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jamr0ck83 · 5 years ago

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Kick Rocks With That Centrist Nonsense

This post in response to an NPR article discussing the dangers of a divided America during the coronavirus pandemic. Originally, the words below were just supposed to be a reply to a comment regarding said article, but...words tend to get away from me. And they all felt important enough that I should post them in their entirety.

I can agree that the media does seem to portray a larger divide than what might actually exist. Cuz really, 100 people on a sidewalk isn’t a sizable movement; it’s a few people shouting inane mantras and holding up ridiculous (and often insulting) signs who don’t need to be receiving a national platform to broadcast their nonsense. And it troubles me that the mainstream media is more willing to cover a relatively insignificant gathering of armed white people on some state’s capitol steps than report on the vast amounts of incidences of injustice and racist vitriol that people of color are dealing with right now. To me, I know which story seems more concerning. But we keep seeing these protesters on the news in between cuts of Trump babbling incoherently about shining light into the body to kill a virus. I know the media is super concerned about ratings, but what happened to their responsibility to the public to provide us with factual information that we absolutely need to know?

That being said, I respectfully disagree that the crux of our national divide is built upon extremism on both sides and that the proper approach is a more centrist view. Our nation has been divided since before its inception. I think Americans have this notion that we need to “get back” to unity and mutual respect, but it seems to me that this idealized era never happened to begin with if it took so very little for people’s incredibly harmful biases and prejudices to become center stage as they now have. We were never united, and we were never in harmony. Any period of time you might point to as one of evidence that we used to see eye-to-eye on things, I will show you at least one group of people who, at that same time, were facing severe injustices and oppression. America has never been good for everyone; that’s a myth that needs to die, because it prevents us from moving forward in any meaningful way if we’re constantly looking back to a romanticized past.

If you want to blame someone for our intense divide, blame this current presidential administration and the larger Republican Party who refuse to do anything but stand idly by as our democracy implodes. At no point, has Trump tried to unify the country. Why would he? He loves division; he thrives on it! Division is how he was able to get elected to an office he has no business holding. He will never be presidential, he will never be the voice of reason, and he will never consider the needs of the country ahead of his own. He genuinely doesn’t care about any of us, not even his supporters. If it made him more money or got him more power, he would sign off on the literal destruction of any one of us in a heartbeat.

That brings me to my third point, which is that this idea that it’s the extremists on both sides that have made life in America unbearable is patently false. I’m an independent, and I lean pretty left. And the reason I do that is because to not lean left is to align myself with people who are clinging to archaic and bigoted ideas about who deserves to be treated like people and who is unworthy. I say this as someone who used to consider themselves fairly conservative; there is nothing that the right is doing right now that speaks of respect or concern for anyone who doesn’t look or sound like them. When you have a side that has couched themselves in both covert and overt rhetoric that is sexist, racist, and homophobic, you don’t get to claim “to each his own”. When your political and social views demand or dictate that I be stripped of my rights and/or my life, I don’t have any need to consider your position as equally valid as mine. And I don’t owe you compassion or respect if you are actively fighting for my destruction. That’s not hyperbole; that’s exactly what is happening. Black people are being attacked and murdered by police and vigilante citizens at alarming regularity. Kids whose parents are just trying to relocate to a place with opportunity and a chance to survive are locked in cages. The LGBTQ+ community is constantly on the receiving end of violence, are being denied the same rights as other citizens, and are being told that they can’t live a peaceful life that would allow them to be themselves because that makes some people who don’t even know them feel uncomfortable. Women are degraded and minimized to a degree that is appalling, and despite everyone being fully aware that the wage gap exists, people are actually (still) debating whether that’s problematic. And then you have the other side that believes all of these aforementioned things are patently abhorrent and need to be fixed. What middle ground exists within that dynamic? Give black people the right to live but let’s hold back on letting LGBTQ+ people exist with any sense of being full citizens? Let’s keep migrant kids in open pens instead of cages, and don’t give women equal pay but maybe just a slight increase so that they’re now being paid 85¢ for every male dollar as opposed to 81¢? None of that is just nor a fair compromise, because you can’t compromise when you’re fighting for someone’s humanity to be acknowledged. Either it is or it isn’t.

I’ve heard harsh words originating from each side, and that does, indeed, reflect a lack of respect. But I’ve approached many a conservative with the mindset of having a thoughtful exchange of ideas in hopes that we might both understand each other more aptly. And as a result of that, I’ve been insulted, diminished, and literally told to shut up the minute I’ve made a point someone either can’t figure out how to reasonably address or I have indicated that I believe myself to be a knowledgeable human being not looking for their permission to exist. Frankly, I’m done being nice, and I’m done showing compassion in hopes that the other person might be swayed, because they never are. That has often left myself open for verbal abuse for absolutely no reason, and I can’t do that anymore; I shouldn’t be expected to. Sometimes, I HAVE said mean things, and I meant every word of it. I will not ever allow someone to degrade me in the futile hope that I can appeal to their humanity. Because the second you began to treat me as “less-than”, you forfeited your right to see my good nature, and I don’t owe you anything. Especially not when the argument you are making is in support of me not being able to enjoy the liberties and freedoms that are due me.

I often cringe when people make the argument for political centrality, because it honestly feels like a cop-out. A person is willing to forego taking a stance, because they can afford to, usually because their lives don’t depend on it. That’s not a privilege I have. Decisions are being made today that affect me deeply, and I cannot sit back “objectively” to find the middle ground. Either you believe in science or you don’t. Either you think it’s wrong that, in NYC, cops were beating black and brown people in the Bronx and putting them in jail for “failure to social distance” while they politely handed out masks to the white people in Central Park, or you don’t. And if you have to stop for an extensive period of time in order to figure out where you land, it’s already clear that you have not chosen the side that respects all humanity.

This country is an absolute mess, but it’s been a mess in the making for hundreds of years. Every citizen needs to decide what it is they stand for and what kind of country they want to live in. Now. And there can be nothing gradual about whatever shift we need to make. People are suffering. Now. They don’t deserve to be sacrificed just so others who don’t like change don’t feel too inconvenienced. “With all deliberate speed” was a bullshit strategy in the 1950s, and it’s a bullshit strategy now. Cuz we waited 60-plus years, and what has really been accomplished in all of that time? We got schools all over this country never even been integrated. But yet we pat ourselves on the back and call ourselves a post-racial society.

No, fam. Just no.

If you like what you just read, please follow me on Instagram. @TheRandomThoughtsofmyBrain

#BlackLivesMatter #HumanityMatters #CommonDecencyMatters #YourRightToBeABigotDoesNotMatter #MLKAintDieForThis #MakeAmericaThinkAgain #BlackProudandEducated #ElectAClownExpectACircus #RandomThoughtsOfMyBrain

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reactionaryhater · 6 years ago

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Watch Innuendo Studios’ video “There is Always a Bigger Fish” and give us your thoughts on it.

Sounds interesting enough. I’m busy this week, but I’ll give it a look tonight and more or less stop to jot down my thoughts as they come. Warning: This will be LONG and RAMBLING.

The topic of the video, as Innuendo Studios (IS) claims, is “the core ideology of conservatism.” I should start by saying I’m not a conservative, in fact I’m ideologically at odds with much of what our Republican party does. Additionally, I’ve never really understood conservatism as a general concept. Like, if you bring up liberalism, or socialism, or progressivism, or whatever you call the Democratic party, I know some basic markers that distinguish these from other political beliefs. Conservatism, I’m not so sure. There’s the idea of small government and traditional values, but these are both relative to our society. And when they come at odds, which does the ideological conservative choose? So on that note evaluating this video might be difficult.

“Say for the sake of argument, you’ve got this friend.”

Oh boy, here comes a self insert fic. I’d like to call this a strawman, but I can’t have it both ways now. I will say arguing politics by private message sounds a bit pathological to me.……cough…Okay will this bickering be on the test?

“Republican thought.”

Okay, we’re not talking about core ideological conservatism here, we’re talking about Republicans. Good to keep in mind.

“If you didn’t believe your friend shared these assumptions, you’d basically be calling him a fascist or a sadist.”

That says quite a bit about the breadth the word “fascism” has for IS. Anyone who doesn’t believe “Do unto others” and isn’t clinically disordered is a fascist.

“And you conclude that, if you believe in democracy, you must believe in equality, and, if you believe in equality, you must believe in equal access to education, and must conclude that governments should help pay tuition.”

This is a chain argument, or to put it another way, a train of association. IS makes three logical steps which he outlines, from one thought to another. In principle, they look good and sound. In reality, many assumptions are made and many possible alternatives ignored, each step of the way. That means the more steps he makes, the more distant he gets from the starting point by an exponential factor.

Let’s start with the first conclusion: Democracy means everyone is equal. He suggests democracy doesn’t work unless everyone is equal (such as in education). I think the people who started the practices of democracy were much smarter than that. Even when all voters had to own land, they would have known not everyone was equally educated, equally virtuous, and equally informed. That was never the point. Democracy doesn’t assume everyone is equal, it assumes the majority of active citizens have the best interests of their society in mind.

I’d also like to point out how he ought to be explaining his belief that everyone is “equal but not equal.” Remember that meme about the fence? Different heights. If anything it’s the conservatives and the “privilege deniers” who believe in the most present equality. Now in an ideal world, if everyone is equal, they can surely educate themselves. But they’re not equal. But they SHOULD be equal. So they need assistance to become equal. Who’s going to MAKE us equal? He assumes the government in the third conclusion. But when did the government gain a monopoly on the power to enact change?

“He is often misinformed, but what if that isn’t the problem? What if he… actually believes something else?”

Uh oh, question begging incoming.

“A liberal is someone who tends to think democratically, and a conservative is someone who tends to think like a capitalist.”

I don’t accept this definition for ideological roots or for the parties as a whole, but I accept it for certain segments of the US political sphere. Those segments may not be equally represented or influential. They’re there, though, so that’s a start.

“It’s an egalitarian mindset; people gain power by…”

HAHAHAHAHAHA. I’m sorry, I just can’t. I can’t help myself. I must meme.

I get that he goes on to give the “People have the power” line, but that is a bit different. We the people ordained the Constitution, which grants power according to rules, and so on. We are not a direct democracy, nor, do I think, anyone today would believe our elected officials are mere employees.

“This is the idea of democracy, with the history of democracy being riddled with failures to live up to this ideal”

Not even IS, and as I said, pure egalitarianism is not by design in the US. I want to be clear I’m not saying egalitarianism is bad, nor am I saying that people should not be treated with equal degrees of respect – this is a very different discussion. I’m just addressing his claims about our political foundations here.

I agree with his description of capitalism.

I disagree that conservatives believe hierarchy is man’s natural state. Many many conservatives are devout Christians, and in Christian tradition, everyone in theory is equal under God. Many conservatives also believe capitalism is a means toward increasing the quality of life for all people.

“Power has to be earned.”

You mean *cough* by garnering votes? I mark this point as where he inserts the straw man that conservatives all want black people to be under Jim Crow again, which sure is a talking point of the far left, isn’t it, and yet not a talking point of the Republican party.

“All citizens are equal…is a legal fiction.”

So I wrote about how he cannot believe in equality before hearing this point, and honestly now. Someone who believes all people are equal does not advocate for money for the poor, because there are no poor. This sounds silly for me to say, but until he either defines equality in concrete terms or concedes that his equality is an “ought” not an “is” (bringing himself about halfway to this capitalist conservative) we won’t be able to go any further.

“Of any issue, simply ask: does this distribute power, or consolidate it?”

Does IS desire a more powerful central government, or a less powerful central government?

“If you’re in the middle, then you serve the king. Valar dohaeris. But, to everyone beneath you, you are the king.”

Ah, the privilege argument rears its ugly head at last. IS apparently thinks we live in, and the honest to God best analogy I can make here is, Soviet Russia at the height of corruption. Peons lick the boots of paper pushers. IS is right when he says he and conservatives can’t communicate, because the world he perceives is not the United States or just about any other developed nation. Here, paper pushers are treated like crap just as much, in fact, usually treated like crap by two sides. By the same token, a poor person’s vote is equal to a middle class vote (but only the rich have enough money to buy power, or a seat in college, or have the connections to get the job).

“And getting pissed at those above implies that those below have a right to be pissed at you.”

Just to hammer it home, this statement necessitates that middle management has real power to enact their own will, and everything I’ve heard from and about people in middle management suggests otherwise. Analogize to the mythical power of merely being white / male or white / male passing.

“A slight on them is a slight on all of us.”

All republicans are racist hillbillies stereotype.I notice how he just slipped this in without even a logical progression. In his grand argument, it’s actually a new premise.

[Analogy to Kingdom Hearts]

I don’t even.

“Savvy viewers may be remembering another political philosophy that is hierarchical, undemocratic, built on nostalgia, and that likes to cloak its policies in progressive camouflage”

Ooo, ooo, it’s the one I was just talking about, Soviet Russia. Oh, nope, I apologize, he has a single word that makes this answer slightly less than ideal, “nostalgia.” With that word, the answer is

“Fascism.”

Who knew nostalgia was of such moral consequence.

“If you don’t like what a business is doing, you don’t regulate it, you take your money elsewhere. You should favor the capitalist solution, not the democratic one.”

Is the collective action of masses to speak their mind not democratic? I understand if his intention is to claim the business will survive despite protest, but he doesn’t claim that. This implies an unusually limited definition of “democratic”: it must compel the operation of government. Whereas fascism and capitalism are defined broadly enough to describe associated, sometimes partial associated, values. I’m not sure what he’s trying to accomplish with this difference of definition, but it’s worth noticing.

“They will never be onboard with aiding the poor in any systemic way, and will, instead, champion charity and crowdfunding, because minnows getting to eat should always be framed as a gift rather than a right.”

Two things. First, charity is systemic. Crowdfunding is systemic, though maybe short-lived. I guess “systemic” now shares the same anemia of definition that “democratic does” in it must only apply to government action. (Unless it’s systemic racism…) Second, conservatives cannot believe both that minnows work for their own food (“How resourceful were you? How well did you play?”) and minnows only survive by being given food.

“But as long as you are trying to meet this mentality in the middle, you are leaving the door open for fascists.”

Did I predict that he hates moderates? Darn, I don’t think I wrote that one down. Well, another day, another radical.

“I recommend this one, because egalitarian thinking is one thing Nazis are bad at infiltrating.”

But people like Pol Pot are good at infiltrating it and, like, shooting a fifth of the population in a field.

Again, I don’t dislike egalitarianism, but that’s a pretty shallow argument in its favor.

I guess the sum of this video is to claim that conservatism is somehow the worship of capitalism, and then that conservatism is like fascism, and fascism shares a “hierarchical mindset” with capitalism. But he can’t bring himself to claim fascism is an extension of capitalism, because that would have us all wondering why Adolf Hitler went around decrying, “plutocracies in which a tiny clique of capitalists dominate the masses.“

So again we get an argument from looks-a-little-like. Fascism looks-a-little-like hierarchy, and so does capitalism. Nevermind so do state-based communism, socialism, regulatory agencies, even labor unions, and any organization that claims to be [inter]national. And our Democrats sure haven’t slowed down the hierarchy of our government.

On a final note, I kept getting confused thinking “bigger fish” was about the phrase “bigger fish to fry” until I went through the whole video and realize, no, it’s supposed to be “big fish in a small pond.” You know, like that Coldplay song. “Lost!”

Probably should have cleared things up and titled the video, “Lost!”

#innuendo studios #conservatism #republicans #capitalism #social justice

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elizadushkudaily · 6 years ago

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“The year has been in some ways just extraordinary in a beautiful way and it’s been in some ways extraordinary in a really challenging way,” proclaims Mapplethorpe producer Eliza Dushku.

From almost any perspective, that seems like an understatement from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum

Married last summer and expecting her first child this summer, Dushku has seen her more than a decade-long endeavor on the Ondi Timoner-directed film about the controversial and hyper-stylized photographer successfully make it to the big screen. After a premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, the Samuel Goldwyn Film distributed-picture, with former Dr. Who and The Crown star Matt Smith in the title role, made a leap today with openings in NYC, LA, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, the nation’s capital and more.

At the same time, Dollhouse star Dushku was thrust into a controversial spotlight of her own as it was revealed that the actor was paid $9.5 million to settle sexual harassment claims on the set of CBS’ Bull concerning star Michael Weatherly. Coming less than a year after Dushku herself spoke out about being sexually assaulted by a stuntman on True Lies when she was 12, the Bull situation originated from The New York Times publishing information from a leaked probe of ex-CBS boss Les Moonves’ behavior and the overall culture at the company.

Restrained by a non-disclosure agreement as a part of her settlement, Dushku nonetheless penned an op-ed in her hometown paper the Boston Globe in December 2018 delivering her side of the story. “I didn’t leak the story, but I was not comfortable with the false narrative that had been propagated, as I wrote about in theGlobe piece,” Dushku told me this week.

Walking a legal line, the op-ed laid out as much as Dushku could what really happened with Weatherly. The actor also detailed why as a once expected series regular, she suddenly was written out of the Amblin Television-produced series after just a few episodes in its first season after presenting her concerns to the network.

I sat down with the frank Dushku recently to talk about the making of Mapplethorpe, where she’s at now and how the current Boston-based Lesley University student got there this year.

DEADLINE: So, as Mapplethorpe is about to open in L.A. and expand across the country, and after a year of, well, a hell of a lot, how are you?

DUSHKU: I am well, thank you. I’ve become good at sort of compartmentalizing even if some people see that as a good thing, some people see that as a bad thing. The year has been in some ways just extraordinary in a beautiful way and it’s been in some ways extraordinary in a really challenging way. However, I feel like this field that I’m studying now, holistic psychology, is about combining all of these — you know, your mind body and spirit — and it’s exactly what I’ve needed and where I’ve needed to be.

So I feel like the universe was looking out for me in that. And in another sense, everything was supposed to happen for us to get to Matt Smith playing Robert Mapplethorpe. He is so good in the movie. Even people that don’t love the movie, they love Matt Smith in the movie.

DEADLINE: In that vein, I know Mapplethorpe was not a film that came together quickly, but how did you get involved in your first run as a feature producer?

DUSHKU: Well, the first time my brother brought me the script from the original writer was 14 years ago. We partnered with Ondi Timoner, the director and co-writer, and optioned the material from Mapplethorpe’s foundation, and it was a long, rough ride.

DEADLINE: How so? I mean, I’d assume one of the hardest parts would be getting the foundation on board.

DUSHKU: For us, there were a number of challenging factors. We had different other cast involved at different times. We worked on the script with the help of the Sundance Institute. We had taken the script to the producer/writer/director labs and wanted to do it right.

DEADLINE: Was Sundance helpful?

DUSHKU: Yeah, it’s a tremendous resource. They do exactly what I was talking about. They bring incredible mentors, and [Robert] Redford himself is up there. They’re giving filmmakers the tools to shoot scenes and then they critique them, and we were really lucky to have some Sundance love.

DEADLINE: So, talking about that rough ride, where was the love harder to find, so to speak?

DUSHKU: (Laughs) Look, this is a business, and as we all know these art movies — whether it’s Frida or Basquiat — they’re not typically a Marvel movie in terms of the return. So you have to sort of find the right financiers for a movie that want to tell a story that’s important.

DEADLINE: Did you think of packing it in by, say Year 10?

DUSHKU: Honestly, sometimes, sometimes. I remember reading about Frida and Salma Hayek, talking about how she’d worked for 12 or 14 years on that movie. This was like just a few years into Mapplethorpe and I thought, “What, that’s insane, how could anyone spend that much time?” But every time it felt like the movie had fallen apart, and there’s no way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, the sky would open up and a glimmer of light would come through and we would sort of like chase that light. We found ourselves like hopping on a flight or going and meeting this person or chasing every leaf, turning over every stone.

We came so close to missing the window and I think you do, you get a real sense as a producer that’s invested in it that long that you’re leaving something behind, and it really has your sort of print on it and this one makes me really proud.

DEADLINE: Besides actually getting it made, which is a massive accomplishment, what makes you so proud of Mapplethorpe?

DUSHKU: When my brother Nate first brought me that script, I wasn’t familiar really with much of Mapplethorpe’s work. I mean, I knew he took some dirty pictures and I knew that he also took some flower pictures and I knew a little bit about his relationship with Patti [Smith] probably, but nothing substantial.

It wasn’t until we really did a deep dive into his work and met with his foundation and we ended up traveling to Florence for a day to see an exhibit where they had surrounded the David statue with his photographs and I started to realize what an international impact this artist had. What a great American artist he was. The guy was a trailblazer, he was a cultural lightning rod. He was so really brave and imperfect, but we also explored his complicated relationship with his family, his relationship with his religion, and with his peers.

We tried to get to the why and the what drove him. You see his journey and where he began to sort of reconcile in himself that “I am an artist and I have something to say that’s very different than what anyone has ever said.” I thought that was extraordinary, and that was where I saw so much courage in him. I mean, you think about being homosexual and doing what he did in today’s day and age would be challenging. Think about it 30 years ago.

DEADLINE: I do, and I think about it in the context of today’s day and age, as you said, and, to be honest, some of what you gone through …

DUSHKU: Yes, I mean, it’s terrifying. In many ways, we’ve regressed so much when we had made so many strides.

When you talk about Mapplethorpe and back in the ’80s and you’re talking about censorship and First Amendment rights. Yes, of course, there’s the irony of the year that I’ve experienced in terms of silencing people and big corporations. The silencing people in this day and age.

DEADLINE: You mean like NDAs and legal threats?

DUSHKU: To some degree. It’s scary, and I think, frankly, people need to be outspoken and say “We’re not accepting that.” That’s not who we are, that’s not what our democracy is based on. We have our First Amendment rights, and we intend to use them and not have people strip them from us.

So, to go back to Mapplethorpe, it’s extremely relevant right now. Also, in some ways, it’s wild because of the amount of time that it took to make this movie and yet the way that everything has lined up and the timing feeling so important and relevant. The anniversary of Mapplethorpe’s death was 30 years ago last week. The movie is now out across the country and expanding, and he has this beautiful exhibit in the Guggenheim in New York right now. It’s sort of this time of all things Mapplethorpe, so we have to believe that there’s something kismet in that.

DEADLINE: To shift gears, obviously the sexual harassment that happened to you on Bull and the millions CBS paid out in the hopes it and you would go away put a different spotlight on you last year when a copy of the internal investigations over Les Moonves and the overall culture there was leaked to The New York Times. Even with the NDA you signed, you not long after penned an op-ed in the Boston Globe on some of your side of the story, and people should read that, can read that if they want to get your POV. But in terms of NDAs, you recently said you believe that they re-victimize, what did you mean by that?

DUSHKU: As we just talked about in terms or our rights as Americans, and to be able to be complete people, we need the right to stand in our power and in our truth. When you rob somebody of that or when you threaten somebody, it’s really damaging. It’s damaging beyond my business or it’s damaging to a person’s personhood and that is what I’ve really struggled with and realized over the last year.

DEADLINE: How?

DUSHKU: As I’m studying trauma and addiction and holistic psychology and the way we store things in our bodies, I’ve also watched this year and I’ve talked to other women who have been part of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement, and it’s been a year of reckoning.

It’s time for us to be open about that and say, “No, we’re going to stand in our truth, we’re going to stand in our power.”

DEADLINE: Do you think that #MeToo and Time’s Up can really work, or do you think that Hollywood eventually will revert to its tried and true and bad ways when it comes to sexual harassment, sexual assault and the culture of complacency?

DUSHKU: I’ll say this: In my case, what made me feel a responsibility was the fact that I had been around for so many years. I have been around for almost 30 years. I had worked and built myself up to a place where you know I wasn’t off the bus and yet on a set, I didn’t have a voice. After all those years, to find myself feeling powerless and feeling victimized was not — it was more important to me to tell the truth and face the consequences.

I didn’t leak the story, but I was not comfortable with the false narrative that had been propagated, as I wrote about in the Globe piece. That’s what I’ve been trying to do. But, as you said, I took the opportunity to fully respond to the leak in the CBS case. I responded very deliberately and very intentionally with my Globe piece in many ways in hopes that then I would be able to go on and celebrate the things that I have worked so hard for and on, and not have the bad behavior of men and others define my life going forward.

DEADLINE: Clearly, that’s not where your head is at…

DUSHKU: This year did shake me, you know — didn’t break me, that’s for sure. Like, this is one of my first trips back to LA in a little while, and I actually spent the morning with the three heads of the Time’s Up organization and Mr. Steven Spielberg.

DEADLINE: What was that discussion like with them and the man who, among other things, is the boss of Bull producers Amblin TV?

DUSHKU: Good. We sat and brainstormed and discussed possible solutions for this systemic imbalance of power, the abuse and harassment that we’ve been seeing and hearing and experiencing and both in our industry and beyond. That’s something that you know that I can and will continue to contribute to and I want to look at it from my own experience.

DEADLINE: Do you think others, at that meeting today and otherwise, get that?

DUSHKU: Yes, I think this is a movement. This is not a fad and that’s one thing that was really clear in talking with these women this morning. We need strength in numbers. We need allies like Steven Spielberg, and of course, we do need the media to tell the stories and to help lay responsibility and accountability where it needs to be.

DEADLINE: And for you?

DUSHKU: I want to look at it from a holistic healing perspective and the work I hope to do there. You know, I wouldn’t sit here and say it’s all very exciting, but I think we all at a certain point realize in our lives that as everything starts to intersect you do start to figure out sort of who you are and what you’re here for. I think one of the hardest parts when we’re all facing the different forms of adversity in our lives, is that we do end up carrying a lot of shame. We do end up covering things up and hiding things and then if you come out with things then you have to face the sort of backlash or the opinions of everybody sort of looking at you and judging you. It can all be really overwhelming and you can feel like you just want to numb out and escape. Now, I’m learning to transform that into something that might help someone else.

Of course, I understand that journalists have their job and that they have to ask, but I also would hope that that’s something that people pay attention to. That part of my being able to heal and to move on is to be able to stand in the power that I produced this movie for 14 years and it’s doing incredibly well and we’re expanding this week. It’s an accomplishment having been an actor for so long, as my first feature as a producer and yeah, I’m really, I’m really psyched about that.

DEADLINE: No argument there…

DUSHKU: Yeah. I’m not only in service of Mapplethorpe, I’m in service of everyone that came together to make this movie. While my story is important, I’ve talked about it, I’ve written about it. Now I want to be in service of this movie and this story and everyone that worked on it.

DEADLINE: So what’s next?

DUSHKU: (Laughs and points at her pregnant belly) Well, my next major production will be this summer in July and that’s right here. Other than that, I mean, god, to look back at almost 30 years in this business I feel like I’m just so grateful, I’m proud of so many of the things that I’ve done as a producer. You know, I was a producer on Dollhouse and that was an incredible experience. My brother and I also had produced a documentary about Albania with PBS, and it’s on Amazon now called Dear Albania.

So what’s next is just having that freedom to tell any kinds of stories that I want to tell that are important to me.

#eliza dushku #sorry i'm late with the updating!#interview

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tudorscharlot · 6 years ago

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Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

SPOILER ALERT: THIS TEXT IS COMPLETELY FULL OF SPOILERS I saw Suspiria in the theater for the third time yesterday and I have so many thoughts about this fascinating, layered, amazing masterpiece of a film. I woke up wordy today, so I'm just gonna write about Suspiria until I drop!

By emphasizing so strongly the larger-world contexts of Germany during World War II and the present-day political unrest of 1977 in his Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino effectively morally neutralizes the concept of witches. While in Argento's Suspiria the witches are presented as primarily evil or at least very dark and sinister and without context in their motives, the witches in Guadagnino's Suspiria are far more nuanced and have been placed into the real world. Witches in this Suspiria are not inherently good or bad. They are just individual people who each have their own motives and their own relationship with power within the frame of their group.

That the Markos Dance company was a bastion for women against the evils and indignities of the Third Reich during WWII and that its matrons remain keenly aware of the importance of women having financial independence in the present day is an effective way of showing that these women and their organization are at a basic, fundamental level fully on the side of women in the face of societal oppression. And not just in spirit or theory, but in very pragmatic, concrete terms.

The idea of a witch is super-pragmatic. What is a witch? A witch is a woman who's been pushed to the margins by a patriarchal society and is forced to find her own way to stay alive, safe, and thriving. She must be pragmatic, because she's got no mainstream/institutional support and in fact is often operating in direct opposition to social norms. There's no room for idealism in such a situation. It's clear that the function and spirit of the dance academy is to empower and protect its women in the face of serious danger and in the most immediate, efficient way. The conflict that has arisen at the time of this film is in regards to just how they should act in order to preserve their organization and maintain their purpose moving forward.

So why are Markos and her followers willing to torture and sacrifice the girls that they are supposed to be protecting?

One of my favorite things that Bob Dylan ever said is "To live outside the law, you must be honest". And I think that basically a good witch is a woman living outside the law honestly. Helena Marko has been corrupted by power and greed and she is not honest. She and her followers have lost sight of their higher purpose and values and have become willing to sacrifice the girls in order to prolong her life and her power. It's heartbreaking that Patricia, Olga, and Sara all suffer and choose to die. And it's because of the kind of pragmatism that corrupt power uses to justify inhumanity. It is a cost that those in power are willing to have others pay in order to remain in power. It's vanity!

I think it's very groovy that the Markos Dance Company - which is using questionable means with questionable motives to achieve idealized goals - is set in parallel to the Baader-Meinhof Gang - which is also using questionable means with questionable motives to achieve an idealized goal. The Baader-Meinhof Gang are considered a left-wing terrorist group. I say FUCK THAT! It doesn't matter which "wing" you're on in theory - if you are using terrorist, totalitarian, authoritarian, or otherwise murderous-asshole means to achieve your political goals, you can no longer claim to be progressive or anywhere near the liberal end of the spectrum. Terrorism is right-wing action, period. Similarly, if you're murdering some of the girls you're dedicated to protecting in order to keep being able to protect them, you're no longer in the business of protecting girls. Your purpose has become a fiction. Helena Markos is an incredible, grotesque manifestation of greed.

Susie Bannion, on the other wing, is honest and good. Throughout her life and the film, she follows her instincts and goes where she feels she belongs. She is open, unafraid, and not driven by ego or a desire for control. And in the end, she becomes a conduit for justice and mercy.

Madame Blanc is honest and, like Susie, willing to accept that there are things happening that are larger than her personal desires or will. She just wants things to be right and pure. It is troubling to me that she goes along with the cruel treatment of the girls that were being groomed before Susie arrived. But it is consistent with her recognition that the will of the collective (the will of the people) is greater than that of one individual. It's a democratic notion (which is idealistic and not pragmatic) that a democracy must be maintained even when it goes in a bad direction if there is hope that it can be steered back in a good direction. It's why you let Donald Trump be president instead of locking him in a hole somewhere and keeping Barack Obama in the White House until you figure out a sane way to move forward.

So that's a bunch of political stuff about Suspiria. But what about the heart of the film?

The chemistry between Blanc and Susie gives me goosebumps. I don't know if it is me projecting my own worldview on the film, but I believe there is romantic love between them. Maybe there isn't. Their love might be that which is between powerful friends or people who are essential parts of something bigger than themselves. It might be the undifferentiated rush of emotion that happens when you meet someone you really connect with and haven't figured out what exactly the nature of the connection is. But that spark feels too hot to be something other than romantic love. The way they look at each other, the way they talk to each other, it's serious shit. Susie disarms Blanc on multiple occasions, and Blanc is clearly a woman who isn't ever disarmed. I am transported by the look on her face when she comes into the mirror room and sees Susie dancing the first time, when she says "it's difficult not to be curious about you," when she's about to caress the back of Susie's head and catches herself and makes the motion without actually touching her. These are some of the most romantic scenes I've ever seen in any movie. When Blanc comes into Susie's room after the Volk performance, the way they talk to each other, and when Susie says "because you love me," just...holy shit. And when they are staring at each other from opposite ends of the table in the restaurant while everyone else is talking and singing...swoon. That scene, to me, is the climactic moment of the film.

I don't think this IS a love story anymore than I think it IS a horror film, but the beautifully non-verbal portrayal here of two people who feel an all-consuming attraction to one another is the stuff of the absolute greatest human art.

And my gosh is this a non-verbal film! There is an incredible amounts of information and emotion conveyed so deeply by the eyes and faces of its entirely brilliant cast. I know it is a hallmark of horror/supernatural films to have characters who communicate telepathically and who are able to perceive things happening elsewhere or in the future. But this is something else entirely. Every time two of these women are looking at each other and not saying anything, every time someone's mind is clearly perceiving something somewhere else, it's just exquisite and electrifying.

Susie says she wants to be the hands of the dance company. What are the hands? Hands are what the heart and mind use to touch and move things in the world. Hands are laid on people to heal them. Hands make tools and cast spells and make real that which the mind conceives. They are a bridge between the spirit world and the physical world. It is good to be good with your hands.

After three viewings, I still don't know why the scene in the ritual room after Death arrives is filmed in that jumpy, fuzzy way. I didn't like it the first time I saw it, but it doesn't bother me anymore. And whatever is happening and whyever it's happening, I love that this movie becomes deep red here for a few minutes. Like Susie says, it's beautiful.

I also still don't know why the last thing we see before the credits roll is a zoom (so much like the last zoom in The Shining) up to Anke and Josef's initials carved into the wall. Even though I love it! And I still don't know what Susie is doing in the post-credits scene. I'd love to think that we are watching her use her hands to heal Blanc's injured neck, but her face doesn't quite look like that's what she's doing. Maybe it will become more clear when I see it again.

This is, without a doubt and without any other beloved film coming anywhere near it, my favorite film of 2018.

#suspiria #luca guadagnino #dakota johnson #tilda swinton

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Are There More Republicans Or Democrats In The Senate

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-there-more-republicans-or-democrats-in-the-senate/

Are There More Republicans Or Democrats In The Senate

Biggest Influencers: Democrats Or Republicans

Democrats take House, Republicans keep Senate in historic midterms

To understand who influences politics, you can easily find out who the wealthy support. For example, the Walton family, the owners of the retail giant Walmart, has traditionally donated to Republican candidates. Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmarts founder, hasnt strayed from that too much. That is, until the 2008 election. In 2008 and 2016 the Walton family donated to Hilary Clintons campaign.

She isnt the only person from a wealthy family to change tradition where politics are concerned either. Many of the younger individuals in Americas richest families have begun to sway from their familys political associations as well. Below youll find the affiliation and overall net worth of the top 10 richest families in America.

Weve Had A Split Senate Before And They Mostly Figured It Out

The most recent 50-50 Senate occurred following the 2000 election. Sens. Tom Daschle and Trent Lott , then Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate respectively, formed a powersharing agreement to guide the chamber. Key features of the agreement included:

Majority Leader: Lott was recognized as the de factor majority leader following Inauguration Day, based on the tie-breaking vote of Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.

Committees would have equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats;

If a tie vote prevented a measure or nomination from being reported to the full Senate, the majority or minority leader could move to discharge the committee from further consideration; Debate on the question of discharge was limited, and therefore, a filibuster could not block it.

Debate: Cloture motions, which are used to bring debate on a measure or nomination to a close and prevent filibusters, could not be filed on any amendable item of business during the first 12 hours of debate.

Scheduling and agenda: the leaders were to attempt to balance the interests of the parties in setting the Senates schedule and deciding what matters to bring up for consideration.

An important caveat in the agreement noted that Senate Rules do not prohibit the right of the Democratic Leader, or any other Senator, to move to proceed to any item.

Senate Votes To Kill Debate On Voting Rights Bill

Republican senators voted against debating Democrats election and voting reform legislation, as expected.

Sixty votes are required to open debate on any measure under the Senates filibuster rules and in a 50-50, evenly divided Senate all 50 Republicans voted against advancing and debating the legislation.

We can argue what should be done to protect voting rights and safeguard our democracy, but dont you think we should be able to debate the issue? said Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer.

Its unclear where Democrats can go from here. Progressives have pushed to end the filibuster, which would allow them to vote and narrowly pass voting rights reform without Republican support. But moderate Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have rejected the idea.

Geoffrey: The Case For Republicans

Republicans may be slightly behind in the polls, but we should be cautious about reading too much into these surveys as its hard to say the slim Democratic edge is all that meaningful. Polls have routinely disagreed over who is in the lead and nearly every survey has fallen within the margin of error. Whats more, there just havent been that many high quality polls just two of the 16 firms that have surveyed Georgia since November have a FiveThirtyEight pollster rating that is higher than a B. This is unfortunate, but not surprising given many pollsters are gun-shy after polling misses in November. Simply put, a small polling error in the GOPs direction wouldnt be that surprising and furthermore, it would be enough to give Loeffler and Perdue the advantage.

Lastly, while Nathaniel poo-pooed it, the GOP does have a history of doing better in runoffs than the Democrats. Outside of one 1998 runoff for a seat on the states public service commission, Republicans have always gained at least a little ground in the runoff compared to the general election. True, we only have a sample size of eight, but some of the factors that contributed to Republican runoff success in the past could still come into play, like an older electorate. And remember, if the Republicans improve on their November showing or even just hold serve they win.

Main Difference Between Democrats And Republicans In Point Form

Democratic Party was founded in 1828 while the Republican Party in 1854

The Democratic Party has about 15 presidents while the Republican Party has about 19 presidents since independence

Republican Party voters are older generation while Democratic Party voters are the younger generation

The voters of Republicans are conservatives while democrats are liberal

The main color of republicans is red while that of democrats is blue

The party symbol of democrats is a donkey whereas that of republicans is an elephant

The Democrats party was founded on the basis of anti-federalism whereas republican party on the basis of anti-slavery and agent of modernity

The Democrats party has a larger membership subscription whereas republican has a lower membership subscription

Democrats applaud same-sex marriage whereas republicans condemn same-sex marriage

Democrats want the elderly medical program to be allowed while republicans reject suggestions of elderly medical care program

Texas Governor Vetoes Bill Protecting Dogs From Abuse

Sarah Betancourt

The governor of Texas has pulled a surprise move, vetoing a bipartisan bill that would have provided greater protections for dogs against human abuse.

The Republican governor, Greg Abbott, vetoed a bill on Friday that would have made unlawful restraint of a dog a criminal offense, sending animal rights activists and legislators on both sides of the aisle into a fray and spurring the hashtag #AbbottHatesDogs.

State senate bill 474, dubbed the Safe Outdoor Dogs Act, aimed to ban the use of heavy chains to keep dogs tethered. The bill had bipartisan support in the legislature, passing the house 83-32 and the senate 28-3.

In his veto, Abbott said state statutes already existed to protect dogs from animal cruelty, and the penalties proposed in the bill of $500 to $2,000, and jail time of up to 180 days, were excessive. The bill said that dog owners could have dogs outside but could not restrain them with short lines and chains or anything that could cause injury and pain to the dog.

Dog owners would have faced a $500 penalty for a first offense and class C misdemeanor, and the next penalty would have been a class B misdemeanor, for a fine of up to $2,000 and up to three months in jail.

Abbott said Texas was not a place for that kind of micro-managing and over-criminalization.

Georgia Election: Democrats On Course For Senate Control

US election 2020

The Democratic Party of US President-elect Joe Biden is on the verge of taking control of the Senate as results come in from two elections in Georgia.

Pastor Raphael Warnock is projected to win one seat. Fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff leads narrowly in the other.

If they both win, Mr Biden will control Congress fully and have a much better chance of pushing through his agenda.

He said it was time to turn the page. The American people demand action and they want unity.

Histories Of The Parties

The Democratic party started in 1828 as anti-federalist sentiments began to form. The Republican party formed a few decades later, in 1854, with the formation of the party to stopping slavery, which they viewed to be unconstitutional.

The difference between a democrat and a republican has changed many, many times throughout history. Democrats used to be considered more conservative, while the republican party fought for more progressive ideas. These ideals have switched over time.

Which Party Is The Party Of The 1 Percent

Democrats Target Vulnerable Republican Seats In Effort To Gain Control Of Congress | NBC News NOW

First, both parties receive substantial support. Much of it comes from registered voters who make $100K+ annually. However, Democrats actually come out ahead when it comes to fundraising for campaigns. In many cases, Democrats have been able to raise twice as much in private political contributions. But what about outside of politicians? Does that mean Democrats are the wealthier party? Which American families are wealthier? Republicans or Democrats?

Honestly, it is probably Republicans. When it comes down to it, the richest families in America tend to donate to Republican candidates. Forbes reported out of the 50 richest families in the United States, 28 donate to Republican candidates. Another seven donate to Democrats. Additionally, 15 of the richest families in the U.S. donate to both parties.

The Prospect Of Ditching The Filibuster

In theory, Senate Democrats could change the cloture ruleand, with it, the need for 60 votes. They could, in other words, kill the filibuster.

There are two ways that Democrats could do that. The first is by holding a vote to change the Senates standing rules. The only problem is that a vote to change the rules requires a two-thirds majority. So, as has happened many times in the past, Senators can simply filibuster the attempt to eliminate the filibuster.

The second way to kill the filibuster is known as the nuclear option. That would mean that Senate Democrats vote to establish a new precedent in the chamber, which can require only a simple majority: the 50 Democrats plus Harris. The nuclear option has been employed twice in the past decadeonce in 2013 by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and then once in 2017 by McConnellto make it easier to confirm executive and judicial nominations.

In recent months, Democrats have been clamoring to eliminate the filibuster. Former President Barack Obama called it a Jim Crow relic and President-elect Biden said hed consider eliminating it, depending on how obstreperous become. But Democrats are hardly in lock step over the issue. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has he will not support such a vote.

Is A Dream A Lie If It Dont Come True

Americas various disproportional representations are the result of winner-takes-all voting and a two-party system where party allegiance and geography have become surprisingly highly correlated. Places where people live close together vote Democratic, places where they live farther apart vote Republican . Under some electoral systems this would not matter very much. Under Americas it has come to matter a lot, in part because of an anti-party constitution.

Americas founders wanted power to be hard to concentrate, and for people who held some powers to be structurally at odds with those who held others. To this end they created a system in which distinct branches and levels of government provided checks and balances on each other. They hoped these arrangements would be sufficient to hobble any factions which sought to co-ordinate their actions across various levels and branches of government. The first two presidents, George Washington and John Adams, both warned that a two-party system, in particular, would be anathema to the model of government they were trying to build.

Take the Senate. To make sure the largest states do not dominate the rest, the constitution provides equal representation for all the states, large and small alike. This builds in an over-representation for people in small or sparsely populated places.

Policymaking Has A Liberal Bias

Democratic presidents talk more about policy, propose more specific policy ideas, and pass more significant pieces of legislation. The numbers are stark. Since 1945, Democratic presidents have put forward 39 percent more policy proposals than Republican presidents, and 62 percent more domestic policy proposals.

There is a good reason for this asymmetry, write Grossmann and Hopkins. Democrats and liberals are more likely to focus on policymaking because any change that occurs is much more likely to be liberal than conservative. New policies usually expand the scope of government responsibility, funding, or regulation. There are occasional conservative policy successes as well, but they are less frequent and are usually accompanied by expansion of government responsibility in other areas.

The chart above codes significant policy changes by whether they expand or contract the scope of government regulation, funding, or responsibility. Policy changes turned out to be more than three times as likely to expand the scope of government than to contract it. This is often true even when Republicans are signing the laws.

As such, gridlock is often the best small-government conservatives can hope for. And so theyre more comfortable with it than Democrats.

What Limitations Will Senate Democrats Face In Passing Legislation

Most proposed legislation can be filibustered by members of the minority party, which means 60 members must agree to end debate and move the bill to a final vote.

The use of the Senate filibuster has become increasingly more common since the 1700s and is now a routine way of obstructing legislation. Concerns about increasing partisan gridlock have sparked debate over whether to reform the legislative filibuster, which would give the majority party vast authority to pass bills. During the recent filibuster debate between McConnell and Schumer, President Joe Biden remained silent on the issue. Other lawmakers in the past, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have called to do away with it.

But advocates for keeping the filibuster said it preserves power for the minority party. Removing the filibuster could also backfire on Democrats if they lose control of the Senate again. As of now, Democrats do not have the votes to end the filibuster but could also consider lowering the threshold, for example from 60 members to 55.

Senate filibuster use over time. Graphic by Danny Davis and Kate Grumke/PBS NewsHour.

There are some very narrow rules around it. It has to have budgetary implications. You cant just stick on any random thing. It has to actually be pretty narrowly tailored, Powell said.

Tied Senate: Who Controls A 50

The results of the 2020 election continue to be finalized, but one possible outcome is an evenly divided Senate sometime after January 5, 2021. This raises questions regarding which party will hold the majority and who the majority leader will be, as well as whether we should anticipate a completely deadlocked Senate on every vote, among others. Here are seven things you need to know

Statement from Bipartisan Policy Center President Jason Grumet: BPCs Bipartisan Approach to a Partisan Process

Who Are The Winners And Losers

Maine Democrats had high hopes of unseating Susan Collins, the 67-year-old moderate Republican who had been trailing her Democrat rival in the polls for months.

But Sara Gideon, 48, conceded in a call to Ms Collins on Wednesday afternoon.

So far, Democrats have managed a net gain of one seat in the Senate election.

Democratic former governor John Hickenlooper won a key Colorado seat from the Republican incumbent Cory Gardner.

Mr Hickenlooper, who stood for the Democratic nomination for president, was governor of Colorado for two terms from 2011 until last year. His rival was considered particularly vulnerable because of his allegiance to President Trump.

In Arizona, former astronaut Mark Kelly defeated Republican incumbent and former fighter pilot Martha McSally. Mr Kelly earlier said he was “confident that when the votes are counted, we’re going to be successful in this mission”.

However, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump ally Lindsey Graham have both been re-elected in their seats of Kentucky and South Carolina respectively.

And in Alabama, Republican candidate Tommy Tuberville took a seat from the Democratic incumbent Doug Jones.

United States Senate Elections

2020 United States Senate elections

The 2020 United States Senate elections were held on November 3, 2020, with the 33 class 2 seats of the Senate contested in regular elections. Of these, 21 were held by Republicans and 12 by Democrats. The winners were elected to six-year terms from January 3, 2021, to January 3, 2027. Two special elections for seats held by Republicans were also held in conjunction with the general elections, with one in Arizona to fill the vacancy created by John McCain‘s death in 2018 and one in Georgia following Johnny Isakson‘s resignation in 2019. In both races, the incumbent Republican lost to a Democrat. These elections ran concurrent with the 2020 United States presidential election in which incumbent Republican president Donald Trump lost to Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

In the 2014 United States Senate elections, the last regularly scheduled elections for Class 2 Senate seats, the Republicans won nine seats from the Democrats and gained a majority, which they continued to hold after the 2016 and 2018 elections. Before the election, Republicans held 53 seats, Democrats held 45 seats, and independents caucusing with the Democrats held two seats, which were not up for reelection. Including the special elections in Arizona and Georgia, Republicans defended 23 seats and the Democrats 12.

Th Congress 2015 And 2016

Panel: After 10 GOP Reps Vote For Impeachment, Are There 17 More In The Senate?

The 114th Congress was notable because Republicans won their largest majorities in the House and Senate in decades after voters used the midterm election in 2014 to express dissatisfaction with a Democratic president, Barack Obama. Democrats lost control of the Senate in the 2014 elections.

Said Obama after the results became clear:

Obviously, Republicans had a good night. And they deserve credit for running good campaigns. Beyond that, Ill leave it to all of you and the professional pundits to pick through yesterdays results.

White House: Democrat

House: Republicans held 246 seats, Democrats held 187 seats; there were two vacancies.

Senate: Republicans held 54 seats, Democrats held 44 seats; there were two independents, both of whom caucused with the Democrats.

Not Much Was Said In This Video And Yet It Explains Why Our Us Senate Is Such A Mess Nothings Funny About This And Yet All There Laughed

The US Senate is a mess. The Republican Senators are closer to Democrats than they are to their base. The Republican base was behind President Trump and gave him the largest number of votes in US history for a Republican and a sitting US President. If not for the millions of ballots suspected of fraud, President Trump would have won in one of the biggest wins in US history.

But the Republican Senators want President Trump out and appear happy he is not there. The Democrats are thrilled they got away with the suspected fraudulent election steal. They dont care about election laws and the people of the United States, they care about power.

So when Senator McConnell, who led the assault on President Trump after the election, was stopped by Democrat Schumer, everyone laughed.

TRENDING:They Openly Mock Us Now: Taliban Hangs “Traitor” by the Throat From US Helicopter in Kandahar Left Behind by Joe Biden

The Republicans in the Senate have no idea what is going on. They have no idea what Americans want. They have no idea Americans are very angry about the 2020 Election and will not be satisfied until the election is fully forensically audited. The Democrats just want power and are happy every time they step on the American people and the U. S. Constitution, while the Republicans laugh.

Who Controls The Senate For Now

Republicans have the majority until Inauguration Day.

Georgia counties have until Jan. 15 to officially certify the results of Warnocks and Ossoffs elections, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has until Jan. 22 to make the victories official. . Once Warnock and Ossoff have an official certificate of election, they will be sworn into office.

Until Inauguration Day, Vice President Mike Pence will preside over the chamber. After Jan. 20, Kamala Harris will have the honors.

Write to Abigail Abrams at .

Republican Memo Warns Us Senate At Risk Of Falling Into Democratic Control

Memo summarizes senate races of 10 states and how the outcome of each could determine who controls the Senate

A memo by Senate Republicans campaign arm has admitted that control of the upper chamber is at risk and that Democrats could win the Senate in Novembers elections.

The September 2020 political update from the National Republican Senatorial Committee summarizes the state of the race of 10 states with Senate races around the country and how the outcome of each could factor into whether Republicans or control the chamber in January.

The memo, obtained by the Guardian, has been circulating among political operatives, donors and interested parties. It comes just shy of 50 days before the November 2020 elections.

The next few weeks will define the future of our country for generations to come, the NRSC memo reads.

Memos like these are often shaped like dispassionate updates but in actuality they are often used to convince interested parties that races slipping out of reach are still in play. They are also often used to juice donations to lagging candidates and counter trending narratives.

Democrats need to pick up three or four seats to take control of the Senate. The fact that the NRSC memo categorizes seven Senate races as ones that simply cant be lost or deserve serious attention suggests that its possible, but not certain that Democrats can take control of the Senate.

Effect Of Republican Retirements

Indeed, 2020 was actually a Democratic-leaning year, with Biden winning the national popular vote by 4.5 percentage points. So theres a good chance that states will be at least a bit redder in 2022 than they were in 2020.

That could make these retirements less of a blow to Republicans than they first appear. Whats more, by announcing their retirements so early, Burr, Toomey and Portman are giving the GOP as much time as possible to recruit potential candidates, shape the field of candidates in a strategic way in the invisible primary and raise more money for the open-seat campaign. And in Ohio specifically, Republicans still look like heavy favorites. Even in the Democratic-leaning environment of 2020, Trump won Ohio by 8 percentage points, implying that its true partisan lean is probably even more Republican-leaning. Ohio is simply not the quintessential swing state it once was; dating back to the 2014 election cycle, Democrats have won just one out of 14 statewide contests in Ohio and that was a popular incumbent running in a blue-wave election year .

Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Skelley, FiveThirtyEight

Us Senate Representation Is Deeply Undemocratic And Cannot Be Changed

Few, if any, other democracies have anything this undemocratic built into their systems.

The U.S. Senate, as you know, is currently divided 50-50 along party lines, thanks to the impressive double win in Georgia, and counting the two technically independent senators as Democrats, since they caucus with the Democrats.

But, according to the calculation of Ian Millhiser, writing for Vox, if you add up the population of states and assign half to each of their two senators, the Democratic half of the Senate represents 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.

Millhisers piece is named after that fact: Americas anti-democratic Senate, in one number.

41.5 million. Thats a lot of people, more than 10 percent of the population . You might think that in a democracy, the party that held that much of an advantage might end up with a solid majority in the Senate, rather than have just barely eked out a 50-50 tie in a body that, taken together, represents the whole country.

Republicans have not won the majority of the votes cast in all Senate races in any election cycle for a long time. Nonetheless, Republicans held majority control of the Senate after the elections of 2014, and 2016 and 2018 and still, after the 2020 races, held 50 of the 100 seats.

GOP does better in lower population states

Works to the detriment of Democratic power

Its deeply undemocratic. Nothing can become federal law without passing the Senate.

Smaller states had to be reassured

Democrats Are Under More Pressure From Interest Groups To Pass Policy

Another difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is that Democrats answer to more interest groups than Republicans.

Grossmann and Hopkins assemble studies showing that Democratic delegates at both national and state conventions report more organization memberships than Republican delegates, suggesting that Democratic conventions are the site of more organized interest group activity than Republican conventions. They also note a study showing that more interest groups make endorsements in Democratic primaries than in Republican primaries.

The graphic above is perhaps the most persuasive evidence of the density of the Democratic interest-group ecosystem: it connects interest groups that endorsed more than one of the same candidate or bill in the 2001-2002 Congress and the 2002 midterm election. So, if the AFL-CIO and the Sierra Club both endorsed Senator Mary Landrieu for reelection and they also both endorsed No Child Left Behind, they get a line. The more shared endorsements between two groups, the thicker the line connecting them; the more total connections any individual group has to other groups, the larger the circle they get.

there are more organized groups asking Democrats for policy than asking Republicans for policy

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dwestfieldblog · 3 years ago

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Q ONAN IN THE AEON OF HORUS

Insanity is contagious in the Aeon of Horus. Hope you all had a happy and healthy Sirius day on 23rd... I wasn’t going to write another screed until late September but I might well be trapped on the festering cesspool prison island of guinea pigs in three weeks time where the oven ready Boris variant runs wild, and will have very limited access, if any, to the matrix. And I needed to rant off as catharsis on current popular topics. Arf arf arf and fnord as well.

Climate report Doom...fires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes on the rise, watch the Texans and Arabs and all those aligned with oil continue to deny global warming in the sweating face of the evidence. The tyranny of the driller killers has been disabling those with clean solar power ideas and the mass use of limitless superconductive energy for decades, while they work out how ‘to put a metre between us and the sun’. Blame greed. Perhaps they think Bezos will have enough rockets for them to plunder other worlds and leave the future desert of earth behind. Climate change deniers usually have the same mind set as those who are anti vaxxers, it seems to be a typical item on their lists of dislike. Right alongside all the other bollocks and twaddle they don’t believe in, despite the enduring and building testimonies of the majority of professionals.

‘To prevent yourselves doing and seeing and coming into contact with this, that and the other...lock yourselves up in a monastery where you’ll be safe. Immunity...it teaches us how not to be affected by the countless vicissitudes of life; not how to avoid them by running away...The philosopher adapts himself to the exigencies of life, not the exigencies of life to himself.’ The Initiate in the New World by his pupil. Book two of a fascinating trilogy. Hello Cecil Jones.

America...the gurning evil one (‘I love the poorly educated’) doesn’t seem to be back in the White House quite yet, Q Onan and the boys can’t seem to get their insurrection up. Been there eh? White guys just take the blue tablet and avoid getting redpilled. ‘We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.’ Yuval Noah Harari-Sapiens.

However, the Onan boys have exported their rabid drivel abroad...A shameful group of wannabe prophets in London a couple of weeks ago were spewing dire craziness and waves of silliness dearly wishing to become important and individualised particles by being observed and applauded. One of their brilliant ideas is that the Great Reset, New World Order of children’s adrenochrome drinking liberal reptiles will be a QUOTE’ An authoritarian socialist government run by powerful capitalists.’ UNQUOTE. Howls of derisive laughter turning into the growl of a wolf with a curled top lip and my left eye twitching for a blackout minute. When sentience returned, I was fairly sure there is no way in this lifetime of me attaining Satori while consumed by this spite. Fear and self loathing in England part 23. To attempt to counter...

Putting the con into conspiracy theories... 1. IF the vaccine is; (A. A poison to cull the overpopulated millions, that would mean that every single decent doctor and nurse in the world is in on it and not one of them is spilling the beans. Neither scenario seems plausible in any way, therefore the first premise appears to be excrement. If Covid doesn’t exist and the x rays are ALL faked (showing the difference between pneumonia, cancer and covid lungs, that also aggressively suggests a high level of implausibility. If you truly believe medical professionals are mostly freemasons and/or serving the Illuminati in the name of genocide etc, you are just a MORON. A DUNGHEADED IDIOT.

As God tweeted last month; It’s always the really dumb who make life hard for the moderately dumb.’

Drug companies and politicians have always been deeply corrupt, some would say with great justification, evil. Their foul business is as usual. But every nurse working a 16 hour shift in intensive care, do you honestly think they are doing it for the kicks to kill, for the (ha) money or to serve the Devil? Again, if Covid IS real but only the plebs are getting the bad vaccine and the here today gone tomorrow (unless they are Putin types) omnipotent holy world leaders are getting the good stuff...again this would be mighty hard to cover up. And it isn’t only the old, obese and those with ‘underlying health problems’ who are dying, teens and workers are too. No government wants to wreck its economy (apart from Brexit England) by murdering its workers, students and quarantining hundreds of thousands.

If the vaccine is a shot of death and the toll rises twice higher than it already is, governments will know that nobody will believe them the next time round when a new virus mutates...which is not good for mass control. (That said, I feel a deep grim certitude that step by blatant step, totalitarianism is coming to democracies as they realise the only way to dominate the drone masses is to do as China and Russia do.) But ‘why am I drifting into negativity’ eh?

And IF folk think the vaccine is a brain control agent by which we can be spied upon and controlled by our puppet masters via the ubiquitous spooky G5 masts, then the science of how the jab’s ingredients work (And could not possibly be activated with sound waves) should be explained in primary schools so the kids can go home and teach their elders with crayon. At the same time, the anti maskers need to watch videos (with their eyes held open (a la Clockwork Orange) of droplets in breath, the distance they travel without protection, the length of time they hang in the air and in what concentration. Humans react well to moving pictures, it might help. Yes that is dripping with rancid sarcasm. And as for those ranting that wearing masks causes illness, tell that to all the healthcare professionals of the last 100plus years who wore masks most of every bloody day, not just a couple of years. Did they all die of lung problems? I don’t have the actual statistics and I am damn sure you don’t either, so shut up and sit down. As Bill Hicks would say...

‘YOU SEE, IT MAKES NO SENSE’.

Beautiful to see so many holy men in the main religions, priests, rabbis, imans and pujari telling their flock to refuse the vaccine because it will (deep choking breath) make them impotent, gay and/or that it has cows blood and human foetuses in it. For the 23rd time, your shepherds will lead you to butchers again. Very spiritual blokes. Are any women as full of manure as this? Well actually...

One talking blonde cow on the London stage mooed about the vaccine being created by Bill ‘I think it makes sense to believe in God’ Gates, with the patent 060606, so was clearly ‘satanic’. Brilliant detective work and a rational conclusion. Except Bill didn’t formulate the vaccine and the patent was for an entirely different shot with an ACTUAL micro chip to measure if work had been completed and pay wages with Bitcoin. (Which, granted is creepy as fk, but nothing to do with Beelzebub or covid, unless you are going to bang on about none being able to buy or sell without the mark of the beast. So the antichrist is a protestant eh? I saw a video last year of an American ‘Christian’ woman blogger saying Bill was the devil, because of ‘the GATES of hell.’ That’s what we are up against and sidestepping the fk away from.

Those not vaccinated are walking time bomb laboratories of new variants. Making their own beliefs real as they will be able to say ‘See, told you the vaccine doesn’t work’. Listen to the doctors and nurses begging you.

Once yet again with even more feeling...These demonstrations of hogwash moonshine bullshit theories, mixed in with a fine blend of ahem, ‘patriotism’ are ripping the country apart. On one side the increasingly corrupt English government and their lies and on the other, the deranged and deluded with their falsehoods. An empty vessel makes the most noise and both sides are ripening the fields for populism.

Using the enemy’s own strength against them, well known to Judo black belt KGB pretty boy Putin...widening and deepening internal divisions in democracies, using the basic mistrust of half the people against their governments and encouraging it...works like a charm in times of stress/ fear/ anger. Just let them do most of the work and their own momentum will destroy them...at very least weaken them for the kill. Britain, America, Europe et al, you are being suckered and you bloody well deserve it for being so thick.

(Sidebar...By the way...Congratulations on 100 glorious years of Chinese communism and now all in the Middle Kingdom are being told, taught, trained, ORDERED to think just like Winnie the Pooh. Perfect unspoiled socialist paradise where millions wonder (as they do in most other places) ‘will there be any hunny for me?’ Unlikely...Communism doesn’t really work that way... another self righteous scam by those who seek power and to maintain their privilege. So the stick makes you keep plodding on for the promised carrot until all you believe in is the stick because it hurts and pain is real. (To greatly paraphrase Sir Terry Prachett, may he remain creative wherever he is.) )

Or...The Bilderbergers met a couple of years ago, discussed overpopulation and a threefold plan of how to deal with it...Release an airborne virus in several countries; allow it to spread for a year, Allow fear to rise. Use algorithms to predict the percentage of the obedient and those who will suspect conspiracy. When the vaccine is ‘found’ it will calm the believers for a while and enflame the rebels all the more who will look for ways to make it fit their own schemes of disbelief. This will cause a degree of expected demonstrations and rebellion...which will have the effect of enabling governments to create and quickly pass new laws on freedoms, including peaceful demonstration, to ‘protect’ the law abiding masses that need to believe all is for their own good.

The B boys talked about phased genocide, vaccines, drugs, supplies of medical equipment, government tenders to similar friends, knowing they will survive, and be well positioned to financially ride out the deaths and bankruptcies of lesser protected groups. Who they will then be able to buy out with ease and thus expand. The goldrush thrill of disaster capitalism! When all of this is (temporarily?) over, food and energy resources will be a little less stretched and/or stricter controlling laws will be in place and democracies will be far easier to control . A sadistic lack of empathy from the richest sociopaths.

There doesn’t need to be anything weird in the vaccines now, people’s minds are doing the paranoid job in their imagination, either with fear or with anger. The rich will remain rich empowering themselves with their inhuman business as usual. Populists will appear to take the side of the people as long as they are rewarded with money and power...and are allowed to join the club. All ethics and morals sacrificed for the temporary glory of pretend immortality.

This was written very quickly over a period of a couple of nights but at least it is a page shorter than usual eh? J I have to concentrate on booking tests (150 pounds in England for a PCR test is RIP OFF. Bastards. The outrageous weight of my suitcase with all my cds and books plus some pants and socks, the forlorn hope of getting a free seat or at least cheap for one of my guitars. The fear I might not be allowed back in to where I am now because the UK still seems to be Boris covid red. And Brexit and being a tourist again. Love the way the brexiteers are pissed off they will have to pay a few Euros to enter Europe as a third country citizen. The Tories voted yes to this idea in 2016 and you voted to become a third country you idiots. So now, you get to stand for a looong time in a longer queue with all the brown people you so disparage. In your nostalgic pride for something which will never be again, you have relegated England to the status of a failed state and voted for the worst government in my lifetime. You should be ashamed but you will just double down. Disgusting.

Anyway, late summer ‘holidays’ ahoy. Stay sane and in rude health...hope to see you again, spreading my cosmic rays of great happiness, comfort and joy. Outside of the insanity, keep visualising...Female male left right brain...Yin and yang let’s do our thang...

Y=01=FIRE...WANDS...ADENINE

H=00=WATER...CUPS...THYMINE

V=11=AIR...SWORDS...CYSTOSINE

H=10=EARTH...DISCS...GUANINE

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go-redgirl · 4 years ago

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Tucker Carlson: The Media ‘Are Your Enemies’ — ‘They Are Misleading You So That You Will Obey’

Friday, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson opened his program by highlighting what he described as a “secret alliance” between journalists those that journalists are expected to hold accountable.

The “Tucker Carlson Tonight” host concluded that ultimately the media were not acting in the best interest of the public at large, which he said made them our “enemies.”

Transcript as follows:

CARLSON: Well, for five years, we have watched the news media treat Donald Trump in a way that no American President has ever been treated. Richard Nixon himself disgraced, impeached, forced from office in the end got a pass by comparison to Donald Trump.

Reporters hate Trump with an all-consuming mania. They hit him so intensely that at times it’s been amusing to watch. If Donald Trump announced a cure for cancer at tonight’s rally in Minnesota, CNN would denounce him for fixing drug prices. That’s true.

If you’re a fair-minded person, it has been infuriating to watch this. It’s too dishonest. It’s also patronizing because it’s almost unbelievably stupid.

Trump spied for Russia. Trump works for Putin. Trump is a racist because he likes borders and doesn’t want to live in Haiti.

Yes, OK.

Clearly all the smart kids went in to finance. America’s websites and TV stations got the rest. Unfortunately, we’ve got to live with the consequences of that. But we should also say, if we are being entirely honest, that as grating as all of this is, unremitting hostility to the President of the United States is far from the greatest threat America faces.

Reporters are supposed to be tough on people with power. That’s why we have journalism: to keep a close eye on those who have outsized influence over our lives. The people we should watch carefully would include business moguls, the Intel agencies, prominent academics, cultural figures, military leaders, and most obviously, our politicians.

The rest of us can’t really know what these people, the people in charge are doing at all times. A reporter’s job is to find out and tell us. So in the end, the real threat to America isn’t too many nasty questions from reporters. It’s the opposite of that. The real threat is collusion.

When journalists strike secret alliances with the very people they are supposed to be holding accountable, we are in deep trouble. Lies go unchallenged. Democracy cannot function. And that’s what we are watching right now.

Yesterday — and this may be the starkest example of all — we learned that the FBI is conducting an active investigation into Joe Biden’s son for business deals that apparently included his father, the former Vice President.

Now that is not speculation, it is confirmed. Former Biden business partner, Tony Bobulinski sat for a five-hour interview with six FBI agents just the other day — a week ago. They asked him about his business dealings in China with the Biden family.

Now, we don’t know if this investigation will result in indictments, obviously. We know that it could. And that is significant because Joe Biden, as you may have heard is running for President. The election is on Tuesday.

So by any possible measure, this is a blockbuster, stop the presses news story. It’s not some naughty picture from somebody’s laptop. This is a criminal investigation into business deals that we know for a fact Joe Biden was party to.

So why haven’t you heard more about this? If you don’t watch this, you’ve likely heard nothing at all, not a word. And you know why? Because the media are collaborating. They are collaborating with the Democratic Party. They are collaborating with the Intelligence Agencies that spy on Americans with impunity.

They are collaborating with the tech monopolies that have choked off the average person’s access to legitimate information. We’re not overstating any of that we wish we were. Watch the people you’re supposed to be able to trust, dismiss a completely legitimate verified news story as quote, “a Russian plot.”

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Holding super spread super spreader events and giving Russian disinformation, spreading Russian disinformation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Disinformation that he knows to be fabricated and supplied by a foreign Intelligence Service, and despite the warning, he is still doing it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have said this entire thing is so obviously a Russian plot.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It’s sort of a crazy quilt at this point, which has all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. That said, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Rudy basically functioning as a Russian asset by pushing Russian disinformation.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: CNN reported on Friday, the U.S. authorities are seeing if those emails we just talked about are connected to an ongoing Russian disinformation effort.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: I’ve got to tell you, Keith, it has all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. These people wouldn’t know Russian disinformation, if it got into the shower with them. They know nothing.

Every word of what they just said was a lie. Russia didn’t forge these emails. Vladimir Putin didn’t invent the two separate meetings that Tony Bobulinski had with Joe Biden to discuss business in China, the business the FBI is now investigating and an active criminal investigation. That’s all entirely real.

It happened. It is happening now, and the people you just watched on the screen know that it did. Yet, they are you it is all fake, a concoction of a hostile foreign power.

So you have to ask yourself at some point, why would they tell you that? They know it’s not true, they are saying it any way. They are expecting you to believe it. Why are they doing that?

Well, because these people are not your allies. They are not trying to help you or inform you, just the opposite. These people are your enemies. They are misleading you so that you will obey and maybe it will work, honestly.

Maybe they will get Joe Biden elected President next week without even asking the most basic questions of the candidate, the most basic questions or vetting him in any way. That can work. That’s the gambit.

But what then? Many of these people you just saw on the screen will then go to work for Biden, officially. We’d expect that because without Donald Trump to hyperventilate over, the business models at many news outlets will collapse, and these people will need jobs.

But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can’t hire everyone at NBC. Some of these people have to continue to be quote “journalists.” And the question is, can they really do that? Can they keep pretending on your screen live every night after everything we have just witnessed?

___________________________________

OPINION: Great, great observation of the Media these days that have turned their backs on the general public in bring truthful news to provide citizens with choices on any side of the isle or information just in general.

Its time for an ‘Unbiased’ News Organization that will provide the readers with accurate information so that they (I,e, readers or listeners) can make up their own minds from the truthful information at hand.

In other words, the News Organization just provide the truth and let the readers or watchers make up their own minds one way or another.

But, when they write/published information then they turn around and tell you how to come too a conclusion. That’s Not good or wise as a News Organization at all!

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alwayswriting123 · 5 years ago

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Are Young People Tuning In?

Youngsters don’t want to sit through either a 2 or 3 hour-long debate of old people arguing about why they deserve to sit their kiesters in one of the world's most powerful chairs ever. (Hmm, wonder if it’s a lazy boy... anyway) No, they’d rather sit around and vape or do the smart thing like the bird-box challenge and posting it online.

In fact, I bet if I asked a group of teenagers who Pete Buttigieg is, they’d reply with a vacuum cleaner salesman and I’m not kidding. I sat down with a group of teenagers and someone literally said he’s a vacuum cleaner salesman. I felt so bad for little Petie I continued to ask them questions on all of the current candidates. Their results? A D+. So I began to wonder, just how many teenagers aren’t tuning into the debates? And what’s the most efficient way of getting to these young voters? Through social media and other places of course!

Well I mean, like, I don’t know about other people but I just don’t care about that kind of stuff. Like, I hear about politics a lot more in my household and stuff - it’s not that I don’t wanna learn it’s just that I feel afraid to contribute to the conversation, you know? Like I don’t wanna open my mouth and say something wrong. Trust me, I don’t like Donald Trump at all, I really don’t know why he won in the first place. That say’s a lot about America. Like a lot but, I really hope he doesn’t win again. I mean, I voted in the past.

Me: “That’s good you should keep doing that.”

That’s why I feel bad because I didn’t vote in the last election. And it wasn’t because I didn’t like either candidate, I liked Hillary. But I just felt like my vote wouldn’t count. The electoral college is messed up! That **** is crazy and plain bananas. - Greg Soyer

Mmm, that **** was indeed crazy and bananas. (This **** is bananas- B-A-N-A-N-A-S!) But I still was hungry for answers. Why was the **** crazy? I needed to find out. So I did the opposite of what I did the first time and asked older and much wiser people.

Question 1. Why do you feel like young voters aren’t or are tuned in to the election?

I think young people starting out in life are very worried about one thing and that is what is going to happen to their future. The presidency affects not just the individual but also their entire existence. Though the argument can also be made that they also don’t tune in because they mistrust the government and at times think it’s corrupt. - Tucker White

No reliable news outlets. [There is] too much to sort through.- Anonymous

I feel like young voters don’t want to be involved or, the ones that are involved don’t pay attention to the policies. - Anonymouse

While I’m not sure if more young adults are tuned in are tuned in or not, I personally feel conflicted. On one hand, I’m invested because I want Trump & his administration out of office. On the other hand, I feel discouraged about who can be trusted to lead our nation next. It feels like the corruption never ends, regardless of who’s in office.- Elizabeth Adebayo

You know it’s funny that you bring that up because I asked my son if he was gonna vote and he said no. I asked him why not and he just responded with my vote won’t change anything. And you know, I feel bad. As a mother, you hear your kid telling you he has no control over what happens in his life? It made my heart almost break. I wanted to argue with him but... I couldn’t look him in the eye and tell him to vote because I’m not even sure if it’ll change anything with the last election.- Elizabeth DeTar.

I can speak for like late 20-somethings millennials. We’re too busy drowning in debt and trying to make it to care about a bunch of lackluster candidates who don’t seem to be inspiring - Anonymous

I soon realized a pattern in each responder's answers. They all felt betrayed. Violated by their government, concerned and scared about not only where their future would end up but, the next generations. I, for one, had hope that democracy wasn’t dead. And to prove it, I continued my search for some good ole’ fashioned teenage spirit, printed out a couple of headshots of each of the 2020 democratic candidates and headed to the one place where teenagers gather (sometimes in flocks) the mall.

First up was Bernie Sanders.

“Do you know who this guy is?”

Oh, of course, that’s Bernie Sanders. He’s one of the candidates. - Amanda Peters

Amanda got Pete, Sanders, Elizabeth, and Biden right, but when it came to Klobuchar... she got the short end of the stick.

Oh... yeah I don’t know, gee I guess I don’t know much about the candidates.

But that was just one person, right? Next, Tom Styer.

“Who is this guy, what do you think of him and do you know any of his policies?”

Oh shoot... I know the guy! I just can’t remember his name. Oh jeez, am I gonna get in trouble for this?

"Okay, I believe you. Do you know any of his policies?”

I’m not even gonna lie, I haven’t even been to his page.

“Do you know who your gonna vote for in the 2020 elections?”

Oh, definitely Pete Buttigieg! I definitely have huge respect for him and his campaign. I mean to come out on national television as a gay man and give zero ***** about it? That takes huge balls. And he has a certain Obama swag about him. I’m not just voting for him because we're both gay, that’s the stupidest argument ever people try to make. I’m voting for him because he’s actually got great ideas. For example, his climate change policy is offering a National Catastrophic Disaster Insurance program that helps and provides stability to people like me. Our house was hit last year. - Ben Potemyer

Wow, now that’s somebody who knows their stuff! Also, he later told me to mention he highly recommends that people read up on his policies. So I invite all of you to look into him with me.

Question 2. Do you feel like most people are just tuning in more now than ever because they just want Donald Trump out of office or for other reasons? And if so, what are those reasons?

In a way, Trump has awakened people who, otherwise, wouldn’t care to know what’s going on politically. I also think that he’s insighted a new era of people to at least watch his comedic politics to get their news. The Trevor Noah’s & Hasan Minhaj’s of the world have become more popular because people are trying to engage in polotics without boring themselves or feeling lost in the conversation. - Elizabeth Adebayo

Yes, people are tuning into the news because of the recent impeachment trial. But I don’t feel like it’s just for seeing him removed from office. - Tucker White

I think people are tuning in because of Trump. Because they see even though the president has checks and balances, he can still have a huge implication on other Americans and how those Americans treat other people. - Anonymous

I do believe it has to do with wanting Trump out, but I think that is because of a want for other types of social policies that Trump is against. - Anonymous

I don’t think more people are tuning in. I think we’re all transient bystanders watching the circus fire. - Anonymous

Another coincidence, among these people I interviewed, all of them said that they think young people aren't focused on this coming election. I wanted to try and find more people. All of this talk about generations got me thinking. What if there were people, who couldn’t even vote yet, had opinions? I met a powerful little 10 year old. And I’ll never forget what she said.

I don’t think it’s because of either one of those things. I think people now see what they have done and who they’ve put in the oval office and they want to correct what they’ve done. Because deep down, we should all love each other. Love should always win.” - Ashley

Love should always win. Wise kid huh?

Question 3. Who do you have your eye on in the race? What draws you to them?

I’m supportive of Bernie Sanders, as I was in the last race. His views seem to be less about solely taking care of the wealthy, but actually looking out for working-class people. I want a leader who cares about helping Americans create better lives for themselves through healthcare & employment v.s focusing solely on our external affairs. I’m also interested in Elizabeth Warren, but I need to do more research on her political decisions. - Elizabeth Adebayo

I have my eye on three candidates, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and, Bernie Sanders. Currently, I’m leaning towards Elizabeth Warren. Joe seems a little consertive and Bernie seems too progressive. Elizabeth has just the right balance. - Tucker White

Of all the candidates I would consider Gabbard, Yang, Biden or Trump. I lean center-right and see the U.S as doing pretty well right now. I do find Gabbard and Yang appealing because they seem very genuine and tell it like it is, similar to Bernie. - Anonymous

I don’t really have anyone I’m drawn to right now if anything, Bernie Sanders but I don’t know everything about him either. - Anonymous

No one. - Anonymous

Question 4. Why are all the big named candidates like Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and Amy Klobuchar popular in the news?

Honestly, I don’t know. - Elizabeth Adebayo

I feel like these names are in the news the most because they are the mainstream and more established friendly. - Anonymous

I suppose they pop up bc they’re campaigning and doing they’re part to try to spread their message. - Anonymous

I think the simplest way of saying it is because they have the money and resources to be able to. - Tucker White

Mayor Pete appeals the common man, Bernie has a wonderful grassroots base, Joe Biden was/is associated with Obama and, Elizabeth Warren is supposed to appeal to women(?) I don’t know about that last one. I expect they make a splash because either A: they have clout and social media following or B: they have the money to appear like they have clout. You forgot Yang! (This person is referring to Yang being a big named candidate.) - Anonymous

Question 5. Who do you feel has the most successful chance of being president?

At this point, I don’t know. For better or for worse, Trumps election has changed the expectation of what we view as a suitible leader to run our nation, so I can’t even say. I do think that we, as Americans, are over the smoke & mirrors of politics. - Elizabeth Adebayo

I think Trump either gets re-elected or Bernie or Biden gets elected. Warren isin’t as strong as Sanders in my eyes. Anonymous

I feel like maybe Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden. Maybe even Bernie. - Anonymous

I’d say Elizabeth Warren would be the best canidate for the job. - Tucker White -

I don’t know, maybe Warren. I honestly think our country sucks enough that we’re about to elect Donald Trump again. - Anonymous

Question 6. What are the biggest flaws amping these candidates and what could help improve their chances?

I just want a politician that’s real that cares about actual people and isn’t the “Better of two evils” bull. - Anonymous

The thing that’s hurting all these campaigns is easily that they’re just playing to their bases instead of trying to sway moderates and voters on the other side. - Anonymous

To face not just the Democrats but also the Republicans. - Tucker White

Bernie and Biden feel like familiar territory to me, so with the exception of Warren, the other candidates haven’t built enough of a rapport with the country to solidify their chances. - Elizabeth Adebayo

Question 7. How do you feel about Pete Buttigieg? Do you think him being gay will hurt him or do you think we, as a country have gotten over that hurdle?

I’d say he’s a pretty good alternative to Biden. From what I hear he doesn’t have very good support in the south, where Biden does, but he can be seen as a strong candidate to religious voters. - Anonymous

As a country, I don’t think we’ve gotten over that hurdle, despite what the media portrays, but if he could speak to the needs of working/middle-class Americans by talking about the things that matter most to them, he might have a chance. - Elizabeth Adebayo

[Buttigieg] Sounds like a solid candidate. I like what I’ve heard about him so far. As for his chances, America is still super “Christian”. And that’s a large chunk of the voting base that isn't ready for a gay president. So no, we suck at getting over that hurdle.- Anonymous

Question 8. And finally, do you think young voters are just affiliating themselves with their parents/ close friends same party?

I want to say that more conservative voters may be doing that because they focus a lot on the idea of the collective through their moral or religious values. Liberals, on the other hand seem to think more individually, but are more heavily influenced by their friends. - Elizabeth Adebayo

Ergh, maybe younger ones. In my experience with mid to late twenty-somethings, we’re diametrically opposed to family members voting wise-- to the point where it’s awkward at family reuinions. - Anonymous

I would like to thank everyone who participated in this very long post about what everyday Americans thought about the candidates so far. For the most part, I say young people/first-time voters are clearly in desperate need of just a little education on each of the candidates and the power - the drive to get engaged. But most of all, to not be afraid. To all my readers, thank you.

#buzzfeed #buzzfeednews #buzzfeed as/is #jurnalist #alwayswritting

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lominsianlily-blog · 8 years ago

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For the Sky

The idea of walking into a brothel to discuss affairs of state was disquietingly familiar for Iris. The only difference now was the location of the brothel in question. Far be it from her to complain - being not open to the public just yet helped ensure the Bandee Pakshee would be less likely to have wandering eyes and swiveling ears. She approached the tenth room and knocked on the door once, sharply, before opening it.

Andromeda, to her credit, was waiting for her. In her field chain, bless the girl. It was a nice counterpoint to Iris’ own travel leathers. She took off the massive pointed hat she wore and set it on the table before taking a seat at Rommie’s side. “I know you’ve had a rough time of it, little bird, I do so hate to pile on, but I come for an important matter.”

Little bird? Rommie frowned at that. Where the hells did she become ‘little bird’? That kind of irritated her. She had no idea that Iris, gifted as she was with language, had the knowledge of what in the name of Shiva a “pakshee’ was.

“I’m just now starting to sort everything out, Iris,” chirped the ‘little bird’, she wasn’t going to let that go any time soon! “When I built a new life a year ago I wasn’t leaving nearly so much in my wake. I didn’t lose just a home this time, and you of all people should know the gravity of what I’m going through. So, tell me, what in the name of the Crystal is so godsdamned important?”

“Ishgard.” She frowned deeply. “Literally all of Ishgard.”

Rommie folded her arms and glared with massive disapproval at Iris. “It’s always ‘literally all of Ishgard’ with you,” she scowled. Was there a loose heretic declaring ‘Shiva lives’? Literally all of Ishgard was at stake. Was there an airship missing in the Sea of Clouds? Literally all of Ishgard could suffer. Was the tea getting cold? Well, that was a crisis for literally all of Ishgard.

Actually, that last one most of the nation probably agreed on.

“Andromeda,” Iris said in the chiding voice of a schoolteacher, “pray heed and not be a... well, not be so you for a moment?” There was actual emotion in her tone. It wasn’t on the surface, it was beneath it, simmering, something she was holding back. This wasn’t a matter of inconvenience or distraction from the ‘real work’ Iris had to do. There was... there was fear in her voice. That made Rommie actually listen.

The times Iris had been afraid, in Rommie’s experience, usually came paired with events of cosmic importance. A dragon didn’t scare Iris, Hydaelyn didn’t scare Iris. The times Rommie had heard that tone in that voice had usually come with threats on a scale that the thief honestly wasn’t able to comprehend.

Literally all of Ishgard.

“We have eleven days remaining to save the Republic, Andromeda,” she said as calmly as she could manage. “In eleven days time, some event will transpire by which I expect every sitting member of Parliament, and Aymeric himself, to be murdered. I have been given warning to spare my own life, that I see to that, perhaps, I find a reason to travel to Kugane or Radz-at-Han for business. That I spare my own life, Andromeda.”

This made Rommie blink and her brain had to reel a moment in order to spool that information up properly. Someone wanted to topple the government. Even at the worst, she never heard of someone trying to outright destroy the Holy See. Maybe kill Thordan. Maybe even kill the Heavens Ward. But to try to take down the entire government of Ishgard in one stroke? That was... new. Regicide wasn’t so much a potent choice in a democracy, though, she figured.

“You’d be the last surviving member of Parliament?” she asked the question without thinking much in advance to determine where the thought was going. “Wouldn’t that basically make you Queen?”

Not like this. That was her instinctual reaction. Never like this. She didn’t do the self-reflection to really determine why she felt that way, but she did. “I’ll not become a ruler from someone else’s coup, Andromeda. For mine own determinations and for the fact that people would hardly accept a ‘beastkin’ being the product of usurpation.”

That was fair. And also because Iris honestly didn’t want those people to die. She didn’t want the chaos of building a new government so soon, with nothing. From nothing. No, this was Ishgard now. This was what her home would be, and she was not going to suffer a coup attempt upon it. Personal ambition be damned.

“The point is, little bird, I need to save the republic, and I need you and your friends in the endeavor.”

She swallowed and shifted in her seat. The gravity was setting in slowly. “What do you need?” Suddenly it wasn’t a thought about making Iris a monarch, it was something that was actually happening. It was a place where the entire government of her home nation could honestly, genuinely be in danger.

“My ‘anonymous benefactor’, we shall call him, signed off his letter with asking for Shiva to keep me. He is a heretic in the eyes of the Halonic Faith,” she looked to see if Rommie followed. She hadn’t. No matter. “That implies that so too are the conspirators. And so too are your friends from the Brume. You, yourself, keep Dravanian paraphernalia.”

“We don’t all know one another. Especially lately,” Rommie countered.

There was a slight incline in Iris’ neck and she looked downward to keep her eyes on Rommie. “You are the only people I know who carry the faith of Shiva and trust to put the Republic first. You must find a way, Andromeda. We must know what is going to happen, and we must know who warned me. We cannot allow the enemy to see our movements before the day comes, and we must needs ensure the survival of the person who has given us warning.”

“That won’t be easy,” Rommie responded, cool as she could be under the weight of the conversation.

“The disaster comes in eleven days, Andromeda,” she took a sharp breath. “Two days to formulate and arm a response effort is the minimum I am comfortable with. The day of the attack is the day we must needs deploy against it. That leaves you exactly one week to get me every scrap of information you can.”

“A week.”

“Indeed.”

“To infiltrate a conspiracy to end the Republic.”

“Indeed.”

“I hate you, Iris.”

“Indeed.”

#Iris Blanchimont #Andromeda Dulaque #vignette #Dragonsblood Treason and Plot #Ishgard #ishgard rp

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platy-sloth-portreeo · 4 years ago

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Is social media corrupting politics?

Marshall McLuhan (2008) was famous for saying medium’s were extensions of us, so by this logic social media is an extension and collaboration of all our minds. Hence, social media is possibly the best representation of a democracy speaking broadly and figuratively. However, some have used this new medium as a political weapon to gain more power and corrupt Democracy by using Behavioural Targetting advertising to manipulate the voting public. Social media is a tool and it is being used in sinister ways to gain more political power than we would’ve previously let politicians get away with.

Democracy is a fragile concept. It comes in different forms and its incredible hard to maintain honestly. It requires those in charge to follow unwritten and written rules, it needs some form of gatekeeping to reduce extremist views (whilst not entirely censoring them), and it requires trust. So the question is, how has social media affected democracy across the world? Well, like the emergence of the printing press, the radio, and the television, it has a political affect. Every newly emerging medium does as it opens up a new battleground for political ideologies. One needs to look no further than the Kennedy v Nixon debate (History.com, 2019) in the 1960s, and the different responses of the audience depending on whether they observed the debate via radio or television. Those who listened to the debate on radio generally believed Nixon won, whereas those who saw the opponents believe Kennedy won (mostly due to Nixon refusing to wear makeup and appearing sweaty).

However, these new mediums never truly changed democracy, just the tactics of communications. Before the radio and television, the only way to hear a debate would’ve been to attend or read about it afterwards, but with these new mediums came a new easier way for a larger amount of people to access them. Hence, I would suggest these new mediums only brought politics to the centre stage. However, many have admittedly disagreed with my statement, for example Neil Postman (1987) was fervently against televisions influence on politics; believing that it made politics more like show business. However, I would argue politics and thus democracy has always been about showman ship. In fact, every form of government is riddled with showman ship. Mussolini famously marched into Italy with a mob of blackshirt wearing followers before becoming a Prime Minister (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2019). Even now, Britain still uses old customs of showmanship left from an era of monarchy, I mean look all the proceedings of the house of commons or how we present the royal family. They’re nearly nonsensical in our era and yet we still continue to use customs, such as slamming the doors of the commons in the face of the Black Rod, mostly for effect (Parliament, 2020). All a new medium does, at least in my opinion, is highlight this showmanship and the undemocratic actions our leaders, elected ministers/senators, and the establishment make.

For example, in ‘How Democracies Die’, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2019) note that Trump isn’t the first undemocratic, extremist presidential candidate to enter politics, in fact it’s quite opposite. They cite dozens of examples of potential presidential candidates who openly dismissed democratic behaviours. For example, Henry Ford, famously known for Ford cars, ran for office in the 1920s. He was famously beloved by the public despite his open anti-Semitic and anti-democratic comments. He however failed to take office not because of the people, but because of the electoral college before it’s gatekeeping measures were relaxed in the subsequent decades. However, it wasn’t newly emerging mediums that allowed for these candidates to get relatively close to the presidential elections, it was us. It was the support of voters.

However, I will say social media has presented a new medium to persuade people. A medium that has greater potential for persuasion than previous mediums. Social media may not have directly corrupted democracy, but it has presented the potential for great and unethical persuasion.

Look no further than Brexit for an example. It was a political movement soaked in racism and hate. It used imagery reminiscent of Nazi propaganda (Stewart and Mason, 2016) and you need look no further than the staggering 500% increase in race crimes (Payton, 2016) after the referendum results. It overspent its legal budget (breaking electoral law) (BBC, 2018), it riled the public to the point of murder (Cobain, Parveen, and Taylor, 2016), pushed incorrect facts that directly lied to the voters (Keegan, 2019), belittled specialists (Mance, 2016), and even at times accused the political system of being rigged (Doyle, 2019).

Brexit isn’t the result of social media, it actually began before the 2000s shortly after a speech by Margaret Thatcher accusing the EU of wanting to become a ‘superstate’ which lead to founding of two groups solely designed to separate the UK from the EU. However, social media was a weapon in their bid to win the public. It used behavioural targetting advertising (Risso, 2017), funded social media activists (BBC, 2018), and speculatively had Russian involvement most likely in the form of social media bots (however the documents on this rumour is still yet to be released despite them being given to the PM, who was a key member in the Brexit movement, in october 2019) (Read, 2020). If social media wasn’t present, to fully explore the question, they still would’ve used the same tactics, however they wouldn’t have been able to reach as many people or sinisterly target those who are ill informed via algorithms.

My point being yet again, social media doesn’t corrupt democracy, people corrupt democracy. There are countless cases of democracy being corrupted throughout history before the invention of social media. Adolf Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Nixon to an extent in America, and chavez in Venezula are but the most known examples of successes in corrupting democracy in history, not mentioning the dozens of attempts internationally in the past.

Going back to British politics, right now our democracy has never been so vulnerable, and it’s not because of social media. Admittedly, the party responsible invested a lot more in social media budget wise than previously seen (Blair, 2019), but in the end the corruption of democracy doesn’t lie in social media. It lies in those power and, to an extent, the voting public. Currently the conservatives have banned certain news outlets from important meetings (Mason, 2020), threatened to cut founding from the BBC after criticism (Belblum, 2019), merged the PM’s and Exchequer’s political advisors (essentially taking control of the treasury and being able to spend money on projects without major scrutiny) (Economist, 2020 and TLDR News, 2020), they still refuse to release the previously mentioned Russian documents, used language that condoned violence and incited violence against opposition ministers (BBC News, 2019), and even attempted to prorogued parliament for an extended time (that was found unlawful by the supreme court) to prevent anti-hard-brexit legislation (Murphy, 2019). There are dozens of examples currently that suggest our government is moving further and further from democracy than ever. It checks every behaviour provided in ‘How Democracy Dies’ (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2019), where they provided a list of common behaviours of undemocratic leaders and political parties have taken when corrupting democracies previously in history.

However, I should note that the usage of Behavioural targeting is definitely sinister. It shouldn’t be forgotten, in fact quite the opposite. It should be illegal considering it is a manipulation of the public via dataaccumulated by social media companies. Algorithms that collect information on our habits now have an incredible power over, constructing unseen and personalised echo chambers. Not only does social media do this though, all of the internet is guilty of this. Why do you think every website incessantly demands you accept cookies upon entering them? They’re collecting information on your browsing habits to ensure adverts are tailored to your tastes and as well other features being tailored personally.

‘Billions of people have come to entrust the google search algorithm with one of the most important tasks of all: searching for relevant and trustworthy information We no longer search for information. Instead, we google. And as we increasingly rely on google for answers, so our ability to search for ourselves diminishes. Already today, ‘truth’ is defined by the top results of the google search.’ (Harari, 2019)

Which is why, when the Brexit movement used the tactic of behavioural targeting advertising, it should’ve been illegal. Essentially an algorithm is an equation for how to manipulate a person, especially in regards of politics.

Does a key section of voters fervently care about the NHS? Target them with the infamous slogan of 350 million pounds invested in NHS weekly. Does your audience regularly read anti-immigration articles from the sun? Target them with the Nazi inspired propaganda developed by UKIP. Does your target read/watch rebellious or anti-establishment articles/watch? Merely mention superstate and you’re golden.

Essentially what the Brexit movement did was manipulate the masses with false promises tailored to each individual. Whether they voted or not in the past, the algorithm would change its style to best suit that person. All this algorithm has done is target transgressive ideals, insecurity, and ignorance. Whilst there were dozens of people who were well informed on the subject and still voted leave, we can’t ignore the fact they used an algorithm to sway the public so easily on a complicated subject matter and accidentally incited illegal action from their followers. My point is, if a more transgressive party had that power, even to a lesser extent, isn’t that incredibly dangerous? Imagine if the Nazis had this power and employed it across Europe who already had a growing rate of Nazi parties at the time. Imagine if Stalin had that power, it would’ve actually had create a domino affect across Europe.

My overall point being, social media isn’t responsible for the corruption of democracy, just as a gun isn’t responsible for shooting someone. It’s a weapon, its the user’s fault.

References:

Mcluhan, Fiore, and Agel. (2008). The Medium is the Massage. London: Penguin.

History.com Editors. (2019). The Kennedy-Nixon Debates. Available: Mcluhan, Fiore, and Agel.

(2008). The Medium is the Massage. London: Penguin.. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

Parliament.uk. (2020). Black Rod. Available: https://www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and- lords/principal/black-rod/. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

Levitsky and Ziblatt (2019). How Democracies Die. London: Penguin.

Stewart and Mason. (2016). Nigel Farage's anti-migrant poster reported to police. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farage-defends-ukip-breaking-point-poster-queue-of-migrants. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

payton. (2016). Racist hate crimes increase five-fold in week after Brexit vote. Available: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/racism-hate-crimes-increase-brexit-eu-referendum-a7113091.html. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

BBC. (2018). Brexit: Vote Leave broke electoral law, says Electoral Commission. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44856992. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

Cobain, Parveen, and Taylor. (2016). The slow-burning hatred that led Thomas Mair to murder Jo Cox. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2016/nov/23/thomas-mair-slow-burning-hatred-led-to-jo-cox-murder. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

Keegan. (2019). A victory won by Brexit lies does not make those lies true. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/15/victory-brexit-lies-does-not-make-them-true-govern-one-nation. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

Mance. (2016). Britain has had enough of experts, says Gove. Available: https://www.ft.com/content/3be49734-29cb-11e6-83e4-abc22d5d108c. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

Doyle. (2019). Labour's second Brexit referendum will be RIGGED, claims Boris Johnson in public letter blasting Jeremy Corbyn for pledging to give votes to millions of EU citizens. Available: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7761875/Labours-second-Brexit-referendum-RIGGED-claims-Boris-Johnson.html. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

Risso. (2017). Harvesting Your Soul? Cambridge Analytica and Brexit. Available: http://www.adwmainz.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Brexit-Symposium_Online-Version.pdf#page=75. Last accessed 02/04/2020.

Postman (1987). Amusing ourselves to death. London: Methuen Publishing Ltd.

Blair. (2019). General Election 2019: Just How Much Are The Conservatives, Labour And Liberal Democrats Spending On Facebook?.Available: https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/a30182266/general-election-spending-facebook/. Last accessed 03/04/2020.

Mason. (2020). No 10 reporter ban: MPs across house raise concerns. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/04/no-10-reporter-ban-civil-service-chief-must-investigate-says-starmer. Last accessed 03/04/2020.

Gelblum. (2019). BBC and Channel 4 in Tory crosshairs for coverage that was not favourable enough. Available: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/media/bbc-and-channel-4-in-tory-crosshairs-for-coverage-that-was-not-favourable-enough/15/12/. Last accessed 03/04/2020.

The Economist. (2020). Rishi Sunak is Britain’s new chancellor of the exchequer - Boris Johnson consolidates his power. Available: https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/02/15/rishi-sunak-is-britains-new-chancellor-of-the-exchequer. Last accessed 03/04/2020.

TLDR News. (2020). Johnson's 'Power Grab': The Cabinet Reshuffle Explained - TLDR News. [Online Video]. 14 February 2020. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opAF2zzJ5n8. [Accessed: 3 April 2020].

BBC News. (2019). MPs' fury at Boris Johnson's 'dangerous language'. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49833804. Last accessed 03/04/2020.

Murphy. (2019). Then and now: what senior Tories say about proroguing parliament. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/29/then-and-now-what-senior-tories-say-about-proroguing-parliament. Last accessed 03/04/2020.

Harari (2019). 21 Lessons for the 21st century. London: Vintage. Pg 68.

#politics #conservatives #labour #social media #essay

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goodra-king · 5 years ago

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Transcript of Overcoming Objections in Sales

Transcript of Overcoming Objections in Sales written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Today’s episode is brought to you by Break Through The Noise, the new book by Tim Staples, Co-Founder and CEO of Shareability. In his book Tim reveals his secret sauce for how to capture the attention of millions of people online, without spending millions of dollars.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jeb Blount. He is a sales acceleration specialist, founder of Sales Gravy and the author of a couple books, Fanatical Prospecting, I think we had him on here for, and then also, the book we’re going to talk about today, Objections: The Ultimate Guide for Mastering the Art and Science of Getting Past No. So Jeb, welcome back.

Jeb Blount: Oh, thank you. I’m glad to be back on. I appreciate you having me on.

John Jantsch: So, objection seems like a pretty specific part of the sales process. So let’s start out there. Why a book just on that aspect?

Jeb Blount: Well, if you think about most sales books, there’s a little part in the very back of every sales book on objections. There are very few books that have been written on objections and even in training that we deliver and that corporations deliver to their people, objections kind of take a back seat. But, when we think about objections and what objections are, you’re dealing with objections all the way through the entire sales process.

Jeb Blount: From the moment that you get someone on the telephone and you’re prospecting, they may tell you, they don’t have time for a meeting to throwing out red herrings in the middle of your sales process that take you off track, to micro-commitment objections. Getting them to advance to a next step. Then finally, buying and selection commitment objections.

Jeb Blount: So, no matter what you do, no matter what you sell, no matter how you sell it, there’s a great democracy in objections and objections are everywhere in the sales process, but we just haven’t addressed it. What I realized is that when I was dealing with entrepreneurs and I was dealing with people in marketing and I was dealing with people in sales and even dealing with people in nonprofit, almost all the questions that they ask about me is, “What do I do when someone tells me no?”

Jeb Blount: That’s why I made the decision to write this book and to really break down the science of objections, the science of why they hurt so much and why do buyers give us rejections. Then creating frameworks that allow people, in the moment, to deal with those objections, get past them and keep their deals advancing.

John Jantsch: Yeah, because for a lot of people, objection is really rejection. I mean, they don’t get past the early on stages and that’s where people give up. I think a lot of what you’re saying is, you got to expect this stuff and you got to look for it and you have to overcome it, maybe multiple times. I think that’s probably the part that makes… I don’t know how to say this the right way. That’s the part that makes people not like selling so much, but it’s also… Isn’t it the part that people get really good at it, enjoy the most?

Jeb Blount: Yeah, I think you’re right. So, persistence is a virtue, especially in sales and in business. I opened the book with the story about a guy that called me 71 times and ended up selling me a software program that changed my business. It changed the trajectory of our company. It helped us grow very fast and if he hadn’t been so persistent, I probably wouldn’t have bought it. So, he really helped me out.

Jeb Blount: I tell the story in the book where I called Fujifilm, was a client that I was looking to do business with. I called them over 50 times until they finally met with me. Which I think is what people miss in this, is when I showed up, they had their head of sales in the meeting and the head of sales was trying to hire me to come work for their company because he was so impressed with my persistence.

Jeb Blount: So, when we’re talking about persistence, in a lot of cases, we’re talking about the objections that you get really early on. Which are the harshest objections and they can be rejection that you get. So, when you call someone up asking for time, you’re interrupting their day and you’re asking for the one thing they don’t have any of and that is time. Those particular objections are the things that, I think make people run from sales the most.

Jeb Blount: Those aren’t the only objections you get, but those are certainly the harshest objections. The thing about objections is that they aren’t necessarily rejection. Sometimes they are, especially when you’re prospecting. But our brains treat an objection like it’s a rejection because we perceive it to be that way. In the worst cases, we anticipate that we’re going to get rejected. So we never even make the call or make the approach because we start worrying about what’s going to happen when someone tells us no.

Jeb Blount: In the book itself, what we really deal with is that feeling that you get of rejection, whether it’s anticipated, whether it’s real or whether it is perceived. That feeling that you have is much more biological than psychological. So, it’s important to be aware of where it comes from, so that in the moment, you can rise above the emotion that you feel and choose your response. That by the way, is the real key of getting past the objection and getting to what you want.

John Jantsch: Well, and I’m going to guess, I could be wrong, but that person that called you 71 times believed in the value that you could receive and that’s what kept them coming back. Am I way off base there?

Jeb Blount: Absolutely. Well, I think two things. One, he had absolute conviction in the quality of the product that he was selling and he was right about that. It is a high quality software and also, he had done a really good job of targeting. So, he had done a very good job of deciding which companies were the best fit for that product and my company Sales Gravy, we’re a fairly well-known sell training company. We work across the globe. We have a high profile. So, one of the things for him was, if I can get Sales Gravy to buy this, then I can get a lot of other training companies to buy this because I can tell them that Sales Gravy’s my client. I knew that was part of what he was doing and he was up front about that. About what an important prospect we were to him.

Jeb Blount: So, when you have the right prospect, where you know that what you’re selling is a fit and you know that you really help them, then that gives you that emotional reason to keep facing the fact that you’re getting knocked down, knocked down, knocked down because That told him to go away a dozen times. It allows you to do that.

Jeb Blount: Thankfully, he had so much conviction in what he was selling that he didn’t stop and it’s made all the difference for us as an organization. I can tell you straight up, the software that he sold us has helped us double the size of our company three years in a row. That’s how powerful that was.

John Jantsch: So, let’s focus on the prospecting part, which a lot of that was what he was doing. For a lot of people, that’s the hardest part. I mean, 90% of people couldn’t get past that because it’s so easy. It’s like, “No, and I don’t have time for you.” Click. To the buyers defense a little bit, I mean, I get those calls all the time and I just don’t have the time to invest in determining a lot of times, as I suspect you did, that that software was a good fit. No matter, all the promises, it like, “Yeah, I get that five times a day. What if it doesn’t?” So, I can’t take the time. So, how do you get past the fact that a lot of people just see that as you interrupting?

Jeb Blount: Well, you are interrupting. I mean, it’s just the fact of the matter. You’re interrupting and you’re asking them for the one thing that they don’t have any of, and that is time. So, there’s a couple of things. One of the things that Richard did really well in this situation is that he built familiarity. So, the last time that he got me on the telephone, I knew who he was. I’d heard his voice. I’d seen dozens of emails. He stalked me on LinkedIn. He called me and left me voicemails.

Jeb Blount: When I finally had a moment, I was in the situation where I couldn’t say, “No, I’m not going to give you time.” Because honestly, as a human being, with some level of empathy, he had just earned the right to have the conversation. The second thing that he did was, he was able to change his message. Because he left me so many voicemails, I heard different messages. So, he built these little commercials for me along the way.

Jeb Blount: So for him, he did that. I mean, he got to the point where I knew who he was and he had earned the right and part of like you said, “Do I know whether or not this is really worth my time?” Part of that is that the salesperson keeps showing up over and over and over again. Because if you think about it, most sales people hit the no once and they never call back again and I see that everyday in corporate America. When we’re working with people, working with a sales person, the question they ask is, “How many times should I call?” The answer is, that they currently have is, “I call once, they tell me, no. I never call back again.”

Jeb Blount: A great example is, I was working with this small company up in New York City and they sold advertising into restaurants. So, I was out with their sales people on the street in New York City, cold calling restaurants. We’re walking door-to-door, walking in and interrupting the day of restaurant managers in New York City, the hardest place in the world to sell. When we walked in, they told us to go screw ourselves.

Jeb Blount: We got told no in about 60 different languages and then, we went back the next day and went back the next day and went back the next day and it took about five times of walking in and them seeing you before they would give you a second look. Then they would say, “Yeah, get out of here but come back tomorrow.” And you knew you had cracked them and then, you’d come in the sixth time and then, they would give you a few minutes. You go in the seventh time, you got a meeting because their filter for whether or not it’s worth their time to invest in you was basically predicated on, did you have the chops to keep showing up over and over and over again?

Jeb Blount: I did the same thing. I love salespeople it’s what I do for a living. But I tell salespeople to go away all the time and it’s the ones that keep at it that eventually will at least get in, or I will at least look at their message. If I look at their message and I determine it’s not right for me, I’ll be respectful enough to tell them why it’s not the right time or right for me, rather than just brushing them off with, “I don’t have time.”

John Jantsch: Yeah. So in a way, you’re asking them to invest in you, before you’ll invest in them and I think that’s a great way to look at it. So, we talked about the prospecting one. You mentioned red herrings and micro-commitments and the fourth one, kind of that buying commitment. So I guess maybe, just briefly state what those are and then, I’d love for you to talk about some tactics for kind of turning those around.

Jeb Blount: Sure, so red herring objections are really not… they’re not real objections. But typically, when we’re in these conversations, sales conversations, especially for entrepreneurs, we feel nervous. A lot of it is because we have everything on the line and we feel a little bit vulnerable. In those initial meetings, what will happen is, you’re having a conversation with someone and they’ll say, “Well listen, I can’t talk anymore until I know how much it costs.” Or, “I just want you to know I’m not buying today.” They’ll throw something like that out really early in the conversation and what happens is we end up chasing that and we burn all the time that we have with them, dealing with something that’s not really a price objection. It’s just what they say. They don’t really have anything else to say to you.

Jeb Blount: So, it’s important in those situations, that you acknowledge it. So, the way I acknowledge anytime I get a red herring, is just write it down on a piece of paper, ask them if there’s anything else. Then I moved directly into my conversation, which usually sounds like this. I’s say, “If it’d be okay with you, let me ask you a few questions about you and then, we can talk about what we do and you and I can determine from there, whether or not it makes sense for us to keep talking.”

Jeb Blount: So, I use this process where I just, I pause for just a moment, acknowledge it, write it down and then, I ignore it. Most of the time red herrings never, ever come back up again and sometimes they’re important. Write it down, come back to it later. But don’t allow a red herring to disrupt your conversation. Maintain control and keep the meeting moving the way you want it to move.

Jeb Blount: Micro-commitment objection is really simple. All of sales is a set of commitments. So prospecting is asking for time. Sales is asking for commitments and those commitments are small micro-commitments along the way. So, for example, if I’m selling something and the best way that I can determine what to sell you is to go walk through say, your warehouse or walk through your building or take a look at your data or spend a day in the life with one of your AR clerks, whatever the case may be. If I’m doing that, I want to ask for micro-commitment and the more micro-commitments I can get along the way, the more my buyer’s invested in the process. Which means it’s more likely that they’re going to see it through to an outcome and my opportunities not going to stall.

Jeb Blount: So, I’m constantly asking people for my micro-commitments at test engagement and make sure that we’re moving forward. But from time-to-time they’ll say, “No.” They’ll say, “I don’t understand why we need to go do a tour of my warehouse. I mean, it’s just a warehouse. Why can’t you just send me a quote?” Or, “I don’t know why we would need to do that.” Or, “Why don’t you just email me the proposal and then, I’ll call you and we can meet later versus setting up a meeting with you.”

Jeb Blount: The thing about micro-commitments is all you have to do is just explain the value. These are real, low-key objections. They’re not harsh. They’re rarely rejection. We get a little bit flustered, but all you have to do is explain the value. So if someone says, “Look, I don’t know why we need to do this.” I say, “Listen, the reason that this is important is because the way I work as an organization is that every solution that I build is custom to my client’s unique situations. Until I get to know you, it’s going to be impossible for me to put together a blueprint for how we would serve you. All I’m going to need is about 15 minutes of your time to go through this information. So how about Thursday at two?” Really simple. If you can give a good explanation, they will rarely tell you no.

Jeb Blount: Then finally, they’re buying commitment objections and buying commitment objections are just people’s… They’re concerned about making a mistake. It’s their fear of taking risks. It’s their attachment to the status quo. What I’m doing now, even though it’s not perfect, it’s probably going to be better than taking a risk of change.

Jeb Blount: With micro-commitment or with buying commitment objections, it’s really about building your case through discovery, making sure that you’ve done all your work along the way. You really understand what’s important to them, why they would do this and it’s relating to them as a human being. Making sure that you are clarifying exactly what they mean. So, if someone says, “Your price is too much.” My question’s always. “How so? Help me understand that.” Because sometimes, it’s maybe the startup cost but not the ongoing cost.

Jeb Blount: Then the key here is, with buying commitment objections is recognizing that buying commitment objections almost always come from a place of fear. It’s just natural for human beings. We’re adverse to risk and along… as we’ve gone through our lives, when we avoid risk, we have a tendency to stay alive, so it’s part of our makeup. So, you have to minimize their fear while maximizing the future outcomes, while showing them what they’re going to get. The best way to have the ammunition that you need in a buying commitment objection is to have done a good job in the sales process doing deep discovery and built a good business case.

John Jantsch: Just to let you know, this episode is brought to you by Break Through the Noise, the new book by Tim Staples. If you’re a marketer, an entrepreneur or a small business owner and you have a limited budget to market to and connect with your customers, you need break through the noise. Tim Staples shares the nine essential rules for mastering the art of online storytelling and provides tools to help you outsmart the social media algorithms, increase your share of voice and build your brand. Breakthrough the Noise by Tim Staples is on sale now, wherever books are sold.

John Jantsch: So you spend a good chunk of the book talking about asking as a skill and how and why. I think that’s a part that most sort of beginning salespeople miss, is that they want to show up and talk about their stuff and a lot of times, we’re not even giving the buyer a chance to object to anything because we want to talk about ourselves. So, how do we develop this habit of making sure that we’re asking plenty of questions before we start trying to sell anything.

Jeb Blount: Well, I think first of all, you’re exactly right. You’ve got to ask questions and do discovery. The easiest thing to remember is this, when you ask for the sale, if you haven’t asked questions to begin with, you’re going to be dealing with price. So, you’re going to go straight to the bottom, deal with price because that’s the only thing that differentiates you. When you ask great questions, when you get out of your own way, rather than just pitching and explaining and telling, when you do that and then you go, “You want to buy?” The only way they can buy from you is based on you lowering your price because you created no differentiation from your competitors. So that’s one part of asking.

Jeb Blount: One is asking questions. Open-ended questions, artful and strategic questions that provoke awareness in building your business case. The problem with salespeople, more often than not with asking, is they don’t ask for what they want. So for example, if I want to come do a tour of your facility, I have to ask for that. If I want to sell, I have to ask you to do business with me. If I want time, I have to ask you for time.

Jeb Blount: The problem is, is when we ask, it creates this deep sense of vulnerability. We ask with confidence that we want something, then the person could tell us, “No.” We begin anticipating that we’re going to get rejected and therefore we don’t ask at all. What we do is we sit and wait for the prospect to do the job for us. That they’re going to somehow come to their senses and close the deal or give us time or what have you and it just doesn’t work that way.

Jeb Blount: One of my favorite quotes from Jim Rome is that, “Asking is the beginning of receiving.” I mean, if we want a deal, we have to ask first. So, asking is the most important discipline in sale, asking for what you want. If you want to get something you have to ask for it. We start the book that way because when you ask, you are going to get told no. When you ask, you are going to get rejected. Those things are true and when you begin anticipating that or when you change your behavior because you don’t want to feel the pain of rejection, all of a sudden you stop asking or you ask in a way that is so passive and insecure, that you’re never going to get what you want.

Jeb Blount: So, what you need is first of all, to understand where that pain comes from so that you can be aware of it. Awareness is the mother of change. But, next you have to have a set of frameworks, so that when you ask and you get the objection, when it happens to you, that you can rise above the emotion. What I teach people when I’m working with them on objections is that the emotion that you feel about being rejected, because it’s not comfortable. Nobody likes to feel that way. That happens without your consent. You don’t get to choose the emotion. The only thing you can choose is how you respond to that, what you’re going to do next, how you rise above it.

Jeb Blount: One of the really simple mechanisms that we teach people is something called the ledge and it’s what neuroscientists call the magic quarter second. So, when you get someone telling you no, an objection, that happens at the… your response the emotional level and it kicks off something called fight or flight, which changes your physiology and it changes the way that you deal with it and it makes it really hard to think.

Jeb Blount: So the ledge, this magic quarter second, gives you just a moment to get your neocortex or your thinking, rational brain in executive control over your response. So, for example, if I asked you for time and you said, “Jeb, I’m too busy today.” My ledge in this situation would be, that’s exactly why I called because I figured you would be. I say that every single time. But just that simple moment of having something that I say and respond to, anytime someone says that to me. Someone says, “Your prices are too way too high.” I always say, “How so?”

Jeb Blount: But because I have that, it gives me a moment to think and if I can have that moment to think, I can get out of the emotional state that I’m in, that makes it difficult for me to respond and get back into a rational state that allows me to be in control of my emotions and therefore, deliver a response that helps me get past the objection.

Jeb Blount: The one thing that you must take to the bank and understand about your interactions with people in a sales conversation, is that the person in that conversation that exerts the greatest amount of emotional control is the person who has the highest probability of getting the outcome that they desire?

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think it probably, also has a little bit of impact of disarming the sort of knee jerk reaction. Like, “I’m too busy. You’re priced too high.” I mean some of that’s just defense, isn’t it? If we aren’t prepared to sort of deflect that defense mechanism, we’re never going to get a chance to show the value we can bring.

Jeb Blount: Yeah. I think it’s probably, when… We think about that more, “Let’s focus on disrupting the pattern.” So, when someone says, “I’m too busy.” Typically, that’s just their… It’s a reflex response. That’s why I call them buyer scripts, right? So, it’s just what they say. So, if you say, “I’m too busy.” I’m going to say, “That’s exactly why I called, because I figured you would be.” There not expecting that. I mean, they’re not expecting a salesperson to say that. They’re expecting me to argue with them or to say, “What’s a better time to call you.” I just say, “That’s exactly why I called because I figured you would be and all I want to do is find a time that’s more convenient for you.” I say that every single time. It’s got about a 70% probability of getting the person to tell me yes.

Jeb Blount: So, in that particular case, I’ve got a stock response. I was just working with a rep who is selling into CFOs and he sells software that helps them reduce their SGNA costs and he was having a hard time dealing with it, when the CFO said, “I’m not interested.” Because they all say, “I’m not interested,” because they’re too busy. His response, the way that he broke that up, he said, “That’s exactly what I thought you’d say because every CFO I call tells me they’re not interested, before they learn that we can rapidly reduce their SGNA costs and give them the ability to invest that money in places that grow the business.”

Jeb Blount: The week before he was using that turn around, he got four meetings. The week that he started using the turnaround, he got 18 meetings. So, it was just breaking through that little bit of resistance and doing something that allowed him to rise above the emotion and then, disrupted the pattern of that CFO, “I’m not interested.” That moved them to a place where they were willing to meet with him and that’s when he began… could begin to make the case because you can’t make the case on a simple prospecting call. It’s moving fast. You interrupted their day. You need to get the meeting to have that conversation.

John Jantsch: All right, I’m going to end on one you can probably swat right out of the park. But I’m going to ask you this question because I’m sure that lots of listeners out there and lots of folks who come to you probably have this. So you have a story in there that yes has a number and you essentially say, “If you ask…” Like a lot of salespeople, you have to ask enough people in order to get to yes with somebody. But here’s my question, so you had the number in there 11. You asked people to sing, Mary Had a Little Lamb and you said, typically somewhere around 11… by the 11th person, you finally got somebody to do it. So, let me ask you this, does that mean though that 10 people were damaged along the way?

Jeb Blount: No. I mean, the story is, I was in New York City. I was more damaged than not because I was usually getting F you, when I asked the question. So, I was the one that was getting damaged. But most people answer… I asked them… They went on with their life. I mean, they may have at dinner said, “Hey, this crazy guy on the street asked me to sing, Mary Had a Little Lamb into a camera.” But more often than not, they just forget, they have no idea.

John Jantsch: Let me make sure I focus on that. You use that as an example. So let’s say, just in the cold calling environment is what I’m really asking. So yeah, you finally find somebody who will meet with you, but the 10 people… And I’m saying damaged, that’s harsh. But I mean, are the 10 people that you interrupted, had a bad experience?

Jeb Blount: Well, only if you’re a total schmuck. But other than that, no. A great example of this is, I was working with a group up in Atlanta and we were doing cold calls. I was working, we’re working with them doing cold calls. The fourth person I called was just the meanest, most awful human being. She was so ugly to me and I’ve made thousands of calls, but she really hurt my feelings. Then I was even thinking that this is Atlanta, Georgia. So usually, you get told no nicer than you do in New York City.

Jeb Blount: So, it was bothering me, but I couldn’t flinch, because I’m in front of a bunch of reps that I’m training how to do cold calls. So, I kept on going, but finally it was bothering me so bad, I went back to the top of the list and I called her back 30 minutes after I’d called her the first time. When she answered the phone, I did exactly the same thing that I’d done the first time. And she said, “Yeah, come on by on Wednesday.” She didn’t even remember that I called her. I don’t know what she was in the middle of. I don’t know what was going on, but that happened.

Jeb Blount: My son called me earlier this week and and said… he said, “You’re not going to believe this.” He said, “I talked to the CEO two weeks ago, who told me that to go away. I’m never going to do business with you and oh, by the way, I’m busy for the next six years. So, don’t ever call me back again.” He said, “I was sitting there and I was thinking about it. I’m like, I’m going to call the guy back.” So he said, “Two weeks later, I called him back.” He said, “I changed my message up just a little bit.” And he said, “I ended up getting the meeting.”

Jeb Blount: It’s like, that’s what happens to people all the time. Is that you get off the phone thinking that that person is still thinking about you but they’re not. It’s probably no different than, someone cuts you off in traffic and you drive on and you’re so pissed off at them and you’re thinking about them grinding your teeth and thinking about all the things you can do with retribution and meanwhile, that person is driving on. They haven’t given you a second thought. They’re just going on with their day. All you are is an inconvenient interruption and they forgot about you the minute that you got off the phone. Unless of course, I mean, if you’re just a total jerk on the phone with them, they may not forget you, but that’s just so weird for sales people to do that.

Jeb Blount: Usually, I try to get past an objection a couple of times. If I don’t, I hang up and I move on and I call them back a couple of days later. So you’re not going to cause any damage calling people, doing prospecting, having conversations. More often than not, you’re going to create respect because you’re willing to call back. Which, I think is essentially, what happened to my son when the CEO realized that this kid who’s 21 years old wasn’t willing to back down. That CEO had deeper respect for him and was willing to give him 20 minutes of his time.

John Jantsch: Jeb, where can people find out more about you and Sales Gravy and any of your books?

Jeb Blount: Absolutely. All my books, I’ve written 10 books, they’re on Amazon. So, you can grab those, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Most bookstores, most airports you’ll find my books. Salesgravy.com is my flagship website. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of free resources there that you can grab. You can get my podcast, along with this one. Because this is the podcast Mark and I listen to every single week, but you can grab my podcasts on all the major podcast providers, Sales Gravy, G-R-A-V-Y, is the easiest way to pop that in. YouTube channel thousands are… Thousands, about four or 500 videos there, I think. Then, you can catch me on all the major social networks. I’m @salesgravy, wherever you go.

John Jantsch: Well, Jeb it was great catching up with you and hopefully, we’ll run into you there soon out on the road.

Jeb Blount: Thank you, sir. Thank you.

from http://bit.ly/331ydF9

#Marketing Plan

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dallasareaopinion · 6 years ago

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Well another April Fool’s day has come and gone……. Plus, a bit of the start of another story

So, I got pranked on April Fool’s day at work, quick one, but 15 seconds of frustration for me and 10 seconds of laughs for everyone else. Life went on except I am sicker than a dog right now.

Otherwise the Democrats are still clueless, Trump is still an unlaughable fraud and the Republican Party has their head so far up their back end it is unrecognizable.

And in a Vanity Fair piece a hedge fund billionaire talks about his fear of revolution, you know, he seems not to be a fan of pitch forks stuck up his back end. What thoroughly ticked me off is he proposes some very worthwhile public policy goals. Here we are after almost forty years of wage stagnation for the middle class and one billionaire who makes money off market movement, not real business is smelling the tea leaves and thinks better public policy is a good idea. Shaking my frigging head. Seriously, so what is he going to do about it, probably nothing and sell (sail would be appropriate, but sell is more his style) off into the sunset of American Democracy on his 180-foot yacht. And add the CEO of JP Morgan, Senor Dimon is going to donate $375 Million to some fund for better education or something. So, he wants a few people proficient in technology serfs so his business can survive all the hacking many corporations have to endure. Seriously, he is cherry picking some education initiative he thinks will make a real dent in America’s lack of education especially in technology. I thought business people were supposed to invest their money wisely. Why doesn’t he take some of that money and invest in his lobbyists lobbying for better public education all around; or better healthcare, or initiatives to open up more opportunity for all lowering college expenses or invest that money to help close the wage gap he so immensely enjoys. So, who is more clueless, the elitists or the Democrats? A tie I guess.

The Democrats should pursue the problems with Trump and his fraud, but they should not make this the sole reason they are in the headlines. They need to spend their days creating strong moderate public policy initiatives to force Trump’s hand with the part of his base that cares about this country and their well-being. Not everyone who supports Trump is an alt right nut trying to destroy our country and Constitution. Many are hard working Americans being defrauded. And the best way to wake them up is plaster the print and airwaves with proposals for Social Security, Medicare and Healthcare, Education, affordable college, real infrastructure initiatives, and tax reform of the tax reform. If anything, saying you have a better tax plan after people are seeing some discrepancies between what they heard and what they are getting might help. And policy on lowering tax burden on social security payments will make more than a few Trump supporters stand up and listen. Trump would not be able to handle a policy battle. He can’t and won’t. The Democrats need to stay calm through his madness and keep proposing solid public policy. If they need any ideas, my 2012 platform is still available, otherwise they need to get creative themselves. Trumpet public policy between now and 2020 and keep the investigations on the back burner publicly so when Trump leaves office some of his base will have left him. The alt right destroyers of Democracy will still cry foul and attempt to fight, but the majority of our country will be headed in the right direction. Or we can do what I always say we need to do,,,,,, we need new parties that represent the Middle and working class. Honestly, I am more conservative than my policy initiatives, but I am also practical. Go back and read my stuff from 2012. It may not be perfect, but is better than anything right now, oh except for that clueless billionaire’s ideas mentioned above. And they sound so familiar to me…hint hint hint

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And occasionally, I type a bunch of words trying to coalesce them into a viable story. As regular readers know, I do this over several posts, adding bits and pieces in an ad hoc fashion so these stories take some strange twists and turns, and some have serious plot holes. Well believe it or not I have started the process of editing these stories that hopefully there may be real product from my ideas. For the time being this is an idea that in some shape form or fashion has come up in my imagination before and reared its head again today. This is truly based on this one idea that I am about to start today, beyond what is about to be written is going to be interesting to find out. And so it goes

He woke up walking along a corridor. Waking up is the only way he could describe it. He could say he became conscious but waking up seemed more appropriate. He felt like he came out of a dream of some life he could not remember and found himself in this corridor. The corridor was not too thin, not as wide as maybe a city street, yet much wider than walking down the hall of an office building. For some reason he thought about what he was wearing, taking notice of this was important, yet he did not know why. He was wearing pants like what we think of as blue jeans, something similar to a flannel shirt untucked with a t-shirt underneath, and tennis shoes, nothing fancy, a nice pair of walking shoes. He did not use this description in his head. He knew he was wearing something over his body, for us to understand though this description is used. There was nothing on his head. He felt comfortable.

Also, as he walked he heard the continual hum of some type of machinery or activity coming from inside the tall structures that lined both sides of the corridor he walked. The corridor was long, yet he had not noticed. He was just walking and walking along the same corridor. The same tall structures lined both sides. And the stretched up into something he did not recognize, in fact he could not determine how tall were the structures. He could feel the top of them, maybe not see them. Looking up he saw what looked like a horizon where they met something, but he still couldn’t distinguish a definite top of the structure versus what they stretched into. Also, as he walked along the corridor there would be other corridors that branched off at precise right angles. He didn’t measure them; it is a description for us so we might have an idea of the environment he found himself. The corridor seemed to have no end.

He kept walking and passing by each turn. It was quite a while before he even thought maybe he should turn into one of these side corridors. He stopped at one and peered down it for some time. Time as we think about it did not exist for him or at least in this place. He stared without understanding why he was staring. The corridor looked the same as the one he was walking. He did not know of making a decision, yet he was deciding. He stayed in the same corridor and walked on. The corridor continued and so did his walking. The sound also continued. Occasionally he sensed changes in the sound, a pitch higher, a change in, was there a minor repetitive change, or the humming become interspersed with very subtle breaks, maybe nanoseconds of silence in between the hum. He could not tell exactly what he was hearing, he just sensed something in the humming wasn’t 100 percent smooth.

There were also flickers of light in the structures, or was it flashes, or lights on in the structures yet he could only see partially in a structure. He couldn’t tell. He became aware of the slight differences in the sound and the potential for some type of lighting maybe even different colored lights only after having walked a long time. He did not remember when he became aware or if this was a change. It was slowly dawning on him as he walked. He started to consciously watch and listen and see and he stopped. To what? Did it matter? He wasn’t sure, but since he noticed the sound and lights, he paid more attention. And he continued to walk. How far had he walked? This was not something he thought about it. It is something more we think about. Is he tired? He didn’t know. He had senses. He had feelings, but tired wasn’t something that concerned him. Time didn’t exist. Distance didn’t exist. He just kept walking trying to perceive the slight changes in the humming and the lights that seemed to appear in the structures. And suddenly it occurred to him this may be endless and then that thought may have come about because an end seemed to appear. In the distance along the long straight line of structures something about the perception of the structures coming together seemed different. As you know from basic elementary art class you draw two lines coming together at the horizon point whenever you want to show something going on for a distance. He had seen the structures down the corridor always coming together at some type of horizon point as he walked, now he saw them seem to stop farther down the corridor. Something was there, yet he could not tell what it was. What we call curiosity hit him. He did not feel curious as we feel, but now he was driven to reach this new point and find whatever it may be. Unconsciously he picked up the pace.

To be continued.

And Cheers

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ixvyupdates · 6 years ago

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I’m an Education Advocate and That’s Why I Can’t (and Won’t) Sit Out the Immigration Fight

It can be tempting for education advocates to see immigration as a related, but not overlapping, issue. For folks accustomed to thinking about school funding formulae and the wonky priorities in federal competitive grant programs, scorching debates over visa or refugee policies can seem, well, too hot to bother handling.

And yet, children of immigrants represent a large part of the country’s current student body. An Urban Institute analysis found that they “accounted for the entire growth in the number of young children in the United States between 1990 and 2008.” In 2016, 1 in 4 U.S. children had at least one immigrant parent.

The administration’s family separation policy affects thousands of families. Its attacks on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients—undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children—may affect hundreds of thousands of young American workers. Its proposed changes to U.S. procedures for granting immigrants long-term legal residency—the so-called “public charge” rule—will affect hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants and their hundreds of thousands of U.S.-citizen children.

In short, education reformers who want to claim that they’re guided by “doing what’s right for kids,” can’t sit immigration issues out. Not an option. Not an available choice.

To Support Kids, We Must Engage Both the Facts and the Feelings on Immigration

So, how can they make sense of ongoing American sins against immigrants and their children? As an ideologically broad movement, reformers ought to be able to honestly explore how the country has arrived to such a comprehensive, sustained attack on immigrants and their families.

This starts with understanding conservative complaints. In her widely-lauded “Strangers in Their Own Land,” UC-Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild offered a “deep story” that explained how some White American conservatives see the U.S. today:

You’ve suffered long hours, layoffs and exposure to dangerous chemicals at work, and received reduced pensions…You haven’t gotten a raise in years, and there is no talk of one. Actually, if you are short a high school diploma, or even a BA, your income has dropped over the last 20 years…You see people cutting in line ahead of you! You’re following the rules. They aren’t.

These feelings—this story—make it hard for some to lead with compassion on immigration.

Of course, this can be tough for for progressives like me. The facts on the ground are not accommodating to these angry folks’ feelings. Immigrants make great community members. They’re net economic assets to their communities. They integrate quickly and succeed in school. Most bring significant skills and education credentials. Immigrants pay billions in U.S. taxes—whether or not they’re here legally.

Some U.S. newcomers have broken our immigration laws. Most have not. In many cases, it’s unclear. But there’s no serious debate over whether or not they make the United States better.

While there’s no disputing the facts, facts are not the coin of this realm. This is democracy. This is politics. It doesn’t matter if you’re right. Politics runs on embryonic, deeply felt emotions—on hopes and fears. In 2018, those hopes and fears are fueled by a heady mix of authentic gripes, deliberate fearmongering by some of our leaders and carefully crafted media echo chambers.

To Move Forward, We Must Focus on Common Ground

We want to be better. An overwhelming majority of Americans—nearly 70 percent—want a path for undocumented immigrants to establish legal status here. Strong majorities of Americans agree that immigrants make America better.

And yet, here we are, with 2-year-olds sitting in immigration courtrooms, thousands of miles from their families—and further still from any semblance of justice. Here we are, trying to resolve the fates of millions of hardworking, undocumented members of our community by comprehensively destabilizing their lives.

A new report from the National Immigration Forum, “Out of Many, One: A Defining Moment for American Immigration,” opens with a question: “How can the United States be a nation of laws and a nation of grace?”

For even as we feel the guilt for our collective cruelty to these families, we know that the U.S. must have rules for who can come here and participate in our economy and society. Perhaps they need updating. Perhaps they should be more gracious. Perhaps not. But whatever we decide, we should take them seriously.

“Out of Many, One” was built around conversations with “faith leaders, police officers, business owners, immigrants, refugees and other community members” in 26 U.S. towns. It found that, in part, immigration politics are stymied because some Americans are anxious about the state of our cultural identity. Participants often saw immigrants’ linguistic and cultural diversity as interesting and valuable—but also worried that these could be a threat to the culture they find familiar.

The substantive path forward is relatively clear. We—the Americans whose immigrant roots are a few generations distant—need, as an accompanying report from More in Common concluded, “to focus first on those things that we share, and this starts with our identity as Americans.”

It’s true. That has to be the way forward. “Out of Many, One” concludes similarly: “Everyone shares a common dream to provide for themselves and their family, a common patriotism, and, as a result, a common American identity.”

The stereotypical immigrant story—flee desperation and injustice for the simple opportunity to live safely and work towards a stable life—is central to the stereotypical American Dream. What is America if not the construction of wealth and security out of hard work and responsibility?

Can We Listen to Each Other Across Our Divides? We Must.

However, the political path to building sensible, comprehensive immigration reform around a common American identity is fraught. If you fired up your time machine and headed back to 2011 or so, you’d be compelling when you argued—along with the man serving as president back then—that “the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.” And you’d be corny, perhaps, but you’d have a real warrant to believe it.

Here in 2018, that’s a harder sell. The forces that divide us do real damage to our union. We lean on the country’s common love of football, hoping to use it to have a better, more productive conversation about protest rights, Black Lives Matter and/or the police. Instead, we find that this leads many of us to scorn the thing we shared. Progressives get the NFL and Taylor Swift. Conservatives get Kanye West. Sigh. What if politics destroys “the things we share” as Americans whenever it touches them?

It’s going to be hard to find room for a politics of grace, a politics that involves standing down and stepping back from combat. It’s going to be especially hard to choose to face and listen to conservative Americans’ anxieties, especially in the context of all those sturdy facts on immigration’s benefits.

But what if there’s no other way back to the free, decent, democratic politics that attracts so many newcomer Americans to our shores in the first place?

Photo by Todd Dwyer, CC-licensed.

I’m an Education Advocate and That’s Why I Can’t (and Won’t) Sit Out the Immigration Fight syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Are There More Republicans Or Democrats In The Senate

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-there-more-republicans-or-democrats-in-the-senate/

Are There More Republicans Or Democrats In The Senate

Biggest Influencers: Democrats Or Republicans

Democrats take House, Republicans keep Senate in historic midterms

Weve Had A Split Senate Before And They Mostly Figured It Out

Majority Leader: Lott was recognized as the de factor majority leader following Inauguration Day, based on the tie-breaking vote of Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.

Committees would have equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats;

Scheduling and agenda: the leaders were to attempt to balance the interests of the parties in setting the Senates schedule and deciding what matters to bring up for consideration.

An important caveat in the agreement noted that Senate Rules do not prohibit the right of the Democratic Leader, or any other Senator, to move to proceed to any item.

Senate Votes To Kill Debate On Voting Rights Bill

Republican senators voted against debating Democrats election and voting reform legislation, as expected.

We can argue what should be done to protect voting rights and safeguard our democracy, but dont you think we should be able to debate the issue? said Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer.

Geoffrey: The Case For Republicans

Main Difference Between Democrats And Republicans In Point Form