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What Cities Are Run By Republicans

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What Cities Are Run By Republicans

Democrats Outnumber Gop Voters About 6 To 1 But Republican Candidates Think People Will Cross Party Lines Over Recent Crime Wave

New York City GOP mayoral candidates Curtis Sliwa, left, and Fernando Mateo have sparred over their qualifications and past missteps.

Two longtime New York City fixtures are enmeshed in a hotly contested primary fight for the Republican nomination in the race to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat.

A poll released last week by WPIX-Channel 11, NewsNation and Emerson College showed Curtis Sliwa, founder of the crime-prevention group Guardian Angels, ahead of Fernando Mateo, a politically connected entrepreneur and longtime advocate for taxi drivers and bodega owners, by 33% to 27%, with 40% of those Republican registered voters who were polled still undecided.

Despite its closeness, the June 22 Republican primary between the former friends turned foes hasn’t garnered much public attention. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans citywide by more than 6 to 1.

The lack of competitiveness in political races over the past decade spurred a voter-outreach effort earlier this year to get Republican and independent voters to re-enroll as Democrats so they can have a say in the . During the outreach, Democrats saw a net gain of nearly 12,000 registered voters, according to the city’s Board of Elections.

Still, both Republicans insist they can win the general election. They said they think enough voters—especially moderate Democrats—will vote across party lines because of the crime surge that has plagued the city since the Covid-19 pandemic struck last year.

Trump Keeps Claiming That The Most Dangerous Cities In America Are All Run By Democrats They Arent

With the economy hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic and protesters in the streets targeting America’s systemic racism, President Trump has been forced to revise his reelection strategy. What was once going to be a triumphal declaration of his effectiveness at keeping the economy afloat has been reworked as a reiteration of his 2016 run: a focus on making America great and, more specifically, on law and order.

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Over and over, Trump has shared that terse phrase with his tens of millions of Twitter followers, including on Wednesday and Thursday. And over and over, he has tried to imply that Democrats broadly and former vice president Joe Biden specifically are soft on crime. That his likely general election opponent and other leaders in the Democratic Party are happy to have social structures collapse into anarchy for some unclear reason.

To make that case, Trump has repeatedly lifted up a statistical factoid, as he did during an event at the White House on Wednesday.

“You hear about certain places like Chicago and you hear about what’s going on in Detroit and other — other cities, all Democrat run,” he said. “Every one of them is Democrat run. Twenty out of 20. The 20 worst, the 20 most dangerous are Democrat run.”

It’s not clear how Trump is defining “most dangerous” in this context. So let’s look at two related sets of data compiled by the FBI: most violent crime and most violent crime per capita.

Well, reader, I have a surprise for you.

Opinionhow Can Democrats Fight The Gop Power Grab On Congressional Seats You Won’t Like It

Facing mounting pressure from within the party, Senate Democrats finally hinted Tuesday that an emboldened Schumer may bring the For the People Act back for a second attempt at passage. But with no hope of GOP support for any voting or redistricting reforms and Republicans Senate numbers strong enough to require any vote to cross the 60-vote filibuster threshold, Schumer’s effort will almost certainly fail.

Senate Democrats are running out of time to protect America’s blue cities, and the cost of inaction could be a permanent Democratic minority in the House. Without resorting to nuclear filibuster reform tactics, Biden, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be presiding over a devastating loss of Democrats’ most reliable electoral fortresses.

Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies. Find him on Twitter @themaxburns.

Rand Pauls Claim That Cities And States Led By Democrats Have The Worst Income Inequality

“We ought to look where income inequality seems to be the worst. It seems to be worst in cities run by Democrats, governors of states run by Democrats and countries currently run by Democrats. So the thing is, let’s look for root causes.”

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— Sen. Rand Paul , Republican debate on Fox Business News, Nov. 10, 2015

Several readers wanted to know whether this statement was true. We looked into a portion of the statement for our debate roundup and determined that the claim lacked context, although the data supported his claim about Democrat-led cities. There was more to explore here, so we decided to dig further. How accurate is Paul’s claim?

Essential Politics: Democrats Scramble To Combat Rising Homicide Rates In American Cities

David Lauter

This is the June 25, 2021, edition of the Essential Politics newsletter. Like what you’re reading? to get it in your inbox three times a week.

A rise in violent crime in the nation’s cities poses a threat to the Democratic Party that little else could rival; finding a way to address the problem has posed difficult challenges for the party’s leaders.

Over the last two decades, America’s politics has divided more and more along lines of city versus countryside. Democrats built an urban-based coalition that unites progressive whites — mostly young and college-educated — with a Black and Latino voter base that’s more often working class.

That happened only after years of sharp declines in crime opened the way for the transformation of urban neighborhoods from Crown Heights in Brooklyn to Silver Lake in Los Angeles.

Just as white flight from cities helped power the Republican rise from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan, the urban resurgence of the last 20 years, despite all the attendant problems of gentrification, helped make possible the coalitions that elected Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Rising crime acts like kryptonite on such coalitions, sapping their strength and laying bare their flaws.

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The latest news, analysis and insights from our politics teams from Sacramento to D.C.

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Rising Violent Crime Is Likely To Present A Political Challenge For Democrats In 2022

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President Biden hosts a White House meeting about reducing gun violence on July 12. Violent crime is on the rise in many U.S. urban areas, and Democratic political strategists believe the White House needs to take on the issue of crime directly.

Violent crime is on the rise in urban areas across the country.

Many small cities that typically have relatively few murders are seeing significant increases over last year. Killings in Albuquerque, N.M., Austin, Texas, and Pittsburgh, for example, have about doubled so far in 2021, while Portland, Ore., has had five times as many murders compared to last year, according to data compiled by Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.

Most cities in the United States, including each of those named above, have a Democratic mayor. After protests last year over police violence against Black Americans — notably the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis — there has been a push from the left to “defund” police departments.

As a result, several cities, including Austin and New York, have reduced or reallocated police budgets — though some cities have looked to restore funding in recent months.

That debate over funding, coupled with the rise in crime, has given Republicans what they believe is an opening in key swing districts that could decide control of the U.S. House next year. The GOP needs to pick up just a net of five seats to do so.

List Of Rioted Cities And Their Political Affiliation Wait Until You See These Stats

List of cities where riots, looting & violence were reported, their mayors, governors and their political affiliation.

Which cites are burning, and what political party runs them? Check out the list below.

I’m just here to state some facts. I am not getting into the whole debate about racism, George Floyd, or anything other than the cities the violent riots and looting are taking place in. We’ve all watched the videos of rioters looting, smashing windows, burning buildings, assaulting police, assaulting private individuals and a whole slew of other horrendous things. I do have some questions though; In many of these cities, the police are being told to ‘stand down’; WHY? .. In some cities, the mayors are even encouraging the riots. WHY? .. Why have some cities called in the nation Guard, but have NOT given them the GO signal? Why are locals in each rioted city telling us that most of the people doing the damage are out-of-towners? Where are they coming from? Who’s bringing them in? Are they being paid? … Lot’s of unanswered questions here folks. Feel free to comment below.

The list contains 29 cities; of which 26 have Democrat Mayors and 3 have Republican Mayors. The # of states may look skewed because some states are listed more than once , but there’s no doubt that even the Democratic run states out number Republican ones. Check out the list below, and don’t forget to Comment.

The Top 10 Cities For Mass Shootings: All Of Them Are Run By The Democratic Party

Tuesday, March 30, 2021 By Stillness in the Storm

The American news media reports every “mass shooting” that fits its political narrative. But a check of the statistics for mass shootings shows that overwhelming majority are committed in Democrat-run cities, including those with strict gun control laws and “gun-free zones.”

The number of mass shootings in the last three years is mind-boggling. There was a total of 424 in 2019; 612 in 2020; and 105 so far in 2021. A mass shooting is defined as an incident in which four or more subjects are shot by a firearm.

The following are the top cities for mass shootings, according to a verifiable database called Mass Shootings Info.

Image Credit: Mass-shootings-info

The top cities for mass shootings: Chicago ; Philadelphia ; New York City ; Houston ; and Baltimore These cities are all run by the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party’s “solution” to the surging crime in America’s cities is to blame the police or to outright defund them. It is only fueling a crime surge that is reversing decades of overall decreasing violent crime.

The following Democrat-run cities are now seeing massive spikes in violence, including mass shootings.

Did Record Gun Sales Cause A Spike In Gun Crime Researchers Say It’s Complicated

“Democrats across the country spent the last year defunding police departments, so they shouldn’t be surprised when voters hold them responsible for the spike in violent crime,” said Mike Berg, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which recruits and advises GOP congressional candidates.

Republicans are already going after Democrats with a three-pronged strategy that includes attacks on crime; the economy, particularly rising inflation and labor shortages; and border security.

Meet The Republicans Representing Cities With A Higher Murder Rate Than Chicago

5 years old

As Democrats escalate calls for tougher gun laws, conservative House members offer pushback but few alternatives to gun control laws

Tue 12 Jul 2016 11.45 BST Last modified on Wed 26 Feb 2020 18.01 GMT

In the wake of a sniper attack on Dallas law enforcement officers that left five officers dead and nine wounded, House Democrats have continued to push for a vote on gun control legislation before the congressional session ends on Friday.

“If this Congress does not have the guts to lead, then we are responsible for all of the bloodshed of the streets of America, whether it be at the hands of the people wearing a uniform or whether it’s at the hands of criminals,” Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, who represents parts of Baton Rouge and New Orleans, said on Friday.

House Republicans are refusing to allow an up or down vote on Democrats’ gun control bills, including a bill to expand background checks on gun sales, which some researchers believe could help reduce urban gun violence. At least 11 House Republicans represent large cities with murder rates even higher than Chicago’s. All of them have A ratings from the National Rifle Association, earned from a record of supporting gun rights and opposing gun control.

A few of these representatives offered alternatives to gun control that they believe will do more to reduce gun violence: better re-entry programs for formerly incarcerated Americans, job creation or improvements to the mental health system.

Eric Holder: There Is Still A Fight For Democrats Against Gop Gerrymandering

In McConnell’s Kentucky, for instance, Republicans are divided over how far to go during the upcoming redistricting process, which they control in the deep-red state. The more extreme wing wants to crack the Democratic stronghold of Louisville, currently represented by Rep. John Yarmuth. More cautious Republicans like McConnell are willing to settle for smaller changes that reduce Democratic margins while stuffing more Republican voters into hotly contested swing districts.

Make no mistake: McConnell’s caution isn’t rooted in any newfound respect for the integrity of our electoral process. Instead, Republicans are mainly worried about avoiding the costly and embarrassing court decisions that invalidated their most extreme overreaches and potentially turn the line-drawing over to the courts. So McConnell’s approach doesn’t reject partisan gerrymandering — it just avoids the type of high-profile city-cracking that could land the Kentucky GOP in federal court.

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For instance, in 2020, Yarmuth won his Louisville district with a comfortable 62.7 percent of the vote. By turning Yarmuth’s single district into portions of two or three new districts, Republicans could turn his safe blue seat into swing districts and safe Republican strongholds. But the naked politicking of that kind of move would invite dozens of court challenges from outraged Democrats and election integrity organizations, tying up GOP time and treasure in the middle of campaign season.

Yet relying on the Republican-aligned Supreme Court to find a remedy is a gamble that could just as easily backfire on Democrats. In the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause, the conservative majority ruled 5-4 that Congress, not the federal courts, must address partisan gerrymandering. As a result, half a dozen Democrat-filed federal cases were tossed out and the gerrymandered district maps allowed to stand. More outcomes like that would be catastrophic both for Democrats and democracy.

For now, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee is fighting back against Republican efforts in a flurry of high-profile lawsuits. The organization, chaired by former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., has said it is committed to countering the Republican plan to split up blue cities.

Hope For Normalcy Is Growing Here’s What Americans Are Still Worried About

He continuously reiterated a version of that response as he faced pressure from the left and criticism from conservatives. Biden won, despite accusations from the right that he was merely a Trojan Horse for progressives and a socialist, police-defunding agenda.

But crime continues to be a nagging issue for Biden. He gets high marks for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic — undoubtedly the top issue of concern when he took office six months ago. But crime is rising in importance for many Americans, and they’re split on his handling of it.

That has led the White House to make a show of doing something about the issue, despite the decentralization of police departments across the country, which are controlled at the municipal level.

“It seems like most of my career I’ve been dealing with this issue,” Biden said earlier this month while convening a meeting of law enforcement and local officials. “While there’s no ‘one-size-fit-all’ approach, we know there are some things that work, and the first of those that work is stemming the flow of firearms used to commit violent crimes.”

Biden and crime have gone back decades. During the 2020 presidential primary, he had to fend off criticism from the left for writing the 1990s-era crime bill. Violent crime then was at a high, but critics have said the bill helped lead to the mass incarceration of many Black men, and often not for violent crime.

Elleithee echoed that.

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When It Comes To Big City Elections Republicans Are In The Wilderness

The party’s growing irrelevance in urban and suburban areas comes at a considerable cost, sidelining conservatives in centers of innovation and economic might.

When Jerry Sanders finished his second term as mayor of San Diego in 2012, he was the most prominent Republican city executive in the country. A former police chief close to the business community, Mr. Sanders appeared to be a political role model for other would-be Republican mayors, a moderate who worked with the Obama administration on urban policy and endorsed gay marriage at a pivotal moment.

These days, Mr. Sanders said, Republicans are out of touch with diverse metropolitan areas. He said Republicans appeared to lack “real solutions” to issues like crime, and lamented the party’s exclusionary message that drives off young people, Hispanics and gay voters in cities like his.

“I don’t think the right has kept up with the times,’’ Mr. Sanders, 70, said in an interview. He said he renounced his party affiliation on Jan. 7, the day after the mob attack on the Capitol.

Across the political map this year, Mr. Sanders’s diagnosis of his former party appears indisputable: In off-year elections from Mr. Sanders’s California to New York City and New Jersey and the increasingly blue state of Virginia with its crucial suburbs of Washington, D.C., the Republican Party’s feeble appeal to the country’s big cities and dense suburbs is on vivid display.

“They go back to that stuff, I’m in trouble,” he said with a laugh.

Rogue City Leaders: How Republicans Are Taking Power Away From Mayors

State lawmakers are preempting the ability of city leaders to enforce their own regulations. The moves represent a sharp ideological shift for a party that has long championed local control.

Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey arrives for a news conference to talk about the latest Arizona COVID-19 information in Phoenix on Dec. 2, 2020. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo

06/23/2021 04:30 AM EDT

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Mayors and city councils across Arizona issued face mask mandates during the pandemic to prevent the spread of Covid-19, angering conservative state lawmakers who decried government overreach. So the legislators turned to the newest Republican playbook and passed a law allowing businesses to ignore those public health requirements.

The one-line “preemption” law signed in April by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who refused to issue a statewide mask order, won’t make much of an immediate difference now. It doesn’t go into effect until later this year, and local officials have lifted mask mandates in compliance with CDC guidelines as the threat of the virus subsides.

But the bill’s main sponsor says it was needed to ensure “rogue city leaders” can’t impose mask mandates again, should another outbreak occur.

An usher holds a sign to remind fans to wear masks during a spring training baseball game between the Oakland Athletics and the Arizona Diamondbacks in Scottdale, Ariz. | Ashley Landis/AP Photo

Is There Currently Riots/looting *only* In Democrat Cities In The Usa

So pathetic to watch the Fake News Lamestream Media playing down the gravity and depravity of the Radical Left, looters and thugs, ripping up our Liberal Democrat run cities. It is almost like they are all working together?

Not being an American, I am unsure what “Liberal Democrat run cities” are. I will guess those having a Democrat mayor, but am willing to be corrected.

Irrespective of your politics and whether you call them protests or riots, are there currently “large street gatherings”only in Democrat run cities?

Mawg says reinstate Monica

No.

Cities are generally democrat-leaning – 35 with democratic mayors vs 13 republican in the 50 largest cities.

But cities with republican mayors also had protests which resulted in property damage. An incomplete list of examples:

List Of Current Mayors Of The Top 100 Cities In The United States

Municipal partisanship in 2021

This page lists the current mayors of the 100 largest U.S. cities by population.

As of 2013, an estimated 62,186,079 citizens lived in these cities, accounting for 19.67 percent of the nation’s total population.

In most of the nation’s largest cities, mayoral elections are officially nonpartisan, though many officeholders and candidates are affiliated with political parties. Ballotpedia used one or more of the following sources to identify each officeholder’s partisan affiliation: direct communication from the officeholder, current or previous candidacy for partisan office, or identification of partisan affiliation by multiple media outlets. As of August 2021, the partisan breakdown of the mayors of the 100 largest U.S. cities was 63 Democrats, 26 Republicans, four independents, and six nonpartisans. The affiliation of one mayor was unknown.

Of these cities, there are 47 strong mayor governments, 46 council-manager governments, six hybrid governments, and one city commission.

At the start of 2021…

HIGHLIGHTS

Based on 2013 population estimates, 76% of the population of the top 100 cities lived in cities with Democratic mayors, and 15% lived in cities with Republican mayors.

Allen Joines , mayor of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, had been in office the longest; he first took office in 2001.

This page includes:

Select a topic from the dropdown below to learn more.Submit

100 Largest Cities By Population Rank Strong mayor No

The Ten Most Dangerous Cities In The Us Are All Run By Democrats

United States

Aug 28, 2020 3:16:00 PM

While the cities with the highest crimes have Democrat mayors, studies show little correlation between party affiliations and crime.

During the 2020 presidential election race, President Donald Trump has claimed on multiple occasions that Democrats run the most dangerous cities in the U.S.

Preliminary data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report covering the first half of 2019 shows the ten cities with the highest overall violent crimes in decreasing order are: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Memphis, Detroit, Dallas, Phoenix, and Baltimore. Based on the number of crimes per 10,000 residents, the top ten cities are Memphis , St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Springfield, Little Rock., Stockton , Cleveland, St. Bernardino, and Oakland . All the mayors of the cities with the highest overall violent crimes are Democrats. The cities with the most violent crime per capita have Democrat mayors except Springfield, which has an independent mayor.

Hence equating surging crime rates with certain party affiliations in cities does not count as a realistic picture of the reasons why certain cities have high crime rates, thus making this claim misleading.

Reference links

Map: Republicans To Have Full Control Of 23 States Democrats 15

In 2021, Republicans will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 23 states. Democrats will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 15 states.

Population of the 24 fully R-controlled states: 134,035,267Population of the 15 fully D-controlled states: 120,326,393

Republicans have full control of the legislative branch in 30 states. Democrats have full control of the legislative branch in 18 states.

Population of the 30 fully R-controlled legislature states: 185,164,412Population of the 18 fully D-controlled legislature states: 133,888,565

This week, Andrew Cuomo’s star went down in flames. While the smoke clears, let’s take a moment to sit back and reminisce about the governor’s long history with ethical and legal violations.

Cuomo’s controversies regarding sexual harassment and nursing homes deaths were far from his first abuses of power. In fact, his administration has a long history of it, ranging from interfering with ethics commissions, to financial corruption.

In July 2013, Cuomo formed the Moreland Commission to investigate corruption in New York’s government. At first it was a success, giving Cuomo good PR. Yet as it went on there were rumors that, contrary to his claim that “Anything they want to look at they can look at,” Cuomo was interfering with the Commission’s investigations. There was friction within the Commission, itself with two factions forming: “’Team Independence’ and ‘Team We-Have-a-Boss’.”

Three Democrats Three Republicans Advance In City Council Race

Hannah Manley hands her ballot to election judge Joann Vioda during Tuesday’s primary election at Southview Baptist Church.

Margaret Reist

The three incumbents on the Lincoln City Council, two Republicans new to politics and a Democrat on the city-county planning commission advanced to the general election Tuesday night, narrowing a crowded race.

Twelve candidates vied for three at-large City Council seats — the largest field of candidates in 16 years, which included a host of newcomers to politics.

Tom Beckius

Mary Hilton

Three of those newcomers will advance: Tom Beckius, a Democrat who works in real estate and construction and serves on the Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission; Mary Hilton, a Republican and issues advocate; and Eric Burling, a Republican and software engineer running a study-abroad company.

Lincoln City Councilman Roy Christensen

Sändra Washington

The three incumbents who advanced: Roy Christensen, a Republican and audiologist seeking his third term; Bennie Shobe, a Democrat and program analyst at the Nebraska Department of Labor seeking his second term; and Sändra Washington, a Democrat and retired National Parks Service employee who was appointed after Leirion Gaylor Baird became mayor in 2019.

The top three vote-getters were the incumbents, with Democrats Washington and Shobe taking the top spots.

Washington said she’s very pleased, especially since this is her first campaign.

Beckius said he was thrilled to have such a strong turnout.

List Of Mayors Of The 50 Largest Cities In The United States

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This is a list of mayors of the 50 largest cities in the United States, are ordered the estimated populations as of July 1, 2017. These 50 cities have a combined population of 49.6 million, or 15% of the national population. Louisville, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Nashville, and Honolulu have consolidated city-county governments where the mayor is elected by residents of the entire county not just that of the main city; in these cases the population and respective rank are for the county.

In some states, mayors are officially elected on a nonpartisan basis; however, their party affiliation or preference is generally known, and where it is known it is shown in the list below.

The breakdown of mayoral political parties is 36 Democrats, 11 Republicans, and 3 Independents .

Party Affiliation Of The Mayors Of The 100 Largest Cities

Municipal partisanship in 2021

In most of the nation’s largest cities, mayoral elections are officially nonpartisan. However, many officeholders are affiliated with political parties. Ballotpedia uses one or more of the following sources to identify each officeholder’s partisan affiliation: direct communication from the officeholder, current or previous candidacy for partisan office, or identification of partisan affiliation by multiple media outlets.

Democratic mayors oversaw 64 of the 100 largest cities at the beginning of 2021, 64 at the beginning of 2020, 61 at the start of 2019, 63 at the start of 2018, 64 at the beginning of 2017, and 67 at the start of 2016.

This page includes:

Who runs the cities?: A chart tracking mayors by party affiliation.

List of mayors: A list of mayors of the 100 largest cities.

Mayoral partisanship: 2016-2021: A chart showing the partisan breakdown of mayors from 2016 to 2021.

History of local nonpartisanship: A look at the history and debate surrounding local nonpartisan elections.

Mayoral partisanship and preemption conflicts: An overview of preemption conflicts between state and local governments.

The following pages track municipal partisanship by year:

See also: Partisanship in United States municipal elections

As of August 2021, the mayors of 63 of the country’s 100 largest cities are affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Americas Top 20 Cities For Crime And What Party Runs Them

President Donald Trump cites Detroit as one of the high-crime cities run by Democrats. Pictured: A Detroit police officer uses tear gas during a May 29 protest over the death four days earlier of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Annoyed that Senate Democrats are blocking a police reform bill, President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the 20 U.S. cities with the highest crime rates are all run by Democrats.

“The Senate Republicans want very much to pass a bill on police reform,” Trump said during a Rose Garden press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda. “I would like to see it happen. We won’t sacrifice. We won’t do that. We won’t do anything that is going to hurt our police.”

The president added:

We have a record positive rating on crime, a record positive rating on crime this year. The best. You hear about certain places like Chicago and you hear about what’s going on in Detroit and other cities, all Democrat-run. Every one of them is Democrat-run. The 20 worst, the 20 most dangerous are Democrat-run.

A quick fact check shows that Trump is at least mostly correct. One ranking says the top 20 most dangerous cities are run by 18 Democrat mayors and two mayors who were elected in nonpartisan races.

According to the website Neighborhood Scout, which in January published a list of the 100 most dangerous cities in America, heavily Democrat Detroit tops the list. At No. 20 is Chester, Pennsylvania, also with a Democrat mayor.

Homicides Are Up But Gop Misleads With Claims About Blame

Some police organizations and Republican politicians are blaming Democrats and last year’s defund the police effort for a troubling rise in homicides in many cities across the country

Senate Republicans set to block Jan. 6 commission bill

WASHINGTON — “SKYROCKETING MURDER RATES,” claimed the National Fraternal Order of Police. “An explosion of violent crime,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Democrat-run cities across the country who cut funding for police have seen increases in crime,” tweeted U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C.

On social media and in political speeches, some Republicans and pro-police groups say last year’s calls to slash spending on law enforcement have led to a dramatic rise in killings in cities overseen by Democrats.

The increases they cite are real, and several big cities did make cuts to police spending. But the reductions were mostly modest, and the same big increases in homicides are being seen nationwide — even in cities that increased police spending. At the same time, the rates for burglaries, drug offenses and many other types of crime are down in many cities across the country.

The effort to blame Democrats for crime may offer a preview of Republicans’ strategy for upcoming elections: a new twist on an old “law and order” argument from the party’s past, harkening back to President Richard Nixon.

Top Republicans have taken up the claim, too.

Yet homicide rates are also increasing in cities that didn’t cut spending.

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blessuswithblogs · 7 years

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On the anti-imperialist roots of the Super Robot genre

Tadao Nagahama is probably not a name you're familiar with. I won't reproach you for it, it's been a while, I had to look it up myself to help me remember. However, Nagahama is an extremely important person for my current subject of discussion: the anti-imperialist, anti-war roots of the Super Robot genre. Shinzo Abe, the current prime minister of Japan, probably most widely known in the west for wearing a Mario hat to promote the next olympic games, has been in his own quiet (and not so quiet) way contributing to the rise of hard right nationalism, historical revisionism, fascism, and a whole bunch of other nasty isms that have found traction in today's sociopolitical climate. Recently, I saw in passing a tweet about how the ever-popular, ever-mystifying Kancolle had an episode where Japan ended up winning the battle of Midway. Propaganda in media is nothing new, but that was quite egregious, even by my desensitized standards. It got me thinking a little bit about my own niche anime interests and how the common perception of the mecha genre is probably one either of random Gurren Lagann bullshit or simplistic, thinly veiled pro-Japan ideology packaged in a kid friendly, larger than life veneer. In a lot of ways, early Super Robots shared more in common with classical American Super Heroes than actual Japanese Super Heroes like Kamen Rider, which evolved into their own tokusatsu genre quite distinct from either paradigm.

I cannot rightly dispute these preconceptions as wrong, but I do want to at least bring up that some early, influential franchises rejected this narrative. One of the first of these, of course, is Mobile Suit Gundam. While now we have the distinction between Super Robot (robots that are like larger than life super heroes) and Real Robot (robots that are presented in a realistic context as weapons of war using standardized technology employed by military and paramilitary forces to project force) for tedious nerds to bicker over indefinitely, in the days of the original Gundam, that distinction did not exist. Indeed, to play for ratings, Yoshiyuki Tomino, famed creator of the Gundam franchise, had to make many concessions to his sponsors and make Amuro Ray's Gundam more like its more popular contemporaries, with goofy mid-season combination upgrades and some extremely anachronistic weaponry like a beam trident and a huge, MS sized ball and chain. On the back of his later success, Zeta Gundam and the seemingly never ending number of side-stories like War in the Pocket and Stardust Memory, Tomino would actually go on to revise the original series in a definitive movie compilation that cut out a great deal of filler and blatantly unrealistic (or at least immersion breaking) elements. This version is extremely good by the way. Give it a watch if you're interested in the genre's history or if you just like old sci-fi.

The reason I bring this up is sort of my roundabout way of arguing that while the Gundam of today is made of entirely different stock than Super Robots, the original article deserves a space in this discussion. The discussion being, of course, the distinctly anti-nationalist bent of a lot of early Super Robot shows. In all of its many incarnations, good, bad, and inbetween, Gundam is a story about war really sucking and how tragic it is that we fail to understand one another because it's easier to just kill one another instead. Now, of course, a lot of fans are either too thick to understand this subtext (and text-text) or simply willfully disregard it because they like cool robots that shoot lasers. Basically think of Dan Ryckert's relationship with Metal Gear. While certainly not all Gundam series have been good, they have always been faithful to these ideas, which is laudable. In broad strokes, anyway. SEED Destiny was pretty weird in spots.

Mobile Suit Gundam 079, which chronicled the One Year War, was not at all shy about this. The One Year War began as a movement for Spacenoid (a slightly ridiculous term for a person living in a space colony or on the moon) independence from the hopelessly corrupt Earth Federation. Naturally, the Federation did not take kindly to this and moved to suppress the movement, but found itself overmatched by the Principality of Zeon's advanced Mobile Suit weapons. To keep an even footing in the war, the Federation resorted to using nuclear weapons and other atrocities on largely civillian colonies to buy time as they developed their own brand of Mobile Suit. In retaliation, Zeon counterattacked with an even more devastating new weapon: dropping space colonies on earth. All told, the One Year War was not a good time to be alive, and nearly half of the Earth Sphere's total population died in one way or another. While all this was happening, the original founder of the independence movement died under suspect circumstances and power was seized by the Zabi family, who were Really Bad News. The Federation, meanwhile, turned to conscripting child soldiers in a desperate bid to keep pace.

This all culminated in the creation of the Gundam by Tem Ray, Amuro's emotionally absent father. Due to Circumstances, Amuro finds himself in the cockpit and becomes the most important soldier in the war overnight because the Gundam is several orders of magnitude more powerful than anything Zeon can field. The character of Amuro is explored most fully in Char's Counterattack, when he is a fucked up adult instead of a fucked up kid, but from the outset, Amuro is defined by forces completely out of his control and his fatalistic acceptance of his own lack of agency. Despite his nigh legendary piloting skills, Newtype powers of precognition and telepathy, and status as hero of the One Year War, Amuro might actually be the most passive motherfucker in the god damned galaxy. This puts him immediately at odds not only militarily but interpersonally with the dreadfully overambitious if mostly well-intentioned Char Aznable, his lifelong rival. Their entire history of conflict is based entirely upon the simple irony that they both want the same thing but, despite being Newtypes, lack the ability to understand this. The One Year War's violence and brutality defined them and their relationship to another, because of a petty twist of fate that put Amuro in the Gundam's pilot seat instead of some other sap.

Gundam uses many more overt methods of conveying that the One Year War is not glamorous or cool or just. Characters die regularly on both sides of the conflict, oftentimes for no real reason other than "this is war, sucker." Tomino developed quite a reputation for this style of storytelling, earning the moniker Kill-'em-all Tomino, especially in some of his non-Gundam works like Aura Battler Dunbine and Space Runaway Ideon. The entire continent of Australia got rendered uninhabitable by colony drops. The White Base, the federation battleship housing the Gundam, is crewed and staffed almost entirely by people who have yet to reach 20 years of age and they've got a pack of prepubescent toddlers running around on the ship because they've got nowhere else to go. I personally find the interpersonal conflicts acting as microcosm for ideology and war to be the most interesting, and most intrinsically Gundam thing about the franchise, but you don't have to go looking between the lines to find evidence of the show's ardent anti-war, anti-nationalist proclivities. The intensely nationalistic Zeon is surreptitiously usurped by a power-mad dictator without anyone even catching on after Ghiren Zabi uses a giant ass space laser to kill both his father and an influential Earth Federation general while they're trying to broker a peace deal. The death of that general, in turn, allows the worst elements of the Federation government to run amok and eventually create the deeply fascist Titans in Zeta Gundam, who make it a point of policy to oppress spacenoids as brutally as possible.

So Gundam, at least, has profound roots in the denunciation of military power as a metric of moral superiority. That's not really news to most people. Oddly enough, it's the most obsessive of fans that tend to miss the memo because they're presumably too busy making sure Mobile Suit measurements are exactly as documented and all character motivations are completely rational and logical, like them. Let's dig a little deeper for some more surprising examples of this kind of ideology in unlikely places. It should be noted, of course, that I am not heralding Gundam as some sort of bastion of progressive thought. Tomino's sexual politics are located roughly in the Stone Age until about 2000's Turn A Gundam, where they progress to about on par with inudstrial revolution social mores. Progress, I suppose. This is a problem with a distressing amount of media, especially in the 70s and 80s, but I'm trying to look at the bright side of things. At least it's not Cross Ange, right?

Moving on, when we look at the genesis of Super Robots as a genre of animation, we will invariably look to Go Nagai. Though a number of shows about large robot men fighting evil like Tetsujin 28 and the live action Giant Robo came first, the seminal Mazinger Z had the popularity and iconic staying power to define everything that came after. Though I could write a great deal about Go Nagai and his Dynamic Robots, they don't really pertain to my particular topic of discussion today because Go Nagai was about as progressive as a sack of bricks. His work was largely apolitical, at least in the sense that he did not intentionally make his stories about contemporary political issues, so at very least Kouji Kabuto never waxed nostalgic about the time Japan was allied with Nazi Germany. In fact, one of the show's major villains, Count Brocken, is a reanimated SS officer cyborg who carries his head around with him because of a decapitation in a previous life. Generally speaking, not a good or sympathetic guy, despite his protests to the contrary. Go Nagai focused on themes of brotherhood and being outcast by society for just being too damn hotblooded and having sideburns that were just too damn thick, though these mostly manifested in his manga. The TV adaptations of Mazinger, Getter Robo, and Grendizer were largely sanitized and inoffensive.

I mentioned Tadao Nagahama at the beginning of my piece, and it is now with him we come to a very important point in the genre's history. Nagahama was the director of three particular Super Robot shows: Combattler V, Voltes V (here the V is treated as the roman numeral, so it's really Voltes 5), and Toushou Daimos (roughly, Brave Leader Daimos). Colloquially, these three are known as the Nagahama Romantic Trilogy, and they are denoted not only by the iconic designs of the robots themselves, towering, blocky things made out of many constituent parts in a fairly sensical way (as opposed to the famously Unpossible Getter Robo), but also by the injection of genuine interpersonal and ideological drama into the proceedings. They were also super popular in other areas of the world, much like Go Nagai's Dynamic Robots. Voltes V in particular was popular in Southeast Asia. Combattler V was instrumental in cementing the notion of The Honorable Rival in the genre, a character aligned with evil that still conducted themselves with decorum. While you would find few such characters in the ranks of Dr. Hell's armies or King Vega's invasion force, in the Romantic Trilogy, they were critical to the show's success. Combattler V was not especially revolutionary, but it laid the groundwork for Voltes V, which in many ways was.

Voltes V is the tale of the Boazan Empire, an interstellar civilization with an expansionist streak and a highly stratified caste system. Unlike previous villainous organizations, the Boazans are noteworthy for being three dimensional and not painted in shades of black and white. The Boazans invade earth for the purposes of annexing it to their growing empire, with the crown prince Hainel leading the charge. Their battle beasts are too much for earth's military (and the militaries of many other planets), but the super electromagnetic robot Voltes V, piloted by a team of five headed by Kenichi, appears to beat them back. Things become interesting when we learn about Kenichi and his two brother's lineage. Their father, the brilliant scientist behind Voltes V's construction, is actually a Boazan expatriate. Not just any expatriate, but former royalty, no less. Boazan's strict caste system is based solely upon whether or not a citizen has horns. If they do, they're nobility. If they don't, well, uh, sucks to be them. Such a system, already untenable, is exacerbated by the fact that the vast majority of Boazans don't have horns. It's a rare genetic mutation. The whole Boazan war machine is powered by a gigantic underclass of slaves-in-everything-but-name. Kenichi's father believed that this was morally reprehensible and that reform was necessary. Unfortunately, this was not a popular opinion among the nobility, and he was disgraced, de-horned, and ousted for his ties to rebellion movements.

Complicating matters even further, he had a son while on Boazan, the aforementioned Prince Hainel. After relocating to Earth to escape persecution and devise some way of bringing change to the empire, Kenichi's father settled down and had a family. Now bereft of horn, he was largely indistinguishable from the average earthling. Parallel evolution is a concept emrbaced heartily by old sci-fi in both Western and Japanese media, probably because people thought alien babes were hot. Fair, honestly. At any rate, Kenichi engages in mortal combat with his half-brother's forces on a regular basis, which creates interpersonal tension mostly lacking in earlier shows. Sometimes Duke Freed got snippy at Kouji for being all love and peace at the Vegans but that was usually resolved at the end of the episode. Hainel himself gradually changes, too, starting out as arrogant, dismissive, and openly ashamed of his connection to a disgraced expatriate and his sons but gaining more depth as time goes on. The end of the show takes place on Boazan itself, with Voltes V spearheading a hornless revolution while Hainel turns on the emperor, vengeful and disgusted by his cowardice. Or maybe it was a movie. Look it's been a long time and I'm going from memory give me a break.

For a kid's TV show at the time, this was honestly pretty wild. Voltes V was not shy about displaying its moral core: people are not defined by the circumstances of their birth, and systems of government based upon the oppression of an underclass deserve only to be destroyed. Voltes V is not as morally complex as Gundam, but it is leaps and bounds ahead of many of its Super Robot contemporaries. Nagahama believed in a sort of fusion of genuine human drama and moral complexity with the more simplistic, bombastic style of storytelling common to his predecessors, and it resonated with viewers all over the globe. At the time of airing, a number of Southeast Asian countries were under the thumb of repressive dictatorships, and the final episodes had to be heavily censored and edited so as not to promote seditious ideas. That, more than anything to me, is the mark of something that is genuinely anti-nationalist in nature. Who would know better than fascist dictators themselves?

The final entry in the Romantic Trilogy, Toushou Daimos, continued the trend of creating morally and politically complex circumstances in which the karate robot made of transforming trucks must punch bad guys. The aliens of the day are the Barmians. The Barmians, however, buck convention and come to earth in genuine peace. Their story is a tragic one - their planet was destroyed in a catastrophe, and the survivors were evacuated on the aptly named mobile space city Small Barm. Due to severe space and resource constraints, a billion Barmians have to remain in cryogenic sleep while a skeleton crew of nobles and military officials keep Small Barm afloat as they search for a place to live. Naturally, they find earth to be a charming place as any to settle down (as it must have seemed in the early 80s before the environment started collapsing) and initiate negotiations with the governments of earth to try and accommodate their people. Expert martial artist and principle protagonist Ryuzaki Kazuya is the son of a brilliant scientist who created the robot Daimos and the special Daimolight energy that makes it so scary strong. Said scientist is part of the diplomatic delegation sent from earth to Small Barm (in some universes alongside the illustrious Rilina Peacecraft, but that is a story for another time entirely) and is a major proponent of the Barmian's request for peaceful integration into earthling society.

Regrettably, this all goes awry when the Barmian hardliner military faction assassinates the King of Barm during the meeting with poison and blames the earthling delegation on it, engineering their own perfect casus beli for a war of domination against Earth. Fascists are remarkably bad at sharing and getting along with others, as has been demonstrated. Prince Richter, the honorable if somewhat dim and hot tempered son of the King wasn't too hot on the assimilation idea because of his prideful belief that the superiority of Barm's culture and technology should allow them to dictate more favorable terms, but was ultimately loyal to his father above all else and acquiesced to the idea. When his father is assassinated, of course, he flies into a rage and declares earth to be the enemy of Barm and kills Kazuya's father. So there's a lot of bad blood between the two of them. Kazuya and Daimos stand up against Barm's battle beasts and prevents the invasion from progressing. He eventually meets and falls in love with princess Erika, Richter's sister. Where Richter is brash and hasty, Erika is intelligent and patient, and much more compassionate. These qualities allow her to see that the circumstances of the King's death, and any motivation the Earthling's might have had to assassinate him, were extremely suspect. They part ways, but Erika eventually joins a resistance faction on Small Barm against the military hardliners who had assumed power. Richter continues to dance to their tune, too consumed by misplaced anger and vengeance to see what is really going on. Erika's relationship with Kazuya only makes him more unreasonably mad.

Of course, Earth has its own hardliners, and in his battles, Kazuya not only has to contend with Barm's battle beasts, but General Miwa, an odious Earth-supremacist convinced that all Barmians, regardless of their disposition, must be eliminated immediately and without mercy. If we want to talk about more alternate universe scenarios, for reference, Miwa was a fucked up enough dude to cast his lot in with the Blue Cosmos organization after his Barmian extermination ambitions never panned out. He really fucking sucks. Ultimately, Kazuya and Erika manage to uncover the plot to assassinate the King, defeat the military holdouts, and bring the peace their fathers wanted about. Where Voltes V presented a scenario of a civilization run by ultra-nationalists needing to be restructured from the ground up, Daimos offers the inverse: a peaceful, tolerant civilization in a time of crisis gets hijacked by a few selfish, warmongering fascists and nearly destroys itself. Coming to understand and love one another, even when from different planets entirely, is an even bigger theme in Daimos than Voltes V, and is in many ways a more personal story. A romance, if you will, for a romantic trilogy.

Nagahama's Romantic Robots were well loved around the globe and left a lasting impact on their genre, encouraging those who came after to experiment with more complex themes and characters, even in the larger than life universe of Super Robots. While not all (or even very many) of these successors live up to this high minded ideal, it's an important part of the history of Japanese animation, proving that drama and politics were not just for Gundam or more "serious" shows. We can see the legacy of Nagahama in a number of more contemporary titles. Evangelion is so much more about interpersonal conflict than actual robots that the final episode of the TV series didn't even have any fighting in it (albeit mostly due to budget constraints). People hated it, of course, and Hideki Anno went on to make End of Evangelion to either appease or piss off further the angry fans, but it happened nonetheless. Gun X Sword represents an evolution of the genre into that of a pseudo-western, where heroes and villains are separated by the thinnest of ideological margins despite the fantastical robots and setting. Gurren Lagann briefly flirts with political complexity before promptly imploding on itself (maybe this one is a bad example). Even Shin Mazinger, an unabashed love letter to older Go Nagai properties, managed to create a surprisingly affecting and compelling character (dare I say, Protagonist?) in its reimagining of Baron Ashura.

The Mecha Genre used to be, and still kind of is, one of my big guilty passions in life. This essay is more personal in nature than a lot of my others, because from time to time I feel like I have to justify to myself why I like this garbage even when it's weird regressive shit. I guess the compromise I have found is that, in certain circumstances, it can be weird progressive shit, too.

#super robots #super robot wars #gundam #media analysis #tadao nagahama

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pisces-to-mousse · 5 years

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“The ONE thing"

I didn't really try so hard but I finished one book in August called “Don't sweat small stuff at work”. I also just finished the book “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan in September. I am trying to create a new habit to not only read the book, but also review what I think is the most interesting thing that I can apply to myself. So here we go, me making effort to take notes. I didn't write about what I learn from the book “Don't sweat small stuff at work" because I think this book is similar to a dictionary at work. All more than 100 topics cover all the problems ones may face at work in the compact and easy to understand way. It is better to just keep the book at the desk and open it when you feel stuck or need an advice but don't have anybody to talk to at the moment.

My first impression after reading the first pages was that is a very interesting book since it talks about something that I thought was true before, but turned out to be wrong. Again, wrong and right can be personal. The book somehow opens my mind in terms of thinking and looking at the same things in a different and innovative way.

The book is candid with 3 main sections: The Lies, discussed 6 main things we usually believe, but that actually impede our progress at work and in life. This is my favorite part of the book since it makes me realize that so many concepts I give credit to don't really work. The second section is The Truth with an adequately simple and clear statement about what to do to be more productive. The last part, Extraordinary Results, guides me to unlock the possibilities within me to reach higher goals. I know I know, it sounds cliché, but the way the book is written is really pristine and makes the process of receiving information easier and more natural. I find myself learning a lot from the book :).

It is very impressive to me that so many complex topics can be explained in the exciting ways, including charts and pictures. For example, to illustrate the ONE THING concept, Gary uses the domino image. The first domino is just 2 inches tall. Who could think that domino can tower over the Eiffel Tower or even reach to the height of the moon. And that's how The One Thing works in our life. One thing, too simple, too single, too small and too weak, but one small thing can result in one BIG - the most significant, relevant and meaningful - thing. It can empower each person to reach to any purpose and to surpass high challenges.

Anyway, I don't plan on revising all the details of the book. Just want to remind myself of things I should pay attention to.

First, the first lie: Everything matters equally. The example is how to make the to-do list. I have a tendency to write down everything in my head that I want to do in a day on my daily to-do board. Literally, just write everything down, without priority. I remember feeling satisfied looking at my to-do list, ticking v on each of the squares, means I accomplished lot of things. But one simple and obvious thing that I didn't even realize at the moment was I didn't even prioritize things, that someday some of the v’s weren't ticked and I ended up not really doing the most important thing. The to-do list, which was supposed to make my day and purpose clearer, actually became a booby trap since it lured me from focusing on the most, the ONE THING that matters. Finish laundry, clean my room, listen to podcast, write for myself doesn't really serve my goal to learn a new marketing skill each day. (p.35). Thus, “big ideas" to remember: (p.41). 1. Go small. Let's walk away from the thought of staying busy, but focus more on being productive. What matters the most should be the thing I prioritize over everything, no matter how many other things seem imporant must wait. 2. Don't get trapped in the “check of" game. Must realize that things don't matter equally. 3. Say no. Whatever I know I don't prioritize, feel free to say NO = not now = may be later = never. Keep it in mind what I want, but never exchange it with my priority. 4. Go extreme. This part will be confusing to me sometimes. Since it is hard to set aside different aspects in life to just concentrate on the only One Thing that matters. Meanwhile, it is necessary to know what matters the most and to make decisions based on it.

Second, the second lie: Multitasking. I used to be proud of myself having the ability to do many things at the same time. I actually still am right now because nothing is wrong with that. However, the silliest thing was I wrote that adjective in my Resume and sent it to the recruiters, thinking that was my advantage over other candidates. Looking at thing of the One Thing perspective, it is obvious that multitasking is the rival of the One Thing. In fact, multitasking doesn't mean being able to focus on different things at the same time, multitasking is a distraction and doesn't actually get anything done in the end. If I doubt it, just question myself: Why would I ever tolerate multitasking when I am doing my most important work already? Thus, it is time for me to remind myself (p.53) 1. Distraction is natural. So I don't have to give myself too much of a hard time for finding myself stuck in distraction. If I accidentally watching more than 1 hour of some Youtube videos while I should listen to some French lessons, it happens, but right at the moment I realize it, stop it, straighten my attitude again and go right back to the main reason I opened Youtube in the first place. 2. Multitasking takes a toll. Not only multitasking takes my time away from my most important thing, it actually leads to poor choices, painful mistakes and unnecessary stress. Since the most important thing is usually the hardest thing to do, I may feel dismay and end up compromising myself by accomplishing the less significant tasks, just to comfort myself that I at least do something. Although what I did doesn't help me to get to where I want to be. At the end of the day, if I could have so many things done but not the most significant thing done, then actually, nothing was done.

Third, the 3rd and 4th lies: A disciplined life and Willpower is always on Will-Call. I want to combine these two points since at some point in my life I do realize them, but it becomes clearer when I read the book. I used to and actually still highly admire people who are disciplined. Especially when I find myself all over the place some times. I also want to clarify that being organized and disciplined are different to me (hehe). So for disciplined people, I believe they have such a great habit of following specific rules throughout the days, months and years to maintain something important in their lives. As a person who can easily get bored of the routine, I find it is hard for me to keep up with being disciplined. However, if I can see that actually discipline is not an ideal characteristic but more of a habit and trained, being disciplined turns out to be exciting. The book says “You can become successful with less discipline than you think, for one simple reason: success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right" (p.55). It means, (p.59), 1. Don't be a disciplined person. Indeed, who really enjoys being disciplined all the time? Just imagine everything is established and run in the exact predictable pace, like a machine, we would lack of humanity. Let’s change the way to define ‘disciplined person’. You don't have to be disciplined in everything to be a disciplined person, just be disciplined towards your ONE THING, take all the costs and attempts to reach out to that goal. Thus, 2. Build one habit at a time. Again, don't try to multitask. Do thing step by step, slowly, and 3. Give each habit enough time, to make sure that it is a real habit, not just a certificate we try to get then put aside once we achieve it. About Willpower, just a main reminder that Willpower = self-energy, I should nurture my mind and thoughts more, also to arrange them appropriately so my ONE THING is always on the go.

Fourth, the 5th lie: A balanced life. I always am looking for a balance in everything I do. Balance between family and myself, between my partner and my friends/social community, between income and outcome, between play and work/study, between working out and just laying down doing nothing, etc... For those efforts, I can easily get stressed finding myself leaning towards one thing more than another one. Thus, it is valuable to see that a balanced life is more an idea than a reality or a life. The older we grow, the more experiences we get, the more we have a tendency to say “I need more balance” since we think balance is a mantra for a good life. But whenever we make a decision to take time doing something over another thing, the imbalance exists already. Instead of trying so hard to make an ideal balance, giving time and endeavors to what matters in our life (purpose, meaning, significance) (p.73) is the greatest balance act each individual can do. I read an interesting example about the term “work-life balance”. “This term was’t coined until the mid-1980s when more than half of all married women joined the workforce” (p74). Perhaps I’m a female so I feel the sarcasm behind this term. It is more a double-standard way to convince women that they were doing something unbalanced that can lead to the problem in taking care of the family. If we have 1 bread winner in the house, that term would never exist. If we have 2 bread winners, “work-life balance” becomes the slogan. Although by the time this term is used for both genders, the history of this word’s creation is still significant to know that a balanced life is just a ruler, not a practical method. Although, there’s still some parts that I’m not sure if I can agree 100%. The book is written “To achieve an extraordinary result you must choose what matters most and give it all the time it demands. This requires getting extremely out of balance in relation to all other work issues”. I understand that there’s no perfect balance but “extremely out of balance” seems to be excessive to me. I still want to write it down here so may be one day if that “extreme” view happened to me, I can get it.

Fifth and the last lie we think is Big is bad. I personally never have assumption so reading that part just confirms my thoughts. Life is consecutive challenges, thus, ones are better to be bold to overcome fear of failure or of scare to be different.

The second part contains 3 mains tips to stay productive. First, how to interpret the focusing question. With everything you face, ask yourself a simple question: “What’s the ONE THING I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” For example, there was a time I was frustrated everyday with everything: when can I be independent again, when can I just go to anywhere I want to, how can I organize my life without stable finance, how can I manage my emotions to stay positive and spread that vibe to others, what can I do to be a stronger and wiser person, what can I do to stay in touch with people I care about. I set all those questions separately and tried to solve them together, which made me go out of control. Then, I actually have one thing I need to answer: What’s the one thing i can do in the current situation such that by doing it everything else will be easier? I find the One Thing I need to focus on now is myself. I always want to be helpful, feel useless when I can’t do something for somebody or easily disappointed myself if I fail in my first attempt. I still believe to have that thoughts, but in this exact current situation, the best I can do is to take a good care of myself. Nobody who loves and cares about me asks me to do any hard thing for them nor do they want to have to worry about me being depressed or losing myself because I am in the bottom of what I want to do. I need to stop trying to act tough and don’t need a help. I need help :), to accept that I have time when everything doesn’t go the way I planned, but being angry won’t help. In dissent, that’s the moment when I must encourage myself more, nurture my spirit so pessimistic attitude won’t decide who I am. In another word, what’s the One Thing to help me cope with my current situation: self-love. I can only love everybody if I embrace myself, accept I have advantages and flaws. It leads to the Second point, to practice the success habit: Apply the ONE question in all the things I do/think. For my physical health, what’s the one thing i can do to relieve my stress? (exercise, enough sleep). For my personal life, what’s the one thing I can do to improve my skills at Marketing (read more related topics, study new skills, practice it). For my relationships, what’s the one thing I can do to make us understand each other better? (patient --> tolerance --> conversation --> acceptance --> remind of how we love each other). For my finances, what’s the one thing I can do to eliminate my credit debt? (plan out budget to spend until I get the job, if overspend in one area then underspend in another part). Third, the path to great answer. It has a lot to consider in this part but I can revise in the following points: 1/ Asking a great question: try to make the question as specific as possible at the same time make it a big question that by answer that all other questions are answered. For example, the best question to ask when a company wants to have better sales is to ask “What can I do to double the total sales in 6 first months of 2019?”. It is better than just have a very general question such as “What can I do to increase sales, or lack of measurement like “What can I do to double sales?” or lack of specific situation like “What can I do to increase sales by 5 percent this year?”. 2/ Finding a great answer: Once the question is clear and target, find as much possibilities based on that questions as possible. That’s when you can benchmark and trend for the best answer you’re looking for.

I guess everything gets easier to imagine what to do next: bring everything that is matter to the NOW. We go back to the simple but always true process: thing big but go small (p.153). Let’s set the biggest goal and start doing as the picture shown below:

I also found a compelling concept in order to stick up with the One Thing goal: Move from “E” (Entrepreneurial) to “P” (Purposeful). (p.179). While entrepreneurial is mostly our instinct, a natural way we have whenever we face an obstacle. It starts with enthusiasm, energy and our natural abilities, and we feel strong and motivated in the beginning. Thanks for this behavior, we always achieve “a reward” in any form: a business success with good financial outcome, respect and trust from people, experience, etc... Also, some people are better than other people in specific aspects, like you were born with the drawing talent but I couldn’t even finish a nice doodle. Meanwhile, the “E” can be burnt out by the time, either because we are losing our motivations or we are getting to our limitations.

I feel like I’m an “E” all the time and that’s why sometimes I question myself if I really like/into something. All the time, I’m doing things within my limitations, more of what I’m good at than what I can do. That’s why it is easy to get frustrated and feel like give up. Knowing what I am “E” or “P” is similar to answer the question: “Am I doing certain things simply in the best way I can or am I doing this to in the best way it can be done?”

With the “P” - purposeful approach, we have to push ourselves harder than what our natural abilities give. It’s inspiring but scary to me I must say, since I feel like I’m getting older, meaning slower to understand things I need to learn. However, it is clear where should I look at when facing a challenge. If I limit myself as the “E”, then don’t be too surprise if the outcomes can be great and bad at the same time. If I can be bolder and push myself to the “P” zone, I may fail very hard but I surely get breakthrough that I couldn’t imagine in the beginning. So, go hard or go home.

(p.201) To sum up, here’s how a highly productive person’s daily energy plan can look like:

1/ Mediate and pray for spiritual energy. In my case is to take a no-brain time for myself, not to tense my body muscle with anything

2/ Hug, kiss and laugh with loved ones for emotional energy

3/ Eat right, exercise and sleep sufficiently for physical energy

4/ Set goals, plan and calendar for mental energy (I NEED TO DO THAT)

5/ Time block your ONE THING for business/career energy (I NEED TO DO THAT MORE)

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tinymixtapes · 7 years

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Music Review: Lil Uzi Vert - Luv Is Rage 2

Lil Uzi Vert Luv Is Rage 2 [Atlantic; 2017] Rating: 3.5/5 Someone had to take the year; why not Lil Uzi Vert? After an impossibly quick rise to prominence in 2016, Uzi’s become the de facto big-budget feature for any artist looking to boost a prospective single or romance the legion of rap fans activated by the emergence of SoundCloud as the genre’s proving ground. In this way, Uzi stifles his competition by making himself an indispensable part of their successes. Not only is “XO Tour Llif3” the runaway favorite for the year’s defining song, but its primary rival “Magnolia” is both inconceivable in a world without Lil Uzi Vert and taken from an album with not one, but two scene-stealing features from Uzi himself. The Uzi phenomenon isn’t a complete mystery. In a relative sense, he presents a sort of family-friendliness that his peers lack. By and large, there’s not a meaningful difference in his lyrical content, but there’s also little evidence that the Tipper Gores of the world are arbitrating decency based on actuality so much as expectation. Rather, there’s a distinction worth investigating rooted in Uzi’s perception as non-threatening: closer to five feet than six, apt to have hair of any color depending on the day, and seemingly unconcerned with any particular sartorial expectations of rappers (or men, for that matter), he’s simultaneously one of the least conventional rap stars imaginable and the natural byproduct of the genre’s long-gestating penetration of the entirety of American culture. The optimist would see Lil Uzi Vert as merely the most visible member of his own fanbase, separated from them only by a natural charisma and a platform upon which to express it. Indeed, it’s difficult to appraise Uzi as some sort of cunning mastermind, somehow divining a massive unserved market of internet-bound anime fans craving a rapper to rally around; rather, it’s a vindication of the idea that the democratization of music production has only strengthened the ability of listeners to discover the music that speaks to them most directly. More broadly, Uzi’s success feels like the culmination of a shift from rap as a lens of representational, sociological interest to a suffix destined to be appended to any other cultural phenomenon. This is how we arrive at “emo rap,” a remarkably canny fusion to probe. Should we assume his persona to be genuine, Uzi’s greatest challenge in breaking into the rap game was always going to be the question of authenticity or hardness. Dabbling in the territory of Motion City Soundtrack short-circuits that critique by inviting overwrought theatricality into the genre equation. Again, it’s the natural byproduct of rap’s pop metastasization; rather than a singular “rap” sound, full immersion requires that the genre mutate to incorporate its opposites. Even if heavy-handed at times, this fusion can only result in new sonic ground being broken. Operating as Uzi does in the “No one understands me/ I am lost at sea” stratum of emotional signification, something as simple as the obscuration of vocals in the intro of “Pretty Mami” can carry great weight; so too do revised expectations allow for the hook of “The Way Life Goes” to exist. Rather than letting Future or YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s emotion-by-omission be the end-all, leaning into the infamous “Push me to the edge/ All my friends are dead” instead situate them on a spectrum of malaise. Which is great news: the two prior examples are extreme and could justifiably be received with a roll of the eyes, but it’s at the midpoint of the two genres’ once-inflexible definitions — the zone of actual intermixing — that real progress lies. By and large, the beats on Luv Is Rage 2 are as unprecedented in rap as Uzi’s elastic personality, the mark of a star who’s finally big enough to command production catered to his own style. “444+222” centers on a loop of what sounds like a particularly musical fire alarm, and “How To Talk” sees the hyperactivity of the rest of the album and raises with the inclusion, out of nowhere, of a saturated kick drum straight out of a jumpstyle track. Because rap is ever-entrepreneurial, there are a couple odd inclusions targeted directly at the unconverted fanbases of other rappers: “Malfunction” surely entered life as a Kevin Gates track; “Early 20 Rager” recalls the Chief Keef-lite comparisons that haunted Uzi’s early career; and like every Weeknd feature, “UnFazed” sounds like it was sold to the rapper as a hook/verse/beat package deal. But on the whole, Lil Uzi Vert’s omnipresence is only reinforced by the extent to which Luv Is Rage 2 functions as both a survey of the rap landscape and a distinctly Uzi album. The breadth of sounds covered will scan as inconsistency to all but the most pious Uzi devotees, but it’s hard to imagine anything else serving as a more comprehensive document of rap in 2017. http://j.mp/2fwSScY

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benchgenderstudies · 8 years

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The mind control angle of shootings.

The Homicide Rate : Finely Tuned Classism of a Deaf Congress

The Airport shooting committed by Esteban Santiago distantly following an interview by FBI to his statements about mind control is not a new premise. People have accused commercials of using subliminal messaging that the usgovernment would deny anyway. They denied the roll of tobacco in cancer. I am going to enlighten the topic on very real and very parallel definitions that Santiago may or may not be witnessing and be distressed about. The problem is toxic social pressure.

To explain toxic social pressure I am going to reference film screenplay format writer Syd Field's “Screenplay” 2005 revision, the health care debate, effective frequency as a political maneuver and the VALS/PRIZM segment identity by Nielsen. Starting with politics and healthcare, we have two rival political parties that privatize the dogmatic media spectrum. That clash of identities which offer statements of direction but seldom solutions its toxic in and of itself. Republicans offered managed care and they will again try to repackage it as the replacement of the ACA. If they concede at all , then they are liable to the public for charges of negligence back in the Clinton Era. We're detailing the first point of existing political cultism by eliminating the dissent of a governments resident lack of concern for the public's preexisting mental health issues.

Managed care says the system can self regulate and it regulates for the role of profit. There said, cost control will never happen by self regulation so then healthcare will not be afforable until disintermediation of insurances self expense is handled. Healthcare will likely have cost rises but the cost rise of insurance for-profit existence means that 'managed care' as a forthput plan of action to the problem of healthcare cost was fraudulent offer. This is case one: not a solution.

The Affordable care act again failed to disintermediate the healthcare system. As long as republicans and democrats are in government , a single payer system can't be expected to be managed efficiently. Democrats moreso failed at making 'being the niceguy” a dimwit gullibility to allow republicans any place at the table of the healthcare debate. This is case two. Case three is for the segment of Americans that continue to demand Single payer system that are entirely correct and yet smeared by a stray Weiner probably intentionally stunting the angle with bad press. A fourth case piggie backs on the single payer pundits except by the term raw truth. Single payer is the only answer as long as the people managing it are loyal to its successful management and not current supporters of either political party's limbs that produced the Affordable care act.

There are more gaps in executive cabinets that allow for the ongoing illness of Citizens by choosing not to regulate an industry. Summarized: For the Citizen who feels without representation for segment identity of race or ethnicity, they are also frustrated by a political social pressure where effort toward a solution in good faith is civil voice unwilling to join the shouting match of democrats and republicans lest it stoop to their level and produce a baseball bat with barbed wire to effectively bash each party's skull to bits for the sheer decency of ending the vitriol. How it relates to Santiago: he opts to make an apolitical spectacle since opting to shoot a Senator or President would create a partisan gain somewhere. He might be frustrated in the notion of effective blood spill so he does something random.

If cops will assemble in riot gear for peaceful protests there is no doubt they acknowledge the summation of people becomes greater than bad government can handle. So assemble the idea that if conservatives pen themselves arch enemies of liberals and liberals pen themselves of racism ; ever favored a slant of repubicans, that they clash as groups with an escalation that can cause serious sideeffects elsewhere. Random shootings elsewhere. Santiago might be one of these also.

Lets move to the screenplay book and politics. Syd Field has an educational book for a career that oozes blood. He makes his screenplay examples through analysis of “Chinatown”,” Thelma and Louise”, Terminator 2”, “ Lord of the Rings” ,”American Beauty”, Shawshank Redemption,”, “Collateral”,”Bourne Supremacy”, and “Basic Instinct”. More often than not the screenplay that Field references or puts verbatim into his text has somebody getting killed. In one angle is the reality that he is exciting and giving aspiring screenwriters the format to follow so people like him reading scripts can efficiently browse an offering of millions of submissions. That part's ok. What I realized in this book is the action movies are really murder movies and the plots have been so saturated with exciting homicide that sometimes it doesn't even wait for the opening credits to start killing people. Hollywood is also a fiend for sex stories at inappropriate moments and so binary in sex roles; polarization; as well.

A new Jennifer Lawrence movie shows a duo of male and female exploring a ship in calamitous situation of dethawing people early and decide to get shaggadelic instead of focus on the outcome of the many. Transformers movies are guilty of it also. There's no room for sex here even as appealing as wetting the bone maybe for keeping … apparently; hollywood producers attention on the script. Or perhaps thats the fault of the script writer relying on cheap innuendo to fuel their own writing. You'll realize in reading the Screenplay book that Field (who is dead) thinks that the Screenplay is where the best creativity comes from. I disagree. I feel the writer must first write the story as a novel, read it, then transfer it to screenplay themselves. They're told to write write write anyway so they might as well blabber all the blubber of details out first and cut it down into the screen play format. Until chapter 13 he insists a good screenplay is 120 pages or less but neglect to admit that first drafts are typically 180-200pages.

Also in Fields book , he has a writer who wants to convey his story in news format rather than screenplay format. Fields decides to bite his tongue and let the writer struggle to transfer the story when its done. He should've had the writer first convert to cards and novel format instead of direct to screenplay. He gives the guy support but his error is he doesn't support an intellectual path away from the screenplay being his best medium of creativity. People like him make their money being the format converters and don't want the secret out too quickly. The writer writes and writing starts at the essay, short story , and poem. Thats where the screenplay should start once the research is done. A writer not knowing characters is his pet peeve. In Parallel, the government doesn't know its people. It doesn't name its people by the cultures of their own identity. The two party system irons on their label with the media.

There was a well established point in Syd Fields Screenplay book that he repeated. For being such an honored person in Hollywood, the movie industry took no time of their own accord to address the Citizens United vs FEC opinion directly. Austin v Michigan Chamber of Commerce stands for the corrupting influence of money is a fact. Its a fact. And its echoed as a fixture of Hollywood:

“Gittes responds: “Ill tell you the unwritten law ,you dumb son of a bitch,you gotta be rich to kill somebody,anybody, and get away with it.You think you got that kinda dough? You think you got that kinda class?”

At the site/sight of dead bodies the repeated second quote is “ Forget it , its China town”. Over and over. Each line. We have a Hollywood that acknowledges or defines being wealthy as the right to assert the godlike power of ending mortality ; perhaps being the definition of “power”; reduces the value of life in the disposal of life to entertainment; calls it guy movie entertainment and then twists its face to suggest art is the act of showing people how to see truth. Santiago has a Caucasian euro masculinity definition to contend with in assimilation messages. As anorexia is itself a socialized classist message of uppity eurotrash wealth-ahead-of health sizing, the aggression and ambivalence toward humanity is a message made throughout Modern action film media. I didn't ever see Hollywood get bothered when scotus decided Citizens United was the opportunity to overturn the limitations of money. There is a balance in society and when hollywood can make wealth equate to the freedom to murder, then they have either tilted the scale or become unbalanced by banker friendly republicans offsetting that balance of overturn Austin V Michigan Chamber of Commerce. Since Hollywood is slow on cultural diversity, I 'd say they are partisanly and ambiguously guilty of negative social influence. The loss Schwarzenegger faced in taking on video gaming was a toy gun in a munitions chest that Arnold would not point at the industry that made him and yet corrupted society in the recession of life value. Bum Wars internet video followed.

The entertainment media example is foundational. Daily, the announcements of political party agendas are instead appointments of that classism. The classism that affords movies, smears awareness of sexuality types and gender, abuses people on and off screen, ignores the common good. If these are qualities that set the sane to rampage with fury , then the mentally unstable are surely hesitant to want to be cured so they don't face the social messages of identity directly. America's sickness starts at what is defining classism , class roles and why money is important to defend immorality. If wealth is the excuse for irrational debate , purposeless congressional clashing , and tunnel vision elections.. then money is most certainly the illness of our country and our psyche. Money is misused to create a reality of ambivalence toward life , toward accounting ourselves ( poor through wealthy) to a common humanity and to account politicians to an ethics code we now clearly see they intend to refuse.... especially by the wealthy's overtly favored republicans. The Business of ambiguity predates the department of labor and workers protection now damns the very politicians for ambivalence toward a democratic public expecting standards of care that must not and cannot be partisanly parsed for election fodder.

This is the disease of our country: Undisputable human rights of government service being unfounded for plutoquisquilocracy. The death rate is a result of people making exhibition of themselves as a reaction to a belief that when government is not receptive to their needs, demonstrates ambivalence toward human needs and creates policy absent of factual conclusion that government and thus law does not exist. So they will then behave in ways ambivalent to the lives of others in the political structure by presumption of no consequence deterring them.

The Neilsen PRIZM Survey and VALS must now be addressed. At first marketers wanted to know who they were selling to. Then they became effective at catering to said segments and eventually their target marketing was so effective it pinned down the segments into their socio economic identities with very little chance to move upward. Because of marketing there are segment castes that remain locked in place. Racism can be said really a form of classism except that sexism likewise is caste'ism. If we agree the creationist 'white appearing male' is the top of the food chain, then the pollution of religious segmentation identifies all others, pinned down in their segments, as sinful and unworthy creations. Women are paid less as a reason of being a caste for while the republic might pretend itself only segregated in classes, the male privilege in patriarchy operates on CASTES. Ergo, Black women and Black males and Latinos and Latinas will not rise by values that support creationist zionist-anglo privileges.

The Segments have become the 'mindcontrol' of consumer identity under the constant pressure of target audience. If you disagree , then at least understand that marketing companies themselves identify the different generations in terms of the traumatic political deaths that happened in their time. “The first Boomer segment is bounded by the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, the CivilRights movements and the Vietnam War” . I want WJ Schroer and other marketing firms that name generations to understand “ shut up, firstly we are not the victim of blood spilled and we'll name ourselves if violence is the only thing you can focus on. Your impact of prioritizing political strife is obvious”. I take Generation X as an identity I would name myself to refute the two party system who designs politics around money . Thats why money is politics. Political failure.

Michael Bench, MEP GCERT

Exercise Physiologist

Womens and Gender Studies.

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inhale-in-hell-theres-heave-blog · 7 years

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romanticisation and reality

i’ve always been one to hold onto the past. it’s a very unwelcome part of me which decides that i should definitely still be awake at 2am replaying moments from days or weeks or years ago in my head and wishing i could do them again differently instead of doing what anyone else would do by laughing about it and moving on

like when i suddenly remember a much better meme i could have used to end a twitter argument which would have likely made me look a lot funnier and like i didn’t care and less like i was actually crying into some chicken selects because i had been simultaneously dumped and then humiliated lol xD

or when i think about when i used to get a bit wild on yunghan420 (follow if u want to be pissed off by the shitposts about once a week) and post things i’d immediately regret and then i’d end up with about 7 less friends than before and a lot of lost respect from people WHICH IS FAIR ENOUGH bc tbf was such a cunt on there i shouldn’t even be allowed it

or when i could have just handled things a lot better. i never know how i feel about astrology but i do basically fit the characteristics of ur classic aries, especially in doing things before thinking and putting emotions b4 rationality etc,. which is not really ideal ahahhahahahahahah it’s so bad i basically regret about 91% of social decisions and just torture myself w/ thinking about them over and over

but there’s another side to this. i realised that past memories go either way with me- either i’ll repress them and then use them as reasoning as to why i am not a functioning human & should probs be euthanised or i’ll overthink them to a point where the actual events become very overexaggerated caricatures of how they actually happened lol

e.g from september to christmas felt like a peak for me - i had a pretty stable friendship group, a boyfriend, i felt so confident etc etc

or did i???

have I just over thought it? was i really happy? am i just remembering the positives about that group and deliberately blocking out the parts where i felt left out in order to regret distancing myself (because i am alexander hamilton and i will never be satisfied clearly)?? am i overexaggerating how happy i was in that relationship and forgetting the distrust (amongst other things lmao)?? was i really happy then or am i just choosing to portray that part of my life as the happiest to make up for how i feel now? i dONT KNOW gosh darn it

again with the last boy i was with. as soon as we met i felt a click immediately and i knew that i could spend months with him. i enjoyed spending time with him more than anything else in the world, hence why i am still very hung up on him and listen to jeff buckley about 3 times a day because it reminds me of him but i digress. did i really feel this or has this only come about since he ended it? i know i’ve romanticised it to some degree, partly because it was the relationship i’ve dreamed of for so long. he took me out at night and we sat in the car and listened to the sound of the smiths and watched louis theroux in his cute lil room which was so ideal and he was older and could drive and it gave me the approval i wanted from not only him but also everyone else. it was perfect until one day it changed and he ended up telling me very nicely and gently that he wasn’t really looking for a relationship which was obviously a fucking blow when you’ve invested so much of ur already fragile self in him :-)

but what i’m trying to get at here is that i’m not sure what is really true and what i’ve romanticised. yes we had a wonderful time but it wasn’t all great. i knew he had to go to uni etc. we probably weren’t a perfect match at all. i think its just the fact it never really got started which left me able to speculate because it ended at a point where anything could have happened and gave me endless scope to romanticise what might have been if it hadn’t ended. (e.g easter ball. i had such high hopes for easter ball and when i got there all i could think about was that i could have gone with him ffs). through no real fault of his own, he left me with no choice but to picture everything that we could have been while he’s likely to have happily moved on and probably gives me very little thought or maybe thinks about me only when he sees me in school or sees my name in his contacts or scrolls past louis theroux on netflix because he’s moved on and probs sees me as a charming but unstable girl who he regrets introducing to his parents or some shit whereas i blatantly haven’t (and i probably should just face the fact i was more invested than him) AS U CAN SEE i’m just out here wondering what might have happened if we were still together

and i see myself doing this with so many things which tbf makes me worry i am basically jay gatsby who, although fictional lmao, i draw many similarities with. this sounds quite far fetched but roll w it i promise i am both revising eng lit here and also making conclusions about myself lmao. gatsby dates daisy for a month and ends up hung up on her for 5 years. he reinvents himself, changes his name, buys A MANSION TO LIVE OPPOSITE HER, THROWS HUGE FUCK OFF PARTIES IN THE HOPE SHE’D GO u get the picture. and when he eventually gets her back he’s still not satisfied. he wants more and more, for her to erase the last 5 years. DO U SEE WHAT I MEAN !! if i got him back, or my old friends back, i probably still wouldn’t be happy. i wouldn’t be able to compromise in a way that i wouldn’t regret at least one decision in that process. i would still want more SO I AM BASICALLY GATSBY AND WILL PROBS GET SHOT IN MY POOL (or hamilton bc am never satisfied so will probs get shot by my political rival or something)

so i think the real moral of this absolute shambles of self realisation is that i need to stop living in the past and focus on the future. yes i have been happy in the past but just bc these things have ended doesn’t mean i need to be unhappy. they aren’t defining factors of how i feel but merely just things to contend with which i am very sure i can do if i stop clinging onto things which once made me happy

how to do that, you ask? well i am not entirely sure but it seems fairly logical that if most of the world’s population, excluding the $10 founding father and 1920s literary figure james gatz, are able to move on and function normally then i’m sure with a bit of work i can. by acknowledging the things that happen to me as happy memories which are in my life for a reason rather than mistakes which i constantly wish i could change, hopefully i can start to move on and focus on other things !!

easier said than done haha cannot wait to slide back into sadness after writing this

jks i am trying to be positive i promise

hope u enjoyed this self absorbed shitpost with almost no real meaning except for a weak literary comparison and how i should probs move on from him bc its been a solid 7 weeks hahahahHAHAHAH banter

peace x

#what is this #why DO I STILL LIKE U ITS RUINING MY LIFE #get out of my head i'm tryin to move on #its failing can u tell #lover you really really really should have come over we would have been a beautiful couple at easter ball #look what ur missing oh wait nothing really ur probs better on ur own #self deprecation is my forte #OK DONE bye

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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What Major Cities Are Run By Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-major-cities-are-run-by-republicans/

What Major Cities Are Run By Republicans

Democrats Outnumber Gop Voters About 6 To 1 But Republican Candidates Think People Will Cross Party Lines Over Recent Crime Wave

New York City GOP mayoral candidates Curtis Sliwa, left, and Fernando Mateo have sparred over their qualifications and past missteps.

Two longtime New York City fixtures are enmeshed in a hotly contested primary fight for the Republican nomination in the race to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat.

Trump Keeps Claiming That The Most Dangerous Cities In America Are All Run By Democrats They Arent

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To make that case, Trump has repeatedly lifted up a statistical factoid, as he did during an event at the White House on Wednesday.

It’s not clear how Trump is defining “most dangerous” in this context. So let’s look at two related sets of data compiled by the FBI: most violent crime and most violent crime per capita.

Well, reader, I have a surprise for you.

Opinionhow Can Democrats Fight The Gop Power Grab On Congressional Seats You Won’t Like It

Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies. Find him on Twitter @themaxburns.

Opinionhow Can Democrats Fight The Gop Power Grab On Congressional Seats You Wont Like It

Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies. Find him on Twitter @themaxburns.

Rand Pauls Claim That Cities And States Led By Democrats Have The Worst Income Inequality

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— Sen. Rand Paul , Republican debate on Fox Business News, Nov. 10, 2015

Essential Politics: Democrats Scramble To Combat Rising Homicide Rates In American Cities

David Lauter

This is the June 25, 2021, edition of the Essential Politics newsletter. Like what you’re reading? to get it in your inbox three times a week.

That happened only after years of sharp declines in crime opened the way for the transformation of urban neighborhoods from Crown Heights in Brooklyn to Silver Lake in Los Angeles.

Rising crime acts like kryptonite on such coalitions, sapping their strength and laying bare their flaws.

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The latest news, analysis and insights from our politics teams from Sacramento to D.C.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Rising Violent Crime Is Likely To Present A Political Challenge For Democrats In 2022

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Violent crime is on the rise in urban areas across the country.

As a result, several cities, including Austin and New York, have reduced or reallocated police budgets — though some cities have looked to restore funding in recent months.

List Of Rioted Cities And Their Political Affiliation Wait Until You See These Stats

List of cities where riots, looting & violence were reported, their mayors, governors and their political affiliation.

Which cites are burning, and what political party runs them? Check out the list below.

Image Credit: Mass-shootings-info

Analysis: Exodus Of Republican Voters Tired Of Trump Could Push Party Further Right

6 Min Read

WASHINGTON – A surge of Republicans quitting the party to renounce Donald Trump after the deadly Capitol riot could hurt moderates in next year’s primaries, adding a capstone to Trump’s legacy as president: A potentially lasting rightward push on the party.

More than 68,000 Republicans have left the party in recent weeks in Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, crucial states for Democrats’ hopes of keeping control of Congress in the mid-term elections in 2022, state voter data shows.

That’s about three times the roughly 23,000 Democrats who left their party in the same states over the same time period.

Compared to the Republicans who stayed put, those who fled were more concentrated in the left-leaning counties around big cities, which political analysts said suggested moderate Republicans could be leading the defections.

If the exodus is sustained, it will be to the advantage of candidates in the Republican Party’s nomination contests who espouse views that play well with its Trump-supporting base but not with a broader electorate.

That could make it harder for Republican candidates to beat Democrats in November, said Morris Fiorina, a political scientist at Stanford University.

“If these voters are leaving the party permanently, it’s really bad news for Republicans,” Fiorina said.

U.S. elections are administered by state governments rather than by Washington.

Did Record Gun Sales Cause A Spike In Gun Crime Researchers Say It’s Complicated

Republicans are already going after Democrats with a three-pronged strategy that includes attacks on crime; the economy, particularly rising inflation and labor shortages; and border security.

Did Record Gun Sales Cause A Spike In Gun Crime Researchers Say Its Complicated

Republicans are already going after Democrats with a three-pronged strategy that includes attacks on crime; the economy, particularly rising inflation and labor shortages; and border security.

Meet The Republicans Representing Cities With A Higher Murder Rate Than Chicago

5 years old

As Democrats escalate calls for tougher gun laws, conservative House members offer pushback but few alternatives to gun control laws

Tue 12 Jul 2016 11.45 BST Last modified on Wed 26 Feb 2020 18.01 GMT

Eric Holder: There Is Still A Fight For Democrats Against Gop Gerrymandering

Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

Hope For Normalcy Is Growing Here’s What Americans Are Still Worried About

That has led the White House to make a show of doing something about the issue, despite the decentralization of police departments across the country, which are controlled at the municipal level.

Elleithee echoed that.

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Hope For Normalcy Is Growing Heres What Americans Are Still Worried About

That has led the White House to make a show of doing something about the issue, despite the decentralization of police departments across the country, which are controlled at the municipal level.

Elleithee echoed that.

Facebook

Mayors Decry Partisanship Over Covid Relief Saying City Needs Are Real

Few provisions in President Biden’s American Rescue Plan have drawn as much partisan opposition as the $350 billion designated for state and local governments. Republicans denounced the funding as a giveaway to mismanaged blue states and cities. But many mayors strongly disagree with that criticism.

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“I am a Republican,” said John Giles, mayor of Mesa, Ariz. “I hear what people are saying about the wisdom of borrowing money to finance the relief act. But I can tell you that the consequences of not doing that would be extreme and painful. So I’m disappointed to see this turn into a partisan conversation.”

Giles was speaking by telephone from Mesa and said he could see from his window a long line of cars waiting to receive a 50-pound package of food to help feed their families. He said this has been a weekly scene every Friday for most of the past year.

“The talking point that people latched onto was this is a bailout for irresponsible blue cities and states,” he said. “They didn’t think about it other than regurgitating that argument. Every time I heard that, I said to them, ‘Please tie all the strings you want to it.’ I can tell you, in my community, none of this money is going to compensate for poor decisions of the past. One hundred percent will go directly to covid-related assistance.”

Declining revenue is only a part of the problem for cities. The economic impact of the pandemic forced cities to respond with programs for which they hadn’t budgeted.

When It Comes To Big City Elections Republicans Are In The Wilderness

The party’s growing irrelevance in urban and suburban areas comes at a considerable cost, sidelining conservatives in centers of innovation and economic might.

“They go back to that stuff, I’m in trouble,” he said with a laugh.

Rogue City Leaders: How Republicans Are Taking Power Away From Mayors

State lawmakers are preempting the ability of city leaders to enforce their own regulations. The moves represent a sharp ideological shift for a party that has long championed local control.

Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey arrives for a news conference to talk about the latest Arizona COVID-19 information in Phoenix on Dec. 2, 2020. | Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo

06/23/2021 04:30 AM EDT

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But the bill’s main sponsor says it was needed to ensure “rogue city leaders” can’t impose mask mandates again, should another outbreak occur.

An usher holds a sign to remind fans to wear masks during a spring training baseball game between the Oakland Athletics and the Arizona Diamondbacks in Scottdale, Ariz. | Ashley Landis/AP Photo

Is There Currently Riots/looting *only* In Democrat Cities In The Usa

Not being an American, I am unsure what “Liberal Democrat run cities” are. I will guess those having a Democrat mayor, but am willing to be corrected.

Irrespective of your politics and whether you call them protests or riots, are there currently “large street gatherings”only in Democrat run cities?

No.

Cities are generally democrat-leaning – 35 with democratic mayors vs 13 republican in the 50 largest cities.

But cities with republican mayors also had protests which resulted in property damage. An incomplete list of examples:

Why Both Parties Are So Fixated On A Nonpartisan Texas Mayors Race

Is fast-growing Fort Worth going the way of Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio?

Mattie Parker, left, and Deborah Peoples answer questions on issues facing the business community during the mayoral runoff forum on May 12, 2021. | Yffy Yossifor/Star-Telegram via AP

06/05/2021 07:00 AM EDT

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Republican mayors are close to extinct in big-city America. And there might be one fewer after Saturday’s mayoral runoff in Fort Worth, Texas.

While Democrats hold City Hall in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin, the fifth-largest city in Texas — Fort Worth — is a holdout. Retiring GOP Mayor Betsy Price has held office through a decade of explosive growth that has seen the city’s population add more than 200,000 new residents, bringing it to nearly 1 million people.

The race to succeed her is officially nonpartisan, but the political backdrop is hard to miss: Fort Worth is not only one of the few remaining big cities with a GOP mayor, it’s part of the last major urban county in Texas — Tarrant County — that remains Republican.

What happens in Tarrant County is closely watched, both inside and outside the state. Once a Republican stronghold, Tarrant has seen its GOP margins decline in recent years — President Joe Biden’s narrow victory there in November marked the first time in over a half-century that a Democratic presidential nominee carried the county. If the county continues to move leftward, it stands to affect the balance of power in statewide elections.

List Of Current Mayors Of The Top 100 Cities In The United States

Municipal partisanship in 2021

This page lists the current mayors of the 100 largest U.S. cities by population.

As of 2013, an estimated 62,186,079 citizens lived in these cities, accounting for 19.67 percent of the nation’s total population.

Of these cities, there are 47 strong mayor governments, 46 council-manager governments, six hybrid governments, and one city commission.

At the start of 2021…

HIGHLIGHTS

Based on 2013 population estimates, 76% of the population of the top 100 cities lived in cities with Democratic mayors, and 15% lived in cities with Republican mayors.

Allen Joines , mayor of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, had been in office the longest; he first took office in 2001.

This page includes:

The Ten Most Dangerous Cities In The Us Are All Run By Democrats

United States

Aug 28, 2020 3:16:00 PM

While the cities with the highest crimes have Democrat mayors, studies show little correlation between party affiliations and crime.

During the 2020 presidential election race, President Donald Trump has claimed on multiple occasions that Democrats run the most dangerous cities in the U.S.

Reference links

Map: Republicans To Have Full Control Of 23 States Democrats 15

In 2021, Republicans will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 23 states. Democrats will have full control of the legislative and executive branch in 15 states.

Population of the 24 fully R-controlled states: 134,035,267Population of the 15 fully D-controlled states: 120,326,393

Republicans have full control of the legislative branch in 30 states. Democrats have full control of the legislative branch in 18 states.

Population of the 30 fully R-controlled legislature states: 185,164,412Population of the 18 fully D-controlled legislature states: 133,888,565

This week, Andrew Cuomo’s star went down in flames. While the smoke clears, let’s take a moment to sit back and reminisce about the governor’s long history with ethical and legal violations.

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What Major Cities Are Run By Republicans

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What Major Cities Are Run By Republicans

Democrats Outnumber Gop Voters About 6 To 1 But Republican Candidates Think People Will Cross Party Lines Over Recent Crime Wave

New York City GOP mayoral candidates Curtis Sliwa, left, and Fernando Mateo have sparred over their qualifications and past missteps.

Two longtime New York City fixtures are enmeshed in a hotly contested primary fight for the Republican nomination in the race to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat.

Trump Keeps Claiming That The Most Dangerous Cities In America Are All Run By Democrats They Arent

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To make that case, Trump has repeatedly lifted up a statistical factoid, as he did during an event at the White House on Wednesday.

It’s not clear how Trump is defining “most dangerous” in this context. So let’s look at two related sets of data compiled by the FBI: most violent crime and most violent crime per capita.

Well, reader, I have a surprise for you.

Opinionhow Can Democrats Fight The Gop Power Grab On Congressional Seats You Won’t Like It

Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies. Find him on Twitter @themaxburns.

Opinionhow Can Democrats Fight The Gop Power Grab On Congressional Seats You Wont Like It

Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies. Find him on Twitter @themaxburns.

Rand Pauls Claim That Cities And States Led By Democrats Have The Worst Income Inequality