#also debating on whether i should make it into modern!steve... just so i can include that thing i said about fboy steve the other day LMAO

[taintedcigs]

and what if i made this fboy king!steve smutty fic im writing to a x fgirl!reader? and then what?

[abundanceofsoph]

SkyFire 2: Chapter 16

“Darling, Just Hold On”: Nov/Dec 2016

Word count: 4.7k

SkyFire 2 MASTERLIST

I’ve been debating whether to write this chapter for weeks and I’m still not entirely sure whether I should have skipped it. While I use real people's names and real life events in this story, in my head they’re all fictional characters since I don’t really know them or how they would actually act in any of these situations. I more just use their likeness and their situations to inspire the story so this chapter was something I didn’t feel like I should include. I tried not to focus too much on Johannah but I felt the bond between Louis and Aurora was so beautiful that I decided to keep this chapter in. I hope you understand why I’ve made this decision.

This chapter's also a bit longer than usual because I wanted to soften the blow of the angst with some domestic fluff. Anyway, we all know what’s coming in this chapter so I'll stop stalling and get on with it.

>Instagram posts

After the trip away, Harry and Aurora decided to stay in London in anticipation of attending the X Factor finale where Louis was going to perform his debut single with Steve Aoki. After the show,  Anne and Robin would once again be joining them in New York for the holidays, but in the meantime, they were enjoying spending a few weeks at Harry’s Hampstead house and catching up with Rori’s friends.

One of those days they headed south to Wimbledon, walking the familiar streets of Aurora’s childhood, their winter outfits helping to hide them from prying eyes, however they were stopped a couple of times by observant fans. Aurora offered to take their photos with Harry but he asked them not to post until that evening so that they could enjoy their day without being mobbed. They headed for the Golden Stag as the sun began to set, grateful for the warmth that greeted them as they stepped through the doors. Greg was working behind the bar, his face lighting up as he watched them approach him and he walked around the end of the bar to sweep Rori into his arms. She buried her face into his shoulder as he held her tightly, feeling instantly at home in his arms.

“We missed you sweetheart,” he murmured while placing kisses to the crown of her head.

“Sorry it’s been so long,” she replied, squeezing him tightly one more time before stepping back from the hug.

“Just glad you’re here now,” he smiled. “Good to see you again Harry.”

“Good to see you too, Sir,” Harry replied, offering his hand and chuckling when Greg ignored it to hug him.

“Told you before you can just call me Greg,” he said as they stepped back. “You kids hungry? Grab a table and I’ll go let Helen know that you’re both here.”

They did as they were told, sliding into Aurora’s favourite booth that was close enough to the fireplace without being too hot.

Helen rushed out of the kitchen a few minutes later, beelining straight for their table and pulling Rori out of her seat and into a bone crushing embrace. “Oh, I missed you my darling,” she cooed, holding the younger woman tightly against her. “I swear every time I see you; you look more and more like your mother.”

“Missed you too Helen,” Rori murmured, her eyes glossy in response to Helen’s words.

“Now you’re both far too thin,” she clucked. “Let me get you some food and we’ll see if we can’t put some meet on those bones.”

Harry chuckled as she rushed back towards the kitchen and Aurora settled herself back into the booth. “I like her,” he said. “She reminds me of mum.”

“She reminds me of mine too,” Rori smiled softly, reaching across the table to take Harry’s hand in hers. “Always feel closer to her when I’m here. We should visit more.”

“Well once we buy a place of our own on this side of the river, we can visit all the time.”

“Sounds perfect.”

After dinner, Rori was eyeing the piano in the far corner, her lips twitching up in a slight grin as she remembered the hours she had spent sitting on that bench growing up. Her smile dropped as she once again berated herself for that stupid fall in the lobby a few weeks ago, knowing that she still had another week before she could wear her prosthetic and she was itching to play. “How do you feel about being my left hand?” she asked Harry.

“And what would you need my left hand for?” he asked, a smirk pulling at the corners of his lips.

“When Louis was at tower over summer, he’d play the left hand for me on the piano before I got my prosthetic. Thought we could maybe try that out.”

Harry smiled widely. “Sounds fun. Lead the way.”

Aurora’s answering grin lit up her face and she jumped to her feet joyfully, grabbing Harry’s hand and tugging him across the room towards the piano. The pub wasn’t crowded, with only a few of the regulars on their stools at the bar, a few families finishing their dinner and a couple of young girls sitting by the door. Aurora had noticed the girls flicking glances towards her and Harry over the past hour, and she was pretty sure they were working up the courage to come over and say hi. She laughed as she imagined the stories they would tell their friends tomorrow about Harry Styles playing the piano in the little pub where they had dinner. Helen watched the pair take a seat on the old piano bench, smiling as they laughed, trying to find the rhythm. They stuttered over the start of a song a couple of times before they got the timing right, settling into the tune. Most of the patrons ignored the pair, a few of the regulars smiling softly at the familiar sound after so many years, and the table of girls by the door watched on with rapt attention. Both Aurora and Harry wore matching grins as they played, their arms slung around each other’s backs as together they wove the melody of familiar songs eventually beginning to sing, giving the unsuspecting patrons an exclusive performance that others would have paid hundreds of pounds to attend if given the chance.

xXx

After having dinner at the Golden Stag, Rori and Harry spent the remaining weeks of November meeting with both their wedding planner and their realtor.

The wedding planning was relatively easy going, seeing as how everything was booked in and ready to go. Aurora still had a few more dress fittings in the new year but otherwise everything was finalised for the big day in only a few months’ time.

The house hunting on the other hand was a little less under control. Harry had agreed with Aurora when she suggested that they look at apartments and penthouses as apposed to free standing houses. Her reasoning had been that she wanted to avoid the issues they’d had with fans camping outside Erskine House, and while they were hoping to avoid the publicizing of their new address, they both knew that it would only be a matter of time before Harry’s fans figured it out. Aurora loved his fans and was incredibly grateful that so many people recognised how incredibly talented he was and appreciated him, but she also got frustrated by how invasive they sometimes got about every tiny aspect of his life, and by extension hers as well. After deciding that they wanted an apartment, Aurora had stipulated that they buy south of the river so that she could be closer to Wimbledon, and Harry decreed that they needed at least 4 bedrooms in addition to the master suite. He planned on turning one into an art studio for Aurora, while another could become a simple recording studio, nothing close to the scale of her studios in Avengers Tower, but just a little something to make it feel like home. He hadn’t mentioned anything to Aurora, but the reason he wanted 2 bedrooms left over once they created the studios, was that he planned for one to be turned into a nursey while the other could remain as a traditional guest room for when their families visited. All of these aspects, as well as the need for plenty of room for Harry’s car collection had left their poor realtor, Lee, with the unenviable job of finding the perfect place for the young couple. He found them four different properties and set up private inspections for each.

The first was in Southwark and Harry was immediately impressed the moment they walked into the lobby and were greeted by the doorman. The security of the building was excellent and they both smiled softly at each other as they took the elevator to the 24th floor with Lee.

“Now this isn’t the penthouse apartment,” Lee explained as the entered the apartment. “But there’s only two apartments above you and there’s shared access between you and 3 other apartments for the rooftop garden.”

Aurora let go of Harry’s hand as they wandered into the main living area, large windows opening out to the Thames and a beautiful view of the city.

“The kitchen and entertainment area are all on this level with a bathroom off the entry hall,” Lee continued as they walked around. “There’s 4 bedrooms upstairs including the master suite with walk in robe and ensuite, with an additional bathrooms for the guest rooms.”

“Only 3 spare rooms?” Harry asked. “Not ideal.”

“I don’t really like the idea of climbing those stairs every day,” Aurora added.

“How about we head to the second property?” Lee asked, accepting immediately that this was not the right fit. “We can always come back if you change your mind.”

Harry motioned for Lee to lead the way and they headed back to the elevator. Once they reached the ground they climbed into Harry���s car.

The second property was only a few minutes away, still in Southwark, and just behind the Tate Modern. “I like the idea of just popping over to the galleries,” Aurora noted as they entered the apartment and spotted the familiar building out the window, the river and Millennium bridge also filling in the landscape sprawled out in front of them. While the building ticked off everything on their list, there was something missing that neither Harry nor Aurora could put their finger on. Whatever it was, the third apartment in Vauxhall was also missing it, leaving them with only one property left to view.

“It’s not available today but we can view it on Tuesday if you want to meet me there at 2pm,” Lee explained once they left the third apartment.

“That works for us,” Harry agreed, “we’ll see you then.”

xXx

They arrived in Battersea a few hours before they were meant to meet up with Lee to view the final property on his list, opting to grab lunch in a nearby café and then wander through Battersea Park.

“I used to come here a lot with my mum,” Rori said as they walked, arm in arm, rugged up against the cold wind blowing in off the Thames. “Used to love going to the kid’s zoo, but mum really loved all the flowers, so we’d come every weekend in spring.”

“It’s beautiful here,” Harry agreed. “We filmed a music video here.”

“I know,” Rori laughed. “As soon as the fans found out you were here, Ella actually came down after school to try and meet you all.”

“Really?” Harry asked.

“Yeah, and I would have been right next to her, but I’d already moved to New York. Still remember watching the video and just feeling so nostalgic. Think that’s why it was my favourite song for so long.”

“You never told me that was your favourite.”

“Because it’s embarrassing, Harry.”

“No, it’s not,” he argued. “I think it’s really cute they you were such a big fan. Imagine if you didn’t like our music. You probably wouldn’t have gone to that after party with me and we never would have gotten the chance to get to know each other if you hated the band.”

“It’s still embarrassing to remember I used to read fanfiction about the man who is about to be my husband,” she replied, laughing softly as they turned towards the river.

“I’m flattered,” Harry promised, kissing her cheek as she blushed. “Now let’s go see our dream home, hopefully.”

Lee was waiting for them outside the riverside apartment building, the ever impressive Battersea Power Station looming next door. The lobby was empty when Lee led them inside Scott House, using a key card to activate the elevator. He explained on the short ride to the 8th floor that the building was nearing completion and the first round of tenants were due to start moving in at the beginning of February.

The elevator opened onto a pristine hallway; the colour scheme monochromatic which was very much to Auroras taste. Lee turned right out of the elevator, leading them to the apartment’s front door, once again using the key card to gain access.

They entered into an entry hall that led straight into what Lee called the reception room, which flowed through to a kitchen/dining area. “This was originally designed to be 3 separate units, but they altered it to create one large 5 bedroom penthouse,” he explained as they entered. “There are 4 other units on this floor, but the sound proofing is state of the art, so you won’t be able to hear them. There’s a secondary entrance from the main hall into the apartment that leads directly into the kitchen so you can bypass the entry hall.” He pointed out the specific features of the kitchen and the enclosed patio that was marketed as a winter garden that ran the length of the apartment, looking out at the power station to their right and the river on the left. “Because it was originally three units,” Lee continued as he led them down a long hallway off the kitchen, “you get three parking spots in the underground garage.”

Aurora sensed Harry brightening at this, but her attention was focused on the 4 bedrooms, office space, study and utility room that Lee pointed out as they passed. Each bedroom had its own bathroom and built in robes with an additional walk-in situated in between them all.  They returned back to the central kitchen via the winter garden, and Rori found herself falling in love with the property more and more with every step. In its unfinished state she was able to imagine the furniture she could buy to fill the space and the colours she would paint the walls, really making a home for herself and Harry.

“And now if we head back through the reception room,” Lee said as he directed them. “You have the master bedroom with the spacious walk-in and dressing room which lead through to the ensuite with a full size tub at one end and a twin shower head in the shower at the other end of the room. His and hers basins and marble tiling.”

“God damn,” Rori muttered as she looked around, picturing the décor she could add to bring out their personalities in the space. “H, I love it.”

“Me too,” Harry replied, equally impressed with the entire apartment.

“It’s not listed yet, so if you can organise the down payment, I’d say we can get it locked down within the next few weeks.”

“Let’s sit down and talk contracts,” Harry replied, watching as Aurora’s smile grew as they walked back out into the bedroom.

“How about you meet me at my office in the morning and we can go over all the specifics then?” Lee asked to which Harry agreed.

“You happy, love?” Harry asked, turning to see Rori standing out on the balcony leading off the master bedroom, looking towards the Power Station. She turned back to him, her face aglow with excitement.

“I can see us starting a family here Harry,” she replied, letting out a surprised squeal as Harry picked her up and held her tightly against him, kissing her cheek.

“Me too my love,” he replied. “Me too.”

xXx

They were lying in bed on a Tuesday evening in the beginning of December, Harry’s head resting in Rori’s lap as she sat against the headboard reading. She was finally able to start wearing her prosthetic again, so she was holding the book in her left hand, the fingers of her right tangled in Harry’s curls. His own hands traced patterns across her thighs, a comfortable silence stretching around them. That silence was shattered as Harry’s phone started ringing on the nightstand and Aurora barely looked up from her book as she passed it to him. His head was still resting in her lap as he answered the call and she felt him freeze against her, a soft gasp escaping his lips.

“We’re on our way,” he said softly, clambering off the bed before Rori could even get her bookmark in place. He started throwing on clothes as she asked him what was going on, and it was clear that he hadn’t heard her at all.

“HARRY!” she yelled, finally breaking through to him. He froze, turning to look at her, his eyes wide and haunted. “What’s happening? What’s wrong.”

“Jay,” was all he said, his voice barely more than a whisper and there was nothing else he needed to say as Rori felt her blood run cold, certain that the haunted look in Harry’s eyes was now echoed in hers. She didn’t say a word, but just as quickly got dressed and moved to pack an overnight bag for the both of them. They were out the door and in the car within minutes. They’d both known this was coming for a while, but everyone had been hoping that she’d make it past the holidays. It took them 3 hours to reach Doncaster, and neither spoke as Harry drove through the night. Aurora turned the radio off after the first pop song played, so at odds with the sombre mood inside the car that she couldn’t handle it.

It was well after midnight by the time they reached Doncaster and headed straight to the Deakin house. Harry texted Louis to let him know they were there, not expecting a reply and not receiving one, and they let themselves inside with the spare key. Despite the late hour neither Harry nor Aurora could think of sleeping and Aurora started tidying up the living room. By the time the sun rose, they’d cleaned most of the house and Harry had thrown together a casserole to put in the oven when everyone got home. They collapsed on the sofa; phones clenched in their hands as they waited to hear.

It was nearing lunchtime when they heard cars pull into the driveway and slow trudging footsteps reached the front door. Aurora was waiting with her arms open and Louis fell into them gladly, holding her tightly as he cried. Harry hugged a few of the girls before moving to Dan’s side and ushering them all into the living room. He busied himself making tea while Louis and Rori continued to cling to each other. No one spoke beyond quite murmurs of thanks and the young couple spent the day doing whatever they could to help, ensuring that the grieving family ate before turning in to bed later in the evening.

They left Doncaster Friday afternoon, driving back to London and leaving Louis  with his family to be together before heading to Wembley the next day. They had assumed that Louis would be cancelling his appearance on X Factor, but he shocked both of them that morning when he announced he was going ahead with the show. They promised to be there and hugged everyone tightly before climbing into their car. Neither spoke on the drive south, both physically and emotionally exhausted by the past two days.

“I just spent the whole time we were there wanting to say something to help Lou, but I had no idea what to say,” Harry admitted once they dropped their overnight bags inside the entry hall of the house.

“There’s nothing you can say,” Aurora said, walking to his side to wrap him in a tight hug. “Not really. At least that’s how it felt when mum died. Anytime anyone told me it was going to be ok I just wanted to scream.”

“Did anything help?” Harry asked softly, his face buried in the crook of her neck.

“Ella stayed over at the hospital that first night. She didn’t say anything, but she just held me. Looking back now, that meant more than anything else. Just knowing that she was there and that I wasn’t alone. That’s what I’ve been trying to do for Lou and the girls, just make sure they feel that they’re not alone.”

“I hate that you ever had to go through that, but I’m glad he has someone that knows what it’s like,” Harry said. “Sorry that sounded really shitty.”

“No I get it,” Rori replied, “and I’m glad I can be there for him too.”

They trudged upstairs and collapsed into bed, neither having the energy or appetite to think about dinner and instead just cuddled up next to each other under the covers. They were silent for a while, both sitting in their own grief until Harry started shaking.

“I can’t help but think we’re going to do this again with Robin,” he sobbed.

“Oh Harry,” Rori sighed, holding him tightly as he cried into her chest. “You can’t think like that. Robin’s tough. He’s going to fight, and he’ll be ok. We deserve the win.”

“We thought that about Jay,” he pointed out.

“I know,” Aurora agreed. “I’m scared too but if I let myself think about it then it’s going to crush us Harry. We have to believe he’ll be ok because we don’t have any other option.”

xXx

They were backstage at Wembley, a little under an hour before the show was set to start and there were plenty of people rushing around getting everything ready. For the most part people were leaving them alone, aware of what had happened and thankfully giving them all space. The boys were all there, as were Lottie and Flic, however Dan and the rest of the kids had stayed back in Doncaster. Occasionally someone would come over to offer their sympathy, while Steve took care of all the technical problems in preparation for the performance. Louis had already gotten through the sound check earlier, mostly holding it together and now was just sitting quietly with his sisters, trying to prepare to go out in front of the sold out crowd, and live tv audience.

“Hey Rori, can we go for a walk?” Louis asked not long before he was needed on stage. She nodded, standing up immediately and following him out of the room. They walked the hallways of the backstage area with his arm around her shoulders and hers firmly around his waist. Aurora stayed quiet, knowing that Louis would let her know what he needed from her. “The night we met,” he finally said, “It was the AMAs, remember?”

“Yeah I remember,” she replied, her voice matching his near whisper.

“That was the first time you performed after your mum?”

“It was the first time on my own,” she explained. “I’d done a couple of smaller shows with the band but that was the first time on my own.”

“How did you do it?”

“It was different. I’d had a few years of missing her, so it wasn’t as fresh, but it was still really hard, especially since the song was about her. I know you’re really asking how you’re supposed to go out there tonight and I don’t really have an answer for that.”

“Yeah, I know, sorry. You’re just the only one I know who’s been where I am right now.”

“You never have to apologise to me Lou. I’ll help however I can because I wish I’d had someone who knew how it felt. But you have something I didn’t have; you’ve got your family and you’ll all get through this together. I guess the best advice I can give is that she loved watching you on stage. She really fucking loved it and she was so proud of you. So am I.” They both started crying and stopped walking to bury their face in the curve of each other’s necks. “I love you so much big brother,” Rori whispered. “We’re all here to help you and the girls through this. You’re not alone.”

“Love you too Rors. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she whispered. “Now go out there and show the world our song.”

“Our song?” Louis scoffed, a small chuckle accompanying his words.

Aurora smiled in response and even though Louis knew exactly what she was doing, he appreciated her giving him shit like she always did. Just this little bit of normalcy helped him to believe that she was right and that it wouldn’t always hurt this much.

“Of course it’s our song,” she joked. “I helped you write the chorus when you stayed with me over summer. I expect my royalty cheques in the mail soon.”

“Not a chance love,” Louis laughed. “You can have the family discount off the merch though.”

“So kind of you.”

xXx

Harry stood behind Aurora as the song began, his arms wrapped tightly around her, his chest pressed firmly against her back and his chin resting on the crown of her head. She watched in awe as Louis jumped around the stage, tears streaming down her face as each line of the song hit like the lashes of a whip.

The sun goes down and it comes back up The world it turns no matter what Oh-oh-oh, if it all goes wrong Darling, just hold on

Even though she’d been the one to help write them, Aurora felt as though every word was slicing at her heart. Like every word was a screaming plea for things to have ended differently. For her to still be here with them. For her to still be here with him.

As the lights came up and the crowd cheered, Aurora brushed aside her tears, taking deep calming breathes so that by the time Louis reached them she was ready to be the shoulder he needed to lean on.

xXx

They’d stayed out late with Louis, eventually calling it a night when Aurora could barely keep her eyes open any longer. They’d collapsed into bed as soon as they returned home in the early hours of the morning, exhausted both physically and mentally.

Harry stirred as the sun streamed in through the bedroom window, the angle disorientating until he realised that it was afternoon and they had slept away half the day. He also realised that the sun had not been what woke him as he watched Rori slip into a pair of jeans, struggling to do up the buttons one handed.

“Need a hand?” he mumbled, voice husky with sleep.

She jumped a little, startled by his question before she turned to him with a cheeky grin. “I do need a hand actually. I seem to have misplaced one of mine.”

Harry rolled his eyes at her joke and motioned her over to the side of the bed so that he could reach out and do up the buttons for her. “Why are you getting dressed? Come back to bed.”

“Gonna go see mum,” she replied, kissing his forehead before grabbing a sweater off the end of the bed and slipping it over her head. “Be back in a few hours.”

“You want company or is this something you gotta do alone?” he asked softly, sitting up and letting the sheets pool around his hips.

“It’s ok baby, go back to sleep.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Harry replied. “I’m coming with you unless you want to be alone.”

“I wouldn’t mind the company,” she answered, smiling softly as Harry climbed out of the bed and slipped into his own clothes, taking her hand before leading her out of the bedroom.

An hour later Harry parked near the Wimbledon Cemetery, rounding the car to hold open the passenger door for Aurora before taking her hand and walking by her side through the large wrought iron gates. They walked quietly past the older headstones until they reached the newer plots, following the familiar winding paths until the reached Louise Bennett’s headstone. The grass was damp beneath Rori’s knees as she sank to the ground, Harry’s hand resting comfortingly on her shoulder as she reached out to brush away the dry autumn leaves on the ground.

“Hi Mumma,” she whispered. “Sorry I haven’t been to visit for a while, it’s been a pretty wild year.”

NEXT CHAPTER

OR CONTINUE READING ON AO3

[marcmyworks]

Quentin Tarantino is one of the best directors of both the 20th and 21st Century, which started with his first wide release film in 1992. He has just recently released his 9th (or 10th depending on your point of view) film, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood to rave reviews. As one of my favourite directors, I have decided to list rank each of his films. I want to first state that I love everything this man puts out, just some more than others. Lets begin.

*Spoilers below*

10. The Hateful Eight (2015)

The Hateful Eight is the least successful in Tarantino’s repertoire and I don’t mean financially. This film just seems to have little to no likeability, and before you say it, I do understand that each character is ‘hateful’ but at times it seems quite forced. 

Though well written and acted, it feels that the shocking moments are put in there simply to shock rather than provide any interest. We have the story of eight characters trapped in a cabin during a snowstorm, the film is Western themed, there is a revenge plot as well a bounty hunter. I really do not think this is a bad film in any regard, and it even feels like the sister film to Reservoir Dogs, but in terms of style and content it feels like a mishmash of things the audience has seen before from the Director, like his greatest hits, rather than a new and original story.

9. Death Proof (2007)

A lot of critics, and even Tarantino himself, have put this as the lowest ranking of his films on their list, I disagree. This may not be the most fleshed out story, but it is one of the most fun. I am ranking the unrated version of the film, as the theatrical version was cut down from its 113 minutes to 87 minutes to be incorporated as the Grindhouse double feature (with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror). The shorter version is the one critics saw and I don’t believe it does the full film justice. 

Death Proof is inspired by Grindhouse revenge films such as I Spit on Your Grave and include a multitude of young starlets and even re-launched the career of actor Kurt Russell. Overall the film is quite good though there are instances where it is quite obvious that a man wrote the female dialogue, which in the Me-Too age isn’t as acceptable. An example of this can be read here, where this character speaks about her father:

“Look, he’s totally harmless and cute as a bug's ear! But you know, when he's got a bunch of half-naked poontang walking the floor of his lake house, he just likes to pay us a visit and make sure we got everything we need.”

8. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Tarantino’s first full length film is the smallest scale of his career as most of it takes place in one room. Though the scale is small, the dialogue and action are immense, the characters fleshed out and, in most ways, stands the test of time. The film was well received by audiences and made more than twice its meager budget, but at times it is quite obvious this was shot by a new director still formulating his style. Tim Roth (as Mr. Orange) is excellent as the newest member of the gang and his relationship with Harvey Keitel (Mr. White) is one of the strongest bromances in cinema history.

7. Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood (2019)

Though advertised as an accurate biographical account of the Manson Murders in 1960s Hollywood, this film is actually more fictional, less about these murders and more a love letter to the actors of that time. The story is centred around director Roman Polanski and wife Sharon Tate’s fictional neighbour, actor Rick Dalton and his stunt man Cliff Booth (based screen legends Steve McQueen and Burt Reynolds and the latter’s stunt-double Hal Needham). The film explores how the two are struggling to adapt to the ever-changing Hollywood, paralleling with the growth of the Manson family who are interested with the Tate/Polanski household. Though a long film, it does quite well at showcasing the struggles of actors in Hollywood, the indulgence of the rich and the rise of a fanatic cult.

6. Jackie Brown (1997)

In the 1990s Tarantino was one of the biggest Directors around, he had won an Oscar for his writing and audiences were anxiously awaiting his third film. After acquiring the film rights to Elmore Leonard’s novel ‘Rum Punch’, Tarantino started writing Jackie Brown with the intent on giving the script to another director; however, Leonard loved the script so much Tarantino decided to direct himself.

Jackie Brown takes inspiration from Blaxploitation films like Coffy and Foxy Brown, though with a slower pace and using much less action. Pam Grier, star of both the aforementioned films, was Tarantino’s only choice for the lead role and to this day he is amazed that she was not nominated for an Oscar. The film is a slow burn compared to Tarantino’s previous two movies and does have its issues with pacing and story consistency but does contain more humour.

5. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)

The Kill Bill films are two of the coolest of Tarantino’s career; from the opening Klingon proverb, to the Pussy Wagon to the schlocky gore, this film was every film geek’s dream. Tarantino promised Uma Thurman that her birthday present would be the lead in his next film and a year after promising her this he delivered her the script. Originally conceived as one long epic film, it was split into two by production as it was felt the first half of the film had a different tone to the second. Producers also wanted to ensure it was a box office success and a four-hour film in the modern age was too much of a gamble. The first Kill Bill provides the groundwork for what is rarely seen in Hollywood, an even better sequel.

4. Django Unchained (2012)

Django is similar to the original film from 1966 in name only, as this version focuses on pre-American Civil War racism, slavery and the liberation a slave named Django. The film feels more like an homage to one of the biggest budget exploitation film of all time, Mandingo. It's a very simple story of a man who is trying to save his wife and along the way befriends a bounty hunter who aids him in his quest, but it is effective as it is a criticism of racism that still continues in the United States. Jamie Foxx does an excellent job portraying the titular character with Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson wonderfully playing the supporting roles.

3. Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)

I will say there is a large debate in the fan community whether the Kill Bill films should be ranked together as one film (as Tarantino states they should be), or whether they are two separate entities of a franchise as well which one is the better of the two. Upon first watching the films I was a bit disappointed Volume 2 did not have the same amount of camp violence as the first, as this film feels to be more a Spaghetti Western revenge film rather than a Samurai thriller. However, upon the re-watching the film multiple times it is quite obvious through the dialogue, storytelling and excellent cinematography that this is the superior film and is a contender for the top spot of Tarantino’s filmography.

2. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Inglorious Basterds is one of the films that not only has incredible star power but also has amazing gravitas. The film made Irish actor Michael Fassbender and German actor Christoph Waltz popular with American audiences with the latter’s excellent performance winning him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The Basterds, a team of Jewish mercenary’s who capture, interrogate and kill Nazis and are played by a group of talents including Brad Pitt, Eli Roth and B.J. Novak. They are up against the evil Hans Landa (Waltz) also known as “The Jew Hunter”, a Nazi Colonel who is employed to ensure security for a film event being attended by Adolf Hitler. The film itself is a tribute to American war propaganda films from the 1940s, and though one of his most brutal, is truly one of Tarantino’s best writing efforts.

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)

I know this is the obvious choice, but with good reason. Pulp Fiction is the first film anyone thinks of when they think Tarantino. Made up of seemingly random story vignettes and inspired by pulp magazines, Tarantino devised to make a film made up of simple short stories that only later the viewer could see were actually intertwined. Tarantino proved he could make interesting films on a smaller scale with his critically acclaimed film Reservoir Dogs and was able to bring in major stars such as Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, the latter of whom would star in or have roles in most of his pictures. The film was a box-office success and won several awards including the Academy Award for best writing. Though Tarantino has had many excellent films in his career, Pulp Fiction will always be the most iconic and original.

[chineselanguageblog]

To Learn Chinese

So you wanna know where to start when learning Chinese, or how to gain momentum and push through to fluency? Read on, dear reader…

Despite being only a mere mortal like yourself (in that I am not yet fluent in Chinese, - but it is only a matter of time) I am quite experienced in learning languages and have developed strategies and techniques that have saved me literally hours, days, months, maybe even years. These I will share with you today, so that you may learn from my past mistakes and less time studying and more picking up Chinese chicks!

Mentality

Okay, so, if I could impart only one thing on you it would be that confidence is half the battle.

If you spend too much time worrying about whether you will ever reach fluency, firstly, that is time you will not be spending injecting Chinese into your brain, but secondly, and most importantly, it will become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy – you won’t enjoy the process, will associate Chinese with stress and essentially never become fluent.

This ‘blind faith’, as an atheist, is something that doesn’t come naturally to me. But you really have no choice but to take my word for it that if you:

Put in the time (listening, writing and, eventually, speaking)

Enjoy yourself

Believe you will become fluent

Then fluency is an inevitable result.

“But, Chinese is such a hard language compared to French or Spanish!”

Don’t get sucked into this idea.

Chinese is not harder, Chinese is just far more different to English than most European languages are. Plenty of Westerners have managed to tame the beast. Off the top of my head, take Steve Kaufmann or Luca Lampariello, for example.

In fact, I would argue that Chinese is actually objectively easier and more logical than any other language I’ve come across (with the exception of Chinese characters – logical in theory, but struggle city in practice for anyone trying to learn it who doesn’t use it every day).

Consider these things:

1, Rather than having completely separate words for related concepts, one character in Chinese will represent a ‘concept’ that will manifest itself in a huge number of multi-syllable words, ie: 工 (gōng) – representing the idea of ‘work’, present in other words such as 工作 (to work), 工厂(factory/plant), 工地 (workplace), 工匠 (craftsman), 工力 (craftsmanship), 工业 (industry), the list goes on.

2, No conjugations. No tenses. No cases. No plurals. No gender. Therefore, no memorising ‘je peux, tu peux, il peut, nous pouvons’. ‘Nuff said.

3, No long words – say goodbye to ‘anticonstitutionnellement’, ‘Unkameradschaftlichkeit’ and ‘electroencefalografistas’.

I could go on for ages about how simple and logical Chinese really is. Also, don’t be afraid of tones. They can be learned naturally through extensive listening.

Approach

Although the sometimes vicious debate present amongst the language learning community would have you believe otherwise (I’m looking at you, Steve and Benny), there is no hard-and-fast rule to language learning. What works for some may work for others. What seems to be unanimous is that a lot of input in the form of listening and reading is needed at some stage, with output (speaking) following either once a good level of comprehension has been achieved or from the start, in addition to input.

Here is what I would advise for those beginning their Chinese studies, and for those already on the path.

Beginners

Learning Chinese can be struggle city. But only if you don’t have fun while you’re doing it!

1, Get some materials. Textbooks are okay, as long as they have dialogs with a recorded version. If you’ve got the dough, ChinesePod is great.

2, Do a significant amount of input (reading and listening) with this beginner material. This is the hard bit, where the language gradually becomes less ‘foreign’ – in other words, you get used to the language. To make rapid progress, try to dedicate at least 30 minutes a day (an hour is better).

3, Work the language into your life. I’m not really an advocate of ignoring your friends and family who don’t speak the language, or listening to the language while you’re talking to them and while you sleep (per AJATT), or changing the language on your computer and phone into Chinese - this is too annoying for me. Instead, make use of dead time. Do you daydream on the train/bus? Now you listen to Chinese. Do you wait in lines? Now you listen to Chinese while you wait in lines. Do you walk the dog? Paint your house? Daydream? Listen to Chinese while you do these things. You’ll see how easy it is. I would estimate that the average person has about 1-2 hours a day of dead time, this meaning time they do NOTHING else. If you studied Chinese only in the time you otherwise would be wasting, you will see massive progress. Now imagine if you fit some Chinese into your free time, too?

4, Two words. Mini goals. Learn 30 words a week, and then step it up after a couple of weeks. Listen to 30 minutes of Chinese a day – then step it up to an hour incrementally. I’m soon to write an entire post over on my own blog dedicated to explaining the importance of mini goals.

5, Characters. Forget about them for the first month. After that though, they are important. Spend 15 minutes a day learning them. Although it may seem tedious, it’s worth learning the radicals first, or as you encounter them – this will enable you to quite accurately guess new characters later on.

6, Get an SRS. Do your reps daily, and add sentences whenever you can. Also, I’ve found sentences are better than words, as you learn grammar and new vocabulary simultaneously – it also seems much less boring than just drilling single words. If you have the option/can be bothered, add sentences with audio so you don’t get a botchy pronunciation (or just do a lot of listening). Where to get sentences? Mine them from the dialogs in your textbook, from ChinesePod, wherever. Just make sure they are correct!

Intermediate Learners

1, Enjoy. This is the best part of the language learning journey. The language is starting to become familiar, and you can start doing fun stuff in the language! Like, watching TV shows from YouKu (the Chinese version of YouTube, but with full episodes) and actually understanding them! Or, reading authentic, interesting content and books. Or making friends, or…

2, Get a girlfriend/boyfriend. Now this may be a difficult and in some circumstances unethical task (if you are just using them to practice your 中文). The truth is, that at the intermediate level you need to actually increase the amount of input you’re getting in the language in order to step it up and push through to the advanced level. At the very least, get some friends! If you live in a cultural melting pot (like my own city, Melbourne, or like, NYC, etc) then you should have no problem meeting Chinese people. Or go study overseas (this may not be practical for you – but if you’re at Uni, go on exchange like I am!) Or, hey, why not get some Chinese roomies? Instant friends that have to hang with you!

3, Everyday. Even more important than in the beginner stage, at this level you need to be having contact with the language every day in order to incorporate it into your psychic. This is because the language needs to become part of the fabric of your mind, which is just not possible if you only study on the weekend. There’s a saying that goes ‘learn a language and gain another soul’. This is because you develop a borderline personality disorder when you learn another language – you will find your thinking and personality will be heavily influenced by cultural elements of the target language.

4, Don’t give up. At this point, you have got it in the bag! The hard yards are almost over. Like I said, this is the best part, it is all downhill from here. You don’t have to agonise over mind numbingly boring hospital-grade artificial learning materials, and can get onto some juicy stuff. It’s simply a matter of continuing to consistently expose yourself to the language, and talk as much as possible. Language acquisition is a natural process, and we are inherently good at it by virtue of being human. Just don’t stress, it will come!

Anyway, that’s all from me, for now.

There is an abundance of resources out there to help learn Chinese, yet it can all be very confusing and time-consuming for the new student to find the best way and the right materials to help.s

Wanting to provide some assistance to students, at one of the regular meetings of the Learn Mandarin Now team, we decided to commission a survey to find out the preferred methods savvy, modern, Chinese language students use. After some thought on how to do this, we agreed to ask 50 or so top bloggers what resources they use to get ahead with learning Chinese - after all…, they should know!

Just who did we ask?

Actually, we asked a wide cross-section of people including teachers of Chinese, native speakers, new and experienced students of the language (both Chinese from overseas and foreign students) and, of course, top bloggers.

The aim: to get a wide variety of opinions and suggestions.

The top 10 recommendations

For reasons such as ease of being able to study whenever the student wanted to and the variety of options on offer, the results, perhaps not surprisingly, showed that the preferred methods to learn Chinese are primarily web based. Other students, however, still preferred to learn and practice with other students or people in their day-to-day lives or via hard copy items such as books.

With 42% of votes Pleco, an integrated Chinese-English dictionary/flashcard system, which not only allows students to learn via Smartphones, but also offers a variety of other features such as being able to look up unknown Chinese words ‘live’, came out on top.

22% of respondents went for human interaction, either learning or practicing with Chinese friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, work colleagues or via other social interaction with native Chinese speakers.

Multi-media captured 20% of the votes, and this included watching Chinese TV programs, dramas, documentaries or movies, or even listening to Chinese songs in order to listen to tones, and learn more common words and colloquial phrases.

The MDBG Dictionary, a comprehensive dictionary which offers the ability to look up a huge number of words in Chinese, Pinyin or English was also a popular choice-easy to use and readily available and it garnered 14% of the votes.

Both also polling 14% were:

(i) WeChat (Weixin), “the new way to connect with friends across platforms”, offering voice and group chat, free calls, video calls and the obligatory message stickers, and thereby especially popular with the younger generation looking to instantly chat in and learn Chinese; and

(ii) Anki, a spaced repetition software programme which makes remembering things easy. As it’s considered more efficient than traditional study methods, time spent studying can be decreased or the amount learned greatly increased. The programme is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific mark-ups.

Skritter which is suitable for Smartphones or PC’s and allows the student to learn how to correctly learn to write Chinese characters—even suggesting corrections to any mistakes if they appear, scored 12%, as did Memrise which offers a wide variety of on-line courses and aims to make learning joyful and exciting.

Rounding off the top 10 with 8% was Line Dict, a very useful on-line Chinese dictionary which translates both words and phrases from Chinese to English and vice-versa, using Chinese characters and Pinyin—plus offering handwriting recognition and the ability to view stroke orders for characters, and also Chinese Pod which promotes itself as a site offering “Chinese learning for busy people”, with over 3,000 short, self-contained, award-winning lessons.

It was both exciting and rewarding for us at Learn Mandarin Now to do this survey and we may well repeat it at some future date. If you’d like to know more about the results in detail you can also read: How to learn Chinese: great tips from 50+ top bloggers, one of our other related articles.

Happy learning!

[patriotsnet]

Are Other Republicans Running For President

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

Are Other Republicans Running For President

Im Running For President Because Its Time For New Leadership Because Its Time For New Energy And Its Time For A New Commitment To Make Sure That The Opportunities Getting Out There Being Able To Hear Peoples Concerns Address Them With New Ideas Has Been An Extraordinary Experience He Said

Biden thought hard about running in 2016, but he decided against it, being so soon after his son beau’s death and. Running for president of the united states is an. But there is so much more to it. Joe biden opposed president reagan’s peace through strength that led to the fall of the berlin wall. And speaking of brand image i read the program of warren recently, and was tempted to give her a french honorary citizenship as she is trying to import.

With The Debates About To Begin Bill Whittle And I Discuss Whether Republican Candidates Should Have To Perform In Exploding Chairs Like The Villains In Thunderball So That The Process Of Elimination Can Be More Immediate And Entertaining

There have been previous unsuccessful efforts to drop the natural born requirement. Former vice president joseph r. Here’s everyone who’s running for president in 2020, and who has quit the race. Amash, the republican turned independent congressman from michigan, announced last month that he was launching an exploratory committee to run for the libertarian party nomination for president. They’ll be able to catch you when you fall.

As for the opposition, there are four republicans running in the primaries as of april 2012. They emerged because when andrew jackson was running for president he was for the ‘common man and they called themselves democratic republicans. But what about the other republicans running for president in 2020? Running for president of the united states is an. Dead things most rotten before they.

Biden thought hard about running in 2016, but he decided against it, being so soon after his son beau’s death and. Is there any other republican running than trump ? There was plenty of motivation to take me out. But these figures don’t quite include everyone who’s running. On the republican side, there is, of course, president donald trump.

Lets Take A Look At The Republican Landscape And The Potential Challengers To So Far There Are Three Official Republican Challengers And One Was Just Announced A Few Days Ago:

I’m going to run for president of the united states because, as a young mom, i’m going to fight for other people’s i know there is a tear in that fabric right now; There are 24 main democratic candidates. People embark on a presidential odyssey for a wide variety of reasons. And speaking of brand image i read the program of warren recently, and was tempted to give her a french honorary citizenship as she is trying to import. But it can be repaired by someone who can lead, and i ran for president to win and make a difference in our great country, swalwell photo: He is not expected to run for any other office in 2020. But these figures don’t quite include everyone who’s running. On the other side, some republicans have challenged president trump in the republican primary. Republican leaders have said they want to protect trump by having state parties change the rules for their primaries to guard against an insurgency. The players and other stadia will make their show of support, so the benefit has already been had. Not coincidentally, there’s been renewed talk of a serious republican taking on the president in the 2020 primaries. ‘there is a rot at the center of the modern republican party,’ he continued. On the republican side, there is, of course, president donald trump.

Notable Candidates Include Individuals Who Have Qualified To Appear On Enough State There Were 21 Candidates On The Ballot Each In Vermont And Colorado

Bush said in retrospect that the divisiveness of the primary challenge might have cost bush reelection. There are several people running for the republican nomination, but given the current president is a republican, he is the only one that matters. Notable candidates include individuals who have qualified to appear on enough state there were 21 candidates on the ballot each in vermont and colorado. While the republican and democratic nominees will be on the ballot in all states, independents must meet an array why is he running for president? Former congressmen joe walsh announces republican presidential primary challenge.

But it can be repaired by someone who can lead, and i ran for president to win and make a difference in our great country, swalwell photo: Since the current president is democrat, we already know who the democrat running for president will be . The only other person running worth mentioning is bill weld, former governor of massachusetts, who was the libertarian nominee for vp back in 2016. Other republicans have made it quite clear they don’t see a path to the nomination for anyone but trump in 2020. I think that as a republican party, we have lost our way. mark sanford.

Republican Hopefuls Will Need To Lay The Groundwork For Potential Campaigns Of Their Own Without Alienating The President And His Supporters

WASHINGTON—President Trump’s public and private musings about running again in 2024 are scrambling the calculus for the large field of fellow Republicans considering bids.

Most hopefuls have been quick to show deference. But it’s unclear whether Mr. Trump, who refuses to concede his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, will follow through, and rivals either way will likely seek ways to remain viable. Prospective GOP candidates don’t want to risk alienating Mr. Trump’s base by appearing to push him aside, but they also don’t want to be left unprepared if he decides not to run.

“For the last 20 years everyone who has run for president has always started off pretending like they weren’t. You can still do that with the possibility of Trump running again,” said Republican strategist Todd Harris. The 2024 election, he added, “could be the first time loyalty to Trump and political ambition are put on a collision course.”

Mr. Trump—who managed to get more than 74 million votes in his losing effort this year—demonstrated his grip on the party base with Saturday’s rally in Georgia for two senators locked in tight runoff elections. “Four more years, four more years,” a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd chanted. He is raising millions of dollars for a newly formed political committee that can fund future campaign activity.

Next Test Of Trumps Influence On The Republican Party: A Crowded Gop Primary Fight For An Ohio House Seat

A GOP primary Tuesday to fill a congressional seat outside Columbus is shaping up to be a test of former president Donald Trump’s influence over the Republican Party, coming after his preferred candidate lost a Texas House campaign last week and some of his allies aligned with other candidates in the competitive Ohio race.

arrow-right

Tuesday’s contest — in which 11 candidates are vying to replace longtime GOP congressman Rep. Steve Stivers — has caused serious consternation among the former president’s advisers and even Trump himself, according to people familiar with the private discussions.

Trump railed at aides after Susan Wright, the candidate he backed in a special Texas Congressional race to replace her late husband, Rep. Ron Wright, lost to a state Republican lawmaker last week, they said.

The defeat was an embarrassing setback for the former president, who has sought to flex his hold on the party by making a slew of endorsements since leaving the White House, inserting himself into GOP primaries and going after political enemies.

Trump has made his preference clear, issuing slashing statements in which he has complained that other candidates are suggesting to voters that he supports them rather than Carey, a close friend of Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager who advisers say helped secure the endorsement.

Collins says infrastructure bill could pass Senate by end of week with at least 10 Republicans in support

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

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

Now, using a massive sample of “validated” voters whose participation has been independently verified, the Pew Research Center has . It helps us understand how Joe Biden was able to accomplish what Hillary Clinton did not—and why President Trump came closer to getting reelected than the pre-election surveys had predicted.

How Joe Biden won

Five main factors account for Biden’s success.

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

How Trump kept it close

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

Longer-term prospects

BillGalston

Seemingly Every Other Viable Republican Politician In The United States Is Lining Up To Make A Run

There are several people running for the republican nomination, but given the current president is a republican, he is the only one that matters. Epl had their logo plastered with the rainbow colors all of june, was there any sanctions on them!? But what about the other republicans running for president in 2020? Notable candidates include individuals who have qualified to appear on enough state there were 21 candidates on the ballot each in vermont and colorado. Former congressmen joe walsh announces republican presidential primary challenge. The only other person running worth mentioning is bill weld, former governor of massachusetts, who was the libertarian nominee for vp back in 2016. Who is running for president in the 2020 election? Seven other candidates qualified to appear on the ballot in five states or more. I think that as a republican party, we have lost our way. mark sanford. Bush said in retrospect that the divisiveness of the primary challenge might have cost bush reelection. Is there any other republican running than trump ? But it can be repaired by someone who can lead, and i ran for president to win and make a difference in our great country, swalwell photo: 18 democrats and two republicans, according to the latest numbers.

Us Election 2024: Who Are The Likely Republican Candidates To Run For President Against Joe Biden

Mike Pence, Ivanka Trump and Ted Cruz are among the rumoured candidates to become Donald Trump’s successor

The 2020 presidential race has only just finished, but the Republican candidates for 2024 are already preparing themselves for their shot at the White House.

We take a look at who may be looking to get themselves in to the race.

Pa Republicans See A Big Opportunity In 2022 But Some Are Worried Their Candidates Might Blow It

Philadelphia Inquirer

It’s a summer of worry for some Pennsylvania Republicans.

A rocky July has increased concern among some party insiders that they’re lacking marquee candidates for critical statewide races next year.

First came a public blowup between likely gubernatorial candidate Bill McSwain and former Attorney General Bill Barr. Some prominent GOP donors and operatives saw it as a daft mistake that reinforced questions about his political acumen. Those insiders, largely from Southeastern Pennsylvania, have spoken to a political veteran from McSwain’s backyard — former U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach of Chester County — to gauge his interest in running for governor, according to four people familiar with the conversations, and some are hopeful that additional candidates join the fray.

Meanwhile, in the state’s critical 2022 U.S. Senate race, fund-raising reports this month showed the leading GOP contenders all . None of the major Republican Senate candidates has ever won elected office, a stark contrast with the emerging Democratic field that includes an array of well-established officeholders.

Republicans are hoping the governor’s race delivers total control in Harrisburg , while the Senate contest is one of a handful that could decide control of the chamber — and with it the fate of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

In a state as closely divided as Pennsylvania, the strength of individual candidates can make a difference in races that could come down to a few percentage points.

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

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

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

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

In Gop Poll From Hell Republicans Say They Want Donald Trump Jr To Be President In 2024

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A recurring nightmare among millions of Americans is that come 2024, Donald Trump will forget the fact that he actually hated being president, decide to run again, and win. Seriously, can you think of a more horrifying scenario, except perhaps falling through a sidewalk into a rat-filled chasm, which some people might still prefer? We maintain that you cannot. But an equally terrifying, skin-crawling situation would definitely be to turn on the TV on January 20, 2025, and see Donald Trump Jr. being sworn in as president of the United States, which a number of Republican voters apparently actually want to happen.

The poll, which was conducted between July 6 and 8, did not include Donald Trump Senior, who maintains an inexplicable grip on voters despite the mass-death stuff, an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and a mental state that suggests he should be in a home or studied by a team of Swiss doctors.

And the fact that Don Jr. came out on top is not where the scary news ends. Because apparently if Republicans can’t have Sheep Killer over here, their second-favorite choice is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the man currently responsible for this:

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More Great Stories FromVanity Fair

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

Colleen O’Dea, Senior Writer and Projects EditorNJ Decides 2020Politics

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

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

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

President Trump Your Legacy Is Secure Stop The ‘stolen Election’ Rhetoric

As many on the left have pointed out, the 2020 election was less a repudiation of Trump than a narrow loss for a man who proved just unpalatable enough for a critical sliver of his coalition.

Sean Spicer, a former Trump press secretary, told The Post his ex-boss would be an instant front-runner in a 2024 primary. “He has a rock-solid base, I just don’t think that there is anyone else who even comes close.”

Teasing a potential run in 2024 would at the very least ensure Trump stays relevant and in the press for years to come.

If Trump himself passes on the opportunity, his two very political children Don Jr. and Ivanka Trump could also potentially pick up the mantle. Trump Jr. has long acted as an outside surrogate for his father online and in the press and connects strongly with his base. Ivanka, meanwhile, has years of administration experience under her belt as a White House adviser to her father.

Republican Presidential Hopefuls Move Forward As Trump Considers 2024 Run

Less than three months after former President Donald Trump left the White House, the race to succeed him atop the Republican Party is already beginning.

Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has launched an aggressive schedule, visiting states that will play a pivotal role in the 2024 primaries, and he has signed a contract with Fox News Channel. Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, has started a political advocacy group, finalized a book deal and later this month will give his first speech since leaving office in South Carolina. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been courting donors, including in Trump’s backyard, with a prominent speaking slot before the former president at a GOP fundraising retreat dinner this month at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort where Trump now lives.

Trump ended his presidency with such a firm grip on Republican voters that party leaders fretted he would freeze the field of potential 2024 candidates, delaying preparations as he teased another run. Instead, many Republicans with national ambitions are openly laying the groundwork for campaigns as Trump continues to mull his own plans.

They’re raising money, making hires and working to bolster their name recognition. The moves reflect both the fervour in the party to reclaim the White House and the reality that mounting a modern presidential campaign is a yearslong endeavour.

___

President Trump Your Legacy Is Secure Stop The Stolen Election Rhetoric

As many on the left have pointed out, the 2020 election was less a repudiation of Trump than a narrow loss for a man who proved just unpalatable enough for a critical sliver of his coalition.

Sean Spicer, a former Trump press secretary, told The Post his ex-boss would be an instant front-runner in a 2024 primary. “He has a rock-solid base, I just don’t think that there is anyone else who even comes close.”

Teasing a potential run in 2024 would at the very least ensure Trump stays relevant and in the press for years to come.

If Trump himself passes on the opportunity, his two very political children Don Jr. and Ivanka Trump could also potentially pick up the mantle. Trump Jr. has long acted as an outside surrogate for his father online and in the press and connects strongly with his base. Ivanka, meanwhile, has years of administration experience under her belt as a White House adviser to her father.

Republican Lawmakers Are Terrified Of Trump Running For President Again

A new report by Politico cites multiple unnamed Republican lawmakers – even those who publicly praise Trump – who say that they REALLY don’t want Donald Trump running for President again in 2024. They would much rather see Trump working “behind the scenes” to help shore up support for the Party as a whole, and they insist that the Party is stronger now than it was five years ago. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Recently, Politico interviewed several Republican lawmakers, who of course all chose to remain nameless. But Politico says that these were Trump supporting lawmakers, still are Trump supporting lawmakers, by the way. And each one of them said that they do not want Donald Trump to be the Republican party’s nominee in 2024. In fact, they don’t want Trump to run for president ever again. I’ll read a couple quotes from some of these lawmakers here. Here’s what one of them said, he’s one of the best presidents we’ve had in terms of policies. But having said that if it were up to me, I would never have Trump on any ballot ever again, because it’s such a distraction. I would love for him to play a behind the scenes role and not be on the ballot. Another one said, I’d like to see a fresh face. I think we have a lot of them.

Eight Republican 2024 Candidates Speak In Texas Next Week But Not Trump

Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, April 30 – A Republican Party event in Texas next week will hear from eight potential candidates for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024, without former President Donald Trump, a source involved in the planning said on Friday.

The May 7 event at a hotel in Austin is being co-hosted by U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to thank donors who helped fund a voter registration drive and get-out-the-vote efforts in the state.

High-profile Republican politicians who are considering whether to seek the party’s nomination in 2024 are expected to speak to the crowd of about 200 donors.

They include former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and U.S. senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and Rick Scott, the source said.

The event comes as Republicans wrestle with whether to try to move past Trump in the next election cycle or fall in line behind him. Trump told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that he was “100%” considering another run after losing in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump was not invited to Texas, the source said. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was invited but was unable to attend, the source said.

Many Republican insiders doubt Trump will follow through on his musings about running for president in 2024, leaving a void that other party leaders will seek to fill.

Fact Check: Trump Did Not Call Republicans The Dumbest Group Of Voters

5 Min Read

An old quote falsely attributed to Donald Trump has recently resurfaced online. The viral meme alleges Trump told People magazine in 1998 that Republicans are “the dumbest group of voters in the country”. This is false.

While the quote has been debunked several times since it apparently surfaced in 2015, users have recently been resharing it on social media. Examples can be seen here , here , here , here

The meme reads: “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific. – Donald Trump, People Magazine, 1998”

Snopes first wrote about the false quote here in October 2015 . Since then, the quote has been debunked multiple times .

People magazine has confirmed in the past that its archive has no register of this alleged exchange.

“People looked into this exhaustively when it first surfaced back in Oct. . We combed through every Trump story in our archive. We couldn’t find anything remotely like this quote–and no interview at all in 1998.”, a magazine spokesperson told Factcheck.org that year .

In December 1987, People published a profile on Donald Trump titled “Too Darn Rich”. The article quoted him saying he was too busy to run for president .

Trump Remains 2024 Candidate Of Choice For Most Republicans Poll Shows

59% of Republican voters said they wanted Trump to play prominent role in party, but tens of thousands left after Capitol riot

If the 2024 Republican presidential primary were held today, Donald Trump would be the clear favorite to win big. That was the message from a Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday, three days after Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.

Read more

Among Republican voters, 59% said they wanted Trump to play a prominent role in their party, up a whopping 18 points from the last such poll, taken in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. A slightly lower number, 54%, said they would back Trump in the primary.

Tens of thousands of Republicans left the party after the Capitol insurrection, and a majority of Americans have told other pollsters they would like to see Trump banished from politics.

Though the 45th president will be 78 by election day 2024, he will be able to run again if he chooses, having escaped being barred from office after a 57-43 Senate vote to convict – with seven Republican defections but 10 votes short of the majority needed.

Mike Pence’s life was threatened by Trump supporters at the Capitol, as the vice-president presided over the ratification of electoral college results confirming Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden. He placed second in the Politico-Morning Consult poll, with 12%.

Trump Challengers: 10 Republicans Who Could Run For President In 2020

Ryan Sit U.S.Donald TrumpMike PenceBen SasseBob Corker

President Donald Trump faced down a crowded field of GOP presidential hopefuls in 2016 as a political outsider, but he could see a packed stage of Republican challengers again in 2020—only as an incumbent this time.

Trump made few political friends during his ascent to the White House. He made headlines making fun of his competition, doling out nicknames—”low energy Jeb Bush,”“Little Marco Rubio,”“Lyin’ Ted Cruz”—along the way. The president’s diplomatic dexterity hasn’t noticeably improved much since taking office. Senators Rubio and Cruz have improved their relationship with Trump since his inauguration, but other lawmakers from within his party have emerged as outspoken critics, fueling speculation he may face a stiff presidential primary race in 2020.

Here are 10 Republicans who may challenge Trump:

Cpac And The Broader Republican Party Agree: Its Trumps Party For Now

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alex: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. We know he’s a rising star in GOP circles and I think the CPAC straw poll pointed out his popularity among the Trump wing of the Republican Party. Another poll, too, after Trump.

Plus, being from Florida gives him an edge in a competitive state. To me, it appears that at this point, people like DeSantis because his policy priorities are similar to Trump’s, but he lacks the former president’s ego and baggage. 

sarah: Stole my first round pick!!  

geoffrey.skelley: DeSantis isn’t terribly well known, but I suspect we’ll see him try to correct for that in the coming months. He may be coy for a while about his plans, though, because he needs to win reelection in 2022, and we know that would-be candidates want to take care of the home front first.

nrakich: Yeah, I think DeSantis is a smart pick. He’s doing all the right things — picking fights with Democrats, going on Fox News a lot …

sarah: Could not agree more. There is no autopsy report yet of the 2020 election from the GOP side , but one thing that stands out to me is something Echelon Insights pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson wrote for the Washington Examiner in February, “Trump’s legacy in the party isn’t policy, and it isn’t a person. It’s a posture — a fighting posture in a moment where Republicans think the fight is what matters most.” 

I bring that up because something Anderson and her organization have found is that many GOP voters want someone who will fight for them.

Republican Support For Trump Running Again In 2024 Falls To Just 45%

Daily Mail

Republicans are quickly losing interest in President Donald Trump running for president again in 2024. 

In new polling conducted by Echelon Insights, 45 per cent of GOP-leaning voters in January said they wanted to see Trump run for the White House again in four years, down from the 65 per cent who said so in December.  

The January 6 insurrection may have played a role in the 20-point dip as January polling found that even 30 per cent of Republicans wanted to see the ex-president barred from holding office again after the MAGA riot.  

< PREVIOUS SLIDE

At the same time, Democrats and independents were way more keen to see Trump punished for his role in inciting the crowd on January 6. 

Fifty-two per cent of independents said Trump shouldn’t be able to run again, with 85 per cent of Democrats in agreement. 

Thirty per cent of Republicans also agreed that Trump should be banned from social media platforms, with 29 per cent saying they’d support the ex-president being censured by Congress. 

The smallest group of Republicans, 21 per cent, wanted to see Trump impeached and convicted. 

Trump’s Senate trial begins on Capitol Hill next week.

Pollsters also asked Republicans over the past few months who they wanted as the leader of their party. 

Trump’s popularity actually increased after he lost the November 3 election to President Joe Biden. 

In November, 52 per cent of Republicans said they wanted Trump to be the leading voice of their party. 

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Rest of the Weekend Warrior’s 2020 Top 25… and His Terrible 12 Movies!

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that my Top 10 has already appeared over at Below the Line, and you can either go there and read those first or start with the movies that fell just outside my top 10, including a few movies you might not have heard about.

Back at the very beginning of 2020, I made a private resolution that I would watch more screeners. This is because I had become quite legendary for publicists sending me screeners and me just not getting the time to watch them with all the running around I was doing to screenings. I will never make a resolution like that ever again. (In fact, if my 2021 resolution was to have more sex, I only really need to do it once.)

This year, I wrote (no joke) slightly under 300 reviews, which may be more than I wrote in the three years prior. Part of this was having extra time from not travelling around the city trying to get to screenings, but also, once I decided to transition my weekly box office column into a review column, I decided that I was gonna watch and review as many movies as I possibly could this year. I’m sure there are others who do this all the time, but man, I don’t know how you do it. There were days where I got so burnt out at staring at my laptop for 15 hours every day that I just had to stop.

Still, when you’re watching 300 movies in a single year, any movie that can get into my annual Top 25 (or even get an Honorable Mention) should feel somewhat honored.

Anyway, onto the second 15 movies in my Top 25 (click on the title for a link to each of my reviews!):

11. Herself (Amazon Prime Video) – One of my more recent viewings is this film directed by Phyllida Lloyd  (Mamma Mia!) and starring British actress Clare Dunne (who also co-wrote the script) as a mother of two young girls who got out of an abusive marriage with a man who still shares custody with her daughters. She wants to give her girls a place to live so she decides to build her own house on a plot of land given to her as a gift. It’s such a simple premise but Lloyd and Dunne have made a wonderful not-too-heavy drama that still slams you with its raw emotions.

12. Jungleland (IFC Films) – I really enjoyed Max Winkler’s earlier movie Ceremony, but this underground boxing drama about two brothers (Jack O’Connell, Charlie Hunnam) was also a solid crime-drama that follows them on a road trip to deliver a mob boss’ mistress (Jessica Barden) back to him on their way to a big match. Winker really outdid himself in terms of the storytelling and somehow managed to avoid most of the normal boxing movie cliches while allowing this to stand up to some of the greats.

13. Palm Springs (NEON/Hulu) – One of the first of this year’s Sundance movies that really connected with me, Max Barbakow’s sci-fi comedy starred Andy Samberg as a guy stuck at a horrible wedding who ends up in a Groundhog’s Day situation with the wonderful Christin Milioti was so much fun. Adding to the madness was JK Simmons as a guy who seems to be out to get Samberg’s character for reasons we don’t learn until much later. Such a brilliant and hilarious movie with so much great re-watch value.

14. Soul (Disney•Pixar) – The latest from the animation studio that seemingly can’t do wrong – but that depends on who you ask – follows jazz pianist Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) who dies and ends up “The Great Beyond” desperate to get back to earth having just gotten his big break. Helping him (sort of) is a soul voiced by Tina Fey, and things don’t go quite as Joe helped. Co-written and co-directed by Kemp Powers, the film goes in a different direction from Docter’s last animated film, Inside Out, but still retaining some of the same metaphysical fabric that made that Oscar-winning animated film connect with adults just as much as with kids.

15. Mangrove (Amazon Prime Video) – The debate on whether Steve McQueen’s latest “Small Axe Anthology”  should be deemed a TV series or five separate movies continues to rage as Amazon decides to save the movie for the Emmies. At  two hours long, Mangrove is the closest of the series to being a  great stand-alone film, and frankly, I thought it was better than McQueen’s Oscar-winning film, 12 Years a Slave. This told the true story of restaurant owner, Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes), and how he’s persecuted by the racist local police in the late ‘60s, but when he teams with a local Black Panther activist (Black Panther’s Letitia Wright), a protest march turns into a tense court trial for a number of people involved in it.

16. I Will Make You Mine (Gravitas Ventures) – Actor Lynn Chen’s directorial debut was actually the third movie in a trilogy of indie films centered around musician/songwriter Goh Nakamura, who appeared in all three films. I watched this the first time thought it was just okay. When I realized it was part of a series of films, and I went back and watched the other two movies, I was completely blown away by what Chen did within this finale. With movies, you generally only have a limited time to explore its characters, but like Richard Linklater’s “Before” movies, this movie helped to really create depth in the characters by revisiting them. I was kind of shocked that I hadn’t seen the other movies – few critics have – and though only 18 other critics reviewed this one, the film is still 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, which should tell you how good it is.

17. Sylvie’s Love (Amazon Prime Video) – Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha starred in Eugene Ashe’s 50s-60s-set romantic drama about an early television producer and a jazz musician, following their relationship after a summer fling that ends with him leaving for Paris. Separated for years, she remarries and raise the child from her former lover, but then they reconnect and… well, you’ll have to watch it for yourself. It’s on Prime Video right now, so if you’re a subscriber, you have no reason not to. (And Erik Davis of Fandango had a great idea… watch this as a double feature with McQueen’s Lovers Rock from “Small Axe Anthology”!)

18. The Traitor (Sony Pictures Classics) – Last year’s Italian section for the Oscar International Film was a fantastic The Godfather-like crime-thriller, this one starring Pierfrancesco Favino as Tomassso Buscetta, a Palermo-based Casa Nostra family member responsible for the heroin trade in the ‘80s who flees to Brazil. It’s an amazing story showing that filmmaker Marco Bellochio did his research to create a movie that didn’t really get the critical love or attention it deserved.

19. Weathering With You (GKids) – And here is Japan’s selection for the Oscar International Film, a rare Anime film, this one by Your Name director Makoto Shinkai, this one more about a fantasy-romance about a young man who meets a young woman who can control the rain, which they turn into a lucrative business. I didn’t love it quite as much as Your Name, which was a truly inventive turn on the “body-switching” movie, but this also had some of the same characterizations that make Shinkai’s work so terrific, so it was impossible not to enjoy how it translated into his latest feature.

20. Lingua Franca (ARRAY Releasing/Netflix) – Trans filmmaker Isabel Sandoval’s film was released in the same weekend as another movie with a trans lead, Flavio Alves’ The Garden Left Behind. While they were both good, Sandoval wrote, directed and starred in her movie which was about her character Olivia having a romance with a guy surrounded by transphobic bros. Olivia is also trying to get her green card, and the immigrant aspect of the film really added a lot to what seemed like a deeply personal film.

21. The Outpost (Screen Media Films) – I’ve been a fan of Rod Lurie’s work for almost as long as I’ve been writing reviews. In fact, one of my very FIRST movie reviews was for his movie The Last Castle in 2001. I’ve also been fortunate to call him friend. I’ve watched Rod transition into quite a skilled television director, but I been waiting over ten years for him to make a movie as good as his amazing political thriller, Nothing but the Truth. Working from Jake Tapper’s non-fiction novel, Lurie created a full-on and unapologetic war movie as good as Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor, Blackhawk Down or any other modern war film… but also a film as personal as any others released this year.

22. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix) – Aaron Sorkin’s second film as a director stepped things up, WAY up, as he decided to take on one of the more noted events that signified the famed “Summer of Love” of 1969, as a number of peaceful protesters were tried by the federal government for “inciting a riot.” The amazing cast included Eddie Redmayne, Sacha  Baron Cohen, Yahya Abdul-Mateen 2, Michal Keaton, Mark Rylance, Frank Langella, Jeremy Strong and many more. It was an abundance of acting riches and when you have such a fine wordsmith in screenwriter/playwright Sorkin, it’s hard to go wrong. The thing is that by the time I saw this, I had already seen Steve McQueen’s Mangrove, which in my opinion is a far superior version of a similar story from the same time period.

23. Words on Bathroom Walls (LD Entertainment/Roadside Attractions) – A movie I didn’t expect much from but totally fell in love with was this romantic drama starring Charlie Plummer as Adam Petrozelli, a young man sent to a Catholic School where he hopes to keep his schizophrenia a secret from his new classmates. The film co-starred Taylor Russell from Waves as Adam’s friend and love interest, who also gets worried about Adam’s erratic behavior whenever he goes off his meds. Adam’s condition was shown by the personalities he interacts with, played by Anna Sophia Robb, Devon Bostick and Lobo Sebastian, but the movie also stars the great Molly Parker as Adam’s mother and Walton Goggins as her live-in boyfriend. All of this adds up to a great coming-of-age film from Thor Freudenthal that also became one of the first couple movies since March to test out theatrical waters months after the pandemic shutdown.

24. Sputnik (IFC Midnight) – An amazing Russian sci-fi thriller from Egor Abramenko (remember that name!) that’s likely to be compared to Alien  but adds so much more depth by taking place in communist Russia during the ‘80s. It stars Pyotr Fyodorov as a cosmonaut who brought something back with him from space and Oksana Akinshina as the psychologist who has to figure what is happening. It starts quite, reminding you of the original Russian film Solaris, but by the end, it gets pretty insane. More than anything, it finds a way of doing something original within an overused sci-fi trope.

25. Parallel (Vertical Entertainment)  - Similarly, I had pretty low expectations for Isaac Ezban’s sci-fi/horror film about a group of Silicon Valley friends who discover a mirror that allows them to travel to and from alternate versions of their own dimension, which they use for criminal activities. Soon, some of them have gotten out of control with the power and money that this access gives them, but like Palm Springs, it’s a great take on another overused sci-fi trope that’s done so beautifully. (Warning: There have been a LOT of movies with this title in the last five years. Make sure you choose the right one!)

Honorary Mentions: The Prom (Netflix), Kindred (IFC Midnight), On the Rocks (A24/Apple TV+), Yellow Rose(Sony), Misbehaviour (Shout! Factory), Premature (IFC Films), Spontaneous (Paramount), The Climb (Sony Pictures Classics)

Oh, and as a reminder, here’s my top 10, this time with links to my reviews where applicable:

10. One Night in Miami.. (Amazon Prime Video) 9. Pieces of a Woman (Netflix) 8. Sound of Metal (Amazon Prime Video) 7. Mulan (Disney+) 6. Synchronic (Well GO USA) (Tied with Disney+’s Hamilton) 5. Nomadland (Searchlight Studios) 4. News of the World (Universal) 3. Minari (A24) 2. Corpus Christi 1. Promising Young Woman (Focus Features)

And some MORE DOCS I liked that didn’t make my Top 12 over at Below the Line:

13. Robin’s Wish (Vertical) 14. PJ Harvey: A Dog Called Money 15. 76 Days (MTV Documentaries) 16. Rebuilding Paradise (NatGeo) 17. The Fight (Magnolia) 18. Collective (Magnolia) 19. Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story (Shout! Studios) 20. We Are Freestyle Love Supreme (Hulu) 21. My Name is Pedro (Sweet 180) 22. Crock of Gold: A Night with Shane MacGowan (Magnolia) 23. You Cannot Kill David Arquette (Super) 24. Feels Good Man 25. Suzi Q (Utopia Distribution)

The Terrible 12 of 2020!:

And it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for -- and the reason I guess most people are reading this -- so I apologize for making all five of you read through all the great movies and docs of 2020 before getting to the juicy stuff. Let’s get to it!

12. Superintelligence (HBO Max) – There was a time when I loved Melissa McCarthy – years before Bridesmaids – but her success after that film and her decision to keep making movies with husband/director Ben Falcone has only led to a few halfway decent comedies. (I didn’t think The Boss was that bad, but that’s cause it co-starred Kristen Bell.) So imagine if you’re one of the first big studio comedies to be dumped to Warner Media’s new streaming service, HBO Max, and that was almost SIX MONTHS BEFORE COVID HIT! How bad could a movie be to have that little support and confidence from the studio? Well, I found out that very thing, as I sat through this horrible movie that had McCarthy play another one of her usual “everywomen,” this one who encounters an Artificial Intelligence, voiced by James Corben, who has achieved sentience. Trying to learn what it is to be human, the AI starts giving McCarthy’s character everything she wants, including a relationship an old workmate, played by Bobby Canavale. The movie wasn’t very funny but it also branched into a rom-com plot that just didn’t suit either McCarthy or Canavale, so yes, quite an epic fail.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: “'Superintelligence' is not a term I'd use for whoever greenlit this piece of crap.”

11. Hubie Halloween (Netflix) – I don’t think that Hubie Halloween was anywhere near Adam Sandler’s worst movies ever, and probably not even his worst for Netflix – although there have been some VERY bad ones. The problem is that any opportunity Sandler was given in this movie to show he can deliver something other than “more of the same” had him instead resorting to the physical humor that appealed to his fanbase. And yet, it wasn’t even the worst movie to come out that week it debuted on the streamer. (See below.)

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: “A perfectly fine Netflix movie, not something I’d ever want to have to sit in a movie theater watching with others.”

10. Max Cloud – This sci-fi-action-comedy didn’t have a terrible premise – I mean, I enjoyed it in all three Jumanji movies --  but it was marred by being such a monumentally badly made movie that stars one of the one actors in the business, namely Scott Adkins. Set in 1990, Adkins plays the title character in a video game, in which a teen girl finds herself transported as a character. If you wondered what a Jumanji movie would look like in the hands of a completely incompetent cast and crew, well, here you go.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: “Pretty awful, a bad faux video game movie that should have had its plug pulled.”

9. The Stand-In (Saban Films) – Not to be outdone by her frequent co-star Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore threw out all of the love she’s garnered from previous movies and her new talk show by playing dual roles of a raunchy comedy star best known for her pratfalls (so kind of a cross between Sandler and Melissa McCarthy?). Barrymore also played her nearly identical stand-in who didn’t get as much acclaim but gets to stand in for her famous lookalike when the latter goes on a bender and ends up hiding in her mansion for five years. Not sure why Barrymore thought this would be a good way to put her back on the movie screen, but yikes… one of her character’s big gimmicks is falling face first into a pile of horse shit – not funny and just plain gross.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: “Guarantees Barrymore a double-dose Razzie nomination.”

8. The War with Grandpa (101 Studios) – For whatever reason, I decided not to review this Weinstein Co. cast-off family comedy starring Robert De Niro and Uma Thurman. Maybe that’s because I hated the movie so much I could barely get through it, and with a Friday review embargo, I just decided not to waste any more time thinking about it. So why didn’t it end up lower, you ask? I have no effin’ idea.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: N/A

7. Pearl – There have been some bad young adult romances over the past few years, and while I don’t think Bobby Roth’s is actually based on any existing book, it might as well have been, because it was very, very bad. It stars Larsen Thompson as a 15-year-old piano prodigy who is sent to live with her unemployed film director uncle, played by Anthony LaPaglia, who was so super-creepy in that role. I don’t remember much else, since I deliberately scrubbed my memory of this movie’s existence.  Little did I realize that I’d be watching an even WORSE version of this movie a few months later.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: “LaPaglia is way too good an actor, who deserves better than this.”

6. Black Water: Abyss – Another movie I watched late in the week and just didn’t have time or bother to review. Honestly, I remember very little about this. I think it involves crocodiles? Who knows, who cares? Not me or anyone else I expect. Everything about this movie was pretty bad.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: N/A

5. The Turning (Universal) – Probably the biggest studio movie to wind up on this list, and possibly the only reason I didn’t review this was because I interviewed the director, Floria Sigismondi (The Runaways), who is generally a pretty awesome artist. But I love the original source material on which this is based and seeing how much better Netflix’s The Horror of Bly Manor was a few months later just made me a little sore that a movie starring the great Mackenzie Davis with Finn Wolfhard and Brooklyn Prince could end up with one of the lamest endings of a horror movie in recent memory.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: N/A

4. Butt Boy (Epic Pictures) – Tyler Cornack’s comedy-slash-thriller was my worst movie of the year for many, many months until the three movies below it reared their ugly heads. Still, this one is pretty ugly as it stars Conack himself as Chip Gutchel, a man who becomes obsessed after a proctology exam so that things just keep vanishing up his own asshole. Yeah, I think my RT quote is fairly apt.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: “I wouldn't recommend this to my worst enemy.”

3. Buddy Games (Saban Films/Paramount) – The fact that Josh Duhamel’s directorial debut came out the same week as Superintelligence yet ended up lower on this list is fairly telling. It involves Duhamel and a group of his friends taking part in ridiculous competitions for money, and shows what happens when these friends reunite five years later to throw another Buddy Game. It was just very low-brow and disgusting and a not particularly funny take on the Jackass movies. There was scene that almost made me stop watching.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: “To call Buddy Games moronic, idiotic or even asinine, would be an insult to morons, idiots or asses, who are also likely the movie's target audience.“

2. Sno Babies (Better Noise Films) – This poorly-conceived “Afterschool Special” that follows a high school senior named Kristen (Katie Kelly) and her ever-growing drug addiction was almost like a young adult version of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream if just about everything about the movie was bad from the writing to the acting to just really horrible images that no one would want to watch or be put through. If the film just followed Kelly’s character, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, but it’s a narrative that follows a bunch of characters including a couple wanting to have a baby… and when Kristen becomes pregnant due to her being on drugs, well, you can probably guess where it’s going. The only movie this year that had me literally yelling at my laptop like a lunatic.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: “The people who made this movie should never be allowed to make another movie again.”

1. Dead Reckoning (Shout! Studios) – Scott Adkins makes his second appearance in the Terrible 12 with a movie in which he plays an Albanian terrorist. In fact, when I first heard about this movie and the fact it was directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, the cinematographer/director behind Romeo is Bleeding and lots of trashy action flickers from the Aughts, it made me expect something in that vein. Instead, this is another young adult drama set in Nantucket with K.J. Apa from Riverdale playing Adkins’ brother who falls for a local teen lush, played by India Eisley, who proceeds to chug alcohol in every scene. Oh, her parents were killed in a terrorist act… coincidence? I think not. Eventually, we learn that Adkins’ character is planning a terrorist act by blowing up a boat on the 4th of July, and that’s maybe an hour or more into the movie. And yeah, there’s a number of action scenes awkwardly shoehorned into the story as well… Adkins’ fight with a nurse trying to help him was particularly hilarious. But the fact that the movie is being sold as “a thriller inspired by the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013” just makes the whole thing even more awkward and insulting. This one ends up in the “What on earth were they thinking, whoever financed this movie?” box.

Rotten Tomatoes Quote: “The only way to have any fun watching this disaster is to play a drinking game where you take a drink every time Eisley's character takes a drink.”

That’s it for this year…. Happy New Year and on to 2021!

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/sports/basketball/n-b-a-rules-james-harden-was-not-fouled-on-3-point-attempt/

N.B.A. Rules James Harden Was Not Fouled on 3-Point Attempt

OAKLAND, Calif. — Stephen Curry made a point Monday of studying all 16 3-pointers James Harden attempted in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals.

He wants to be better prepared to defend the Houston Rockets star who has such a knack of drawing his man in to generate contact as he jumps forward to release the ball from long range.

Who knew a debate about landing space would be all the talk going into Game 2 on Tuesday?

Curry said he was disappointed that the officiating has taken over the narrative of the series, and pointed out that Golden State could exhaust its energy on the same issue.

“So what are you going to do about it?” he said. “Hopefully, Game 2, it’s about the game and how we play and making shots and the energy and intensity that we need to play with, knowing what’s at stake, and that becomes the conversation for sure.”

A day after the Rockets complained about the officiating following a 104-100 loss in the opener of the best-of-seven series, the N.B.A. handed Houston’s Chris Paul a $35,000 fine for “aggressively confronting and recklessly making contact with a game official,” while also confirming in its Last-Two Minute Report that no foul should have been called on Draymond Green’s defense of a 3-point try by Harden with 10.1 seconds left that could have tied the game.

The report did, however, state that three Golden State fouls were missed — including two against Curry, each of which would have resulted in his fouling out.

On the 3-point attempt that Harden was adamant was a foul, the N.B.A. said, “Green jumps in front of Harden and would have missed him if Harden hadn’t extended his legs.”

Curry, who the league says fouled both Harden and Eric Gordon in the last two minutes, said the Warriors must understand the “tendencies” of a shooter like Harden to avoid putting themselves in a position where it’s a tough call for the referee on whether the Warriors have encroached on someone’s landing space.

In addressing the issue, Harden referenced a play two years ago during which Kawhi Leonard, then of the San Antonio Spurs, was lost for the season with a left ankle injury in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals against the Warriors. Leonard came down on the foot of then-Golden State center Zaza Pachulia.

“That can change the entire series,” Harden said after Sunday’s game. “Just call the game the way it’s supposed to be called and we’ll live with the results. It’s plain and simple.”

The Warriors are surprised the Rockets have made their grievances quite so public, with Coach Steve Kerr saying it’s unfortunate this became the focus in a series between the two powerhouses of the Western Conference.

“I thought we were going to talk about the game,” joked Kerr, who pretended to flop Monday on San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ann Killion to make his point.

“Watching the tape, both teams just got after it and competed. But we just watched the tape upstairs. You don’t think there were 10 calls that we thought we got fouled? This is how it goes. And every coach in the league will tell you the same thing: You watch the tape and you go, ‘Man, that’s a foul, that’s a foul.’ It’s the nature of the game. It’s very, very difficult to officiate an N.B.A. game. There’s all kinds of gray area, and in the modern game a lot of players have gotten really good at deception, creating contact. I don’t remember people falling down on 3-point shots all the time when I played.”

Houston Coach Mike D’Antoni said the officials came to talk to him during halftime about missed foul calls on the Warriors closing out on the Rockets’ 3-point shooters.

“I’m going to try to be a nice guy because I really don’t want to give the charity to them, I’d rather have my charity have the money,” D’Antoni said. “So I mean the response was they came in halftime and said they missed them. That’s what they told me. They missed four of them. That’s 12 foul shots. So be it. They’re trying to do the best they can do.”

[itsfinancethings]

Lori Alhadeff is haunted by the fact that she did not send her 14-year-old daughter to school with a bulletproof backpack. The mother of three had wanted to buy one but never got around to it. By Feb. 14, 2018, it was too late. Her first child, Alyssa, was fatally shot trying to hide under a classroom table at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. “I wish to this day that I did give that protection to Alyssa. It could have saved her life,” Alhadeff says. “Obviously, I regret that.”

After the massacre, which killed 16 others, Alhadeff bought bulletproof backpacks for her two sons, who are now 14 and 12. “I have peace in my heart for my two boys, at least, that I’m doing everything in my power to protect them,” says Alhadeff, who won’t let her sons go to school without the backpacks.

With more than 69 people killed so far in mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019, thousands of Americans like Alhadeff are seeking security through an explosion of products marketed to those scared of being shot or of losing loved ones to gun violence. Backpacks that double as shields are sold by major department stores, including Home Depot and Bed, Bath & Beyond. There are bulletproof hoodies for children as young as 6; protective whiteboards and windows; armored doors and anchors designed to keep shooters out of classrooms; and smart cameras powered by artificial intelligence that alert authorities to threats. In Fruitport, Mich., officials are building a $48 million high school specially designed to deter active shooters, with curved walls to reduce a shooter’s line of sight, bulletproof windows and a special locking system.

In 2017, U.S. schools spent at least $2.7 billion on security systems, and that’s on top of the money spent by individuals on things like bulletproof backpacks, the IHS Markit consulting firm reported. Five years ago, in 2014, the figure was about $768 million, IHS said. But school shootings haven’t decreased in frequency, and critics of the growing industry in bullet-resistant items say the only beneficiaries of these so-called security measures are the people making money off of them.

“These companies are capitalizing on parents’ fears,” says Shannon Watts, a mother of five who founded the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action following the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre that killed 20 first-graders and six educators.

In September, as students were returning to school, Sandy Hook Promise, a gun violence prevention nonprofit led by family members of Sandy Hook victims, released a video that used biting satire to highlight the bulletproof industry and the country��s failure to prevent mass shootings. It shows cheerful children returning for classes and using their new clothes and back-to-school supplies to save themselves and others from a shooter. One boy shows off his new skateboard, then uses it to smash a window and escape; a girl demonstrates how her new socks can be used to tie a tourniquet; another uses her jacket to lock a set of double-doors. The message is clear: these shootings should be prevented before kids get to the point of using tube socks to save classmates from bleeding to death.

Survive the school year with these must-have #BackToSchool essentials. https://t.co/9KgxAQ0KGz This PSA contains graphic content related to school shootings & may be upsetting to some viewers. If you feel this subject matter may be difficult for you, you may choose not to watch. pic.twitter.com/5ijYMtXRTy

— Sandy Hook Promise (@sandyhook) September 18, 2019

But with efforts at gun control legislation stalled as the Senate refuses to take up a House-passed bill that would require background checks for private gun sales, even critics of the booming security industry concede it’s unlikely to slow down. “There’s not a parent in the country who isn’t worried that their child will be the next victim of gun violence,” Watts says.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than 330 mass shootings—in which at least four people other than the shooter were injured or killed—so far this year in the United States. This summer alone, 31 people were killed in back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio and another 10 died in attacks in Gilroy, Calif. and Odessa, Texas. In the aftermath of each tragedy, companies saw striking growth in profits. “It’s a business fueled by fear,” says Sean Burke, president of the School Safety Advocacy Council, which works with school districts and police departments.

TuffyPacks, an online retailer selling ballistic shields that are inserted into backpacks, reported up to a 500% increase in sales after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton in early August, which coincided with back-to-school shopping season. “Every time shootings occur, we see spikes in sales,” says TuffyPacks CEO Steve Naremor, 63, of Houston, Texas, who insists his company’s $129 inserts are no different from other safety equipment, like fire extinguishers and bicycle helmets. Guard Dog Security, a competing company that sells bulletproof backpacks that weigh up to 4.5 pounds and can cost up to $299, couldn’t keep up with the orders. “They were selling out faster than we could get it back in stock,” says Yasir Sheikh, its 34-year-old CEO. Sheikh—who like Naremor declined to disclose revenue figures—launched his company in 2009 but didn’t see a huge demand until Sandy Hook.

The demand that follows mass shootings prompted Vy Tran, 25, to quit her job and use $100,000 in savings and retirement funds to start selling homemade bulletproof hoodies. Her company, Wonder Hoodie, began as a side business, which she launched after her next-door neighbor, a mother of two, was shot dead in their Seattle neighborhood during an attempted robbery in 2016.

Panicked after the killing, Tran says she searched online for body armor to protect her mother and younger brother, but the products she found were either too expensive or too heavy. So Tran, a health and safety consultant, decided to make them herself, using Kevlar that she ordered online. Tran was making an average of one or two hoodies a week until 58 people were killed at a Las Vegas music festival on Oct. 1, 2017 in the worst mass shooting in modern history. Sales spiked, and there were suddenly 10 to 15 requests pouring in every day.

Courtesy: Vy TranVy Tran in one of her bulletproof Wonder Hoodies

“I couldn’t keep up with the orders,” says Tran, who hired a team to help her. Wonder Hoodie has since fulfilled almost 1,000 orders for hoodies that cost up to $600 and weigh up to 9 pounds.

It’s not just young and new CEOs leaping into the growing field of gun safety products, and the merchandise isn’t all body armor. Chris Ciabarra and Lisa Falzone of Austin, Texas, launched Athena Security, a smart camera system, after they sold their first tech startup for $500 million in 2017. Athena’s software detects 900 different types of guns and can send an alert and video feed to law enforcement if it senses a threatening movement, like someone pointing a gun, according to Ciabarra. More than 40 schools, malls and businesses in the U.S. use Athena’s software, which charges $100 a month for each camera it monitors. Since schools and malls typically have 100 cameras building-wide, Athena could make more than $100,000 a year monitoring just one school. The weapons detection program has been installed in one of the two New Zealand mosques where a suspected white supremacist opened fire in March, killing 51 worshippers. After the massacre, New Zealand’s prime minister banned assault weapons. But that’s not likely to happen in the United States, says Ciabarra. Even presidential candidates during the fourth Democratic debate Tuesday night couldn’t seem to agree on how to manage assault weapons. Rep. Beto O’Rourke and South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg clashed on the best way to get the weapons off the streets, whether by banning the sale of assault weapons or also instating mandatory buyback programs.

“We’re not going to change the law and forbid guns. It’s not going to happen,” Ciabarra says. “People will have weapons.”

Jason Connolly—AFP/Getty ImagesAA teacher takes part in an active shooter drill during a firearms course for teachers and administrators in Commerce City, Colorado on June 28, 2018.

When Mike Lahiff, a former Navy Seal, launched ZeroEyes, a competing gun-detection system based in Philadelphia, he and his team of fellow veterans saw it as a continued service to the country. Lahiff, a 38-year-old father of four, hopes the U.S. will find a way to reduce gun violence and put him out of business. “If the active shooter problem goes away, and that’s the end of the company, then great,” he says, “that’s a win for me.”

***

While mass tragedies spark surges in sales, most of the bulletproof products on the market today, including backpacks and hoodies, would not withstand the force of the assault-style weapons commonly used in high-casualty attacks. Killers used assault-style weapons in the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings, as well as in El Paso and Dayton. The products would, however, protect against most handguns—the weapon of choice in the majority of U.S. gun murders in 2018, according to newly released FBI data. Handguns were used in nearly 65% of the roughly 10,000 gun murders that year, while rifles were used in about 3% of the cases, statistics show.

But spending hundreds of dollars on a hoodie or backpack is not a viable option for many people, particularly those living in lower-income neighborhoods plagued by gun violence. In St. Louis, for example—which has the highest murder rate among major cities in the nation, according to FBI data—more than 65,000 people are living below poverty, and the median household income is about $44,000, according to estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau. Even across the nation, many Americans are not prepared to handle a sudden expense of $400 or more, like replacing a broken car engine or visiting an emergency room without insurance, according to a recent report by the Federal Reserve. Nearly 30% would have to borrow or sell something to pay for the expense, and 12% would not be able to cover the expense at all, the report says.

NICHOLAS KAMM—AFP/Getty ImagesBulletproof whiteboards and backpack inserts at the Hardwire factory in Pocomoke City, Maryland, on March 1, 2018.

Bulletproof products may make consumers feel safer, but they may be putting people in more danger, according to school safety experts like Michael Dorn, a former police chief for the Bibb County School District in Georgia who’s now the executive director of Safe Havens International, a nonprofit that advises schools on security. Dorn worries that in a shooting situation, students with bulletproof backpacks may expose themselves to greater risk by standing in place and holding up their packs for protection instead of running away. “A focus on the armor could result in death because people don’t focus instead on things they need to do like lock a door,” says Dorn.

The products may also be distracting officials and parents from focusing on long-term solutions to gun violence, like adequate training and stronger gun laws, critics say. School districts investing in these products are doing so, in many cases, knowing they’re not real fixes, according to Ken Trump, a school safety expert and president of the consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services. “They rely on the hardware, the technology, the gadgets, so they can focus less on the human side,” he says.

Researchers have found some evidence that so-called red flag laws, which allow courts to take guns away from potentially dangerous people, may help stop mass shootings. A recent study by the University of California Davis School of Medicine cited 21 cases in which such a law in California was used to help prevent potential mass shootings in the state. The measure exists in 16 other states and Washington, D.C.

Rather than buy body armor or conduct active shooter training drills, school officials and parents should focus more on early intervention strategies, including student-threat assessments and better student supervision, according to gun control advocates and safety experts. Dorn, who has an 11-year-old son, says he wouldn’t let his child carry a bulletproof product to school, even if it was free. “I teach him how to be alert and react rather than rely on something that’s so statistically unlikely to do any good,” he says.

Alhadeff knows the backpacks she bought for her sons are only the last layer of protection. To improve safety in other ways, she launched a national nonprofit, Make Our Schools Safe, and won a seat on the local school board, where she’s pushed for legislation to make schools safer. In February, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy enacted “Alyssa’s Law,” named for Alhadeff’s daughter, which requires every public elementary and secondary school in the state to install a silent panic alarm button. When pressed, the alarm would immediately alert local law enforcement, reducing emergency response times. On Oct. 4, a bipartisan version of the bill was introduced in Congress.

“Before the shooting, my biggest fear was whether my children would do well on their tests,” Alhadeff says. “It’s sad and unfortunate that our society has come to this.”

[presuninoc-blog]

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[sunshineweb]

The Books That Made Me – Part 1

Hope you had a great start to 2018, and hope you have been able to maintain your new year resolution thus far.

A new year is not just about looking forward to what may transpire over the next 360+ days, of where you may go, but also to take stock of where you have come from. Like, for me, when it comes to reading books, a new year is not just a time to prepare a rough list of the books I wish to finish during the coming months, but also to look back at the books I have read in the past and would like to re-read.

2017 was one such year when most of the books I read were the ones I had read multiple times over the years. I don’t see 2018 turning out to be any different.

One of the few filters I use to choose the books I read is Taleb’s Lindy Effect. This, in simple words, means that a non-perishable thing (like technology, or books) that has survived the most, will survive the most. So, a book that has survived 50 or 100 or 500 years, and is still widely read because it contains timeless wisdom, will survive another 50 or 100 or 500 years because, well, it’s wisdom is timeless.

In this three-part series of posts, I aim to profile such books that have stood the test of time (almost, as some will be just 10+ years old) and have inspired me the most over years. In the first part today, I am profiling books on life and living that have inspired me the most. The second part will include my favourite books on thinking, learning and decision making, and the third part will be dedicated to investing books.

Let me start right away with the books that have inspired me the most in the way I live my life and conduct my daily affairs. This is not an exhaustive list but is made up of the books on life and living I go back to time and again, and return wiser.

The Bhagavad Gita (~ 200 BC)

A have partly read a few translations of Bhagavad Gita, but one I found most readable, understandable and relatable was the one translated by Eknath Easwaran. His commentaries on the Gita’s teachings make it clear why this sacred text is a manual for living a spiritual life.

Although the battlefield is a perfect backdrop, for Easwaran the Gita’s subject is the “war within,” the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage. As Easwaran explains, Arjuna’s dilemma is acutely modern, and the Gita’s message remains as relevant for us now as it was for ancient India.

The passage I liked most in Easwaran’s translation could be found in the introduction of the book, that brought about a paradigm shift in the way I perceived Gita before I had read this –

Scholars can debate the point forever, but when the Gita is practiced, I think, it becomes clear that the struggle the Gita is concerned with is the struggle for self-mastery. It was Vyasa’s genius to take the whole great Mahabharata epic and see it as metaphor for the perennial war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness in every human heart.

Arjuna and Krishna are then no longer merely characters in a literary masterpiece. Arjuna becomes Everyman, asking the Lord himself, Sri Krishna, the perennial questions about life and death – not as a philosopher, but as the quintessential man of action.

Thus read, the Gita is not an external dialogue but an internal one: between the ordinary human personality, full of questions about the meaning of life, and our deepest Self, which is divine.

Easwaran then adds –

There is, in fact, no other way to read the Gita and grasp it as spiritual instruction. If I could offer only one key to understanding this divine dialogue, it would be to remember that it takes place in the depths of consciousness and that Krishna is not some external being, human or superhuman, but the spark of divinity that lies at the core of the human personality.

Autobiography of A Yogi (1946)

I picked up Autobiography of A Yogi after I read a post on Steve Jobs’ reading list, which mentioned that this was the only book Jobs had downloaded on his iPad, and had first read as a teenager, then re-read in India and had read once a year ever since.

If I were to describe this book in one sentence, it would read – “This book explains the subtle but definite laws behind both the ordinary events of our everyday life and the extraordinary events we commonly term as ‘miracles’.”

One specific excerpt from the book that I liked relates to the life of Mirabai, a medieval Rajputani princess who abandoned her court life to seek the company of sadhus –

One great-sannyasi refused to receive her because she was a woman; her reply brought him humbly to her feet.

“Tell the master,” she had said, “that I did not know there was any Male in the universe save God; are we all not females before Him?” (A scriptural conception of the Lord as the only Positive Creative Principle, His creation being naught but a passive ‘maya’.)

Mirabai composed many ecstatic songs which are still treasured in India; I translate one of them here:

“If by bathing daily God could be realized Sooner would I be a whale in the deep; If by eating roots and fruits He could be known Gladly would I choose the form of a goat; If the counting of rosaries uncovered Him I would say my prayers on mammoth beads; If bowing before stone images unveiled Him A flinty mountain I would humbly worship; If by drinking milk the Lord could be imbibed Many calves and children would know Him; If abandoning one’s wife would summon God Would not thousands be eunuchs? Mirabai knows that to find the Divine One The only indispensable is Love.”

Even in the book’s final chapter, Paramahansa Yogananda writes –

God is Love; His plan for creation can be rooted only in love. Does not that simple thought, rather than erudite reasonings, offer solace to the human heart?

The core message that Mirabai and Paramhansa Yogananda share through their simple words is that all we need to do to find God in our lives is to find love.

Nothing but love will get you to closer to the Almighty. Not temple visits, or idol worship, or following those self-proclaimed gurus with massive followings…a clean heart with love for others will see you through God’s path.

This is such a simple, but powerful idea.

Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)

Man’s Search for Meaning is one of the most life-changing books I have ever read. The book is a chronicle by Viktor Frankl of his experiences as a German Nazi concentration camp inmate during World War II. In this book, Frankl describes his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then immersively imagining that outcome.

The central theme of Frankl’s book is ‘survival.’ Although he witnessed and experienced horror, the book focuses less on the details of his own experience and more on how his time under Nazi rule showed him the human ability to survive and endure against all odds.

As Frankl wrote, he saw the lowest parts of humanity while in the camps. He saw fellow prisoners promoted to be in-camp guards turning on their fellow prisoners. He watched as they beat their lifeless, malnourished campmates. He watched sadistic guards treating them as if they were lower than animals. But he also saw individuals rising up like saints above it all.

The part that impacted me the most from the book was this –

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.

Who Moved My Cheese (1998)

I read this little book multiple times before quitting my job to start work on Safal Niveshak in 2011. It is about, well, coping up positively with change. Who Moved My Cheese illustrates the simple fact that change will happen, whether we choose to accept it or not. The defining factor is how we deal with it; whether we allow ourselves to change or insist on staying the same.

The story involves four characters who live in a maze: the mice Scurry and Sniff, and two little people named Hem and Haw. They find a huge source of cheese in the maze. Hem and Haw move their houses to be near it and the cheese becomes the centre of their lives. But they do not notice that it is getting smaller, and are devastated when they arrive at the site one morning and find the cheese is gone. Having built their lives around the big cheese, they feel they are the victims of fraud. Yet this only makes things worse, as their clinging on ensures that they go hungry.

The mice Scurry and Sniff, on the other hand, quickly accept the loss of the cheese and go off into the maze in search of other sources. For them, the solution is simple: the situation has changed, so they must change.

The fable captures that moment and experiences we are all familiar with i.e., sudden, unexpected change. The author’s message comes out loud and clear and that is that instead of seeing change as the end of something, we must learn to see it as a beginning. Like, to make himself accept reality, Haw writes this on the wall of the maze –

If you do not change, you can become extinct.

Another of my favourite quotes from the book is –

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

And finally, here’s an advice from Haw that has helped me immensely at various stages of my life –

Sometimes, Hem, things change and they are never the same again. This looks like one of those times. That’s life! Life moves on. And so should we.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is another of my best-read fables. It is about a seagull who is trying to learn about life and flight, and is also a discourse about self-perfection.

Jonathan, the seagull, dreams of flying better than a seagull has ever flown, instead of spending his days looking for scraps of food. As the author, Richard Bach, writes –

Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly…This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self popular with other birds.

I have been deeply inspired by the story of Jonathan, in my own pursuits of flying free and higher instead of spending my days running after scraps (money included). I suggest this book to you if you feel you have reached a ceiling or barrier in your personal life, or if you wish to make some needed changes in your life, or if you are wanting to follow your gut instinct but are too afraid, or if you feel that there is something more to life than what you are being told.

Fly free, fly high is the core message of this book. I’ve not looked down after I read it.

Meditations (~ 180 AD)

This book (Gregory Hays���s translation) stays with me all the time, apart from the Bhagavad Gita.

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, the author of this book, wrote it as notes or ‘spiritual exercises’ for himself and never intended them to be published. The book was however first printed in 1559, almost fourteen centuries after the emperor’s death in 180 AD.

With a profound understanding of human behavior, Marcus provides insights, wisdom, and practical guidance on everything from living in the world to coping with adversity to interacting with others. Reading Meditations was one of the hardest, but most rewarding experiences in my own personal growth. The book has done so much to stir up my prior beliefs and has helped a lot to broaden my mind and encourage me to be all that I can be.

After you read a few passages of the book that you start to realize that there is no reason to feel unhappy, unfulfilled, or unappreciated. In fact, if many of us read Marcus’ thoughts, take them to heart, and practice them, the world will be a better place. This is the least we can do.

For me, Meditations has never brought me to easy answers, just more questions, and self-introspection about how I am living my life during my waking moments. Marcus advises that there is a larger meaning to events and lives that escapes us. This knowledge itself is a comfort. As he writes –

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

And here’s another one of my favourite thoughts from the book –

Stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.

One Small Step Can Change Your Life (2004)

Every path to success has been littered with doubt, fear, and uncertainty, as well as persistence, calculated risks and repeated action. The difference between someone who fails and someone who succeeds is the courage to act, repeatedly. The only way you get the courage to act “repeatedly” is when you break the act into small steps.

One Small Step Can Change Your Life book was recommended to me by Prof. Sanjay Bakshi in 2012, and it truly has helped me change my life, one small step at a time. It’s a small book but talks about the big idea of “Kaizen”, which is Japanese for “taking small steps to continual improvement.”

Think of the last time you set out to bring about a major change in your life – like starting a new project or business, learning how to invest on your own, starting an exercise regime, or learning to break a bad habit. What did you feel? Exhaustion? Excitement? Fear?

Most people, when faced with change, will feel at least some element of fear. And very often that fear can get in the way of making the change. The idea of Kaizen is to make such small changes in your life that your brain doesn’t even know you’re changing, and therefore, doesn’t get in the way.

Maurer writes about the power of asking small questions, thinking small thoughts, taking small actions, solving small problems, giving small rewards, and recognizing small moments. And these small things ultimately help you bring about big changes in your life over time.

Maurer quotes John Wooden, one of the most successful coaches in the history of American college basketball, thus –

When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts.

Mahatma Gandhi said –

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.

It all starts with one belief, one thought, one word, one action, one habit, one value…and that makes one destiny.

Happy living and successful investing follow the same route.

Just take one small step at a time.

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948)

I first read Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living around 2011, during the first few worrisome months of starting Safal Niveshak and going on my own. It inspired me immensely then. But this book turned out to be a life saver in 2016 when I was going through a personal (‘all in the mind’ types) turmoil of my own making (I wrote about it here).

“Live in day-tight compartments” is one of the first, and amongst the most important, advises from the book. We often worry because we carry the burden of both the past and the future with us today. That makes the present look much more difficult than it really is. Carnegie advises us to focus just on today. I just love this advice. At times, when I catch myself carrying the burden of the past and worry about the future, I remind myself of this part from the book that brings me back to appreciating the present, the today.

Carnegie writes in his book –

You and I are standing this very second at the meeting place of two eternities: the vast past that has endured forever, and the future that is plunging on to the last syllable of recorded time. We can’t possibly live on either of those eternities – no, not even for one split second. But, by trying to do so, we can wreck both our bodies and our minds. So let’s be content to live the only time we can possibly live: from now until bedtime.

“Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. “Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.”

The big idea here is to stay grounded in the present moment – where you actually have some influence – instead of fretting and losing sleep over things that have already happened or haven’t happened yet, and that you have no real control over at the moment.

“Shut the iron doors on the past and the future,” Carnegie advises. “Live in day-tight compartments.”

As a Man Thinketh (1903)

The title of this book is influenced by a verse in the Bible from the Book of Proverbs – “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

As a Man Thinketh talks about the power of the mind. It explains how our thoughts affect who we are and the circumstances we live in. It depicts that we are solely responsible for our own circumstances. Our life, and all it is made up of, like love, wealth, success, our experiences and opportunities are governed by the thoughts we nurture.

The author James Allen writes that we can control these circumstances by our thoughts and the character it brings forth. He calls this the “seeds” we plant in our minds, which will sprout the circumstances we live in.

The book opens with the statement –

Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes, And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills, Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: — He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass: Environment is but his looking-glass.

And closes with a chapter on Serenity –

Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.

A man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a thought-evolved being, for such knowledge necessitates the understanding of others as the result of thought, and as he develops a right understanding, and sees more and more clearly the internal relations of things by the action of cause and effect, he ceases to fuss and fume and worry and grieve, and remains poised, steadfast, serene.

The Alchemist (1988)

Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist was the first real book I read cover to cover when I started reading seriously in 2001. The story is of a Spanish shepherd boy, Santiago, keeps getting the same dream that there is treasure lying underneath the Egyptian pyramids. After meeting an old king who offers him some advice and some magic stones, Santiago embarks on his journey to cross the Mediterranean and the Sahara to find his treasure and accomplish his Personal Legend (which is a concept equivalent to our purpose in life). Amidst tricksters and tribal wars, he finds his one true love, learns the language of his heart, and of course, fights to reach the treasure he dreamt of.

A passage explains the thought of “personal legend” –

“I’m the King of Salem,” the old man said.

“Why would a king be talking with a shepherd?” the boy asked, awed and embarrassed.

“For several reasons. But let’s say that the most important is that you have succeeded in discovering your Personal Legend.”

The boy didn’t know what a person’s “Personal Legend” was.

“It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.”

Another passage that almost sums up the story in the book reads thus –

“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams.”

Throughout the story and the search for the alchemist, I felt like this was more a metaphor for life in general. If we follow our own “personal legends” we can perform the same magic – turn our ordinary lives into gold, as long as we believe in the journey and don’t give up on what we believe is our destiny. If you’re looking for inspiration, Santiago’s story brings it in droves.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (1947)

One story from World War II that I found as tragic as it was magnificent was that of Anne Frank. Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany but moved to the Netherlands for safety in 1934, five years after she was born. The Frank family hid in their basement with four other Jews when Germany took control of the Netherlands.

Anne then began to write, at age thirteen, in a diary of her life, feelings and the outside world. She wrote in the diary every day for two years until their hiding place was found and she was forced into a concentration camp where she died with her sister due to a sickness. She was just fifteen when she died.

Although Anne wasn’t only a tragic girl in this war, her diary that is available to read as The Diary of a Young Girl displays the strength of her character. The diary portrays her as a brave and hopeful girl, character traits that are hard to manage in the kind of hardship that she was a part of.

One of her diary entries reads –

Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.

Strong character is what Anne displayed through here little life. And strong character is what makes people great in their lives.

To be continued…

Disclosure: I participate in the Amazon Associates Program, which simply means that if you purchase a book on Amazon from a link on this page, I receive a small commission. The book does not cost you any extra. I give away 100% of the commission for the betterment of the under-privileged.

The post The Books That Made Me – Part 1 appeared first on Safal Niveshak.

The Books That Made Me – Part 1 published first on https://mbploans.tumblr.com/

[londontheatre]

David Ireland’s dark comedy The End of Hope makes its London premiere at Soho Theatre. The play originated at the Oran Mór in Glasgow and it played for a few nights at the Orange Tree earlier this year. It is now ‘transferring to the west end’ for a full 5-week run.

‘Everywhere in the world where there’s a war about religion, two people from each side should have sex. That would bring world peace. We should literally make love and not war‘

Dermot and Janet just had some great, if perhaps slightly surreal, hook-up sex. But as they start getting to know each other, things become a little more complicated. Debating and often disagreeing on every possible subject, including political stance, notions of identity, religion, sex, self-worth, culture, fame, class and taste, this unlikely pair soon realise that love and connection are more elusive in the grind of modern life than they anticipated.

By the end of the night, no taboo is left untouched. An outrageous and revealing roller-coaster of a comedy from award-winning writer David Ireland following his critically-acclaimed Cyprus Avenue (Royal Court Theatre). The End of Hope provides a brutal insight to the haphazard nature of modern relationships.

Returning to Soho Theatre following Vicky Jones’ Verity Bargate Award-winning play The One, Rufus Wright is Dermot, performing alongside Elinor Lawless (King Charles III, Almeida) as Janet.

Elinor Lawless and Rufus Wright answered a few questions about the production…

Elinor Lawless What can you tell us about ‘The End of Hope’? Well, I don’t want to say too much but, in a nutshell, the play is an edgy contemporary comedy about relationships, politics and the darker uses of the common courgette.

How did each of you get involved in the production? I first auditioned for the role of Janet when it was being staged as part of the Director’s festival at The Orange Tree Theatre. I have a little boy, Joe, and this was my first audition back after becoming a mum. As soon as I read the script for the meeting I was dying to be part of it!

What were your thoughts when first learning about the play (reading the script etc) I remember very clearly sitting down to read the script for the first time and doing a bit of a double take at the opening stage direction: ‘Janet is dressed as a mouse.’ All I could think was – ‘please let this play be as good as I think it’s going to be!’ It was better. One of the things that really struck me was the fearlessness of the writing, its ballsiness and its warmth. I was already an admirer of David Ireland’s work and this play affirmed why.

You play the part of Janet – can you tell us about your character? Janet is a really refreshing mix of brutal and vulnerable. She is the kind of woman that you would secretly love to be your mate but you would never dream of inviting to your drinks and nibbles night.

Described as ‘Complex, hilarious and fascinating’ Joyce McMillan, Scotsman. What is the key to the humour in the production? As with all great comedy, you end up giving a damn about these two characters – I think that’s quite a feat to achieve in one hour – but David Ireland does that. The writing is sharp, economic and moves at a breakneck pace. It plays on all our middle-class insecurities and hang-ups and reminds us that, even at our lowest ebb, human beings can be bloody funny and loveable.

What do you hope the audience will get from The End of Hope? First and foremost – a solid hour of entertainment. I guess, for me, what really resonates with this play is how it explores and exposes the current climate of politics, media, faith and relationships. It’s all a bit ‘us and them’ and I think the backdrop of Belfast, post Good-Friday Agreement, serves as a really interesting platform to explore that kind black and white thinking.

For you, what works and what doesn’t in a two-hander? I definitely work. I’m not so sure about Rufus.

Offstage, what do you like to do to chill out? I’m really into Pilates and Bikram yoga at the minute. No seriously though, most of the time I’ll be eating something – or thinking about eating something and then regretting what I did finally eat. It’s that winning combination of womanhood and Catholic guilt.

Why should everyone get along to see The End of Hope? It’s smart, it’s compassionate and it’s very funny. There’s also a mouse in it. It should also be said that when my mum came to see it at the Orange Tree she told me that she thought I’d really improved. If you want to be a part of that journey then get booking.

Rufus Wright What can you tell us about ‘The End of Hope’? It’s a very funny, touching, very short play that feels extremely current but avoids endless references to social media, Trump n’ Brexit, and twerking (although that was more 2013 really).

How did each of you get involved in the production? I’d wanted to and had almost worked at the Orange Tree before. Living in Walthamstow, Richmond is obviously incredibly convenient for me. No, I’ve been keen work there since Paul Miller took over there, as I think his programming is fantastic. I relished the opportunity to work with a young director, and loved the script from the off. It did so well at the Orange Tree that it caught Steve Marmion’s attention at Soho and now it’s getting a proper run there.

What were your thoughts when first learning about the play (reading the script etc)? That it was really unusual and incredibly funny. I understand it’s been performed in Europe but not in London so it was great to be able to bring it here. It opens with a straight couple who have just had sex, and the woman is wearing a full body mouse costume and mask. It’s clear within 2 minutes that he’s never seen her out of this. Much of the play is spent with him trying to persuade her to remove the mask. Not to give anything away, but when she does remove it (dammit), it’s an amazing moment on stage.

You play the part of Dermot – can you tell us about your character? Dermot is an incredibly good-looking, well-built human being. I’m joking. But he has a high opinion of himself. He considers himself to be Ireland’s greatest living poet and is pretty confident in most social situations, but when confronted with a woman dressed as a mouse who enjoys the anonymity of disguise he is flummoxed. Although the mouse costume is obviously silly, the play has its roots in quite complex questions about female identity- the burqa, the right of women to determine how much they want to conceal their faces- whether that concealment is part of a wider patriarchal hegemony, and so on. In that sense, Dermot is struggling with a much bigger debate about empowerment. But look again and there’s a tall man with very white legs who’s just slept with a giant mouse. The play flits between these two things with extraordinary ease.

Described as ‘Complex, hilarious and fascinating’ Joyce McMillan, Scotsman. What is the key to the humour in the production? I think there’s always something funny about pompous men dealing with situations in which they are uncomfortable. Janet is an entirely frank, extremely funny and deadpan character and Dermot never really knows whether or not she’s pulling his leg. Can someone genuinely say they’ve never heard of Friends because they watch ITV and not Channel 4?

What do you hope the audience will get from The End of Hope? They’ll laugh, a lot, and hopefully, will be left thinking for a while about the deeper questions the playwright is posing. And those who are turned on by big sexy mice and confused bearded Northern Irishmen will possibly get quite aroused.

For you, what works and what doesn’t in a two-hander? A big thing in casting nowadays is the ‘Chemistry Read’. Yes, these two actors are great but do they have Chemistry? The two sexiest actors in the world can have nothing when you put them together (Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, anyone?). I think good two handers need a real spark. I was lucky enough to do a play called The One by Vicky Jones with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, also at Soho. Much of the play was just the two of us talking, teasing, testing each other, and there was a terrific sense of sparkiness, danger and fun on stage. Once you’ve got that and a good script, you’re set. 

Offstage, what do you like to do to chill out? Consolidate my debts into convenient monthly payments. That and paint. You can commission me at rufuswright.com 

Why should everyone get along to see The End of Hope? Because they’ll laugh like eejits and they’ll be in the bar by 8pm. Yes, 8pm! Then they can either have some drinks or stay and see some comedy. Soho is the best theatre of its kind in the world. Often 9 shows a night. Something for everyone.

SOHO THEATRE AND THE ORANGE TREE THEATRE PRESENT THE END OF HOPE SOHO THEATRE Tue 10 Oct – Sat 11 Nov, 7.15pm http://ift.tt/GDd1na

http://ift.tt/2hiaTvR LondonTheatre1.com

[patriotsnet]

Are Other Republicans Running For President

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

Are Other Republicans Running For President

Im Running For President Because Its Time For New Leadership Because Its Time For New Energy And Its Time For A New Commitment To Make Sure That The Opportunities Getting Out There Being Able To Hear Peoples Concerns Address Them With New Ideas Has Been An Extraordinary Experience He Said

Biden thought hard about running in 2016, but he decided against it, being so soon after his son beau’s death and. Running for president of the united states is an. But there is so much more to it. Joe biden opposed president reagan’s peace through strength that led to the fall of the berlin wall. And speaking of brand image i read the program of warren recently, and was tempted to give her a french honorary citizenship as she is trying to import.

With The Debates About To Begin Bill Whittle And I Discuss Whether Republican Candidates Should Have To Perform In Exploding Chairs Like The Villains In Thunderball So That The Process Of Elimination Can Be More Immediate And Entertaining

There have been previous unsuccessful efforts to drop the natural born requirement. Former vice president joseph r. Here’s everyone who’s running for president in 2020, and who has quit the race. Amash, the republican turned independent congressman from michigan, announced last month that he was launching an exploratory committee to run for the libertarian party nomination for president. They’ll be able to catch you when you fall.

As for the opposition, there are four republicans running in the primaries as of april 2012. They emerged because when andrew jackson was running for president he was for the ‘common man and they called themselves democratic republicans. But what about the other republicans running for president in 2020? Running for president of the united states is an. Dead things most rotten before they.

Biden thought hard about running in 2016, but he decided against it, being so soon after his son beau’s death and. Is there any other republican running than trump ? There was plenty of motivation to take me out. But these figures don’t quite include everyone who’s running. On the republican side, there is, of course, president donald trump.

Lets Take A Look At The Republican Landscape And The Potential Challengers To So Far There Are Three Official Republican Challengers And One Was Just Announced A Few Days Ago:

I’m going to run for president of the united states because, as a young mom, i’m going to fight for other people’s i know there is a tear in that fabric right now; There are 24 main democratic candidates. People embark on a presidential odyssey for a wide variety of reasons. And speaking of brand image i read the program of warren recently, and was tempted to give her a french honorary citizenship as she is trying to import. But it can be repaired by someone who can lead, and i ran for president to win and make a difference in our great country, swalwell photo: He is not expected to run for any other office in 2020. But these figures don’t quite include everyone who’s running. On the other side, some republicans have challenged president trump in the republican primary. Republican leaders have said they want to protect trump by having state parties change the rules for their primaries to guard against an insurgency. The players and other stadia will make their show of support, so the benefit has already been had. Not coincidentally, there’s been renewed talk of a serious republican taking on the president in the 2020 primaries. ‘there is a rot at the center of the modern republican party,’ he continued. On the republican side, there is, of course, president donald trump.

Notable Candidates Include Individuals Who Have Qualified To Appear On Enough State There Were 21 Candidates On The Ballot Each In Vermont And Colorado

Bush said in retrospect that the divisiveness of the primary challenge might have cost bush reelection. There are several people running for the republican nomination, but given the current president is a republican, he is the only one that matters. Notable candidates include individuals who have qualified to appear on enough state there were 21 candidates on the ballot each in vermont and colorado. While the republican and democratic nominees will be on the ballot in all states, independents must meet an array why is he running for president? Former congressmen joe walsh announces republican presidential primary challenge.

But it can be repaired by someone who can lead, and i ran for president to win and make a difference in our great country, swalwell photo: Since the current president is democrat, we already know who the democrat running for president will be . The only other person running worth mentioning is bill weld, former governor of massachusetts, who was the libertarian nominee for vp back in 2016. Other republicans have made it quite clear they don’t see a path to the nomination for anyone but trump in 2020. I think that as a republican party, we have lost our way. mark sanford.

Republican Hopefuls Will Need To Lay The Groundwork For Potential Campaigns Of Their Own Without Alienating The President And His Supporters

WASHINGTON—President Trump’s public and private musings about running again in 2024 are scrambling the calculus for the large field of fellow Republicans considering bids.

Most hopefuls have been quick to show deference. But it’s unclear whether Mr. Trump, who refuses to concede his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, will follow through, and rivals either way will likely seek ways to remain viable. Prospective GOP candidates don’t want to risk alienating Mr. Trump’s base by appearing to push him aside, but they also don’t want to be left unprepared if he decides not to run.

“For the last 20 years everyone who has run for president has always started off pretending like they weren’t. You can still do that with the possibility of Trump running again,” said Republican strategist Todd Harris. The 2024 election, he added, “could be the first time loyalty to Trump and political ambition are put on a collision course.”

Mr. Trump—who managed to get more than 74 million votes in his losing effort this year—demonstrated his grip on the party base with Saturday’s rally in Georgia for two senators locked in tight runoff elections. “Four more years, four more years,” a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd chanted. He is raising millions of dollars for a newly formed political committee that can fund future campaign activity.

Next Test Of Trumps Influence On The Republican Party: A Crowded Gop Primary Fight For An Ohio House Seat

A GOP primary Tuesday to fill a congressional seat outside Columbus is shaping up to be a test of former president Donald Trump’s influence over the Republican Party, coming after his preferred candidate lost a Texas House campaign last week and some of his allies aligned with other candidates in the competitive Ohio race.

arrow-right

Tuesday’s contest — in which 11 candidates are vying to replace longtime GOP congressman Rep. Steve Stivers — has caused serious consternation among the former president’s advisers and even Trump himself, according to people familiar with the private discussions.

Trump railed at aides after Susan Wright, the candidate he backed in a special Texas Congressional race to replace her late husband, Rep. Ron Wright, lost to a state Republican lawmaker last week, they said.

The defeat was an embarrassing setback for the former president, who has sought to flex his hold on the party by making a slew of endorsements since leaving the White House, inserting himself into GOP primaries and going after political enemies.

Trump has made his preference clear, issuing slashing statements in which he has complained that other candidates are suggesting to voters that he supports them rather than Carey, a close friend of Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager who advisers say helped secure the endorsement.

Collins says infrastructure bill could pass Senate by end of week with at least 10 Republicans in support

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

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

Now, using a massive sample of “validated” voters whose participation has been independently verified, the Pew Research Center has . It helps us understand how Joe Biden was able to accomplish what Hillary Clinton did not—and why President Trump came closer to getting reelected than the pre-election surveys had predicted.

How Joe Biden won

Five main factors account for Biden’s success.

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

How Trump kept it close

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

Longer-term prospects

BillGalston

Seemingly Every Other Viable Republican Politician In The United States Is Lining Up To Make A Run

There are several people running for the republican nomination, but given the current president is a republican, he is the only one that matters. Epl had their logo plastered with the rainbow colors all of june, was there any sanctions on them!? But what about the other republicans running for president in 2020? Notable candidates include individuals who have qualified to appear on enough state there were 21 candidates on the ballot each in vermont and colorado. Former congressmen joe walsh announces republican presidential primary challenge. The only other person running worth mentioning is bill weld, former governor of massachusetts, who was the libertarian nominee for vp back in 2016. Who is running for president in the 2020 election? Seven other candidates qualified to appear on the ballot in five states or more. I think that as a republican party, we have lost our way. mark sanford. Bush said in retrospect that the divisiveness of the primary challenge might have cost bush reelection. Is there any other republican running than trump ? But it can be repaired by someone who can lead, and i ran for president to win and make a difference in our great country, swalwell photo: 18 democrats and two republicans, according to the latest numbers.

Us Election 2024: Who Are The Likely Republican Candidates To Run For President Against Joe Biden

Mike Pence, Ivanka Trump and Ted Cruz are among the rumoured candidates to become Donald Trump’s successor

The 2020 presidential race has only just finished, but the Republican candidates for 2024 are already preparing themselves for their shot at the White House.

We take a look at who may be looking to get themselves in to the race.

Pa Republicans See A Big Opportunity In 2022 But Some Are Worried Their Candidates Might Blow It

Philadelphia Inquirer

It’s a summer of worry for some Pennsylvania Republicans.

A rocky July has increased concern among some party insiders that they’re lacking marquee candidates for critical statewide races next year.

First came a public blowup between likely gubernatorial candidate Bill McSwain and former Attorney General Bill Barr. Some prominent GOP donors and operatives saw it as a daft mistake that reinforced questions about his political acumen. Those insiders, largely from Southeastern Pennsylvania, have spoken to a political veteran from McSwain’s backyard — former U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach of Chester County — to gauge his interest in running for governor, according to four people familiar with the conversations, and some are hopeful that additional candidates join the fray.

Meanwhile, in the state’s critical 2022 U.S. Senate race, fund-raising reports this month showed the leading GOP contenders all . None of the major Republican Senate candidates has ever won elected office, a stark contrast with the emerging Democratic field that includes an array of well-established officeholders.

Republicans are hoping the governor’s race delivers total control in Harrisburg , while the Senate contest is one of a handful that could decide control of the chamber — and with it the fate of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

In a state as closely divided as Pennsylvania, the strength of individual candidates can make a difference in races that could come down to a few percentage points.

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

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

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

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

In Gop Poll From Hell Republicans Say They Want Donald Trump Jr To Be President In 2024

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A recurring nightmare among millions of Americans is that come 2024, Donald Trump will forget the fact that he actually hated being president, decide to run again, and win. Seriously, can you think of a more horrifying scenario, except perhaps falling through a sidewalk into a rat-filled chasm, which some people might still prefer? We maintain that you cannot. But an equally terrifying, skin-crawling situation would definitely be to turn on the TV on January 20, 2025, and see Donald Trump Jr. being sworn in as president of the United States, which a number of Republican voters apparently actually want to happen.

The poll, which was conducted between July 6 and 8, did not include Donald Trump Senior, who maintains an inexplicable grip on voters despite the mass-death stuff, an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and a mental state that suggests he should be in a home or studied by a team of Swiss doctors.

And the fact that Don Jr. came out on top is not where the scary news ends. Because apparently if Republicans can’t have Sheep Killer over here, their second-favorite choice is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the man currently responsible for this:

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More Great Stories FromVanity Fair

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

Colleen O’Dea, Senior Writer and Projects EditorNJ Decides 2020Politics

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

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

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

President Trump Your Legacy Is Secure Stop The ‘stolen Election’ Rhetoric

As many on the left have pointed out, the 2020 election was less a repudiation of Trump than a narrow loss for a man who proved just unpalatable enough for a critical sliver of his coalition.

Sean Spicer, a former Trump press secretary, told The Post his ex-boss would be an instant front-runner in a 2024 primary. “He has a rock-solid base, I just don’t think that there is anyone else who even comes close.”

Teasing a potential run in 2024 would at the very least ensure Trump stays relevant and in the press for years to come.

If Trump himself passes on the opportunity, his two very political children Don Jr. and Ivanka Trump could also potentially pick up the mantle. Trump Jr. has long acted as an outside surrogate for his father online and in the press and connects strongly with his base. Ivanka, meanwhile, has years of administration experience under her belt as a White House adviser to her father.

Republican Presidential Hopefuls Move Forward As Trump Considers 2024 Run

Less than three months after former President Donald Trump left the White House, the race to succeed him atop the Republican Party is already beginning.

Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has launched an aggressive schedule, visiting states that will play a pivotal role in the 2024 primaries, and he has signed a contract with Fox News Channel. Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, has started a political advocacy group, finalized a book deal and later this month will give his first speech since leaving office in South Carolina. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been courting donors, including in Trump’s backyard, with a prominent speaking slot before the former president at a GOP fundraising retreat dinner this month at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort where Trump now lives.

Trump ended his presidency with such a firm grip on Republican voters that party leaders fretted he would freeze the field of potential 2024 candidates, delaying preparations as he teased another run. Instead, many Republicans with national ambitions are openly laying the groundwork for campaigns as Trump continues to mull his own plans.

They’re raising money, making hires and working to bolster their name recognition. The moves reflect both the fervour in the party to reclaim the White House and the reality that mounting a modern presidential campaign is a yearslong endeavour.

___

President Trump Your Legacy Is Secure Stop The Stolen Election Rhetoric

As many on the left have pointed out, the 2020 election was less a repudiation of Trump than a narrow loss for a man who proved just unpalatable enough for a critical sliver of his coalition.

Sean Spicer, a former Trump press secretary, told The Post his ex-boss would be an instant front-runner in a 2024 primary. “He has a rock-solid base, I just don’t think that there is anyone else who even comes close.”

Teasing a potential run in 2024 would at the very least ensure Trump stays relevant and in the press for years to come.

If Trump himself passes on the opportunity, his two very political children Don Jr. and Ivanka Trump could also potentially pick up the mantle. Trump Jr. has long acted as an outside surrogate for his father online and in the press and connects strongly with his base. Ivanka, meanwhile, has years of administration experience under her belt as a White House adviser to her father.

Republican Lawmakers Are Terrified Of Trump Running For President Again

A new report by Politico cites multiple unnamed Republican lawmakers – even those who publicly praise Trump – who say that they REALLY don’t want Donald Trump running for President again in 2024. They would much rather see Trump working “behind the scenes” to help shore up support for the Party as a whole, and they insist that the Party is stronger now than it was five years ago. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Recently, Politico interviewed several Republican lawmakers, who of course all chose to remain nameless. But Politico says that these were Trump supporting lawmakers, still are Trump supporting lawmakers, by the way. And each one of them said that they do not want Donald Trump to be the Republican party’s nominee in 2024. In fact, they don’t want Trump to run for president ever again. I’ll read a couple quotes from some of these lawmakers here. Here’s what one of them said, he’s one of the best presidents we’ve had in terms of policies. But having said that if it were up to me, I would never have Trump on any ballot ever again, because it’s such a distraction. I would love for him to play a behind the scenes role and not be on the ballot. Another one said, I’d like to see a fresh face. I think we have a lot of them.

Eight Republican 2024 Candidates Speak In Texas Next Week But Not Trump

Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, April 30 – A Republican Party event in Texas next week will hear from eight potential candidates for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024, without former President Donald Trump, a source involved in the planning said on Friday.

The May 7 event at a hotel in Austin is being co-hosted by U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to thank donors who helped fund a voter registration drive and get-out-the-vote efforts in the state.

High-profile Republican politicians who are considering whether to seek the party’s nomination in 2024 are expected to speak to the crowd of about 200 donors.

They include former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and U.S. senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and Rick Scott, the source said.

The event comes as Republicans wrestle with whether to try to move past Trump in the next election cycle or fall in line behind him. Trump told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that he was “100%” considering another run after losing in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump was not invited to Texas, the source said. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was invited but was unable to attend, the source said.

Many Republican insiders doubt Trump will follow through on his musings about running for president in 2024, leaving a void that other party leaders will seek to fill.

Fact Check: Trump Did Not Call Republicans The Dumbest Group Of Voters

5 Min Read

An old quote falsely attributed to Donald Trump has recently resurfaced online. The viral meme alleges Trump told People magazine in 1998 that Republicans are “the dumbest group of voters in the country”. This is false.

While the quote has been debunked several times since it apparently surfaced in 2015, users have recently been resharing it on social media. Examples can be seen here , here , here , here

The meme reads: “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific. – Donald Trump, People Magazine, 1998”

Snopes first wrote about the false quote here in October 2015 . Since then, the quote has been debunked multiple times .

People magazine has confirmed in the past that its archive has no register of this alleged exchange.

“People looked into this exhaustively when it first surfaced back in Oct. . We combed through every Trump story in our archive. We couldn’t find anything remotely like this quote–and no interview at all in 1998.”, a magazine spokesperson told Factcheck.org that year .

In December 1987, People published a profile on Donald Trump titled “Too Darn Rich”. The article quoted him saying he was too busy to run for president .

Trump Remains 2024 Candidate Of Choice For Most Republicans Poll Shows

59% of Republican voters said they wanted Trump to play prominent role in party, but tens of thousands left after Capitol riot

If the 2024 Republican presidential primary were held today, Donald Trump would be the clear favorite to win big. That was the message from a Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday, three days after Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.

Read more

Among Republican voters, 59% said they wanted Trump to play a prominent role in their party, up a whopping 18 points from the last such poll, taken in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. A slightly lower number, 54%, said they would back Trump in the primary.

Tens of thousands of Republicans left the party after the Capitol insurrection, and a majority of Americans have told other pollsters they would like to see Trump banished from politics.

Though the 45th president will be 78 by election day 2024, he will be able to run again if he chooses, having escaped being barred from office after a 57-43 Senate vote to convict – with seven Republican defections but 10 votes short of the majority needed.

Mike Pence’s life was threatened by Trump supporters at the Capitol, as the vice-president presided over the ratification of electoral college results confirming Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden. He placed second in the Politico-Morning Consult poll, with 12%.

Trump Challengers: 10 Republicans Who Could Run For President In 2020

Ryan Sit U.S.Donald TrumpMike PenceBen SasseBob Corker

President Donald Trump faced down a crowded field of GOP presidential hopefuls in 2016 as a political outsider, but he could see a packed stage of Republican challengers again in 2020—only as an incumbent this time.

Trump made few political friends during his ascent to the White House. He made headlines making fun of his competition, doling out nicknames—”low energy Jeb Bush,”“Little Marco Rubio,”“Lyin’ Ted Cruz”—along the way. The president’s diplomatic dexterity hasn’t noticeably improved much since taking office. Senators Rubio and Cruz have improved their relationship with Trump since his inauguration, but other lawmakers from within his party have emerged as outspoken critics, fueling speculation he may face a stiff presidential primary race in 2020.

Here are 10 Republicans who may challenge Trump:

Cpac And The Broader Republican Party Agree: Its Trumps Party For Now

All VideosYouTube

alex: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. We know he’s a rising star in GOP circles and I think the CPAC straw poll pointed out his popularity among the Trump wing of the Republican Party. Another poll, too, after Trump.

Plus, being from Florida gives him an edge in a competitive state. To me, it appears that at this point, people like DeSantis because his policy priorities are similar to Trump’s, but he lacks the former president’s ego and baggage. 

sarah: Stole my first round pick!!  

geoffrey.skelley: DeSantis isn’t terribly well known, but I suspect we’ll see him try to correct for that in the coming months. He may be coy for a while about his plans, though, because he needs to win reelection in 2022, and we know that would-be candidates want to take care of the home front first.

nrakich: Yeah, I think DeSantis is a smart pick. He’s doing all the right things — picking fights with Democrats, going on Fox News a lot …

sarah: Could not agree more. There is no autopsy report yet of the 2020 election from the GOP side , but one thing that stands out to me is something Echelon Insights pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson wrote for the Washington Examiner in February, “Trump’s legacy in the party isn’t policy, and it isn’t a person. It’s a posture — a fighting posture in a moment where Republicans think the fight is what matters most.” 

I bring that up because something Anderson and her organization have found is that many GOP voters want someone who will fight for them.

Republican Support For Trump Running Again In 2024 Falls To Just 45%

Daily Mail

Republicans are quickly losing interest in President Donald Trump running for president again in 2024. 

In new polling conducted by Echelon Insights, 45 per cent of GOP-leaning voters in January said they wanted to see Trump run for the White House again in four years, down from the 65 per cent who said so in December.  

The January 6 insurrection may have played a role in the 20-point dip as January polling found that even 30 per cent of Republicans wanted to see the ex-president barred from holding office again after the MAGA riot.  

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At the same time, Democrats and independents were way more keen to see Trump punished for his role in inciting the crowd on January 6. 

Fifty-two per cent of independents said Trump shouldn’t be able to run again, with 85 per cent of Democrats in agreement. 

Thirty per cent of Republicans also agreed that Trump should be banned from social media platforms, with 29 per cent saying they’d support the ex-president being censured by Congress. 

The smallest group of Republicans, 21 per cent, wanted to see Trump impeached and convicted. 

Trump’s Senate trial begins on Capitol Hill next week.

Pollsters also asked Republicans over the past few months who they wanted as the leader of their party. 

Trump’s popularity actually increased after he lost the November 3 election to President Joe Biden. 

In November, 52 per cent of Republicans said they wanted Trump to be the leading voice of their party. 

[djgblogger-blog]

From travel bans to alternative facts: the dangerous descent into irrationality

http://bit.ly/2vzFbAS

Donald Trump has signed a new executive order preventing citizens of six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for the next 90 days. The decree covers Syria, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen, but it will not apply to visa holders or dual citizens. Refugees will be denied entry to the country for a period of 120 days.

Trump’s original travel ban was struck down by the courts in January; it also included Iraq, which has been left off the list this time.

For the past month, even after the first order was suspended, academics have been detained and questioned at American airports and many others have been left in limbo, afraid to undertake planned travel to the US.

Beyond the effects that the new ban will have on people from the Middle East and North African region, it also has serious repercussions for science. Trump’s travel prohibitions are an integral part of a broader ideology that is at war with rational critical thought. It is from that perspective that my scientist colleagues and I find ourselves most concerned.

An attack on scientists

The United States today is the world’s leading scientific research hub, and the largest producer of skilled scientists and engineers. It is difficult to estimate what percentage of the world’s active scientists are US-trained, but it is well documented that somewhere between 30% and 50% of US-trained scientists and engineers at the PhD level are foreign-born.

Many of these highly talented individuals return to their countries to support development at home. Many remain in the US to become the researchers, engineers, medical doctors and tech-entrepreneurs that fuel the economy there.

It may be anecdotal, but it is worth considering that if the father or mother of a future Steve Jobs were trying to enter the United States today, they may be prevented from doing so. As a panel of scientists and security experts argued after the 9/11 attacks, the US needs the influx of people as much, if not more than, the rest of the world needs to be allowed into the US.

It is illuminating to consider that as far back as 1996, 21% of members of the US National Academy of Science were foreign-born. This does not take into account the US-born children of immigrants who are National Academy members.

The US is where some of the most important scientific conferences, such as the Gordon Conferences, take place, and thus where some of the best ideas that might shape the future of the world are exchanged. It is therefore no surprise that the European Molecular Biology Organisation has criticised the travel ban and created a platform by which its members can offer to host their stranded colleagues.

Many scientists are now wondering whether, in solidarity with their banned colleagues, they should boycott US conferences and refuse invitations to speak in the country. Others believe this to be counterproductive, and the debate rages. Both sides make excellent points, and the answer is not simple.

What is clear is that if the proposed isolationist and discriminatory policies continue, a scientific boycott would have strong moral and political justification, comparable to that of other boycott movements that protest against discriminatory policies all over the world.

An attack on science

The travel ban is detrimental to scientific exchange and progress in the US and possibly globally – not just because it is potentially based on bad data. However, there is a far greater menace underlying its ethos, and that of the Trump administration.

While the term “alternative facts” is great comedy material, the ideology that underlies is not funny.

From a scientific perspective, it is tragic. Science is a process of generating facts (we call them data). In science there are no alternative facts. There may be alternative interpretations of the same facts, but not alternative facts.

Without confidence in facts, there can be no meaningful debate on interpretation, and thus no progress. It is a fact that the planet is warming. It is also a fact that human activity contributes significantly to that warming. Scientists may debate how to tackle these changes, and which model will best predict future effects. However, they do not disagree on the facts.

And science is much more than the collection of data. It is a process of analysis and discussion of data. It is the process that allows rational thought, open debate and the evolution of understanding to rule over personal preferences, individual biases and ideological positions.

This is not the monopoly of people in white coats who speak weird jargon and drink too much coffee. Science is the prerogative of every person in the world. It is what sustains freedom of exploration, respect for positive debate and acceptance of a better idea based on proof.

This is what the language and attitude of the current US administration seeks to undermine.

The travel ban imposed by the US administration is one symptom of a wider and more dangerous assault on fundamental values of rational thought, evidence-based opinion making and debate.

Ibn Al-Haytham: father of the scientific method. Sopianwar, CC BY-SA

It is a great irony that we are witnessing attacks on both fact and people from the Middle East and North African region, given that the father of the scientific method is the great scientist and mathematician Ibn Al-Haytham, who just happened to hail from what is today Iraq.

It is no coincidence that this assault also counts among its victims serious journalism and the courts of law.

The core values I have mentioned are key to scientific research, but they are also integral to modern democracy and respect for human dignity and equality. As such, they are worth standing up for by all of us, most of all by scientists.

Bassem Hassan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

[othersportsnews-blog]

Golfing -- Weekly eighteen -- Go with the old? The youthful? Or someplace in in between at The Open?

New Post has been published on https://othersportsnews.com/golfing-weekly-eighteen-go-with-the-old-the-youthful-or-someplace-in-in-between-at-the-open/

Golfing -- Weekly eighteen -- Go with the old? The youthful? Or someplace in in between at The Open?

It is really a extensive journey from Weekly eighteen headquarters to this week’s Open Championship. How extensive? Very long more than enough to ponder anagrams for Royal Birkdale, which consist of Undesirable Roar Possible (but at minimum under no circumstances a “Baba Booey” above listed here), Ladylike Arbor (peculiar for a inbound links system), A Dorky Liberal (hey, it is really not a Trump-owned venue) and Railroad By Elk (an clear reference to Rory McIlroy‘s diminished social media existence — and on-system effectiveness). On to greater, and unquestionably a lot more pressing, concerns as this W18 is all Open, all the time.

1. I did not just choose Rickie Fowler to gain this year’s Masters. I wrote an whole column detailing exactly why it would transpire. That’s the type of factor that’ll get a guy the #OldTakesExposed cure, but in its place I’m doubling down. That’s proper: I’m buying Fowler to gain The Open. He loves inbound links golf, but a lot more importantly, he is completely ready to gain a significant. When he walked off Erin Hills just after the final round last thirty day period, yet another golden option long gone awry, there was a tranquil self confidence all-around him, a person which instructed he knows a thing we will not. He then explained all the proper things: He was delighted with his participate in that week if he keeps knocking on the door, he’ll gain a person he won’t be able to allow that strain hassle him way too considerably. That’s the type of frame of mind that gets rewarded. It is really the type of frame of mind that has me buying him to gain this week — yet again.

two. The most common blunder produced by the masses when it arrives to predictions? It is really the identical factor these commercials generally alert in regard to the inventory marketplace: Previous effectiveness is not indicative of foreseeable future success. Really don’t think it? Request the crowd that for years clung to the notion that Sergio Garcia would under no circumstances gain a significant. Sometime soon these crowing that Fowler will under no circumstances assert a person — and it is really a large group — will be ingesting that crow in its place. Just mainly because a thing has under no circumstances occurred just before doesn’t signify it under no circumstances will.

3. The alarms have officially sounded for Rory McIlroy. Very last week, he skipped a second consecutive minimize for the initially time in a lot more than two years and he is now MC’d in a few of his earlier four starts, which equals the identical range as he owned in his prior twenty five tournaments. At Dundonald in the Scottish Open, he achieved only 50 % of greens in regulation and necessary thirty putts for every round — each range underneath the industry common. That’s an hideous blend.

four. The most important issue for McIlroy? In accordance to him, it is really the truth that he even now has not played more than enough event golf this yr, having 2 times been sidelined presently thanks to a recurring rib personal injury. “I have been playing capture-up all yr,” he explained just after the most current MC. “I just have not played more than enough. I might adore to have played a lot more.” Therein lies a Catch-22: McIlroy desires a lot more competitive rounds to participate in superior, but will have to participate in superior in buy to get a lot more competitive rounds. At some place, something’s gotta give.

Rory McIlroy, the 2014 Open winner at Royal Liverpool, has been on a run on not-so-stellar kind of late. The Northern Irishman has skipped the minimize in his earlier two European Tour starts. Glyn Kirk/AFP Photograph

five. My buddy Michael Collins and I recorded a podcast with Rafa Cabrera-Bello a several months ago and I arrived away from the conversation contemplating that he walks, talks, seems to be and functions like a superstar. The only factor lacking is that superstar résumé, but it is really finding there. RCB received the Scottish Open in a playoff — by some means, just his initially victory in the earlier half-decade — and should be a very hot name for punters likely into this week.

6. I signify, seriously, how very good is this guy’s existence? Cabrera-Bello was born in the Canary Islands, life in Dubai, owns a area in the browsing haven of Bali and is engaged to a Swedish model. Oh, and he is actually very good at golf and a wonderful guy and makes a good living. Yeah, respectable existence, I suppose.

seven. These were Padraig Harrington’s four rounds at the Scottish Open: 67-sixty eight-79-sixty six (T-four). (Raise your hand if you can location the outlier.) On the surface area, it may well glimpse discouraging that a person lousy round ruined his odds of just a second European Tour victory in the earlier nine years. Definitely, while, the whole end result should offer you a substantial improve of optimism likely ahead. Just a thirty day period ago, Harrington was strike on the elbow by the exercise swing of an amateur golfer whilst providing a clinic and thought he might’ve suffered a profession-ending personal injury. As a substitute, he returned a several months later on and has immediately turn out to be pertinent at the time yet again.

eight. If you did not observe Harrington participate in last week, you are in for a deal with. His latest swing can be explained only as Modified Pleased Gilmore as he measures into the ball at tackle and lifts his front foot during the backswing. “Each individual player knows these moves,” he spelled out. “They are schooling drills, rather considerably.” Properly, they’re also working proper now — and it is really rather exciting to observe, way too.

9. Harrington, of system, received The Open the last time it was contested at Royal Birkdale, again in 2008. He hadn’t been again to the system since, right up until a modern go to for a company outing. I requested him about that go to afterward and whilst he spelled out it did not uncover any forgotten recollections, he did try to recreate his famed five-wood from 249 yards on the 17th hole that landed 3 toes away and led to a decisive eagle. “It took a lot more club it was a distinct wind, while,” he told me, then supplied the larger cause why he could not get it there: “You just won’t be able to recreate the adrenaline.”

ten. Ian Poulter is again, ending T-9 this earlier week in Scotland. Appreciate him or despise him, Poulter is very good for golf. Why? Due to the fact there are so several players in the game who encourage more than enough passion from the masses that they are simultaneously liked by some and hated by some others. Golfing desires polarizing figures, players whose mere existence on a leaderboard is a conversation-starter. For years, Poulter has generally played the role of villain, irrespective of whether by using Ryder Cup histrionics or social media braggadocio. The game doesn’t need to have to turn out to be experienced wrestling, but having a lot more players with variable Q scores isn’t really a poor factor for small business.

Ian Poulter had to go by qualifying to make it into the industry at the Open and confirmed he is even now playing effectively with a leading-ten complete at the Scottish Open last week. Mark Runnacles/PA by using AP

eleven. Matt Kuchar posted a 3-underneath 69 on Sunday for a semi-again-door leading-ten at the Scottish Open. He does that quite commonly — so does McIlroy — but it is really generally seemed upon with disdain. I have under no circumstances comprehended that. Would folks favor a guy performs superior on Thursday and Friday, then falls off during the weekend? The “again-door” leading-ten is just yet another way of saying he played his most effective when it mattered the most.

12. Tommy Fleetwood is likely to participate in the role of media darling this week. He grew up in Southport, England, and utilised to sneak on to Royal Birkdale when he could. But the affable 26-yr-old naturally has loads of game, way too. He enters The Open with four consecutive leading-ten success, which include a solo fourth-area complete at the U.S. Open and a gain at the Open de France. So considerably for the hometown child traveling in listed here underneath the radar.

13. Just one of sports’ good debates will at the time yet again bubble to the surface area this week. You may well contact it the “British Open” — but these are battling words in the U.K., wherever this event is possibly The Open Championship or just The Open. (And wherever the PGA Championship is generally referred to as the U.S. PGA, nearly as if in retaliation.) I get the argument. “The Open” could mistakenly refer to the U.S. Open — or any other Open, for that issue. But if that’s what the event officially phone calls itself, then that’s what it is.

14. The last Open at Royal Birkdale was the initially of again-to-again title contentions for senior-eligible players. Very first, it was Greg Norman in 2008 at fifty three, who basically led likely into the again-nine on Sunday. The subsequent yr, Tom Watson arrived in a final-hole par of profitable at 59. We will not have to glimpse way too significantly for this week’s applicant. Steve Stricker is “only” 50, but he is even now playing some great golf. Following generating the minimize on the range at the John Deere Typical, he shot 65-sixty four on the weekend to sail up the leaderboard for a T-five complete. Now he heads to an occasion wherever he was solo fourth last yr just after skipping the prior a few editions.

fifteen. Just in situation anyone, someplace, even now believes golf is an “old-male sport,” listed here are the ages of the earlier 6 PGA Tour winners: 23, 23, 29, 23, 27, 24. The most current to be part of that record is 23-yr-old Bryson DeChambeau, but yet another proficient youngster who is proving himself on the game’s most important phase. With his gain at the John Deere Typical, he’ll also assert a location in this week’s Open — a worthy addition. DeChambeau has been highlighted in national Television set commercials even just before profitable as some others can attest, it is really not easy to live up to that strain. He has performed it now, which should make the victory even sweeter.

Get dates, Television set program, information coverage, live scores and success on ESPN for The Open at Royal Birkdale.

Phil Kenyon may well be a person of the most crucial voices at this week’s Open that only the toughest of tricky-core golf enthusiasts know. So how did he appear to a area of these prominence?

1 Related

sixteen. Oh, Callum Shinkwin. Bad Callum Shinkwin. Dude necessary to make a par on the reachable par-five closing hole at Dundonald in the Scottish Open for his initially profession gain, then went for it in two, flubbed a chip and still left a five-foot par putt small. Then he did it yet again on the initially playoff hole. His consolation prize? A location in this week’s Open industry, which may well not be as considerably consolation as he’ll need to have.

17. I adore this James Hahn tweet from Friday evening: “Traveling from SFO to Manchester, British isles as 1st alternate for the Open Championship. Worthy of the likelihood to compete in my most loved significant of the yr!” We’d all like to think that experienced golfers would do anything to compete in a significant. Hahn is proving it.

eighteen. There are no mulligans in experienced golf, but possibly they should even now offer you ’em in the job interview home. Listed here was Daniel Berger last week, outlining his rationale for playing the John Deere Typical just before The Open as opposed to touring overseas early: “My rookie yr, I acquired into the British Open and I went to Scotland and played the Scottish Open, and that was just way too considerably time in England.”

Resource link

[caveartfair]

The Art Market Has Changed Dramatically—but Is It a Mature Industry?

Installation view of at Art Basel, 2017. Photo by Benjamin Westoby for Artsy.

Once upon a time, art collectors would arrive at a gallery on a Saturday and spend a leisurely afternoon perusing works that might soon be a part of their intimate environment. Today, collectors are more likely to dip into a fair booth, wait for digital images and prices to arrive on their iPhones, and make a handful of six-figure purchases—perhaps destined for a private museum or foundation—in roughly the amount of time it takes to put a few books and some groceries into an Amazon cart and check out. Clearly, things have changed. But is that evolution the hallmark of a “mature” industry?

Five industry insiders, representing various nodes in the marketplace, debated this and other questions about the art market at Art Basel in Basel in June. The panelists were Lindsay Pollock, former editor-in-chief of Art in America; Olav Velthuis, sociology professor at University of Amsterdam; Adam Sheffer, partner at Cheim & Read, and president of the Art Dealers Association of America; Pierre Valentin, partner at law firm Constantine Cannon LLP in London; and Bob Rennie, Vancouver-based collector. András Szántó, an author and cultural consultant, moderated.

Szántó introduced the panel by observing how the art market’s soaring value (an estimated $56.6 billion in global sales in 2016, down from a high of $68.2 billion in 2014, according to Art Basel and UBS’s The Art Market | 2017) has reconfigured the industry’s relationships, concentrating more power and influence in the hands of the wealthiest collectors.

The panelists agreed that the art market is larger, more global, more transparent, and moves faster than ever before, but were quick to debate the finer points of the market’s need for regulation, and how much it had truly evolved. Here are three takeaways from the talk.

“Refreshing” transparency, but still “very local”

Pollock opened the panel by describing some of the changes she has seen in her decades covering the art market for the likes of the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Art in America. Most prominent among those shifts has been the sharp increase in interest in and prices for contemporary art, a change from when Impressionist and Modern works, as well as jewelry, dominated the auctions. From a journalist’s perspective, she said, transparency is on the rise, citing the recent story about a sale by collector Agnes Gund to hedge fund manager Steve Cohen of a Roy Lichtenstein painting for $165 million, the proceeds of which were slated for a criminal justice non-profit. The forthrightness around those sorts of details, she said, was “very refreshing.”

Pollock also noted a blurring of boundaries around the different roles various actors now play in the market. Auction houses, for one, have assumed new functions such as handling estates—more often the role of dealers or foundations—and offering in-house art advisory services. The blurriness extends to individuals such as François Pinault who can influence the market through a number of channels, whether as owner of Christie’s, a major collector with over 3,000 works to his name, or as the funder of non-profit spaces for contemporary art (in his case, the Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi in Venice, and a forthcoming location in Paris).

But Velthuis, the sociologist, noted that in many ways little has changed. Some of the key features of today’s art world—its financialization, say, or its global nature—are either not new or vastly overstated, he said, pointing out that syndicates of buyers have operated in the art market since the early 1900s.

While the art market certainly spans the globe, with mega-galleries and auction houses establishing new outposts across oceans, Velthuis drew a distinction between the high-level deal-making that happens at international fairs such as Basel, and the way the majority of dealers still operate, relying on a small coterie of collectors who typically live in their immediate vicinity.

“It is still often a very local market,” Velthuis said. “Don’t overestimate how global it is.”

“It’s very hard to regulate morality”

The discussion of the art market’s relative maturity raised the question of regulation: with the market currently estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, is it time for governments to step in and put their stamp on the industry? Velthuis was quick to point out that even at the high end of estimates, the entire art market is a drop in the bucket compared to a company like Walmart, which had over $480 billion in sales last year. Rather, he said, the question is: “Is the art market worth regulating?”

Valentin, the London-based lawyer, said the idea that the art market isn’t regulated is “nonsense.” A few years ago his firm counted up the existing regulations that apply to the United Kingdom’s art market, finding at least 167 rules and regulations, most of which applied broadly to all businesses, although there were some that were specific to cultural objects or antiquities. Some were national, others came from the European Union, and others stemmed from international bodies, such as UNESCO. But he stressed the challenge of regulating a market that is so international.

Rennie, a real estate developer, pointed out that discussions of art market regulation often tend to confuse regulatory action with “good morals.” In the real estate business, for example, brokers’ fees are typically standardized and clearly spelled out, which is frequently not the case in art deals. The relationship-based art industry generates information asymmetries that can be larger than in other spheres where more information is publicly available, creating more opportunities for bad actors. But is that something regulation can solve?

“It’s very hard to regulate morality,” Rennie said.

Sheffer noted that the industry group he chairs, the Art Dealers Association of America, requires its members to pledge to abide by a code of ethics, a form of self-regulation. He said any further steps towards regulation should be made carefully and thoughtfully, and most serious issues (such as fraud, perhaps, or forgeries) should be left to the courts.

“Do you want to regulate whether somebody is buying for investment value, for personal enjoyment, or for speculation?” he asked, noting these evaluations are already in the purview of the Internal Revenue Service and sometimes the legal system.

“Do you want to regulate if someone buys a horizontal painting and decides they prefer to hang it vertically?” he asked again, to some laughter. “We need to decide what we want to regulate.”

Sheffer noted this debate is more salient in places where the art market is still reaching puberty, than, say in more mature markets such as New York or London. He described visiting an organization of Korean art dealers in Seoul last winter as a board member of the international organization Talking Galleries. There, he advocated for how trade associations could work to improve and upgrade industry practices, in addition to promoting the market by organizing gallery weekends and other events. He said a trade group’s responsibilities included creating a code of ethics, ensuring members adhere to it, and disseminating news and legal developments that impact the trade.

“It was all new information to them,” he said.

Sheffer suggested art fairs could take a more robust role in promoting best practices and codes of ethics, given the outsized role they now play in the market.  

The art world is still an exclusive club

One hallmark of a mature industry, Szántó observed, is fairness, or an even playing field for all market participants. Could that be said of the art world?

Rennie, the veteran collector, described visiting Mary Boone’s gallery in the early 1990s, dressed in a ripped ski jacket, and asking two young men standing behind a desk and a woman sitting behind a typewriter whether Mary was in. Both men said no. As Rennie began to explain who he was and why he was visiting, the woman behind the typewriter jumped up, extended a hand and said, “Hi Bob, I’m Mary Boone.” That kind of selective attention, he said, happens routinely in the art world.

Further along in his collecting career, in 1999, Rennie said, things changed “very clearly” for him and his wife, after they acquired Mike Kelley’s John Glenn Memorial Detroit River Reclamation Project (Including The Local Culture Pictorial Guide, 1968-1972, Wayne/Westland Eagle).

“I found that when I mentioned that, I got into the club,” he said. “We all of a sudden got access to works that other collectors couldn’t be the custodians of.” He challenged anyone listening to “try and get a Mark Bradford.” You can’t, he said, unless you have a relationship with museums or an existing collection deemed strong or important enough to merit the opportunity to buy one of his works.

Yet this sense of exclusivity, even snobbery, is not just a fact of the art market, but the thing that makes it glimmer and shine, said Velthuis.

“It is that part of the market that makes it attractive to people, the whole spiel about the waiting lists, and about getting access and not getting access,” Velthuis said.

Art acquisition serves as “a status mechanism,” he said, a way for the newly wealthy to understand “where they are in this global cultural elite.”

In that respect, there may be parts of the art world that never fully “mature”—if by maturity one means a large, liquid market such as those for commodities or equities. As it stands, the art market is continuously welcoming new consumers, producers, and dealers from different parts of the world; new sources of data and information; and new ways to discover, discuss, and purchase art, perhaps putting it more in a stage of prolonged adolescence. But the depth of the conversation underscored the how seriously some of its top players are thinking about the challenges and opportunities at stake in an industry that is clearly growing and evolving.

—Anna Louie Sussman

from Artsy News

[healthserv]

Time to Start Over!

By STEVE FINDLAY

The CBO’s analysis of the House and Senate health bills should kill them both—permanently.

Republicans should go back to the drawing board and work with Democrats in both the House and Senate to achieve bipartisan fixes to the ACA/Obamacare marketplaces for 2018 and 2019.

That is the far and away the best thing to do from a policy and political perspective.   The vast majority of Americans would stand up and cheer. Two polls out this week, for example, add to previous surveys showing deeply low public support for the Republican bills.

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that just 12 percent of Americans overall support the Senate Republican plan, including only 26 percent of Republicans. Similarly, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found 17 percent in favor overall, with Republican support at 35 percent.

Just 25 percent of respondents in the latter poll say the want Congress to repeal the ACA completely—consistent with other polls since late 2016.

Trump has suggested a bipartisan path several times in recent months, although there’s no evidence he ever reached out to Democrats and he just as frequently demonized them as “obstructionists.”

That Trump does not now see that he’d likely be hailed a hero if he brought the two sides together on this issue is a failure of judgment and leadership, in my view.

Recognizing the importance of optics to this President, even Obama has said Trump and Congress can call whatever emerges a “repeal” of Obamacare if they want.

Working together, Republicans and Democrats should first and foremost stabilize the exchanges by means of these and other measures:

(1) Increase premium subsidies/tax credits for low-income people

(2) Enact some hybrid of the exchange market stabilization funds in the House and Senate bills. Those earmarked between $10 and $20 billion a year to reduce premiums where needed, subsidize insurers for very expensive claims, attract new insurers in poorly served areas, and expand enrollment of healthy young and middle aged people.

(3) Fund the cost saving reduction (CSR) payments—deductible and co-pay help—in full for two to three years—at $7 to $10 billion per year.

(4) Bring back the reinsurance fund for insurers. This operated from 2014 to 2016, helping to defray insurers costs for outlier claims and thereby reducing premiums by 5% to 10% a year. The temporary program’s termination was one factor in the average 22 percent increase in premiums across the country in 2017.

(5) Provide additional funding to states to allocate to insurers to ramp up opioid addiction and substance abuse/mental health treatment. The Senate bill provided $2 billion for this over 10 years. Much more is needed—on the order of $1 to $3 billion per year.

(6) Provide more funding to the nationwide network of community health centers. With a history of bipartisan support, the 1,300 centers serve the medical needs of about 25 million low-income people. Since the ACA was enacted, the centers have steered millions of people to sign-up for exchange coverage or Medicaid. Under current law, they will receive about $4 billion in federal funds in 2017. The Senate bill increases that by $422 million.   The centers should get an additional $1 billion or so for 2017 and 2018.

(7) Expand section 1332 of the ACA to make it easier for states to experiment with their insurance systems as long as those experiments obey the ACA’s insurance rules on consumer protections and do not increase the number of people without coverage nor cost the federal government more money.   (Hey, if California, Vermont or Massachusetts want to enact a single payer system with their own money, let them do it. The current effort in Calif. appears to be dead in the water for this year.)

The House and Senate bill’s Medicaid overhaul should be abandoned and the Medicaid expansion component of the ACA retained. Long-term fixes to that program are needed but should not be taken up now.

Lost their way

The CBO verdicts on both bills show us that Republicans lost their way. Many commentators have said the process was purely political—with little attention to the actual policies they were proposing.

I don’t buy that.  Yes, Republicans are guilty of political hubris, legislative overreach, and an exclusionary process that ignored congressional norms. But they are also guilty—with full awareness of the impact—of trying to undo 52 years of a delicately balanced federal-state partnership (Medicaid) to serve the health needs of low-income Americans, including millions of seniors and children. And they are guilty, most cynically, of proposing to dramatically reduce the growth in Medicaid spending to deliver a tax cut to the wealthy and to corporations.

This is a disturbing place to be for our nation. For the second time in a decade, we are debating whether social insurance and guaranteed universal health coverage are good ideas. Every other modern, industrialized democracy—and most other non-democratic wealthy nations—long ago resolved this issue. That includes the conservative parties in those countries.

Other nation’s leaders and their people embrace both concepts because no matter what your political views or values, both concepts (in tandem in health care) deliver multiple benefits.

Broad social insurance and a universal coverage system don’t just assure people access to health care. They create social equality and stability, and enhance employment, productivity and economic growth by keeping larger portions of the population healthy and working.

Absolutely alone, the Republican party in the United States is the only political entity in the western developed world that does not concur that an egalitarian social insurance approach to health care is the most efficient one.

Also, shamefully, Republicans propose their alternative “free-market” path even as research reveals a USA where: (a) racism remains a poisonous force that still divides us (Black and Hispanic Americans are much more likely to lack coverage and die younger); (b) the premature death rate among low-income white Americans is increasing for the first time in decades; (c) as many people are dying of drug overdoses and related afflictions as traffic accidents; and (d) mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and PTSD are on the rise and more prevalent than in other OECD countries.

The House and Senate bills are mean. The impulse and philosophy behind them pretends to be mostly about reining in long-term federal spending, creating more competition in health care, giving consumers more choice, removing government mandates on businesses and people, and giving states more flexibility (although mostly to spend their own tax dollars.)

To be fair, some of that agenda should be in play. More competition among insurers and in doctor’s fees, health products, and prescription drug prices—would be welcome. And the growth in health costs and spending will have to be constrained; it’s unsustainable after about 2024.

But neither the House nor Senate repeal bills lift a finger to reduce underlying health care costs. Instead, they shift the burden of rising costs to states, businesses, and consumers/families.

Sadly, the more foundational Republican philosophy in this legislation is social Darwinism: The fittest survive and thrive. The poor are that way, and usually sicker, because—well, they just are. People are ultimately responsible for their health; government is not responsible.   We spend too much money on the poor. We are not a European welfare state. This is not a socialist country. You make your own way here. No handouts. You gotta earn your insurance, and have “skin in the game.” Medicaid is just a welfare program.

It’s all right there in Kellyanne Conway’s telling comment on a talk show this past Sunday: “People who lose Medicaid should just get a job with benefits.”

You can read the CBO report or the handy summary on CBO’s web page.        It’s a straightforward 49-page document.

I concur with Vox’s terrific health policy reporter Sarah Kliff that Table 5 on page 48 is especially worth checking out.   It shows, for example, that a 64 year-old single person with an income of $56,000 who opts for a silver plan would pay an estimated net annual premium (after subsidies) of $6,800 in 2026 if current law (the ACA) is maintained. Under the Senate bill, this person would pay a net premium of $20,500.

In contrast, a 21 year-old buying the same silver plan would see their net premium decline by $1,000, from $5,100 to $4,100 by 2026 under the Senate bill, compared to the ACA.

From the CBO’s summary:

“Under the Senate bill, average premiums for benchmark plans for single individuals would be about 20 percent higher in 2018 than under current law, mainly because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated, inducing fewer comparatively healthy people to sign up.”

By 2020, average premiums for single individuals would decline by about 30 percent compared to current law, however, CBO predicts. Hmmm, that sounds good.   It’s not. Why? Because the decline is due in large part to, in CBO’s words, “the smaller share of benefits paid for by the benchmark plans.”

Translation: Premiums would decline because people would be buying policies that had a significantly lower actuarial value (close to 55%), much higher deductibles ($6,000 and up) and co-pays, and possibly fewer benefits as a dozen or more states opt out of the ACA mandated essential health benefits.

The CBO’s predicted loss of insurance by 22 million people by 2026 (15 million in 2018) stems from six key provisions in the Senate bill, according to a nice summary from the Commonwealth Fund:

Smaller premium tax credits compared to the ACA that make coverage less affordable for low-income people

The ability of insurers to charge older people premiums up to five times more than they charge young people, making coverage much more expensive for older people

Higher deductibles and copayments that make coverage less valuable for everyone

A phase-out of the Medicaid expansion starting in 2020 that reduces coverage for low-income people

A $772 billion reduction in federal funds over 2017–2026 for state Medicaid programs that could leave children, disabled people, and the elderly with fewer or no benefits

  Time to Start Over! published first on http://ift.tt/2sUuvu3