focusing on keeping Penny happy for the next few weeks.

“Shit,” I said halfway through breakfast, hopping up and pulling out a loaf of bread. “You like PB&J?”

“I made my lunch,” she said, pointing at her backpack.

“Penny,” I said with a smile. “A bag of Cheetos is not a lunch.”

“I was trying to help,” she said. “You get grumpy when I ask for help sometimes.”

“You’re right,” I said, her head cocking. “I’m sorry about that sweetie. I’m confused just like you but your mom trusted me to take care of you and that’s what I’m going to do. You never have to be scared to ask for my help, okay?”

“Alright,” she said, letting me go back to making her a sandwich, tossing a few Cheetos in a baggie for her too. She got more comfortable as I asked her about her favorite animals and games, memorizing the answers not all that important but something in her becoming more apparent as we spoke.

As much as she was Y/N, there were parts of me in there too, the parts that made me pretend that I was okay when I wasn’t. She definitely didn’t deserve to feel like that because of me.

“Hey, you want to walk to school Penny? It’s a pretty day outside,” I said. It would hopefully be good for her and probably a good idea that I actually spoke with someone there before letting Penny loose on her own.

“Okey dokey,” she said, finishing up her breakfast, going back to her room to make her bed.

About twenty minutes later we were heading outside, her little hand reaching up for mine, that tug in my chest starting to hurt now.

Why hadn’t Y/N told me? Was she afraid I wouldn’t want her? I barely knew a thing about the kid but that instinct to make sure nothing happened to Penny was like getting hit with a live wire.

Or a sack from a 350lb linebacker.

“Ow,” I said, rubbing my knee, hoping for maybe some easy downtime time because of it today. When we were stopped at a crosswalk, Penny leaned over and kissed it, a jolt of pain shooting through it but her face in a big smile. “Thank you. It feels much better now.”

“You should ask the other boys not to hit you so hard,” she said.

“I’m gonna try that next Sunday,” I teased. “Maybe you can come to my game. Or else I’ll have to find a babysitter for you.”

“Aren’t you my babysitter?” she asked.

“I’m your dad, not a babysitter,” I said, her face lighting up. “You want to come to a game?”

“Yeah!” she said, nearly skipping as walked along again. She asked about the different outfits I wore and my helmet and how does she get a job to play all day, so suddenly full of life I didn’t even want to wipe off the stupid smile on my face.

“Okay, more questions later, Pen,” I said, walking up the front steps of the school with her. “Let’s figure out where you need to go.”

Fifteen minutes later she was waving bye as her new teacher showed her down the hall, two gym teachers all over me about last night’s game.

“I didn’t know you had a kid even,” said one. “She good at sports?”

“Uh, sure,” I said, trying to back out of there. “Just treat her like everyone else. Please.”

“You better ice that knee. Ain’t gonna be no cakewalk this week,” said the other, my eyebrow raising.

“Yeah, just...like I said, treat her normal,” I said, turning to head out of there.

I wasn’t at the stadium more than five minutes before every single head in the locker room was turned in my direction.

“What’s going on?” I asked, Benny grabbing my arm and pulling me into a side room. “Dude, why’s everyone looking at me like I got three heads?”

“You got a kid? You got some honey on the side that no one knows about?” he asked.

“No, I don’t. I didn’t know I had a kid until 7 last night. What’s the big fucking deal?” I asked.

“Mister bachelor, perfect bring home to your parents type, has a kid. One he didn’t know about. Your image is gonna get screwed,” he said.

“Oh fuck off. She’s a scared little kid stuck with a scared grown man who doesn’t have a fucking clue what he’s supposed to do. She’s my daughter, so what? What does that have to do with anything,” I said storming out into the locker room. “Anyone got anything to say, you can say it to my face.”

“I was going to ask if she wanted to come to Timmy’s birthday party on Saturday,” said someone in the background. “He’s turning seven but if not, that’s cool.”

“You just surprised us is all,” said someone else.

“Trust me, no one is more surprised than me,” I said.

“Winchester,” I heard behind me, a groan escaping before I knew it. “You ice last night?”

“Something came up,” I said, the black haired man stepping up to me. “Come on, Cas, I’ll be fine for Sunday.”

“Ice bath. Coach will be in to talk to you soon,” said Cas, spinning me around towards the recoup room.

“Of course he will,” I said, doing as told and going there without a struggle. I wasn’t in the freezing cold tub for more than twenty seconds before the door flung open. “You look like you’re having a great Monday morning.”

“The kid, she gonna distract ya?” he asked.

“Would you like to hear what you want to hear or the truth?” I asked, crossing my arms.

“Big game Sunday. We win it, we’re automatically in the postseason,” he said.

“Really? Is that so? I must have forgotten since this is my first day in the NFL and all,” I said, throwing a towel over my face.

“You’re distracted,” he said. “Deal with your home crap at home like the other guys.”

“Did I get drunk and order an ‘exotic dancer’ that you guys covered up like a certain someone out there? It’s a kid. It’s fine,” I said. “Go lay into someone else.”

“Do I have to go back to peewee basics with you? You can run laps all day at this rate,” he said.

“Back off my kid and maybe I’ll back off you,” I growled out, the coach crossing his arms, a little smirk there. “What?”

“I was just checking something. We’re good now. Cas said to go five minutes, then we’re doing film review in room 12,” he said, leaving without a fuss.

I dunked my head under the water, taking a deep breath when I popped back up. I knew what he was doing, making sure I was handling my crap the right way. Still...he didn’t need to go poking that bear.

None of them did as far as I was concerned.

“Hi, Penny,” I said, awkwardly standing outside the truck a little after 3 that afternoon on the off chance she didn’t recognize it. She had a paper crown on her head, a piece of paper in her hand. “How was school?”

“Good. I drew you a picture,” she said, handing over the sheet. I laughed a little at it, her and what I guessed was supposed to be myself outside with a soccer ball on the ground.

“You know I play football, right?” I asked.

“I thought it was funny,” she with a shrug, opening the back door and hoisting herself up.

“Your mother is as sarcastic as ever I see,” I said, biting my bottom lip, folding up the sheet and tucking it in my pocket. I made sure she was buckled up, closing the back door with a sigh. I didn’t get it at first but the more time I spent with her, the more I got pissed, the more I felt like the weight of the world from before was nothing compared to handling a six year old.

Worst of all, I hated every time I remembered something good about Y/N. She took something from me, maybe without realizing it but for some reason she didn’t think I’d be a good father, good enough. For some reason, I still wanted her to just come back to me and say it was all in my head and that she didn’t give up on me.

“Dad?” asked Penny, rolling down the window. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, a lot on my mind is all. Let’s head home, huh? You can tell me all about your day.”

Two Weeks Later

“Dammit Penny!” I shouted, getting up from the ground, tripping over her ball she was kicking against the wall I’d told her more than once not to do. I hobbled on my bad knee, thankful it didn’t matter how the rest of the season went. The rookie could play the whole damn game for all I cared. “I told you to stop doing that!”

“You said you’d take me to the park,” she said, crossing her arms. “I want to play.”

“I have a game plan to run through that is this thick and I-”

“Were you always this mean to mom?” she asked. I picked her up and sat her down on the couch, running a hand through my hair, taking a deep breath.

“I was never mean to your mother. I loved her. She was funny like you and had a sense of humor and she knew when I felt bad. Somehow you’ve got that too...she was grumpy in the morning and got that same bedhead you get and she always stole my bacon but it didn’t bother me because she looked so freaking adorable when she had that big smile on her face and…” I said, hearing the waiver start to build up in my voice.

“You miss mom too,” she said.

“I’ve missed your mom for seven years, Pen. For some reason, she didn’t...yeah, I miss her too,” I said, sitting down next to her, Penny climbing in my lap, giving me a hug. It was still foreign to me, how freely she handed them out, how for all the physical contact I got day in and day out, I never felt like most of those people actually cared about me.

Then there was a little kid that I’d known for only two weeks, that showed more and more of herself to me every day. She wasn’t just smart, she was logical. She wanted to understand how things worked, how football worked, how people did this or that or the next thing. She liked to play pretend, hear stories, even if they made no sense. She wanted to be independent but asked that I get her a night light in her strange new bedroom. She was just so damn...wonderful.

“Penny,” I said, turning her head up to look at me. “After your mom comes back, you’re going to go back home to Austin. But maybe...if you want to...maybe you can come visit me sometime? Would you want to come see me again?”

“I like my new school,” she said, burrowing her head in my neck. “I’m sorry I called you mean. Can I stay here and mom comes here and everyone’s happy? I like having a dad.”

“I like having a daughter,” I said, coughing to hide a sniffle. “I don’t think that’s going to happen sweetie but if your mom is okay with it, I want to be in your life.”

“I really hope she is,” she said.

“Me too, Pen.”

One Week Later

It’d been a long time since I’d felt so nervous I wanted to vomit. Y/N was downstairs in the lobby, Lou already ringing up to say that she was there. Penny was thrilled, insisting on wearing her jersey I’d picked up at work one day, completely in love with how it said Winchester on the back.

“S’okay, dad,” she said in the elevator, grabbing onto my hand.

“Excited?” I asked, her head bobbing up and down. She took off the second the doors opened, rushing out towards the lobby. I heard a laugh and a giggle, Penny probably jumping up and knocking Y/N to the ground. I stepped out and took a deep breath.

Now or never.

Reader POV

“Oh, I missed you sweetie,” you said, picking Penny off the ground, hugging her tight, her hands fisting hard in your jacket. “I missed you so much.”

You spun her around with a smile, catching a blank face on your next spin around.

“Hi Dean,” you said quietly, setting Penny down, your gaze going with it. You heard him step over, the sweet boy you once knew about to chew you out or who knew what.

“We should talk in private,” he said. Penny took hold of your hand, leading you over to an elevator, the ride too slow and too fast, her little hand guiding you into the home she’d spent the past three weeks in. “Penny, can you hang out in your room for me? We’ll just be a minute.”

When you heard her walk away, a door shut in the distance, you realized you hadn’t seen any of Dean’s apartment apart from his floor, your face unable to meet his. He was quiet, probably waiting for you to try and explain yourself. But his finger came under your chin, tilting your head up, just in time for you to close your eyes.

“Your cheek is scuffed up,” he said softly. “What happened?”

“A bad ex. He’s not a problem anymore,” you said, Dean’s thumb running over your healing skin. “I needed her someplace I wouldn’t have to worry.”

“Are you sure you’re okay now?” he asked. You nodded, blinking open your eyes, Dean’s hurt ones staring back. “Why did you never tell me?”

“Your life was going one way and a baby would have...by the time I realized I was pregnant, we’d stopped talking. We stopped. I was scared of you, what you might do,” you said. Dean shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut.

“I would never hurt-”

“No, no, Dean,” you said, giving him a sad smile. “I know you’d never do that. I meant...you had your dream in front of you. It was yours to take. You wouldn’t have to worry about money. Your life would be good and that’s all I ever wanted for you. I would screw it up if I came back. You’d give up your dream and it’d be my fault.”

“My life is far from perfect. I am so far from perfect you don’t even…” he said, biting the inside of his cheek, looking away.

“You’re happy though. You got what you wanted,” you said, rubbing a hand up and down his arm.

“I was in love with you. I remember that stupid bowl game. I remember feeling so low and lost and you were the only thing keeping me together. I needed you so many times since then. The pressure never got better. I just knew I could handle it because us falling apart hurt like a son of a bitch. If I could live with that, I could live with whatever shit a coach or owner or whoever threw at me,” he said. He took a step back, running his hands through his hair.

“Dean,” you said, still no clue of how much he hated you for everything.

“Why’d you always try to make me happy? Always you did that. You let me go after a little boy’s dream for what? So I could lose you? Lose a daughter I never got to know? I never got to see her as a baby and never got to see her first steps or watch her learn to ride a bike or take her to her first day of school or any of it. You took so much from me, all so you could try to make me happy? Because you thought that you and a little girl would take me away from all of this? Why is my happiness, the one that hasn’t existed for a long, long time, not until three weeks ago, why am I so much more damn important than you? Than her?” said Dean. His chest was heaving but he was on the verge of tears, close enough to see the ones that had welled up in your own.

“You were my partner,” you breathed out, voice steady but so quiet you weren’t sure he even heard you.

“You were mine,” he said. “You never let me protect you like that. Never.”

“Your head...it’s wired different. You hurt when you shouldn’t and I really fucking hate when I see you’re hurting,” you said. “It’s okay that I took the load. It is, Dean.”

“Then why do I feel like I let you down, long before I was even drafted, before I even got to training camp. Why didn’t we just keep running like in that hotel room? Why couldn’t you have been selfish and told me to choose you? I would have,” he said.

“Because you would have,” you said. “You would have gone to work at Bobby’s. We’d have a baby on the way when we were both loaded with debt and I couldn’t stand the thought of you resenting us for the rest of your life because-”

“Why’d you give her my last name,” asked Dean, scrunching up his face, wiping at his eyes. “Why.”

“She’s yours,” you said softly. “We’ll disappear. We’ll never bother you again, I swear. I-”

“Don’t you fucking dare leave me alone again,” he said, throwing his arms around you, holding on tight. “I love her. I barely know how to do a damn thing for her but I love her to death. I’d quit my job right this second to keep her. I’d do anything. You got to stay.”

“You’re her father. You can see her as often as you like,” you said, nodding your head, his shaking.

“No. Both of you. I’ve been trying to think of every reason why you wouldn’t tell me about Pen the past few weeks and I always kept coming back to you trying to help me. You don’t have it in you to hate me, even if you think I could hate you. I don’t, I honestly don’t. I just don’t want to go back to being sad again,” he said.

“Dean, Penny, I understand but why-”

“How can I hate someone that put me first? Have you looked at yourself lately, Y/N? Your spark is gone, sweetheart. I don’t know if I can fix it but give me a chance to,” he said. “The only thing that broke us was letting life get in the way of what we should have focused on. Please, stay for lunch. Just a lunch and we’ll take it from there,” he said.

“One lunch, Dean. But then I need to go. I don’t deserve-”

“Damn it, Y/N. I’m forgiving you and that’s final. Just stay for lunch, tell me about our daughter, please, it’s all I’m asking. Forget about beating yourself up for one minute. Please, do this for me. One lunch.”

“Hey,” said Dean, nuzzling your cheek awake. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

“Morning,” you grumbled, turning into his chest, hiding yourself away there. “What time is it?”

“Six,” he said, running his hand over your head. “I missed you.”

“I feel like there’s a shoe that’s about to be dropped,” you said.

“Stay for breakfast?” he asked.

“You said stay for lunch, then stay for dinner, then stay over,” you said, lifting your head, Dean’s hand sliding down to rest on your waist. “How can you forgive me for keeping her from you?”

“Are we going to have this conversation every five minutes for the rest of our lives?” he teased. “I forgive you. Make it up to me and stay for breakfast.”

“You said that at dinner,” you said.

“If you moved on, if you don’t want me like that anymore, I’ll respect it. We’ll figure out how to raise her together. From everything she’s told me though, everything you’re still not telling me, you wouldn’t have bawled your eyes out last night in this bed if you weren’t considering trying this again,” he said.

“There’s a difference between what I want and what I deserve,” you said. Dean shook his head, pulling you flush against him.

“Well...do you forgive me? For not putting in the effort back when I should have, letting you drift away?” he asked.

“Of course, Dean. None of that was your fault. It was on both of us,” you said.

“So it’s okay to forgive me but not you? That sounds like the Y/N I knew,” he said.

“...Shut up,” you said, Dean’s chuckle rumbling through his chest. “I’m in Austin though. How’s that going to work? It didn’t before.”

“Austin’s not that far. It’ll work, trust me. We’ll make it work, for us and for her,” said Dean.

“I hope you’re right,” you said.

“Why don’t you take a shower and relax and I’ll make up some Backers for us,” he said. You raised your eyebrows, Dean laughing to himself. “Penny had the genius idea of mixing the bacon and eggs together, covered in maple syrup. We got a pretty smart kid if I do say so myself.”

“You really like her?” you asked.

“No. I love her. Come on, let’s get the rugrat out of bed, let her have breakfast with her parents for the first time.”

Penny was bundled up tight that afternoon, her feet standing on the railing while you wrapped one arm around her, the other around yourself. Dean managed to find a pair of last minute end zone tickets, Penny saying how she normally watched from the warm and comfy box but that dad had a surprise for them today. You weren’t sure what he meant but being in person at the stadium was an experience in itself.

Dean seemed hard and calculated when he was out there, driving down the field, barking things out to his teammates. He hadn’t been hit yet thankfully but he was getting a little more daring the closer to the end zone he got. It was third down in the fourth quarter when you saw him pull back to throw, no one open and he went for it. You cringed, praying when he got tackled it wouldn’t be too hard. He jumped over someone though, getting his feet in motion fast and ran the ball in, earning a few slaps on his back from his teammates in return. He didn’t hand the ball to the ref though, instead jogging over to you and Penny, hopping up to the railing and leaning over.

“Hi,” he said with a wink, handing the ball to you.

“You did this your first college game,” you said, Dean nodding his head.

“See you soon, ladies,” he said, ruffling Penny’s head, hopping down with a wave.

“Are we going to stay here with dad?” she asked, looking up at you.

“I don’t know, Penny. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Six Months Later

“Alright,” said Dean, clapping his hands together, pointing at you and Penny. “Pen, I need you to handle that super important checklist your mom made up with all of the boxes that go where.”

“I lost it,” she said, Dean nodding.

“Pen, new job. Go find your checklist,” said Dean, pointing out the front door. “I’d check the backseat if I were you.”

“Okey, dokey,” she said, giving him a little salute, skipping out the front door.

“Y/N,” said Dean, giving you a smile. “I need you to give me a kiss.”

“Oh, is that all?” you teased, Dean pressing his lips to yours, Penny running back in with her paper.

“Well, I can think of a few other things too,” he said, squeezing your waist. “Alright Pen, which room to do we unpack first?”

“The kitchen,” she said, reading over the paper, putting a hand on her head. “This is gonna take forever.”

“Nah,” said Dean, scooping her up, plopping her on his shoulders. “Maybe like a couple days. When we’re done, then we’re going to have a house warming party and all your friends from school can come.”

“And their parents,” you said, cocking your head.

“And their parents...except for the Giants fan guy. He’s not invited,” teased Dean.

“Giants suck,” said Penny, Dean doing a fist pump.

“I’ve never been more proud of you,” said Dean, walking around the first floor, smiling to himself. “How about you play in the backyard, sweetie. Mom and I can handle the kitchen.”

“Okay,” she said, sliding down Dean’s back, pulling open the back door, and running onto the big empty yard.

“You like the house?” he asked, your head nodding. “Not too big?”

“It’s nice but no, not too big,” you said. “I’m glad we’re out of that apartment.”

“Thank you for trusting me that we would make it work this time,” he said.

“Dreams change I suppose,” you said, Dean humming as he wrapped his arms around you, resting his forehead against yours.

“Some do. Some don’t. I should have told you what the real one was back in school. I think I was too scared of what would happen if you said no,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have said no,” you said, Dean’s eyes glancing down. “It’s alright. We’re a bit late to the game but we’re doing it now.”

“Last week when I asked...did you do it for her or because you want it too?” he asked.

“I want her to have a father, a role model...but mostly I was selfish. I don’t want to let you go again,” you said. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” said Dean. “It’s more than okay. This might not be exactly how I planned my life to go but sometimes you just gotta throw the play book away and let things happen how they’re supposed to. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.”

“We’re happy too,” you said, turning your head, Penny running back in the house, dragging dirt all over the floors. “Penelope Winchester…take your shoes off outside please.”

“Dad brings home his sweaty clothes all the time!” she said, Dean scoffing. “I don’t know why he does. He can’t even run that fast.”

“Fast enough to outrun you,” he said, letting her have a head start, lightly picking up his feet, jogging around the kitchen island, stomping his feet as she chased after into the front hall, the sound of his butt hitting the ground and her giggle alerting you that he’d fallen over dramatically again. “How are you so fast! It’s not fair.”

“S’okay. You’re just old,” she said, Dean chuckling when you came in to watch from the doorframe, her sat on his chest.

“Oh, that must be it,” he said, sitting them both upright. “Back to work, sweetie.”

She took off back outside, Dean reaching up for a hand. You tugged him to his feet, Dean pulling you into his chest in the same motion.

“I thought we were going back to work,” you said, Dean wearing a smirk. “What are you up to?”

“It’s just nice to have my partner back,” he said, going over to a box, pulling out a beaten up football. “I can’t believe you kept this.”

“Well a boy only gives a girl a football so many times in her life,” you said, Dean tossing it up and down.

“Want to take a break with our daughter?” he asked. “Wear her out for nap time.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good game plan to me, Dean.”

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ninjagoat · 6 years

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Notes on Supergirl 3x14

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

I've been annoyed with the show for a while now. Season three came out of the gate with four solid eps, and then draaaagged for another seven; before finally putting things back in order: slamming a season's worth of Lena's 'development' into reverse so she can actually have her own worldview and agenda once again; giving the Legion a hidden agenda so they actually have some narrative juice; giving Alex and Kara a genuine ideological conflict for the first time since... I can't remember, and actually having a plan for the World-killers because of it; and, important to me especially, the re-emergence of Winn as a recognised problem-solver.

Which brings us to 3x14, a MASSIVE episode for Winn, and, in terms of scale, a massive episode in general: the two major action sequences are of a kind you'd expect from a season finale; they've landed a *recent* Academy Award Nominee for a guest star; there's a frank discussion of later-life mental illness, and an insight into J'onn's specific attitude toward his adopted race; and a hilarious sequence of our heroes just... hanging out.

In short, in just a few episodes (which, by sheer coincidence, would all have finished being scripted *after* AK was suspended and fired for being a mediocre sex-pest)... they fixed the show.

THEY FIXED THE DAMN SHOW.

Notes below the cut (it’s a long post this week):

- "People being addressed as soldiers going into battle before actually just trying something fun and silly" is one of my favourite tropes, and that look Winn and Kara exchange is one of the best indicators of their long-standing friendship we've seen in a long time (Winn is, of course, Kara's best friend. You many have heard her give statements to the contrary. THESE ARE LIES).

- The choice to have the characters, all played by actors who can sing, do 'karaoke voice' instead of their actual voices is a good one. Having Kara do Beastie Boys side-steps the whole 'we've heard her sing' problem; J'onn and Mr. J are both wonderfully appalling; and Alex letting the lyrics of her ballad run on as she stops to drink is, as the kids say, a Mood (I'll come back to Mon-El and Winn at the end).

- THERE ARE *STILL* NO ALIENS AT THE ALIEN BAR. WHAT HAPPENED TO KEVIN? OR BRIAN?

- James's constant need for validation crashing against Lena's particular brand of emotional - and literal - unavailability is a good choice; we've not really seen James's interest in Lena manifest outside of her needs until now, and it's the first time he's had a relatable problem since 1x06. And pairing him up with Mon-El for this scene - who's having his own issues right now - is nice.

- Speaking of which, Imra's telepathy: is this the show telling us she definitely *doesn't* have mind-control powers, or that Mon-El - currently not the most reliable expert on the Legion - doesn't *know* she has mind-control powers?

- "FELLOW DRUNKS!"

- I'll admit, James was my least favourite option for who could be Winn's emotional support in this episode, given his long history of being really quite bad at it; but in this first scene, he's actually pretty good, providing Winn with the avenues he needs to avoid the old-school masculinity coping methods he's trying to use instead.

- Winn making ABSOLUTELY SURE that his Winslow's dead, even before they tried to put him in the ground, is on point.

- Mary. MARY. The writers knew they had Tony-award-winning Steppenwolf alum Laurie Metcalf on board, and it SHOWS. She's nervous and tentative, but she's also forthright; she takes over the space when she feels she ought to (a lot of her funnier asides could have been put in Cat Grant's mouth with no problem), and physically, tangibly awkward when she doesn't; and Metcalf runs through the gear changes as only a pro of her stature can. In her first scene, she's anxious, yes, and she's having difficulty separating Winn from the little boy she left behind; but it's also clear that THIS IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF HER LIFE, even if it isn't her son's. Mary is a catalyst for Winn's pain, but has a whole existence outside of it. That's good writing, that is.

- Speaking of Winn's pain... DEAR. LORD. That story goes toe-to-toe with any crappy parent story you've ever heard (and blows all of Lena's solipsistic crap out of the water); and Jeremy Jordan, having done so much with so little every week, completely sells that this is a story he's been waiting two decades to tell, and how being left alone with no-one to be *except* his father's son absolutely broke him.

- The Flying Monkeys sequence is the best action scene this show's ever done. Better than Reign. Better than Crossfire. And again, Mary and Winn: every time they're not focused on the time they've spent apart, it's almost like they were never apart at all.

- Winn calling out James for suggesting he forgive Mary is absolutely on point; and James admitting that he was a selfish, sulky little brat after his Dad died as an argument of how it could have been just as bad if she'd stayed is interesting (James is making it up to her now, though, by... never going home for a single holiday. Ever. Still, baby steps). His argument will also end up applying, subtextually, to his relationship with Lena; stop being ungrateful for the time she's not there for you, and just be happy for the time that she is. It's what she needs you to do. She's got her own stuff going on.

- "He doesn't always get the credit, but he keeps us going around here." Kara's gentle tribute to her friend (her BEST friend) and the adaptive, outside-the-box thinking that's been keeping everyone alive for years is wonderful; not just for what she says, but for how comfortable a rapport she has with Mary, while never forgetting that being told how great her son is by *Supergirl* is as good, if not better, than hearing it from the President herself (and if Mary needs that... it could be arranged).

- On a downer note, anytime a show starts talking about a side character as the "heart of the team" or somesuch... it's usually not a good sign for that character.

- I'm not ready to go into Mr. J's illness yet. I have a personal relationship to stories like this, and I can't write about it in this format. But Carl Lumbly is still ABSOLUTELY the best.

- And I'm not the person to get into J'onn's opinion on his own blackness; except to say, in a week when David Harewood met with British MPs to discuss the 'accidental' deportations of the Windrush migrants, this is a BIG DEAL.

- Since I'm doing asides into side plots: Mon-El and Kara. His apology - agenda-free this time - is honest and heart-felt, and his full disclosure about *why* he's apologising now raises interesting questions: at what point is this honesty defined as over-sharing? Where is the line drawn between being 'open about your feelings' and 'demanding emotional labour from others'? Kara has a firm boundary - they are *not* going to talk about his marriage - and he respects that. But should he have told her about it in the first place, even if it does lead in to the new information about the World-killers? I've said before: Supergirl is the only show with a significant male audience that, whether you believe it should or not, actually tackles questions of what healthy masculinity *should* be (albeit with varying degrees of success), and it's good that they're keeping it up.

- Mary's story is not only an important reminder that the men who commit mass-murder often begin by terrorising the women in their own homes; but also, in the context of Childish Things, addresses Winn's misunderstanding of his own fears. Winn has always believed that his father was a good person, until one day, when he just wasn't; and Winn believed that any time he didn't keep a lid on his own anger, any time that he might use that part of himself to stand up and say 'no' against those that would hurt him, the same would happen to him. But Winslow Sr. wasn't a good person. It took a long time for his anger to consume him, a long time for his battles against perceived slights to affect anyone except Mary. Winn has little to worry about.

- And her decision to take the gun and take on Toywoman(?) alone is immediate, consistent, and believable. She's been without her son for twenty years to protect his life. He will NOT be taken from her now.

- Delightful stunt-casting for Toywoman, by the way (If you haven't watched The Silence Of The Lambs recently... go do that).

- The second action sequence: not as good as the flying monkeys, but still has some banging moments, as the 'heroes' drop out to handle various contraptions to leave Winn to rescue Mary.

- Speaking of contraptions: "Cloth Magic." Comics Mon-El fans, that's got to feel good.

- How many times did Mary have to sit through New Hope when Winn was a kid? I'm guessing 'more than ten'.

- Winn being offended at the idea that he's going to be killed with something as pedestrian as a *firearm* is the absolute business, and annoying because it's a beat I'd already gotten it noted down for my own fic series.

- "You haven't just survived, you have EXCELLED."

- Mon-El *butchering* a song now synonymous with a TV show that *LIVES* in the kind of masculinity he's been used to deconstruct (again, with varying degrees of success) is a solid piece of work. As is his apology.

- Okay, this episode isn't exactly what we all wanted for Winn. No-one has hugged him. No-one has told him they love him. Kara has not re-iterated that he is, in fact, her best friend (because he is). He's not designing the Valor suit. We didn't get to hear him sing. And his twenty-year-long trauma of being alone in the world is resolved a lot more speedily that it really ought to be. But that doesn't matter. Those are indulgences, and that's pretty much what fan-fiction and the Miscast performance videos are for.

What this episode *does* do is reiterate the show's mission statement once again: We, as a people, are at our best when we depend on each other. Forgiving when we can. Understanding when we can't. And more than anything else, simply being there for each other. Whether it's supporting each other through a personal crisis, or through the decline of a loved one; teaching each other new skills, or helping to mend a beloved outfit; or even, sometimes, just having the courage or shamelessness to perform karaoke with your mum; the same truth remains:

WE ARE STRONGER TOGETHER.

- Which is why it's perfect that the show end on Lena. Alone. Keeping the truth from the people she's closest to. She hasn't told James. She won't tell Kara. She's just there, trapped inside the box in which she's imprisoned her oldest friend, with no-one else there to help or to guide her. For all her claims that Kara Danvers is her hero... ultimately, the only person she will ever truly depend on is herself.

And it's all going to go horribly, horribly wrong.

-LyraWatch: I'm bringing it to a close. It's now been eighteen episodes, and nary a mention of if they're still together or where she's gone. It's so very unlikely that she'll be brought up again.

-LenaWatch: 14 episodes (record high: 16). Most likely at this point, Winn and Lena will have a scene at some point after it's been revealed she's been working on Sam (and has probably made things worse); and Winn will, for the third time, have to help bail her out of the war-zone-like situation she'll have created through her own hubris.

#notes #superglue

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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How Many People Are Registered Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-people-are-registered-republicans/

How Many People Are Registered Republicans

Polling Data Shows Republican Party Affiliation Is Down As Independents Leaning Toward The Democratic Party Surge

Democrats have a nine-percentage-point affiliation advantage over Republicans at the moment.

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The GOP is losing its grip, according to the latest Gallup poll.

The number of Americans identifying as Republicans or as independents who lean toward the GOP dropped to 40% in the first quarter of 2021, compared with the number of Democrats or independents leaning toward the Democratic party hitting 49%. And that nine-percentage-point lead is the greatest Democratic advantage that Gallup has measured since the fourth quarter of 2012, when former President Barack Obama was re-elected.

Gallup routinely measures U.S. adults party identification and the political leanings of independents. The latest poll surveyed a random sample of 3,960 U.S. adults by phone between January and March of 2021. And while Democratic Party affiliation actually dropped by one point from the fourth quarter of 2020, to 30% where it has hovered for most of the past eight years the number of Americans identifying as independent rose to 44% from 38% last quarter. And this growing number of independents came at the expense of the Republican party, as 19% of independents said they lean Democrat, compared with 15% leaning Republican. Most of the remaining 11% of independents didnt swing either way.

And several events have happened during those three months that could position the Democratic Party more favorably in voters eyes, the Gallup report noted.

Opinion:

Past Jumps In Party Affiliations

The bump in Democratic affiliation following Biden’s inauguration mirrors that of former President Barack Obama’s first term, Jones said.

“That was really the high point that we’ve seen; kind of the 2006-2009 period, when really the majority of Americans either identified as Democrats outright or were independents but they leaned toward the party,” he said. “Our data on this only goes back to the ’90s, but it’s pretty much the only time we consistently had one party with the majority of Americans on their side.”

Republican advantages, though rarer and more short-lived, followed the Gulf War in 1991 when George H.W. Bush was in office and the 9/11 terrorist attacks during President George W. Bush’s term, according to Gallup. More people also reported GOP affiliation after the 1994, 2010 and 2014 midterm elections.

Whether the Republican Party can regain advantage during the 2022 midterm elections may rely on the successes of the Biden administration, according to Jones.

“A lot of it is going to depend on how things go over the course of the year. If things get better with the coronavirus and the economy bounces back and a lot of people expect Biden can keep relatively strong approval ratings, then that will be better for the Democrats,” Jones said. “But if things start to get worse unemployment goes up or coronavirus gets worse then his approval is going to go down. It’s going to make things a lot better for the Republican Party for the midterm next year.”

Since Democrats And Republicans Appear To Have An Inexhaustible Appetite For Political Friction In The United States The Words Democrat And Republican Are Widely Used To Mean The Two Major Lets Take A Closer Look At Where These Two Words Came From And How They Came To Be Used In The

Altogether, there are 31 states with party registration; Eric rauchway, professor of american history at the university of democrats seized upon a way of ingratiating themselves to western voters: How many wars were initiated by democrats since the beginning of the usa? Republicans were able to fend off challenges from democrats trying to flip control of state legislatures in key states. Results seemed to follow what was set out by prediction polls, with the democrats seizing control of the house of representatives and the republicans maintaining the majority in the senate. Republicans who worked with democrats were traitors in the war for seats in congress. Since democrats and republicans appear to have an inexhaustible appetite for political friction in the united states, the words democrat and republican are widely used to mean the two major lets take a closer look at where these two words came from and how they came to be used in the. Republicans opinions carry less weight. How many democrats, republicans, and independents are registered? Voter registration and participation are crucial for the nations democracy to function properly and for the us government to provide fair representation. So, perhaps i should start with a story. Democrats did see a boost in 2008 when former president obama was elected, hitting a peak of 43.62 percent of registered voters. Democratic supporters accounted for 35% of the electorate.

Voter Registration And State Political Control

This section needs additional citations for . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

The state or Party controls the governorship, the state legislative houses, and U.S. Senate representation. Nebraska’s legislature is , i.e., it has only one legislative house and is officially non-partisan, though party affiliation still has an unofficial influence on the legislative process.

The simplest measure of party strength in a state voting population is the affiliation totals from voter registration for the 30 states and the District of Columbia as of 2019 that allow registered voters to indicate a party preference when registering to vote. 20 states do not include party preference with voter registration: , , , , , , , , , , , North Dakota, , South Carolina, , , , , and . The party affiliations in the party control table are obtained from state party registration figures where indicated. Only has a majority of registered voters identifying themselves as Republicans; two states have a majority of registered voters identifying themselves as Democrats: and .

For those states that do not allow for registration by party, Gallup’s annual polling of voter party identification by state is the next best metric of party strength in the U.S. states. The partisan figures in the table for the 20 states that don’t register voters by party come from Gallup’s poll.

If Joe Biden Loses It Probably Wont Be Because Of An Increase In Gop Voter Registration

Election night is fast approaching, and even if its quite possible we wont know who the winner is on Nov. 3, recent state and national polling suggest that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is the clear favorite.

In a search for data points that might suggest a different outcome, some analysts have turned to looking at voter registration numbers. Particular attention has been given to registration numbers in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania three hugely important swing states that register voters by party, and recently released numbers show that more people have been registering as Republicans than as Democrats.

In Florida, Republicans have shrunk their voter registration deficit from 2.5 points in 2016 to less than a point now . In North Carolina, the gap has shrunk by 3.8 percentage points. And in Pennsylvania, it has shrunk from 10.4 points to 7.8 points.

But thats really only part of the story. President Trump may overcome his polling deficit to win reelection, but the voter registration numbers in those states are not necessarily a sign of some significant underlying shift.

A lot of the net registration change in all three of those states are people changing their voter registration to reflect their long-standing partisan inclinations shifts that Trump may have facilitated and/or solidified in White, working-class areas, but arent completely new.

Aaron Blake contributed to this report.

As A Successful Republican New Mexico Governor 2016 Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson Pronounced That He Had Slashed Taxes More Than A Dozen Times Balanced The There Are Many On The Left Who Support The Libertarian Partys Proposals To Legalize The Liberal Use Of Marijuana

39.66 percent of voters are registered with that party. The most recent poll at the time of writing gives a d+11 advantage. Even if youd rather not commit to any particular party, you may find yourself wishing to support a specific democrat candidate when primaries come around. Once you know which party you belong to, it will be easier to decide which candidates to vote for during elections. This quiz will ask you questions about your political beliefs. However, registered republicans outnumber democrats in six of the states 21 counties, and there several other counties that are pretty evenly split. Over 60% of black voters are registered democrats compared to just 3% that are registered in surveys, more than half of seattle voters identified as democrat or leaning democratic. The answer may surprise you. Are you a democrat or a republican? Are there more democrats or republicans who top that list? The election of 2010 gave republicans the majority beginning in january, 2011. These are broadly generalized opinions; There are still way more registered democrats;

The election of 2010 gave republicans the majority beginning in january, 2011. Hello and thank you for registering. It was a more natural association. related: Are there more democrats or republicans who top that list? The republican party has waxed and waned in popularity and membership over the years, never quite having as many registered partisans as the democrats.

In 2021 Republicans Will Have Full Control Of The Legislative And Executive Branch In 23 States

Democrats and independents grow more diverse since 2008. According to gallup.com about 42% of voters claim to be independents. There is a big difference between a state, for example with 7000 registered greens, which had a net increase of plus 200 where 201 new voters registered in to the greens and only 1 left, compared to a situation in the same state where 5000 voters newly registered green but at the same time 4800 left the party. Currently, republicans have 51 seats, and democrats have 47 with two races still undecided. San francisco 62.61% modoc 54.46% santa clara 29.92% Their partisan affiliation was roughly split between three groups: How the county has changed since this time last year: Democrats will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 15 states. There are roughly 55 million registered republicans. There are 517,562 registered democrats this year in allegheny county, compared to 520,135 in 2016. The counties with the 10 highest percentages of democratic party, republican party, and no party preference registered voters are: According to data from ballot access news, independents make up 29.09 percent of registered voters, while republicans make up 28.87 percent and democrats make up 39.66 percent. In 12 states, there are more registered republicans than democrats.

Political Party Strength In Us States

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Political party strength in U.S. states is the level of representation of the various political parties in the United States in each statewide elective office providing legislators to the state and to the U.S. Congress and electing the executives at the state ” rel=”nofollow”>U.S. state governor) and national level.

Map 1 And Table 1: Party Registration Totals By State July 2018

Democrats no longer control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or for that matter most of the governorships or state legislatures. But they still maintain a toehold in the political process with their edge in the realm of voter registration. At least that is the case in the 31 states and the District of Columbia that register voters by political party. As of this month, 13 of these states boast a Democratic plurality in registered voters, compared to eight states where there is a Republican plurality. In the other 10 states, there are more registered independents than either Democrats or Republicans, with Democrats out-registering the Republicans in six of these states and the GOP with more voters than the Democrats in the other four. They are indicated in the chart as I or I. Nationally, four out of every 10 registered voters in party registration states are Democrats, with slightly less than three out of every 10 registered as Republicans or independents. Overall, the current Democratic advantage over Republicans in the party registration states approaches 12 million.

Poll Finds Startling Difference In Vaccinations Among Us Republicans And Democrats

FILE Two men talk as crowds gather on L Street Beach in the South Boston neighborhood of Boston.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll has found a startling difference between Democrats and Republicans as it relates to COVID-19 vaccination. The poll found that while 86% of Democrats have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, only 45% of Republicans have.

In addition, the survey found that while only 6% of Democrats said they would probably decline the vaccine, 47% of Republicans said they would probably not be inoculated.

The poll also found that 60% of unvaccinated Americans believe the U.S. is exaggerating the dangers of the COVID-19 delta variant, while 18% of the unvaccinated say the government is accurately describing the variants risks.

However, 64% of vaccinated Americans believe the government is accurately describing the dangers of the delta variant.

Iran fighting COVID 5th wave The variant is having a global impact. Irans President Hassan Rouhani has warned that the country is on the brink of a fifth wave of a COVID-19 outbreak. The delta variant of the virus, first identified in India, is largely responsible for the rising number of hospitalizations and deaths in Iran, officials say.

All non-essential businesses have been ordered closed in 275 cities, including Tehran, the capital. Travel has also been restricted between cities that are experiencing high infection rates.

Reports say only about 5% of Iranians have been vaccinated.

Daniel Rivero

At Least 60 Afghans And 13 Us Service Members Killed By Suicide Bombers And Gunmen Outside Kabul Airport: Us Officials

Two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans flocking to Kabul’s airport Thursday, transforming a scene of desperation into one of horror in the waning days of an airlift for those fleeing the Taliban takeover. At least 60 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops were killed, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

Gallup: Democrats Now Outnumber Republicans By 9 Percentage Points Thanks To Independents

I think what we have to do as a party is battle the damage to the Democratic brand, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison on The Daily Beasts . Gallup reported Wednesday that, at least relatively speaking, the Democratic brand is doing pretty good.

In the first quarter of 2021, 49 percent of U.S. adults identified as Democrats or independents with Democratic leanings, versus 40 percent for Republicans and GOP leaders, Gallup said. The 9-percentage-point Democratic advantage is the largest Gallup has measured since the fourth quarter of 2012. In recent years, Democratic advantages have typically been between 4 and 6 percentage points.

New Gallup polling finds that in the first quarter of 2021, an average of 49% of Americans identify with/lean toward the Democratic Party, versus 40 percent for Republicans.

Thats the largest gap since 2012:

Greg Sargent April 7, 2021

Party identification, polled on every Gallup survey, is something that we think is important to track to give a sense to the relevant strength of the two parties at any one point in time and how party preferences are responding to events,Gallup senior editor Jeff Jones told USA Today.

More stories from theweek.com

Immigration Policy Is About A Lot More Than Just Border Enforcement Or Ice Raids

Glancing at the graph above, it looks like the number of unaffiliated might even be higher than the number of democrats by the 2020 election (the triangle markers along the top edge of the graph denote the. For decades, the word conservative have been synonymous with orange county. Orange county, long a republican stronghold, has officially turned blue. Short answer, more democrats than republicans, but the largest group, by wide margins, is neither. The county that nurtured ronald reagans conservatism and is the resting place of richard nixon is now home to 547,458 registered democrats, compared with 547,369 republicans.

Party Affiliation By State

Party affiliation by state Switch to:State by political party

% of adults who identify as

Democrat/lean Dem. Sample Size

Sample size = 511. Visit this table to see approximate margins of error for a group of a given size. For full question wording, see the survey questionnaire.Sample sizes and margins of error vary from subgroup to subgroup, from year to year and from state to state. You can see the sample size for the estimates in this chart on rollover or in the last column of the table. And visit this table to see approximate margins of error for a group of a given size. Readers should always bear in mind the approximate margin of error for the group they are examining when making comparisons with other groups or assessing the significance of trends over time. For full question wording, see the survey questionnaire.

Alabama

How Many Democrats How Many Republicans

I want to follow up on my last post regarding how variations in poll results are often due to differences in how pollsters construct their samples. The previous post talked primarily about whether pollsters were sampling likely or registered voters. Obama, I suggested, polled better among registered voters. Today I want to look at another decision pollsters must make: whether to weight their sample by party identification and, if so, what weights to use. We know that whether one considers oneself a Democrat or a Republican is the biggest single determinant of how someone will vote. Not surprisingly, people tend to vote for the candidate who shares their party identification. So a poll that includes 40% Democrats in its sample is likely to have more favorable results for Obama than one that includes 35% Democrats, all other things being equal. Ditto for McCain and variations in the number of Republicans sampled.

To see how this makes a difference, consider two respected national polls that came out yesterday. CBS/NY Times came out with their monthly national poll that has Obama up 49-44, with 6 undecided.

Rasmussen, meanwhile, has the race tied, 48-48% in its latest tracking poll.

I show you these numbers to give you an idea of what it means to weight by party. But why does it matter? Compare the CBS weighting to what Rasmussen calculates when they weight by party.

Are You Surrounded By Democrats Or Republicans How Jersey Breaks Red And Blue In All 21 Counties

Here is a county-by-county breakdown of which political party rules in each of New Jerseys 21 counties and how much each party gained since this time last year.

Matt Arco | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

New Jersey is a Democratic-leaning state, and its getting bluer by the month.

Democrats have registered voters at a faster pace than Republicans in the Garden State. But the GOP still maintains pockets of control in some counties.

Republicans are outnumbered by registered Democrats by nearly 1 million people , according to the latest statistics from the states Division of Elections. As of the end of September, New Jersey had 2,307,937 registered Democrats and 1,331,102 Republicans.

Over the past year, Democrats added more than double the number of registered voters compared to the GOP , according to the data.

However, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats in six of the states 21 counties, and there are a few other counties that are pretty evenly split. Also, Republicans out registered the number of new Democrats in six counties from this time last year, including in three counties where the number of Ds outweigh the Rs.

The largest number of New Jersey voters 2,378,040 to be exact have not formally claimed any party affiliation.

Twelve years ago, Democrats had a 290,000 vote plurality over registered Republicans statewide, said Ben Dworkin, director of Rowan Universitys Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.

A Group Of Friends And A Few Acquaintances Were Having A Politic Many Of You Guys Can Add It Up In One Minute So Please Tell Me:

Eric rauchway, professor of american history at the university of democrats seized upon a way of ingratiating themselves to western voters: There were nine new senators and a minimum of 89 new representatives , as well as one new delegate at the start of its first session. During this time, african americans were largely disenfranchised. Get more help from chegg. The us political parties, now called democrats and republicans, switched platform planks, ideologies, and members many although what happened is complex, in many cases there was no clean sudden shift, and some voter bases and factions never switched, you can see evidence of the. How many new democrats are there? Voter registration is the requirement that a person eligible to vote registers on an electoral roll before that person is entitled or permitted to vote. Voter registration and participation are crucial for the nations democracy to function properly and for the us government to provide fair representation. Republicans who worked with democrats were traitors in the war for seats in congress. Ive seen a lot where it says theyre a registered democrat . A group of friends and a few acquaintances were having a politic many of you guys can add it up in one minute, so please tell me: Republicans and democrats after the civil war. In the others, such as virginia, voters register without.

Lots Of Consistency Elsewhere

In the rest of the country, there was much more consistency between party registration totals and the 2016 election outcome, with only three non-Southern states voting against the grain. On election eve in Pennsylvania, there were 915,081 more registered Democrats than Republicans; Trump carried the state by 44,292 votes. In West Virginia, there were 175,867 more registered Democrats; Trump won by 300,577 votes. And in New Hampshire, there were 24,232 more registered Republicans than Democrats in the fall of 2016, but Hillary Clinton took the state by 2,736 votes. Thats it. The other 22 party registration states outside the South were carried in the presidential balloting by the party with more registered voters than the other.

And in many of these in sync states, the registration advantage in recent years has grown more Republican or Democratic as the case may be, augmented by a healthy increase in independents.

The registration trend line in California is a microcosm of sorts of party registration in the nation as whole. Democrats are running ahead and the ranks of the independents are growing. Yet registered voters in both parties appear to be widely engaged. That was the case in 2016, and likely will be again in 2018, with Trump flogging issues to rouse his base. In short, this is a highly partisan era when party registration totals, and the trends that go with them, are well worth watching.

Gop Registration Drop After Capitol Attack Is Part Of Larger Trend

WASHINGTON In the weeks since the January riot at the Capitol, there has been a raft of stories about voters across the country leaving the Republican Party. Some of the numbers are eye-catching and suggest that the GOP may be shrinking before our eyes, but a closer look at the numbers over time shows that a larger change has been working its way through the party for some time.

In fact, when one takes into account shifts in the composition of the Democratic Party, the real story seems to be more about a deeper remaking of the nations two major political parties.

To be sure, the headlines from the last few weeks have been striking, with multiple states reporting large declines in Republican voter registrations.

In Pennsylvania, more than 12,000 Republicans dropped the “R” from their registrations in January. In North Carolina, the figure was close to 8,000. In Arizona the figure was about 9,200 through late-January. And in one county in California, San Diego, more than 4,700 Republicans left the party last month.

Those are sizable changes and they are much larger than the moves away from the Democrats in those places, but they come with some caveats. There are always some losses and gains in registrations for the Democrats and Republicans. Partisan identity can be fluid for a large chunk of the voters, and remember: just because a voter is registered with one party doesnt mean he or she always votes for its candidates.

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hillaryisaboss · 7 years

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8/25/2016: Hillary was the first to call out Trump's racist history and dog whistling to racists.

This speech should be required viewing. Required reading. The woman who got 3 million more votes called it. She was 100% right. She had the crystal ball. If only a few more of us had listened.

This speech needs to be burned into our memories forever:

"After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says.

But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.

Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him."

~Hillary Rodham Clinton; 8/25/2016

She warned us.

"Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.

It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States.

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.

He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.

His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

...

It takes a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” The answer is everything!

Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.

But what he’s doing here is more sinister.

Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.

It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be.

This is what I want to make clear today:

A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.

If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?

Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.

After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says.

But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.

Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him.

When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants.

Their applications would be marked with a “C” – “C” for “colored” – and then rejected.

Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed.

The pattern continued through the decades.

State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And let’s not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called “Birthers.”

He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn’t really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black President.

In 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for President with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.

And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.

Oh, and by the way, Mexico’s not paying for his wall either.

If it ever gets built, you can be sure that American taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

Since then, there’s been a steady stream of bigotry.

We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn’t be trusted to do his job because, quote, “He’s a Mexican.”

Think about that.

The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage.

Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

To this day, he’s never apologized to Judge Curiel.

But for Trump, that’s just par for the course.

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name “white-genocide-TM.” Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.

His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on a white supremacist website.

The Trump campaign also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. They only dropped him under pressure.

When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.

And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones.

Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.

He suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there’s absolutely no evidence of that.

Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over.

His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on.

This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel.

It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.

Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”

This man wants to be President of the United States.

I’ve stood by President Obama’s side as he made the toughest decisions a Commander-in-Chief ever has to make.

In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership… clear thinking… and calm judgment… because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death.

The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors.

Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.

It’s another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.

Now, some people will say that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention.

But look at the policies Trump has proposed. They would put prejudice into practice.

And don’t be distracted by his latest attempts to muddy the waters.

He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth… but we know where he stands.

He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country.

He’d abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you’re born in the United States, you’re an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, “anchor babies” and should be deported.

Millions of them.

And he’d ban Muslims around the world – 1.5 billion men, women, and children –from entering our country just because of their religion.

Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now.

But in Trump’s America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, “What is your religion?”

And then what?

What if someone says, “I’m a Christian,” but the agent doesn’t believe them.

Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?

Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution.

Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.

Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It’s the so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. It would be a cruel irony if America followed its lead.

Don’t worry, some will say, as President, Trump will be surrounded by smart advisors who will rein in his worst impulses.

So when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will be there to convince him not to.

Maybe.

But look at who he’s put in charge of his campaign.

Trump likes to say he only hires the “best people.” But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode of the Apprentice.

The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – “Let Trump be Trump.” To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.

To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published:

“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”

“Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield”

“Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.”

That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further.

Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: “this is what I need more of in my campaign.”

Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone.

This spring, he railed against Paul Ryan for, quote “rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.”

No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces “ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas.

Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’”

Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”

The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”

The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

This is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders, Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.

Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race -- that’s who Trump wants by his side.

The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs.

Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee.

Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embrace pro-Russian policies.

He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and of giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe more generally.

American presidents from Truman to Reagan have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia.

We should, too.

All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before.

Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.

On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant.

“We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,” one white supremacist said.

Duke laughed. There’s still more work to do, he said.

No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves “racialists.” White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists.” The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right.” But the hate burns just as bright.

And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. Don’t be fooled.

There’s an old Mexican proverb that says “Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.”

We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that.

He says he wants to “make America great again,” but his real message remains “Make America hate again.”

This isn’t just about one election. It’s about who we are as a nation.

It’s about the kind of example we want to set for our children and grandchildren.

Next time you watch Donald Trump rant on television, think about all the kids listening across our country. They hear a lot more than we think.

Parents and teachers are already worried about what they’re calling the “Trump Effect.”

Bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.

At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of “Build the wall!” and “Speak English.”

After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, “They see it in a presidential campaign and now it's OK for everyone to say this.”

We wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in our own homes. How can we stand for it from a candidate for president?

This is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. It’s a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this.

Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits and told any racists in the Party to get out.

The week after 9/11, George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims “love America just as much as I do.”

In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew – Barack Obama is an American citizen and “a decent person.”

We need that kind of leadership again.

Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying “enough is enough” – including a lot of Republicans. I’m honored to have their support.

And I promise you this: with your help, I will be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For those who vote for me and those who don't.

For all Americans.

Because I believe we are stronger together.

It’s a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we’ve ever seen.

Just look at our fabulous Olympic team.

Like Ibtihaj Muhammad, an African-American Muslim from New Jersey who won the bronze medal in fencing with grace and skill. Would she even have a place in Donald Trump’s America?

When I was growing up, Simone Manuel wouldn’t have been allowed to swim in the same public pool as Katie Ledecky. Now they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates.

So let’s keep moving forward together.

Let’s stand up against prejudice and paranoia.

Let’s prove once again, that America is great because is America is good.

Thank you, and may God bless the United States."

~Hillary Rodham Clinton; 8/25/2016

The woman who warned us.

Trump is a con-man propaganda artist:

Never Normalize Trump.

#strongertogether

#hillary clinton #bill clinton #barack obama #bernie sanders #donald trump

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glittergummicandypeach · 4 years

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Why “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is so relevant to politics and religion today

“There are three things I’ve learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.” So declares Linus in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Today, let’s discuss all three.

We’ll begin with the last. As Maggie Maloney observes in Country Living, “No autumn is complete without the most sacred of traditions,” which she identifies as viewing the classic Peanuts movie. The Halloween special first aired in 1966. It centers on Linus’s belief that the Great Pumpkin exists and that he will appear on Halloween night.

Alas (spoiler alert), the evening ends with no Great Pumpkin sighting. But the movie closes with an undeterred Linus vowing that the Great Pumpkin will come to the pumpkin patch next year.

Now, in a sign of the times, we learn that the film will not be shown this year by any of the major or cable networks but will air exclusively on Apple TV+. The good news is that the streaming service will offer it free to all users from October 30 through November 1.

What does the Great Pumpkin have to do with politics and religion? A great deal, as it turns out.

Hope in an election and a vaccine

The 2020 election is less than two weeks away. Depending on whose polls and analysis you read, Democratic nominee Joe Biden is on his way to a landslide victory, or he will eke out a narrow win, or the race is too close to call, or there will be no winner on November 3 and the election will descend into chaos, or President Trump will win reelection. We’re all waiting to see which version of the story will come true.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic is spiking as predicted. The World Health Organization noted in a recent press briefing that Europe’s case numbers grew by a million in the span of just ten days. One official warned that a much larger number of people could die in this upcoming season of COVID-19 than did in April.

Reports indicate that more than half of US states are seeing an “uncontrolled spread” of the virus. This wave threatens to be the worst since the pandemic began. Since death rates lag behind infections, mortalities are expected to rise as well and constitute an urgent call to intercession.

In the meantime, we’re watching the economy, where sales are up but a surprising increase in jobless claims is raising alarms. As with the pandemic, we are hoping that successful vaccines will enable us to return to a financial “normal.”

What the election will not change

Here’s my point: like Linus’s Great Pumpkin, our greatest hopes for the election, the pandemic, and the economy will not change the underlying realities before us.

Whoever wins the election, our country will face deep and angry divisions over foundational issues such as when life begins and how it should end, the nature of marriage and the family, and the role of religion in our secular society.

Whatever happens with community spread, therapies, and vaccines to stop the coronavirus pandemic, we are likely to face more viral pandemics in the future. Not to mention the perennial facts of heart disease, cancer, aging, accidents, and other causes of human mortality.

And even if the post-pandemic economy rebounds to new heights, millions of Americans will still face unemployment and underemployment. Economic discrimination will be a tragic fact. And all the wealth in the world cannot buy what we need most.

This last observation leads us to the hope we need most.

The hope we need most

Chuck Colson famously noted that the Kingdom of God will not arrive on Air Force One. Americans may elect the “Leader of the Free World,” but the “King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God” will still rule the universe (1 Timothy 1:17).

As St. Augustine said to our Lord, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

We find true and transforming unity when we draw close to his throne (cf. Revelation 7:9–10). We find true and transforming hope in the face of mortality when we make Jesus our Savior (cf. Matthew 1:21). We find true and transforming help for our needs when we trust them to him (cf. Philippians 4:19).

When we do, our lives and our witness can draw others to his throne in worship, to his salvation in faith, and to his provision in trust.

A booklet from my past

Yesterday, I was working in my library when a book title caught my eye. When I pulled it from the shelf, a small pamphlet came with it. Titled Live With Yourself . . . and Like It, it was written by Don W. Hillis in 1972 and was one of the first booklets given to me when I became a Christian in 1973.

When I reread it, I was drawn again to the story of Kandura San, a narrative that deeply impressed me those many years ago. Kandura was born in Japan with a face and body so deformed that his parents kept him in seclusion. However, the radio brought him the message that God loved him and sent Jesus to be his Savior. When a Japanese Christian visited him, Kandura was ready to place his faith in Christ.

Later, he laboriously scrawled these words: “Day by day as I walk this road of blessing, I receive the fruits of faith in my hands. These blessings come from my Lord, who is my strength and my hope. Praise the Lord, for he gives me this wonderful salvation.”

His triumphant joy moved the Christian workers who met him and told of him in their letters. Christian periodicals then published his story. And now Kandura’s influence has reached you.

How can you find hope in your faith today?

The post Why “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is so relevant to politics and religion today appeared first on Denison Forum.

This content was originally published here.

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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How Many People Are Registered Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-many-people-are-registered-republicans/

How Many People Are Registered Republicans

Polling Data Shows Republican Party Affiliation Is Down As Independents Leaning Toward The Democratic Party Surge

Democrats have a nine-percentage-point affiliation advantage over Republicans at the moment.

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The GOP is losing its grip, according to the latest Gallup poll.

And several events have happened during those three months that could position the Democratic Party more favorably in voters eyes, the Gallup report noted.

Opinion:

Past Jumps In Party Affiliations

The bump in Democratic affiliation following Biden’s inauguration mirrors that of former President Barack Obama’s first term, Jones said.

Whether the Republican Party can regain advantage during the 2022 midterm elections may rely on the successes of the Biden administration, according to Jones.

Voter Registration And State Political Control

This section needs additional citations for . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

If Joe Biden Loses It Probably Wont Be Because Of An Increase In Gop Voter Registration

Aaron Blake contributed to this report.

In 2021 Republicans Will Have Full Control Of The Legislative And Executive Branch In 23 States

Political Party Strength In Us States

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Map 1 And Table 1: Party Registration Totals By State July 2018

Poll Finds Startling Difference In Vaccinations Among Us Republicans And Democrats

FILE Two men talk as crowds gather on L Street Beach in the South Boston neighborhood of Boston.

In addition, the survey found that while only 6% of Democrats said they would probably decline the vaccine, 47% of Republicans said they would probably not be inoculated.

However, 64% of vaccinated Americans believe the government is accurately describing the dangers of the delta variant.

All non-essential businesses have been ordered closed in 275 cities, including Tehran, the capital. Travel has also been restricted between cities that are experiencing high infection rates.

Reports say only about 5% of Iranians have been vaccinated.

Daniel Rivero

At Least 60 Afghans And 13 Us Service Members Killed By Suicide Bombers And Gunmen Outside Kabul Airport: Us Officials

Gallup: Democrats Now Outnumber Republicans By 9 Percentage Points Thanks To Independents

New Gallup polling finds that in the first quarter of 2021, an average of 49% of Americans identify with/lean toward the Democratic Party, versus 40 percent for Republicans.

Thats the largest gap since 2012:

Greg Sargent April 7, 2021