#another lying dog faced pony soldier

[dosesofcommonsense]

Truth

[a-bucket-of-trash]

The Garden of Horrors- Kelvin x Female Reader – Part 6/?

Part 5

Your body heaved a long sigh as you woke up, dimly realizing that you were using Kelvin's broad back as a pillow. You felt your face flush slightly, while you thought that, although it made sense, since the bunker had only one bed, it was still strange that you were so close to that deaf soldier who had only recovered his faculties yesterday and of whom you did not know absolutely nothing. You sighed again, staying still, not moving, thinking that later you should probably go rescue the other soldier, or at least recover what was left of him.

You saw Kelvin move, turning around like a dog rolling in the mud, murmuring and making little whimpers, to which you had to move away a little so that one of his arms wouldn't take your head off.

"Jeez, hold still." You growled, holding him back from spinning. "You're going to crush me, pony face."

You saw him mumble, lying on his back, eyes closed, reaching around with his hand, as if he had lost something.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" You wondered, watching him touch your arm and move his hand up to touch your head and pat your hair like you were a dog. You saw him open one eye slightly, look at you, and close it again as he rubbed your hair. "What the fuck?" It was what came out of your mouth. You thought maybe he was just as brainless and asleep as he was yesterday, and you just got up to get everything ready.

But he seemed quite focused, evidently he was preparing himself mentally for whatever it was, so you gave him all the suggestions you could in such a short time, you explained a little how to proceed, what to expect, how to attack. You planned it all, seeing his serious look, absorbing the information with his poor, still bruised brain.

What worried you more was his safety, so you gave him your ax instead of a wooden weapon, if anything could keep him safer, it was at least an edged weapon. And with him following close behind, you walked to one of their camps, attentive, listening for the crows, a pair of spears in hand.

You carefully reached the area and, hidden among the vegetation, you checked the place, but there was no one, not a soul, not a cannibal, not a soldier. You gestured to Kelvin to keep an eye on, while you entered the place, somewhat crouched, spying, checking. For a moment you were scared to see something inside one of those cloth cabins, until you realized that what was there was a mountain of dead cannibals, piled up like a pile of garbage.

"Good" you thought. You hadn't done it, so it was obvious that the other soldier had not only gotten away, but had killed quite a few in the process. And they were one of the big ones, the bosses, the ones you never even wanted to get close to because you had seen them kill others of their own group too easily. Those were really strong, and if they were dead, it was for the best. Maybe that's why you had noticed fewer cannibal raids in recent days. Perhaps the extra tranquility of the island was because that soldier was cleaning the place.

You gestured to Kelvin, and saw him approach, looking around, his face fearful. He saw the dead cannibals, frowning. It wasn't that death bothered him, he was a soldier, one way or another he was used to it. What bothered him was knowing that you had been alone on the island, at the mercy of those beings who didn't look exactly weak, surviving and even taking care of him.

You quickly went through the rest of the pseudo houses, putting everything that could be useful in a bag, taking the things with you, ropes, cloth, a couple of broken computers, a book, socks, gloves, a nice knife, everything, before coming back to your bunker.

You had some relief in your chest, it was possible that in addition to you two, the island was now home to another soldier who obviously had the training and skills to send the worst cannibals to hell. He was someone who would no doubt stop to talk if he saw you, or at least you thought so. A soldier was better than a horde of savage humans. And your calmness was something Kelvin noticed right away.

You stayed by his side outside the bunker, in the sun, while he seemed to love being outside, feeling the pleasant breeze move his hair, writing to him a bit, explaining to him what you had detected, what you calculated had happened to his fellow soldier.

He understood all that, but your calmer energy was relaxing him. Seeing you smile a little more, since you'd been grumpy with worry all morning, made him smile. Kelvin had always been exceptionally good at sensing things, at calculating whether someone was trustworthy or not, at sensing if someone meant well, and in part that was a skill that was even valued on his team, to the point that when others were not sure of someone, they went to him. He was rarely wrong, especially when he felt that he was one hundred percent sure.

And looking at you, studying you, perceiving, he was convinced that you were a woman with an excellent heart, that you drew courage from where you did not know you had, that you stood behind to emphasize others like him, that you hid your doubts in goodness. You were one of those people who did not shine for being the most powerful leader in the squad, or for being the most intelligent or the most outgoing and energetic, but who had a thousand times more than you appeared.

You were a bit like him. Virtues hidden in a façade of normalcy, kindness flowing through your veins, tranquility in a gentle voice, and the constant effort of someone for whom things rarely turned out right from the start. You were the kind of people he valued twice over any other mass of obnoxious and loud personality.

He was liking you, exaggeratedly much.

Part 7

[dertaglichedan]

Tactless Biden says 'Good Evening, Vietnam!' while in Hanoi - as he mistakes Robin Williams' anti-war movie for a SONG - during ANOTHER bizarre press conference where he rants about 'Indians' and John Wayne

President Joe Biden held a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam Sunday night 

He whispered, walked about the stage and used the phrase: 'lying dog faced pony soldier,' telling a tale about 'Indians' and John Wayne 

The president spent two days in India for the G20 Leaders' Summit and will depart Vietnam Monday for Alaska, circumnavigating the globe

A sleepy Joe Biden risked upsetting his Vietnamese hosts with quotes from the Robin Williams movie Good Morning, Vietnam - which he seemed to think was a song.

The 80-year-old president arrived in the country after two days at the G20 summit in India and admitted he was struggling to tell if it was day or night.

‘Good evening, everyone,’ he told a press conference.

‘It's already evening, isn't it? It's around the world in five days - it's interesting.

‘One of my coworkers said, “Remember the famous song “Good Morning Vietnam”?” Well, good evening, Vietnam’.”

In what was supposed to be a show of stamina - Biden is circumnavigating the globe in five days - he ended the 26-minute event by saying, 'I'm going to go to bed.' 

The president had been asked if he was concerned that there was no agreement on fossil fuels that came out of the G20 Leaders' Summit in New Delhi.

He regaled reporters with a story he says is from a John Wayne movie and features the 'Indians' - not the ones he just met with - who don't buy it when a Union soldier says 'everything will be good' if they go back to the reservation. 

'And the Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the Union soldier and says, 'He's a lying dog faced pony soldier.' Well, there's a lot of lying dog faced pony soldiers out there about global warming. But not anymore,' Biden said. 'All of the sudden, they're all realizing it's a problem,' the president said, whispering into the mic.

***Interesting thing, this is written by the DM leftist, Nikki Schwab. I think this is the first time I have seen her write anything sightly negative about the Lib party. It must have been pretty bad.

[antoine-roquentin]

I collect Soviet newspapers. Years ago, I used to travel to Moscow’s Izmailovsky flea market every few weeks, hooking up with a dealer who crisscrossed the country digging up front pages from the Cold War era. I have Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep.

These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any Pravda headline in advance. What else but “A Mighty Demonstration of the Union of the Party and the People” fit the day after Supreme Soviet elections? What news could come from the Spanish civil war but “Success of the Republican Fleet?” Who could earn an obit headline but a “Faithful Son of the Party”?

Reality in Soviet news was 100% binary, with all people either heroes or villains, and the villains all in league with one another (an SR was no better than a fascist or a “Right-Trotskyite Bandit,” a kind of proto-horseshoe theory). Other ideas were not represented, except to be attacked and deconstructed. Also, since anything good was all good, politicians were not described as people at all but paragons of limitless virtue — 95% of most issues of Pravda or Izvestia were just names of party leaders surrounded by lists of applause-words, like “glittering,” “full-hearted,” “wise,” “mighty,” “courageous,” “in complete moral-political union with the people,” etc.

Some of the headlines in the U.S. press lately sound suspiciously like this kind of work:

— Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty

— Champion of the middle class comes to the aid of the poor

— Biden's historic victory for America

The most Soviet of the recent efforts didn’t have a classically Soviet headline. “Comedians are struggling to parody Biden. Let’s hope this doesn’t last,” read the Washington Post opinion piece by Richard Zoglin, arguing that Biden is the first president in generations who might be “impervious to impressionists.” Zoglin contended Biden is “impregnable” to parody, his voice being too “devoid of obvious quirks,” his manner too “muted and self-effacing” to offer comedians much to work with. He was talking about this person:

Forget that the “impregnable to parody” pol spent the last campaign year jamming fingers in the sternums of voters, challenging them to pushup contests, calling them “lying dog-faced pony soldiers,” and forgetting what state he was in. Biden, on the day Zoglin ran his piece, couldn’t remember the name of his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and referred to the Department of Defense as “that outfit over there”:

It doesn’t take much looking to find comedians like James Adomian and Anthony Atamaniuk ab-libbing riffs on Biden with ease. He checks almost every box as a comic subject, saying inappropriate things, engaging in wacky Inspector Clouseau-style physical stunts (like biting his wife’s finger), and switching back and forth between outbursts of splenetic certainty and total cluelessness. The parody doesn’t even have to be mean — you could make it endearing cluelessness. But to say nothing’s there to work with is bananas.  

The first 50 days of Biden’s administration have been a surprise on multiple fronts. The breadth of his stimulus suggests a real change from the Obama years, while hints that this administration wants to pick a unionization fight with Amazon go against every tendency of Clintonian politics. But it’s hard to know what much of it means, because coverage of Biden increasingly resembles official press releases, often featuring embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions.

When Biden decided not to punish Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi on the grounds that the “cost” of “breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies” was too high, the New York Times headline read: “Biden Won’t Penalize Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Killing, Fearing Relations Breach.” When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties because “the world is a very dangerous place” and “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage.

“In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing.” was the Times headline, in a piece that said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” The paper noted, “Even Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill expressed revulsion.”

This week, in its “Crusader for the Poor” piece, the Times described Biden’s identical bin Salman decision as mere evidence that he remains “in the cautious middle” in his foreign policy. The paper previously had David Sanger dig up a quote from former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who “applauded Mr. Biden for ‘trying to thread the needle here… This is the classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests.’” It’s two opposite takes on exactly the same thing.

The old con of the Manufacturing Consent era of media was a phony show of bipartisanship. Legitimate opinion was depicted as a spectrum stretching all the way from “moderate” Democrats (often depicted as more correct on social issues) to “moderate” Republicans (whose views on the economy or war were often depicted as more realistic). That propaganda trick involved constantly narrowing the debate to a little slice of the Venn diagram between two established parties. Did we need to invade Iraq right away to stay safe, as Republicans contended, or should we wait until inspectors finished their work and then invade, as Democrats insisted?

[grootpoepjeplasjehoofd]

so now that bernie is out will the url change to accommodate the new situation? perhaps “lying-dog-faced-pony-soldier” ?

I've horded enough Bernie cum juul pods to keep me vaping for another 3 years

[venactricisfics]

Back to Class

Part 1   Part 2  Part 3

The Unit Based Story

Trigger warning  Part 4

“How long has it been since you’ve been to SERE school?” Bob asks as we walk down the hall to the locker room.

“Honestly,” I think back, “too long. Couple of years, I’d say.”

“You think you got the balls to dominate?” I quirk a brow at Mack’s words, “Do you?” I give a slight smile as I  take a seat at the table with my SERE manual, “I know eyes will be on me. Can’t be soft just because I’m a woman.”

“That is one of your best qualities,” Charlie shoots me a smile that if I hadn’t gotten used to them, would have made me blush. 

“You seem to be all talk, Betty Blue,” I kick a chair out for him to take a seat in. “You’ve been flirting with me for weeks and have yet to actually make a move.” 

“Timing’s been an issue,” he swallows his response. 

“We've got nothing but time,” I say back before glancing up at the clock, “but now I’ve got to get to the kennel if I’m gonna see Beau before we leave.” I tuck my SERE manual in my pack and sling it over my shoulder. 

“Wait,” I hear Charlie’s voice behind me as I step outside. I stop but keep my eyes focused forward, “Yeah?” 

“Look at me?” he asked. 

“Nope, you’ll distract me with your dimples and I’ll forget how infuriating you can be,” I start walking again. 

“Mitch, please,” he says and I turn to face him waiting to hear what he had to say, “You know I don’t get serious, really ever. With our job it gets complicated. I can’t exactly tell a girl I’m dating what I do.  With you it’s different.  I can’t hide shit from you.”

“So you’re worried about not lying to me?” I quirk a brow. “Don’t overthink it. And it doesn’t have to be serious. We can keep it casual. Hang out and see what happens.”

“I like you, Mitch,” he says, “I don’t think I could just keep it casual.”  

“Good,” I give him a smile, “I like you too. Come with me to see Beau?” 

“Yeah,” Charlie seemed a touch more relaxed as we head into the kennels. He jumps back as one of the dogs aggressively barks at him.  

“Angel, quiet,” I command, “sit.” She thinks about it a minute and places her butt on the ground.  I pull a treat out of my bag and hand it to her.  

“So it’s all dogs? Not just Beau?” he asked as we walked further down the line.  

“Dogs, they get me,” I tell him, “they don’t over complicate shit. They want to make their people happy for the most part. These guys,” I point to the row of kennels, “they enjoy working and the praise they get once they’ve found their prize.”  I open Beau’s kennel and kneel down to pet him. Within seconds he’s found the pocket I keep treats in, he sniffs at it and then sits down on his butt. Cocking his head to the side as I take a moment to give him one. “Here you go,” I laugh and motion for Charlie to sit beside me, “he likes you.  Beau doesn’t like very many men. That’s how I got him,” I scratch behind his ear, “he broke the arm of his last handler.” 

“Should I be worried?” he looks from me to him. 

“Not too much,” I give Beau a final scratch behind his ear before standing. “We should get back.” 

“You think the SERE school is a drill?” I hear Hector performing his best impression of Col Ryan.

“We are the drill bit,” we respond in unison as Charlie and I enter the locker room. 

“That’s right, this ain’t no drill,” Col Ryan chimes in behind me. I could almost see Hector’s cheeks flush. “Any of you thinking of being lenient, who are you gonna save that for?” 

“Puppies and babies, sir,” I respond. 

“That’s right, as guards you are gonna put these fellas through the wringer. Let us know who’s gonna break and who’s gonna stand,” Ryan replied. 

“Hoo-rah!” we shout back in unison before grabbing our gear and loading up on the van. 

“I’ve been on a couple of these where things got a little too real for the guards,” Jonas told us, “keep control and remember it’s just a drill.” The van pulls inside a fenced-off area and stops. 

“Here we go,” I mutter as the door slides open and we climb out. Our eyes meet the other soldiers already dressed in their fatigues. 

“Cakewalk,” Mack says.  The way the guys are surrounding us I’m starting to doubt that.  Rifles are raised and aimed at our faces.  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?” Mack adds.

“This is an Army SERE training drill,” the leader of the group states, “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Relinquish all your weapons to your captors now.”

“Captors?” I look from the men surrounding us then back to Jonas. Charlie rears back and punches the closest guy to him.  Two others catch him by the arms holding him as he struggles to get free. 

“Grey!” Jonas commands, “Stand down!”

My eyes raise to movement above us, Col Ryan and a woman exit the office, “Alpha team! Welcome to SERE. You have been captured and are now prisoners of war.” 

“Prisoners, atten-hut!” the leader barks the cuts his eyes to Bob, “Drop and do push-ups until /I/ get tired.” Bob reluctantly obeys the order. “This man is vermin, not fit to lick the dirt of my fucking boot. Just like the rest of you,” he kicks Bob in the side, “get the hell up.” 

“Guards!” Col Ryan shouts from above, “Receive the prisoners.” 

“All prisoners strip now,” the leader barks. I glance at my team and then back to the head guard. “That includes you, princess.  We do not coddle vermin here.”  I toe off my shoes and tug my top up over my head, following suit with my teammates stripping down to our underwear. I was thankful I decided to wear boy shorts and a tank so I had a little sense of modesty.  Though I was too pissed at the moment to care that I was standing in front of men I fought hard to gain the respect of in my underwear. 

“You look at me or my men,” the head guard commands, “you lose an eye.”  Charlie lifts his gaze, I jump as the leaders fist collides with his face a second later.  “Left face,” he shouts. I turn to the right following behind Mack, as we march forward.  “These vermin look fucking flea-infested,” he shouts to another guard.  That guard answers by spraying us with ice-cold water.  I shiver as cold seems to cut right through me.  

“Learn these numbers,” he barks as numbered uniforms are shoved in our arms. “You have no names.  Vermin don’t have names.”  We rush to put the uniforms on and then we are ushered like cattle into a cell. The door closes hard and loud behind us. 

Jonas pats my shoulder and eyes the camera in the corner.  I start singing a loud rendition of Take Me Home Country Roads as he gives assignments, Bob on morale and conduct, Hector and Mack co-chairs of surveillance and intel, and Charlie head of the health committee.  “Sign no confessions, do not admit to anything.  Accept no special favors. And most importantly keep faith with each other and your country.”  We’re silenced by another spray of cold water. 

“Huddle up!” Charlie shouts, ushering us all into a group to keep from getting dangerously wet. “Take off your outer layer. Let it dry.” I tremble as we strip again to our underwear. “We gotta conserve body heat,” Charlie says, “fall in we’ll huddle. Think warm thoughts.” 

“No matter what,” Jonas adds, “keep faith with your mates.” 

“Get some rest,” Charlie tells Jonas, “you’re our leader and you need it.” Jonas curls up in a corner and Charlie pulls me in the center of the circle, “Your lips are already turning blue, need to get you warmed up.”  I nod wishing I could be wrapped up in my warm blanket at home. Hector pulls my back to his chest, as Bob and Mack huddle in on either of my sides, then Charlie closes the opening in front of me. I feel myself start to drift off from the warmth until a bright light is shined through the cell door. And loud heavy metal music is piped in through the speakers.  

“I think I had this dream before,” I offer a slight smile, “though it wasn’t this cold and we had Genuwine playing instead of this.” 

“Not Marvin Gaye?” Bob asked. 

“That’s what you play when you want romance,” I reply, “Pony is not exactly a romance song.” I cringe hearing the sounds of babies crying being added to the mix.  I press my face into Charlie’s chest, letting his heartbeat drown out the screeching that played through the speakers. 

At some point, I must have relaxed enough to doze, though the screams penetrated into my dreams. I jump as the guards bang on the bars of our cell.  “Rise and shine, vermin! Get dressed double time.” 

At least our clothes were mostly dry, they lost the dampness after a few hours in the sun.  

“You scared you gonna break a nail, princess?” the Sgt in charge screams in my face as another guard slams the butt of his rifle in the small of my back, causing me to fall to my knees. “That’s where you belong.” His fingers gripped my making my eyes focus directly on his crotch, “You give a little, you get a little.” He sneered at me, “You want us to go easy on you, huh?” 

I lift my eyes to his face after catching his meaning, “Blow yourself.” My words are met with a fist to my face.  I can see the muscles in my team’s arms tense but they don’t follow through.  Knowing it would make things worse. 

“We were gonna start with your boys first,” the leader says, “but we’ll start with you.”  Two guards hoist me up and drag me inside.  

“You are the weak link aren’t you little girl,” he spits at me as the guards shove me down on my knees. “You fuck all of your mates so they protect you? My question is are you fucking them one at a time? Or are you such a little slut you fuck them all at once?” I keep my face stoic, not letting the words affect me.  It was a tactic, something to get me to talk. Or to convince one of the other’s to talk to save me. But none of this was real.  I wasn’t gonna lose my spot in the Unit because my feelings got hurt. 

“Enough of the pleasantries,” the woman that stood with Col Ryan said, “Start with the kidneys.”  One of the guards smacked me with a baton hard on the left side, then the right. Causing me to double over in pain. I’m righted again and receive a swift kick to the abdomen.  I cry out in pain.

“Just tell us what we want to know,” she says, “Were you in Iraq last month?”

 “My name is Mitch Reyolds, Sgt First Class, US Army,” I respond. I’m met with more of the same.  My response is the same. 

“Throw her back in the cell,” she orders, “take her uniform.” They yank me to my feet and drag me back to the cell.

“Strip,” the guard commands. I take off the numbered uniform and toss it in his direction. “Take off the boots,” I take off the shoes, “lose the tank top too.” The way he leers at me as I stand in my bra and panties, “That’ll do for now.” I retreat to the corner as cold water is sprayed into the cell again. I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them, trying to keep myself warm while listening to Hector followed by Bob, then Mack gets beaten. I wince at the sound of the baton smacking into flesh. After the guards are tired of their failed attempts each man is shoved back in the cell with me.

“Are you ok?” Hector asked me. 

“Cold,” I start to shiver, “asshole took my clothes.” He unbuttoned his shirt and wrapped it around my shoulders. “Thanks, but I can’t,” I point to the camera, “they’ll use it to try and break us.”

“Alright,” he takes a seat beside me, slipping his arm around my shoulder and pulls me close.  “Gotta get you warm.”

“How is it hot as hell out there?” I shiver, “and freezing in here?” I watch the cage door for a while, “Where’s Charlie?” 

“They took him in after me,” Mack says sitting on the other side. I jump again as the beatings continue in the next room.

The guard came back, a Cheshire smile spread across his face, “You,” he points his baton at me, “come with me.” 

“Take me instead,” Mack says standing.  

“Did I fucking ask for volunteers?” he barked back, “Sit your ass down.” 

“I’ll be fine,” I stand, my bare feet touching the cold concrete, “keep the faith.” The guard’s fingers curl around my arm and he drags me into the room so I can watch as two guards hit Charlie with a baton.  I try to hide my concern but my face betrays me.  My guard’s hand twisted a burn on my arm. Charlie reacts to that by punching him in the face. All three take turns hitting him with a baton and breaking a flashlight over his head. 

“Stop,” I shout. I’d never felt weaker at that moment. Fully exposed. A guard pulls a sharpie from his pocket, smirking as he scribbles across my chest: THIS BITCH LIKES TO BE BEATEN. Without missing a beat, I feel the guards turn their attention on me. Each taking turns hitting my sides and my legs until I drop to the floor. 

“Take them back to their cell,” the woman wore a satisfied smirk. 

“Why did you jump the guard like that?” I asked. 

“Prisoners are not to harass or interfere with the administration of the camp,” Hector says.  I slid back down the wall and pulled my knees to my chest again.  

“Unless it serves a greater objective,” Charlie answers, sitting close beside me, glancing up at the camera and then back. He opens his hand revealing a D cell battery.  I lean into his shoulder, “Pretty smart. Kind of. That woman,” I tell them, “she creeps me the fuck out.” 

“You!” the guard shines a light in my face. “Come, now.” I stand still dressed only in a bra and panties, trying to maintain some spectrum of dignity as I’m escorted from the cage.  A fist tangles in the disaster that was my hair and pushes me over the table in the room.  The woman watching from the corner. 

“You can stop all of this from happening,” she said, “you and your friends can go home.” The guard behind me shoves the side of my face into the table.  

“And you can go fuck yourself,” I respond, “ma’am.” I hear a zipper lower.  

“Your choice,” she states then gives the guard behind me a nod. He pushes my legs apart with his knee. I close my eyes as I feel him grind his hips into me.  I suppose humiliation was the goal.  And I was that in spades. But I wouldn’t, I couldn’t let that break me. I don’t make a sound throughout the simulated rape. The torture technic was valid, I assumed.  A reason they were hesitant in letting women in Special Forces. Being held down and forced into submission was the worst form of torture.  It’s not real, I tell myself through it. Even though I could feel my guard’s body starting to react to the simulation. I feel a tear trail down my face but I don’t make a sound.

“Bring the little one in,” she said. “Make him watch.” I squeeze my eyes tighter. 

"What in the fuck are you doing to her?" I hear Charlie's voice behind me. Then the sound of metal against flesh and him dropping to the floor. The guard leans over me, pressing the weight of his body on me. 

"You are a dirty whore that likes being watched," he whispers in my ear as he grinds his hips into mine, "You want it don't you? Maybe when this drill is over we can make this fantasy real." I responded by smacking the back of my head into his face. 

"You bitch!" The weight of him eases as he brings his hands to cup his nose. 

"Take them back to their cell," the woman states. I tears roll down my cheeks the moment the guard slammed the cell door behind us. 

"What happened?" Mack asked. I couldn't speak, Charlie led me back to the wall wrapped his arm around my shoulders. 

"They did a rape simulation on her," Charlie said. "The guy was very enthusiastic about his part." He looks to Jonas, speaking softly, "I don't know how much more she can take." 

I wipe my eyes with the heels of my hands, "I can last just as long as the rest of you." 

"This is bullshit," Mack states, his voice soft but the anger is still very real behind the words. 

"Stop, all of you," I say, "this is what they want. To break me, or to have one of you break to protect me." I look at each of them, "We are not breaking, not today. Fuck that bullshit." 

“Hoo-rah,” Mack says softly.  I jump, shrinking back in the corner at the sound of the cell door dragging across the concrete floor.

“Lookee here,” the Sgt in charge says as he sets down a bucket of water.  “It’s Christmas and Hanukkah all in one.”  Hector slips his sweaty shirt off and dunks it in the bucket. Causing a side-eye from the Sgt, “Whatever.”  He closes the door behind him.  

“What are you doing?” I whisper, scooting around watching as they piece together a few items they’d collected in the yard.  

“Gonna try and break the bars,” Hector says, “we just need salt and a piece of metal that will be small enough to fit in an outlet.” 

“I have an idea,” I glance up at the camera, “but first I need a hug,” I’m met with looks but Charlie slides his arms around my waist and I slide my arms around his neck. “Under my arm.”

“OK,” he slides his hand up.

“You feel that?” I press my body closer to him, turning him so that his back is to the camera.

“Yeah,” he says as he starts to tug at the fabric, “I do.” 

“I’m all for making the best of a fucked up situation,” Mack states, “but how does feeling her up to help anything.”  I bite my lip as Charlie tugs at the thread of my bra, the contact wasn’t initially intimate but his hand was essentially cupping my boob as he works the thin metal wire out. 

“You got it?” I locked my gaze with his for a moment. He loosens his grip on me, “I got it.” 

“Will that work?” I stand close to him as my arms drop back to my sides. Drawing in a few deep breaths.  He nods and steps back to put the metal with the rest of the supplies they had secured. 

“Well isn’t that something,” Mack says as he puts together the items that he found. Bob looks up at me, “You need to sit, you don’t look so good.”

“Sorry didn’t have time to put myself together, what with being tortured and all,” I snap back at him, irritation coating every word.  I turn my back to the camera, giving him a wink before I sit down on the floor my back leaning against the bars. Charlie dunks and rings his shirt back out in the water.  “Is it salty enough to make it work?” 

“It better be,” Mack responds. 

“In about twenty seconds they’ll be figuring out what the hell we’re doing,” Hector adds. 

“I’m almost done,” Mack fills a jar with water and dips the end of the wire inside it. He takes the other end that was twisted around the underwire of my bra. I scoot over letting him slide his arm between the bars, jabbing the metal in an electrical outlet. I slide over as sparks begin to fly cutting through the metal bars.  Bob, Mack, and Hector push and pull the bars, opening a gap big enough for a man… or a woman to slide through.  Mack drops the end of his tool in the salty water causing the lights to flicker and short out.  

“Go, go, go!” Jonas states.  I squeeze through the gap in the bars and stand to my feet. Each of the men follows behind me.  I take a second to let my eyes adjust to the darkness, glancing one way and then the other.  Hector, Bob, and Jonas move in front of me and Charlie and Mack behind me. My bare feet start to slip from under me.  “I got ya,” Mack says scooping me up bridal style. In front of us, I hear fist collide with flesh, as Bob and Hector take down the guards.  I hold onto Mack tight as we run across the yard. We squeeze through the opening in the gate and make it into the surrounding woods.  

Mack sets me down, “Stay here,” he hands me a rifle, “take this.” I nod and bring the rifle to my shoulder, lining my eye up with the sight, aiming in the direction we had come from. The men gather wood and build a fire behind me. 

“Here,” Hector says behind me, “you can take this now.” He hands me his shirt and takes the rifle from me.  

“Thank you,” I slide my arms in the sleeves and button it up, regaining a sliver of my dignity. I sit down locking my gaze on the flames. My mind wanders as I focus on the flickering of the fire. 

“What they did in there,” Jonas looks at me, “to you...was too far.” I look back at him, “That’s the point of this was. All’s fair, right?” 

“No,” Charlie says, “I heard what that asshole said to you. He wasn’t acting.” I jump at the sound of leaves crackling behind me. Hector and Mack raise their rifles at the approaching men.  The Sgt in charge of the camp followed by Col Ryan come into view. 

“SERE ain’t over,” the Sgt shouts. “Breakout’s not on the approved list of activities.” 

“And I thought SERE meant Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape,” Jonas responds as he stands.

“Back inside,” he commands.  I see a catch a nod from Col Ryan.

“You think that if this wasn’t a drill we wouldn’t be back home safe in our beds?” I ask. “You’ve got to be fucked…”

“Reynolds!” Jonas barks at me. I close my mouth. “Come on let’s get you some clothes.” 

The morning dawned and we stood in a line. The woman shouts from above, “Congratulations. You have survived SERE school.” Reveille plays and immediately we stand at attention, saluting as the Flag is hoisted up on the pole.   

An hour later, I felt myself again, showered and dressed in my own clothes. I lean my head on the glass as the van drives us back to the base. 

 “You alright, Mitch?” Charlie asked as he moved to sit beside me. “You haven’t said much since we left camp.” 

“Yeah,” I turn to look at him, “I haven’t felt like saying much. Processing it all I guess.” 

“You don’t have to be alright with what happened,” he says softly and takes my hand in his. 

“Thank you,” I look down and lace my fingers with his. It was a sweet gesture and I liked him even more for it, “I may not be as OK with it as I want to be. But I’ll get there.”

“Bob is gonna find him,” he said. “And then we’ll deal with him.”  I start to protest but know that it would be useless.  They wouldn’t stop because I asked.  They’d just keep it from me. So I just nod in agreement.  

“It’s gonna be strange sleeping alone again,” I say as we climb from the van. “Mack, Bob, and Jonas have wives to go home to. You and Hector have each other.”

“We’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” Hector says as we make our way to the locker room. “With my promotion, I’ve qualified for a bigger apartment. We could get into a three before you would get off the waiting list for a single.”

“Are you asking me to move in with you guys?” I close my locker contemplating it. “Your girlfriend won’t have an issue with you having a girl roommate?”

“You’re family,” Hector says, “she won’t have a problem with it.”

“Charlie? Are you good with it?” I ask.

“It was my idea,” he gives me one of his smiles.  

[soldiermanes]

Fourth of July

Prompt: Michael helping Alex deal with his PTSD

               The first time Michael sees Alex again he’s twenty and the summer heat has reached peak levels. The airstream has been almost unbearable for the past few days, it was already in terrible condition when he bought it off a guy at the Wild Pony, but then the AC went out and now it felt like he was living in a tomb. Even at night, the sun having set hours ago, there’s still a heavy humidity to the air that’s suffocating.  

               He’s lying, shirtless, on the bed and staring at the dented ceiling when the knock on his door comes.

               His body tenses, he hadn’t been expecting visitors.

               With a groan, he pulls himself from the bed, grabbing his t-shirt where it’d been discarded on his desk and throwing it on like an afterthought. Even as he walks to the door, he readies himself for what might be on the other side. A drunk from the bar who wanted to finish their fight, government goons in hazmat suits intending to drag him off to some lab, Max with coffee or donuts as a peace offering, ready to lecture him on all the reasons he shouldn’t be doing anything he was doing.

               What he doesn’t expect is to open the door, ready to snap at whoever’s decided to bother him this late at night, only to come face to face with Alex Manes. Whatever smart ass greeting he’d had planned dies in his throat at the sight of the man.

               “Alex,” he breathes instead, eyes widening ever so slightly.

               He looks different, of course he does it’s been three years since they last saw each other. But it’s odd seeing him like this; hair so short it’s almost a buzz cut, dressed in blue jeans and a plaid button up, his signature eyeliner replaced with dark circles and lines in his features that most definitely hadn’t been there when Alex had left him. Three years is apparently all it takes for any remainder of the boy he’d loved to vanish, leaving him with this stranger on his doorstep.

               “What are you doing here?” He asks, unable to stop the venom that slips into his voice, even as Alex is looking at him with something akin to need in his wide brown eyes.

               He opens his mouth, shoulders raising as he draws in a breath, only no words come out. His hands fidget nervously, and as Michael watches him pick at his sleeves he’s comforted by the familiarity of it; at least one thing hasn’t changed. Then Alex shifts and a glint of metal peaks out just above the collar of his shirt. Dog tags. Right. Alex Manes was the property of the US government now, he obeyed orders like every good pet. His father must be proud.

               Alex seems to notice how Michael is staring at the tags. He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, and pulls at his shirt until they’re hidden from view again.

               “I um-. I heard you were living out here,” he finally says, turning back to look at the junkyard, “I wanted to see for myself.”

               Michael tries to bite back the smart remark, but it slips through anyway, “yeah, well, my truck wasn’t exactly cutting it anymore. I kind of outgrew the sleeping bag.”

               If Alex is hurt by the low blow he doesn’t show it, just turns back to meet Michael’s gaze with a laugh. His teeth flash bright white against the deep tan of his skin and Michael hates the way it makes something come to life inside him. The familiar pull in his gut that Alex was so good at awakening.

               If this was three years ago, back when they’d had the whole world laid out open and waiting for them, he would have kissed Alex. He’d be lying if he said that’s not what he wanted to do now, but they’re not kids anymore and there are no happy endings. They’d been great, something wild and untamed, but they’d ran too hot and burnt out too soon, and now all that was left was the emptiness that creeped in alongside the longing.

               Alex seems to know this as well as he does, the smile fading from his face, replaced with something sad and broken.                

               “What do you want, Alex?” Michael says, crossing his arms across his chest and scowling down at the man.

               “It’s the fourth of July,” Alex replies simply, like that’s supposed to mean something to Michael, “and I-. I don’t know, I just wanted to see you.”

               Something cracks in the façade Alex is hiding behind, a quick flash of fear in his eyes that’s gone as soon as he blinks. But Michael sees it, he sees everything Alex does because he’s never been strong enough to look away and that tears at something inside him until all he can feel is the raw pain that had consumed him so long ago. His hand throbs at the memory, cool winter chill and even colder grey eyes. When Alex looks at him it’s with warm brown that promise safety and reprieve, he’s nothing like his father, and even still it physically hurts for Michael to look at him because all he can see, all he can feel, is the tool shed.

               His voice cracks when he speaks again, “go home, Manes.”

               He turns, beginning to retreat back into the suffocatingly hot trailer, when Alex’s hand grabs at his wrist and he freezes. The man’s grip is tight, desperation showing in everything he does, even as he takes another step forward, pressing himself close to Michael. They’re close enough that he can feel Alex’s warm breath fan across his cheek, and he’s not sure if the quickening heartbeat he hears is his or not.

               “Please,” Alex begs, and that pull in Michael’s gut strengthens, “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

               And that is familiar.

               “Please, Guerin,”

               His voice is so small, so achingly similar to that of the seventeen year old who’d clung to Michael on that last night, both of them with tears streaming down their cheeks as Alex apologized profusely, again and again, and Michael begged him not to go. It would be so easy to turn the tables, to be the one to leave Alex this time, but the boy has always had a grip on his heart that couldn’t be explained, even now.

               He sighs, deep and heavy, “why are you back?” he asks because there’s a truth here that Alex isn’t admitting. He wouldn’t just show up on Michael’s doorstep because he missed him. He’s here for something, whether it be another piece of Michael’s soul or not, there’s a reason.

               “I-,” Alex starts, the lie already forming on his lips.

               “I want the truth. Or you can go.”

               Alex’s eyes shine with tears, his breathing heavy and trembling with each exhale, “I just need you, please, Guerin.”

               “Why?”

               “Because I miss you,” the first tear falls, Michael fights down everything in him that wants to wipe it away, “because I’ve only been back for a day and already my father is suffocating me. Because I can’t watch goddamned fireworks anymore without thinking about bombs and bodies and it’s killing me, Guerin. It’s killing me.”

               Something snaps then, whatever thin thing it was that was keeping Alex upright as he sags heavily against Michael. He sobs, loud and pain filled, and Michael’s never felt so worried in his life. There’s a lump in his throat that won’t let him breathe and each time Alex cries, with a raw vulnerability that he doesn’t know how to handle, he can feel his chest tighten.

               He tries to soothe the boy, holding him tightly, one hand wrapped around his waist, the other cradling the back of his neck. Alex has got his face buried in the crook of Michael’s neck, his tears warm against bare skin and he shakes like he’s about to fall apart; violent tremors that wrack his small frame. Michael’s confused and shocked, completely unequipped to deal with this situation. He could barely console Isobel when she was having a melt down over which decorations to use for a party, so a traumatized soldier was definitely outside his area of expertise.

               “I’m sorry,” Alex cries, voice muffled against Michael’s skin, “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t-. I can’t-. It’s too much Guerin, it’s all too much, and I just needed things to be quiet.”

               “Okay. It’s okay,” he’s got tears stinging at the corners of his vision now and he blinks them away as his grip tightens on the man. This close, Michael can smell him, the strong scent of cologne and sweat and underneath that vanilla and spice that is so distinctly Alex is makes him ache more. This isn’t a stranger; this is the boy who he’d do anything to defend and he’d failed.

               Alex’s body shudders as he collapses further against Michael, “I’m broken. They were just fireworks, and I knew that, but they started going off and I was back there. It’s like I’m stuck. I can’t sleep, can’t eat. I’m not strong enough. My dad was right, I’m weak.”    

               No, Michael won’t stand for that. He won’t let Jesse win, that’s not an option. He pulls away from Alex, taking the man’s head in his hands and tilting his chin until their eyes meet, “look at me. You are not weak.”

               “I am-.”

               “You’re not. I swear Alex, you’re not. You’re the bravest person I know, and no war is going to change that,” he speaks with a conviction that’s usually only reserved for his siblings, an unwavering truth to his words that he stands firmly by. He will not let Alex think less of himself, because Jesse is wrong. He’s always been wrong about Alex, the strongest of the Manes’ men, because even when the world tried to harden him into something cruel and unforgiving Alex refused to be anything but good.

               “You don’t understand. You’re not there,” Alex says, as more tears track down his cheeks. This time, Michael doesn’t fight the urge to wipe them away with gentle thumbs. The man closes his eyes at the contact, lips parting enough for a trembling breath to escape him.

               “You’re right, I’m not. But neither are you, not right now. You’re here. You made it back here, and that makes you stronger than anyone.”

               Alex cries again, this time a whimpered thing, and it makes Michael want to hunt down Jesse Manes and destroy him. He can feel the familiar anger course through his veins, the warning of something far more sinister biting at him, and he swallows it down. Alex doesn’t seem to notice the papers, scattered across Michael’s desk behind them, that begin to float as if taking life of their own. He breathes, deep and steady and they fall. Now’s not the time to let his rage for the oldest Manes out. That’s a problem for another day.

               As Alex begins to calm down, his breath returning to something resembling normal, he starts to pull away from Michael. The haunted look never leaves his eyes though, expression glazed over as if he’s not really there, but stuck in whatever hell his mind has concocted. Three years ago, they’d been free. They dreamed ideas for the future in the back of Michael’s pickup, curled against each other as they looked at the night sky above them and it was the first time he’d ever really let himself hope.

               Things were different now, and Alex had left, taking that budding hope with him. He won’t let himself pretend this is anything other than Alex seeking comfort, because the man will be gone in the morning and the pain in his heart will return. He’s had enough one night stands to understand the arrangement.

                Instead he simply says, “you can stay if you want, but the bed’s pretty small.”

               Alex smiles, there’s no humor in his features, just an empty twitch of his lips. He nods, “okay.”

               Once, Alex Manes had been his. It had been such a brief moment of time that it shouldn’t hold as much impact as it does, but he’d shared a part of himself with the boy that he hadn’t with anyone else. Alex knew some of the darkest parts of him, and in turn he knew Alex’s greatest fears. And just when he’d thought they’d have a future together, that maybe Michael could find a home in the brown haired boy with a smile like heaven and wit to match Michael’s own, Alex had left. He’d run off to a war that spit him out twisted, and Michael knew if he kept returning to fight his father’s battles that the war would demand more each time, but he didn’t say any of this.

               He doesn’t beg like he had when he was seventeen, and he thought that if he just kept saying the words that Alex would stay. He knows better now, he knows that once Alex has made up his mind, there’s not a power on earth that could change it. And he knows the fear that sits deep in Alex’s heart, because it had been whispered to him once, in the same summer heat that now permeated every part of the airstream.

               “I’m afraid to love something my father could break,” he’d said, even as he’d moved to kiss Michael. He’d been stupid to not realize that that was the beginning of the end.

               He was stupid now, for letting Alex stay, and continue to carve a place into his heart.

               But all Alex had to do was look at him, with that lost and lonely fear in his eyes, and Michael would feel the need to protect so deeply that it almost suffocated him. Alex must have felt similar, somewhere deep inside, because no matter how far away he ran and how fast, he always seemed to find his way back.

               Like magnets, they always seemed to find each other again.  

A/N: Will I ever let these boys be happy, probably not. I’d like to think of this as a prequel to Safe Haven, when Michael has no idea how to handle Alex’s PTSD, but after this moment he starts reading articles and journals online so next time Alex shows up at his door, he’s ready. 

Prompt from: @taki-nee-chan 

[orbemnews]

Three-ring binders and 14-point font: How Biden preps for a news conference - CNN Politics (CNN) —   One day before holding his first formal news conference, President Joe Biden seemed to write the whole thing off. “What press conference?” he joked when asked Wednesday evening how he was preparing. In reality, Biden has been getting ready for days to face the White House press corps, according to multiple people, who all conclude he recognizes the bright spotlight it will garner. Biden has talked his strategy through with several members of his inner circle and even held an informal practice session earlier this week. The event, scheduled for early afternoon in the White House East Room, will be Biden’s most extended period of questioning since becoming president. For all his years in Washington, it’s a moment he hasn’t quite experienced for himself before; senators and vice presidents rarely hold their own solo televised news conferences. He’s taking the step later in his presidency than his recent predecessors, who all convened formal news conferences within their first 40 days in office. The White House officially put Thursday’s event on the calendar in the middle of last week, giving reporters – and themselves – ample time to prepare. For most of Biden’s formal events at the White House, he has spoken directly into a camera mounted with a teleprompter and read from a prepared speech. His encounters with reporters have been more ad-hoc, responding with one or two sentences when lobbed a question at the end of an event or on his way to his helicopter. He has prepared extensively for some of those events, including his prime-time address to the nation earlier this month. He spent days line editing his remarks, ensuring he was striking the appropriate tone while using exactly the right words and phrases. Biden did not want to make a single mistake, he told others. A news conference, however, is a different prospect. While Biden is expected to open with prepared remarks, the question-and-answer session won’t be scripted. To help punctuate the event with agenda-driven news, Biden plans to announce a new vaccination target after reaching his initial 100 million shots goal well ahead of schedule. That fits within his desired messaging about the pandemic response. But the remainder of the event will be dictated by reporters’ questions that are certain to veer from the White House’s preferred topic of confronting the pandemic. To prepare for the event, aides have written sets of talking points for potential questions on a wide array of topics. White House officials expect a number of questions to arise on immigration, but have also been preparing for a number of other topics, from the state of bipartisanship to the future of the Senate filibuster to a decision on withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. As he has before other major public appearances, Biden has taken home briefing books containing policy positions and framing for potential answers. Biden’s three-ring binders are typically organized by topic, with tabs separating the sections and the contents typed out in 14-point font. He has read them in the evenings and returned the next day with feedback for his team. So, too, have Biden’s advisers worked to avoid situations that would cause the President’s temper to flare, as it did a few times on the campaign trail when faced with questioning he didn’t like. Among former staffers and people who have worked closely with him, Biden’s penchant for defensiveness when challenged is well-known. He once lashed out at a voter who questioned him about his son, Hunter, calling the 83-year-old Iowan a “damn liar.” Another time he called a younger voter in New Hampshire a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” when she asked a question about his electability. He’s gotten into verbal spats with reporters as well when questioned about his family or, early in his administration, about his goal of administering 100 million vaccines within 100 days. “Come on, gimme a break, man!” he said. While advisers do not believe occasional flashes of anger are necessary a bad thing for Biden, they do not believe his news conference should be marked by open hostility in the same way President Donald Trump’s were. Part of avoiding that is providing Biden as many potential questions as possible, aides say, in the hopes he feels prepared for whatever might come his way and not be caught off guard in a way that puts him on the defensive. How questions are phrased – which, during a presidential news conference, is often quite pointed – could also cause Biden’s temper to flare. Asked by reporters this week how Biden was preparing, press secretary Jen Psaki joked he was “looking at your Twitters and seeing what’s on your mind.” “He is, you know, thinking about it,” she said aboard Air Force One. “It’s an opportunity for him to speak to the American people, obviously directly through the coverage, directly through all of you. And so I think he’s thinking about what he wants to say, what he wants to convey, where he can provide updates, and, you know, looking forward to the opportunity to engage with a free press.” PHOTO: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Like his predecessors, Biden has been provided succinct talking points that attempt to boil down complex issues in ways that would be easily communicated to a general audience. That has not always been Biden’s strong suit. He sometimes meanders into the inner complexities of matters or uses confusing turns of phrase to describe a thought or idea. Since his presidential campaign last year, he has noticeably worked to curtail those kind of tangents, telling audiences that he doesn’t want to bore them. “It’s gonna be, like, Sanskrit to people listening here,” he said when answering a question about last year’s delayed transition during an interview with ABC News last week. “I’m going to get into trouble,” he said during a CNN town hall in February. “I’m supposed to only talk two minutes in an answer.” Indeed, keeping Biden succinct has been a perennial challenge of the people who work for him, and a press conference provides precisely the venue where brevity is viewed as an advantage – but where lengthy answers have befallen his predecessors. In his recent memoir, former President Barack Obama said he “enjoyed the unscripted nature of live press conferences” but admitted to sometimes droning on about policy matters. “I succumbed to an old pattern, giving exhaustive explanations of each facet of the issue under debate,” he wrote of a health care news conference in 2009 that became overshadowed by an answer he delivered about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates at his home in Massachusetts. For all presidents, news conferences present the unique challenge of facing questions that have little to do with that day’s preferred topic. Biden has taken extra pains to remain strictly on message during his first two months in office, rarely veering away from taking about his efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic. But events this week alone illustrate the difficulty in sticking to that message. Two mass shootings that have left 18 Americans dead, an influx of migrants on the Southern border and fresh provocation from North Korea all have little to do with the agenda priorities he has worked ardently to promote. A news conference will only exacerbate the difficulty in remaining on message as Biden is forced to answer key questions on topics he hasn’t discussed at length since taking office. Questioned on one such issue this week – diversity within his Cabinet, specifically focused on Asian Americans – Biden offered a flash of defensiveness. “We have the most diverse Cabinet in history. We have a lot of Asian Americans who are in the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet level,” Biden told reporters in Ohio, before raising his hands to add, “Our Cabinet is formed.” Source link Orbem News #14point #Biden #binders #CNN #Conference #font #news #Politics #preps #Threering

[dipulb3]

Three-ring binders and 14-point font: How Biden preps for a news conference

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/three-ring-binders-and-14-point-font-how-biden-preps-for-a-news-conference/

Three-ring binders and 14-point font: How Biden preps for a news conference

“What press conference?” he joked when asked Wednesday evening how he was preparing.

In reality, Biden has been getting ready for days to face the White House press corps, according to multiple people, who all conclude he recognizes the bright spotlight it will garner. Biden has talked his strategy through with several members of his inner circle and even held an informal practice session earlier this week.

The event, scheduled for early afternoon in the White House East Room, will be Biden’s most extended period of questioning since becoming president. For all his years in Washington, it’s a moment he hasn’t quite experienced for himself before; senators and vice presidents rarely hold their own solo televised news conferences.

He’s taking the step later in his presidency than his recent predecessors, who all convened formal news conferences within their first 40 days in office. The White House officially put Thursday’s event on the calendar in the middle of last week, giving reporters — and themselves — ample time to prepare.

For most of Biden’s formal events at the White House, he has spoken directly into a camera mounted with a teleprompter and read from a prepared speech. His encounters with reporters have been more ad-hoc, responding with one or two sentences when lobbed a question at the end of an event or on his way to his helicopter.

He has prepared extensively for some of those events, including his prime-time address to the nation earlier this month. He spent days line editing his remarks, ensuring he was striking the appropriate tone while using exactly the right words and phrases. Biden did not want to make a single mistake, he told others.

A news conference, however, is a different prospect. While Biden is expected to open with prepared remarks, the question-and-answer session won’t be scripted.

To help punctuate the event with agenda-driven news, Biden plans to announce a new vaccination target after reaching his initial 100 million shots goal well ahead of schedule. That fits within his desired messaging about the pandemic response.

But the remainder of the event will be dictated by reporters’ questions that are certain to veer from the White House’s preferred topic of confronting the pandemic.

To prepare for the event, aides have written sets of talking points for potential questions on a wide array of topics. White House officials expect a number of questions to arise on immigration, but have also been preparing for a number of other topics, from the state of bipartisanship to the future of the Senate filibuster to a decision on withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

As he has before other major public appearances, Biden has taken home briefing books containing policy positions and framing for potential answers. Biden’s three-ring binders are typically organized by topic, with tabs separating the sections and the contents typed out in 14-point font. He has read them in the evenings and returned the next day with feedback for his team.

Temper?

So, too, have Biden’s advisers worked to avoid situations that would cause the President’s temper to flare, as it did a few times on the campaign trail when faced with questioning he didn’t like. Among former staffers and people who have worked closely with him, Biden’s penchant for defensiveness when challenged is well-known.

He once lashed out at a voter who questioned him about his son, Hunter, calling the 83-year-old Iowan a “damn liar.” Another time he called a younger voter in New Hampshire a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” when she asked a question about his electability.

He’s gotten into verbal spats with reporters as well when questioned about his family or, early in his administration, about his goal of administering 100 million vaccines within 100 days.

“Come on, gimme a break, man!” he said.

While advisers do not believe occasional flashes of anger are necessary a bad thing for Biden, they do not believe his news conference should be marked by open hostility in the same way President Donald Trump’s were.

Part of avoiding that is providing Biden as many potential questions as possible, aides say, in the hopes he feels prepared for whatever might come his way and not be caught off guard in a way that puts him on the defensive. How questions are phrased — which, during a presidential news conference, is often quite pointed — could also cause Biden’s temper to flare.

Asked by reporters this week how Biden was preparing, press secretary Jen Psaki joked he was “looking at your Twitters and seeing what’s on your mind.”

“He is, you know, thinking about it,” she said aboard Air Force One. “It’s an opportunity for him to speak to the American people, obviously directly through the coverage, directly through all of you. And so I think he’s thinking about what he wants to say, what he wants to convey, where he can provide updates, and, you know, looking forward to the opportunity to engage with a free press.”

Talking points

Like his predecessors, Biden has been provided succinct talking points that attempt to boil down complex issues in ways that would be easily communicated to a general audience.

That has not always been Biden’s strong suit. He sometimes meanders into the inner complexities of matters or uses confusing turns of phrase to describe a thought or idea. Since his presidential campaign last year, he has noticeably worked to curtail those kind of tangents, telling audiences that he doesn’t want to bore them.

“It’s gonna be, like, Sanskrit to people listening here,” he said when answering a question about last year’s delayed transition during an interview with ABC News last week.

“I’m going to get into trouble,” he said during a Appradab town hall in February. “I’m supposed to only talk two minutes in an answer.”

Indeed, keeping Biden succinct has been a perennial challenge of the people who work for him, and a press conference provides precisely the venue where brevity is viewed as an advantage — but where lengthy answers have befallen his predecessors.

In his recent memoir, former President Barack Obama said he “enjoyed the unscripted nature of live press conferences” but admitted to sometimes droning on about policy matters.

“I succumbed to an old pattern, giving exhaustive explanations of each facet of the issue under debate,” he wrote of a health care news conference in 2009 that became overshadowed by an answer he delivered about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates at his home in Massachusetts.

For all presidents, news conferences present the unique challenge of facing questions that have little to do with that day’s preferred topic. Biden has taken extra pains to remain strictly on message during his first two months in office, rarely veering away from taking about his efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

News events

But events this week alone illustrate the difficulty in sticking to that message. Two mass shootings that have left 18 Americans dead, an influx of migrants on the Southern border and fresh provocation from North Korea all have little to do with the agenda priorities he has worked ardently to promote.

A news conference will only exacerbate the difficulty in remaining on message as Biden is forced to answer key questions on topics he hasn’t discussed at length since taking office.

Questioned on one such issue this week — diversity within his Cabinet, specifically focused on Asian Americans — Biden offered a flash of defensiveness.

“We have the most diverse Cabinet in history. We have a lot of Asian Americans who are in the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet level,” Biden told reporters in Ohio, before raising his hands to add, “Our Cabinet is formed.”

[itsmassivecollectionpatrolus]

Reality in Soviet news was 100% binary, with all people either heroes or villains, and the villains all in league with one another (an SR was no better than a fascist or a “Right-Trotskyite Bandit,” a kind of proto-horseshoe theory). Other ideas were not represented, except to be attacked and deconstructed. Also, since anything good was all good, politicians were not described as people at all but paragons of limitless virtue — 95% of most issues of Pravda or Izvestia were just names of party leaders surrounded by lists of applause-words, like “glittering,” “full-hearted,” “wise,” “mighty,” “courageous,” “in complete moral-political union with the people,” etc.

Some of the headlines in the U.S. press lately sound suspiciously like this kind of work:

— Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty

— Champion of the middle class comes to the aid of the poor

— Biden's historic victory for America

The most Soviet of the recent efforts didn’t have a classically Soviet headline. “Comedians are struggling to parody Biden. Let’s hope this doesn’t last,” read the Washington Post opinion piece by Richard Zoglin, arguing that Biden is the first president in generations who might be “impervious to impressionists.” Zoglin contended Biden is “impregnable” to parody, his voice being too “devoid of obvious quirks,” his manner too “muted and self-effacing” to offer comedians much to work with.

Forget that the “impregnable to parody” pol spent the last campaign year jamming fingers in the sternums of voters, challenging them to pushup contests, calling them “lying dog-faced pony soldiers,” and forgetting what state he was in. Biden, on the day Zoglin ran his piece, couldn’t remember the name of his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and referred to the Department of Defense as “that outfit over there”:

[all-my-books]

2017 Reading

262 books read. 60% of new reads Non-fiction, authors from 55 unique countries, 35% of authors read from countries other than USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. Asterisks denote re-reads, bolds are favorites. January: The Deeds of the Disturber – Elizabeth Peters The Wiregrass – Pam Webber Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi It Didn't Start With You – Mark Wolynn Facing the Lion – Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton Before We Visit the Goddess – Chitra Divakaruni Colored People – Henry Louis Gates Jr. My Khyber Marriage – Morag Murray Abdullah Miss Bianca in the Salt Mines – Margery Sharp Farewell to the East End – Jennifer Worth Fire and Air – Erik Vlaminck My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me – Jennifer Teege Catherine the Great – Robert K Massie My Mother's Sabbath Days – Chaim Grade Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me – Harvey Pekar, JT Waldman The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend – Katarina Bivald Stammered Songbook – Erwin Mortier Savushun – Simin Daneshvar The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran Beyond the Walls – Nazim Hikmet The Dressmaker of Khair Khana – Gayle Tzemach Lemmon A Day No Pigs Would Die – Robert Newton Peck *

February: Bone Black – bell hooks Special Exits – Joyce Farmer Reading Like a Writer – Francine Prose Bright Dead Things – Ada Limon Middlemarch – George Eliot Confessions of an English Opium Eater – Thomas de Quincey Medusa's Gaze – Marina Belozerskaya Child of the Prophecy – Juliet Marillier * The File on H – Ismail Kadare The Motorcycle Diaries – Ernesto Che Guevara Passing – Nella Larsen Whose Body? - Dorothy L. Sayers The Spiral Staircase – Karen Armstrong Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi Defiance – Nechama Tec

March: Yes, Chef – Marcus Samuelsson Discontent and its Civilizations – Mohsin Hamid The Gulag Archipelago Vol. 1 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Patience and Sarah – Isabel Miller Dying Light in Corduba – Lindsey Davis * Five Days at Memorial – Sheri Fink A Man Called Ove – Fredrik Backman * The Shia Revival – Vali Nasr Girt – David Hunt Half Magic – Edward Eager * Dreams of Joy – Lisa See * Too Pretty to Live – Dennis Brooks West with the Night – Beryl Markham Little Fuzzy – H. Beam Piper *

April: Defying Hitler – Sebastian Haffner Monsters in Appalachia – Sheryl Monks Sorcerer to the Crown – Zen Cho The Man Without a Face – Masha Gessen Peace is Every Step – Thich Nhat Hanh Flory – Flory van Beek Why Soccer Matters – Pele The Zhivago Affair – Peter Finn, Petra Couvee The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake – Breece Pancake The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson Chasing Utopia – Nikki Giovanni The Invisible Bridge – Julie Orringer * Young Adults – Daniel Pinkwater Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel – John Stubbs Black Gun, Silver Star – Art T. Burton The Arab of the Future 2 – Riad Sattouf Hole in the Heart – Henny Beaumont MASH – Richard Hooker Forgotten Ally – Rana Mitter Zorro – Isabel Allende Flying Couch – Amy Kurzweil

May: The Bite of the Mango – Mariatu Kamara Mystic and Rider – Sharon Shinn * Freedom is a Constant Struggle – Angela Davis Capture – David A. Kessler Poor Cow – Nell Dunn My Father's Dragon – Ruth Stiles Gannett * Elmer and the Dragon – Ruth Stiles Gannett * The Dragons of Blueland – Ruth Stiles Gannett * Hetty Feather – Jacqueline Wilson In the Shadow of the Banyan – Vaddey Ratner The Last Camel Died at Noon – Elizabeth Peters Cannibalism – Bill Schutt The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry The Food of a Younger Land – Mark Kurlansky Behold the Dreamers – Imbolo Mbue Words on the Move – John McWhorter John Ransom's Diary: Andersonville – John Ransom Such a Lovely Little War – Marcelino Truong Child of All Nations – Irmgard Keun One Child – Mei Fong Country of Red Azaleas – Domnica Radulescu Between Two Worlds – Zainab Salbi Malinche – Julia Esquivel A Lucky Child – Thomas Buergenthal The Drackenberg Adventure – Lloyd Alexander Say You're One of Them – Uwem Akpan William Wells Brown – Ezra Greenspan

June: Partners In Crime – Agatha Christie The Chinese in America – Iris Chang The Great Escape – Kati Marton As Texas Goes... – Gail Collins Pavilion of Women – Pearl S. Buck Classic Chinese Stories – Lu Xun The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West The Slave Across the Street – Theresa Flores Miss Bianca in the Orient – Margery Sharp Boy Erased – Garrard Conley How to Be a Dictator – Mikal Hem A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini Tears of the Desert – Halima Bashir The Death and Life of Great American Cities – Jane Jacobs The First Salute – Barbara Tuchman Come as You Are – Emily Nagoski The Want-Ad Killer – Ann Rule The Gulag Archipelago Vol 2 – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

July: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz – L. Frank Baum * The Blazing World – Margaret Cavendish Madonna in a Fur Coat – Sabahattin Ali Duende – tracy k. smith The ACB With Honora Lee – Kate de Goldi Mountains of the Pharaohs – Zahi Hawass Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy Chronicle of a Last Summer – Yasmine el Rashidi Killers of the Flower Moon – David Grann Mister Monday – Garth Nix * Leaving Yuba City – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni The Silk Roads – Peter Frankopan The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams A Corner of White – Jaclyn Moriarty * Circling the Sun – Paula McLain Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them – Al Franken Believe Me – Eddie Izzard The Cracks in the Kingdom – Jaclyn Moriarty * Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe – Fannie Flagg * One Hundred and One Days – Asne Seierstad Grim Tuesday – Garth Nix * The Vanishing Velasquez – Laura Cumming Four Against the Arctic – David Roberts The Marriage Bureau – Penrose Halson The Jesuit and the Skull – Amir D Aczel Drowned Wednesday – Garth Nix * Roots, Radicals, and Rockers – Billy Bragg A Tangle of Gold – Jaclyn Moriarty * Lydia, Queen of Palestine – Uri Orlev *

August: Sir Thursday – Garth Nix * The Hoboken Chicken Emergency – Daniel Pinkwater * Lady Friday – Garth Nix * Freddy and the Perilous Adventure – Walter R. Brooks * Venice – Jan Morris China's Long March – Jean Fritz Trials of the Earth – Mary Mann Hamilton The Bully Pulpit – Doris Kearns Goodwin Final Exit – Derek Humphry The Book of Emma Reyes – Emma Reyes Freddy the Politician – Walter R. Brooks * Dragonflight – Anne McCaffrey * What the Witch Left – Ruth Chew All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville-West The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde The Curse of the Blue Figurine – John Bellairs * When They Severed Earth From Sky – Elizabeth Wayland Barber Superior Saturday – Garth Nix * The Boston Girl – Anita Diamant The Mummy, The Will, and the Crypt – John Bellairs * Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? - Frans de Waal The Philadelphia Adventure – Lloyd Alexander * Lord Sunday – Garth Nix * The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull – John Bellairs * Five Little Pigs – Agatha Christie * Love in Vain – JM Dupont, Mezzo A Little History of the World – EH Gombrich Last Things – Marissa Moss Imagine Wanting Only This – Kristen Radtke Dinosaur Empire – Abby Howard The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents – Terry Pratchett *

September: First Bite by Bee Wilson The Xanadu Adventure by Lloyd Alexander Orientalism – Edward Said The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan – Carl Barks The Island on Bird Street – Uri Orlev * The Indifferent Stars Above – Daniel James Brown Beneath the Lion's Gaze – Maaza Mengiste The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde * The Book of Five Rings – Miyamoto Musashi The Drunken Botanist – Amy Stewart The Turtle of Oman – Naomi Shahib Nye The Alleluia Files – Sharon Shinn * Gut Feelings – Gerd Gigerenzer The Secret of Hondorica – Carl Barks Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight – Alexandra Fuller The Abominable Mr. Seabrook – Joe Ollmann Black Flags – Joby Warrick

October: Fear – Thich Nhat Hanh Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 – Naoki Higashida To the Bright Edge of the World – Eowyn Ivey Why? - Mario Livio Just One Damned Thing After Another – Jodi Taylor The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman Blindness – Jose Saramago The Book Thieves – Anders Rydell Reality is not What it Seems – Carlo Rovelli Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell * The Witch Family – Eleanor Estes * Sister Mine – Nalo Hopkinson La Vagabonde – Colette Becoming Nicole – Amy Ellis Nutt

November: The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing The Children's Book – A.S. Byatt The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin Under the Udala Trees – Chinelo Okparanta Who Killed These Girls? – Beverly Lowry Running for my Life – Lopez Lmong Radium Girls – Kate Moore News of the World – Paulette Jiles The Red Pony – John Steinbeck The Edible History of Humanity – Tom Standage A Woman in Arabia – Gertrude Bell and Georgina Howell Founding Gardeners – Andrea Wulf Anatomy of a Disapperance – Hisham Matar The Book of Night Women – Marlon James Ground Zero – Kevin J. Anderson * Acorna – Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball * A Girl Named Zippy – Haven Kimmel * The Age of the Vikings – Anders Winroth The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction – Helen Graham A General History of the Pyrates – Captain Charles Johnson (suspected Nathaniel Mist) Clouds of Witness – Dorothy L. Sayers * The Lonely City – Olivia Laing No Time for Tears – Judy Heath

December: The Unwomanly Face of War – Svetlana Alexievich Gay-Neck - Dhan Gopal Mukerji The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane – Lisa See Get Well Soon – Jennifer Wright The Testament of Mary – Colm Toibin The Roman Way – Edith Hamilton Understood Betsy – Dorothy Canfield Fisher * The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Vicente Blasco Ibanez Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH – Robert C. O'Brien SPQR – Mary Beard Ballet Shoes – Noel Streatfeild * Hogfather – Terry Pratchett * The Sorrow of War – Bao Ninh Drowned Hopes – Donald E. Westlake * Selected Essays – Michel de Montaigne Vietnam – Stanley Karnow The Snake, The Crocodile, and the Dog – Elizabeth Peters Guests of the Sheik – Elizabetha Warnok Fernea Stone Butch Blues – Leslie Feinberg Wicked Plants – Amy Stewart Life in a Medieval City – Joseph and Frances Gies Under the Sea Wind – Rachel Carson The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia – Mary and Brian Talbot Brat Farrar – Josephine Tey * The Treasure of the Ten Avatars – Don Rosa Escape From Forbidden Valley – Don Rosa Nightwood – Djuna Barnes Here Comes the Sun – Nicole Dennis-Benn Over My Dead Body – Rex Stout *

[dertaglichedan]

A vote for Joe Biden is really a vote for the risky adventure of President Kamala Harris

It’s been another tough week for our president as he plows forward with his re-election bid.

It began with root canal surgery and went downhill from there. 

He did the usual wandering around on stage with jerky arms before aides rushed in to point him in the right direction. 

In Connecticut he ended a speech with a baffling “God Save The Queen,” and back at the White House, it was his hands doing the wandering all over Eva Longoria’s torso. 

At one event he wheeled out the old “dog-faced lying pony soldier” line which had everyone scratching their heads, and after another event, he snapped at a reporter who asked him if he was the Big Guy: “Why’d you ask such a dumb question?” 

He told us he was planning to “build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean” — to which one wiseguy online responded: “Who’s going to run that train? SpongeBob?” 

MORE...

[theconservativebrief]

Former vice president turned 2020 Democrat Joe Biden is not doing so well. Between the controversy surrounding his son Hunter to the plethora of ways that Biden has misbehaved on the campaign trail, to say that he’s struggling would be a significant understatement.

Throughout the former vice president’s time as a Democrat candidate, he’s made one oral gaffe after the other and verbally abused voters. Some of Biden’s worst gaffes include mixing up world leaders’ names and forgetting the state he’s currently in.

“Joe Biden” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Gage Skidmore

Moreover, some of the Democrat’s latest instances of verbal abuse towards Americans comprise calling a student a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier,” pushing a man while telling him to vote for someone else, and making fun of another man’s failed marriage.

Now, voters aren’t hesitating to let Biden know what they truly think of him. Earlier this week, New Yorkers very clearly expressed their lack of interest in the 2020 Democrat. Fox News reports that chants of “Drop out, Joe!” took place while Biden fundraised in New York.

Why Are Voters Eager for Biden to Drop Out?

The New York Communities for Change has not minced words or hesitated to articulate their dislike for the former vice president. In a nutshell, this group and the individuals affiliated with it view Biden’s campaign as over. This view is not only evidenced by the “Drop out, Joe” chants, but also by New York Communities for Change members placing Biden 2020 stickers on a black coffin, thus representing the “death” of the former vice president’s campaign.

Taking to social media, the group also discouraged Biden from attempting to continue his campaign in Nevada and South Carolina.

We found @JoeBiden at his 250 person Wall Street fundraiser. We had a message: DROP OUT JOE! You don’t have to do this Joe. You can skip Nevada. You can skip South Carolina. And go straight home to Deleware. pic.twitter.com/BKjB3trVSb

— New York Communities for Change (@nychange) February 14, 2020

On Tuesday, Biden professed his interest in continuing to run as a 2020 Democrat. Noting the upcoming elections in South Carolina and Nevada, the former vice president maintains that he has yet to hear from “the most committed constituents” of the Democrat Party, citing these constituents as blacks and Latinos.

During yesterday’s anti-Biden protests, the 2020 candidate cozied up to Wall Street folks, hoping to raise one million dollars for his campaign.

The Case for Biden to Drop Out

Americans on both sides of the aisle are well aware that there’s no scenario where Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States. His own party is already losing faith with him, as the establishment considers throwing their support behind Mike Bloomberg. Meanwhile, the former vice president can’t conduct himself with dignity or class when campaigning and attempting to get votes.

“Joe Biden” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Gage Skidmore

All of Biden’s bad behavior is not only coming back to haunt him, but also speaks to his lack of fitness to become president. If Biden can’t deal with someone asking about his poor outcome in the Iowa caucus, how will he handle our allies and other world leaders who may challenge him in one way or another?

Throughout the former vice president’s time on the campaign trail, he’s consistently broken down, both mentally and emotionally. For these reasons, Joe Biden has absolutely no business coming anywhere near the United States presidency.

Do you believe Joe Biden should drop out of the 2020 presidential election? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

The post New Yorkers Tell Biden to “Drop Out!” appeared first on The Conservative Brief.

via The Conservative Brief

[maine-writes]

Kindness

It was a simple act. 

It began in a busy office, bustling with life as raccoon dogs scoured countless documents piling up on their desks. One raccoon dog, calm and composed, arrived at his desk with a small cup of tea. His desk was a neat and organized space, everything in their place, save for a single envelope. After a quick sip, he placed the tea down to open the envelope and read its contents. There, a letter addressed to him that read;

Consul Nobuki,

In light of the kingdom’s agreement with the griffons, you are hereby ordered to shut down the Kauen office and report to Griffonstone for reassignment by the the 22nd of June.

Regards, Vice-Minister Naotake Arita

With a sigh, he steeled himself for another day of work, plus the process of preparing to shut down the office. 

At first, it was easy-going. He began by sorting through his belongings, figuring out what should be transferred ahead. Then he sent other employees ahead to sort out the new office in the heart of the griffon kingdom. His experience with griffons taught him that griffon buildings tend to be rather spartan. 

But everything changed on that morning. It began as usual, Nobuki would walk down the empty streets as the sun slowly emerged in the distance. But as he made his way down the hall to the office, he was greeted by a line of ponies, waiting at his door. They were there for help, they needed travel papers to leave Mindau. They were afraid that the war would reach them. One safe haven for them was Mujina, his homeland. 

It was a simple process, some paperwork that had to go through the ministry. He promised them that it would only take a few days. By the end of the day, the ponies left relieved. 

One week later, he received a letter;

Consul Nobuki,

You are not to issue any travel documentation until further notice. 

Regards, Vice-Minister Naotake Arita

He sat at his desk, quill in paw, thinking about how he should tell the ponies who visited of the bad news. But just as the tip of the quill touched the paper, there was a knock at his door. With a heavy sigh, he hopped off his chair and walked to the door, where he encountered an awesome sight. There were scores of ponies, young and old, whole families, clamoring to see him. An older unicorn stumbled in front of him, down on his knees, “You’ve got to get my family out!” he begged, “They’re coming, they’re coming!” 

Countless forelegs were reaching out to him, trying to grab at his light brown fur to get his attention. He tried to calm them, he begged them, but they would not cease. He could see the fear in their eyes, the desperation. 

One by one, he let them in, telling them that he could help. It didn’t feel right, lying to them, giving them hope, but he couldn’t turn them away. He saw frail elders hugging fillies no taller than him. Like before, by the end of the day, they left relieved. This time, he made a call using the phone in a neighboring office to the Foreign Ministry in Mujina, where he made his case. 

“These ponies are in danger.” he said, growing frustrated as Vice-Minister Arita dismissed his arguements. 

“That is not of our concern, Consul.” the Vice-Minister reminded him. “The current consensus is that we should try to remain in the griffon’s good graces, and granting their enemies sanctuary may very well jeopardize that.” 

“Enemies? There are children here!” Nobuki retorted, losing all sense of calm, “Children and elders! They are not soldiers! How can w-?!”

“That’s enough Nobuki!” Arita interrupted. “Your orders are to shut down the office and report to Griffonstone. You are not to issue any travel documents and this matter is closed. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes, Vice-Minister Arita.” Nobuki growled, livid and weary of the conversation. 

He took a moment to calm himself. He returned to his empty office and opened a window. The cold breeze blew across his fur as a shaft of silver light shined down upon him from the moon. He gazed upon its silvery brilliance, reflecting on his thoughts. He knew what he had to do. 

For the next few weeks, he issued the travel papers himself, signing whatever needed signing, stamping whatever needed stamping, day in and day out. Each morning, as ponies gathered in front of the building, he would hand out all the travel papers he made the day before. Then he would begin issuing more. When night fell, his paws would ache, pain shooting through to his arm. After a couple of weeks, he ran out of official papers, but there would still be more ponies waiting for him. He began to use whatever he had. First he used whatever blank paper he had lying in the office, then he used old documents, before finally, he began to simply hand out scraps of paper with his signature and stamp on it. 

As he boarded the train to Griffonstone, he threw the scraps of paper into the crowds of ponies that trailed behind him, all clamoring for help, for hope. “I’m sorry!” he cried out from the train window, “I can’t give you any more!” 

As the train roared to life, he looked out into the crowd of ponies. In the faces that gazed back at him, he saw fear, he saw hope, and, perhaps worst of all, he saw despair. As one last sign of respect, he bowed. 

That was the last he saw of them. 

A lonely bus stop. It was raining heavily that day when an tired-looking tanuki came running, looking for shelter. He carried a cardboard box, now soaked through, falling apart in his paws. 

There was a heavy weight in his heart. Not a day went by when he didn’t wonder. He remembered the faces of those he left at the station, their eyes searching for a sign, hoping he had saved one just for them. 

He lost everything when Arita found out what he did; his career, his home, and any hope of finding work in his homeland. He wasn’t ostracized, what he did wasn’t made into some great spectacle, but rather, everything was subtly implied when he was asked to resign. His neighbors began to whisper of his resignation, theorizing what had happened. It was their caution that ruined him, forcing him to find work elsewhere, where nobody knew of him. 

But each day, he wondered about the ponies he left at the station. Thinking back at what he could’ve done, how many more he could’ve made, how many lives he could’ve saved. And every time, he would remember a face he saw in the crowd, and imagine the horrors the griffons wrought upon them. 

As he sat on the bench, drenched by the rain, drops of water dripping off his fur, he dropped the soaked box and buried his face into his paws. “I-I’m sorry.” he whimpered to ghosts that haunt him, “One more. I should’ve made one more.” 

The dead of night. An aging tanuki laid in a hospital bed, resting his weary head. He head his door slowly creak open, and when he turn his head to see who it was, he was met with a unfamiliar raccoon. “Good evening.” the raccoon said. 

“Now isn’t this a pleasure?” Nobuki mused, his voice weak and raspy. “A stranger coming to see a nobody.” 

“Actually sir,” the raccoon began as he approached, “I’m here to show you something.” 

As the raccoon stood there by the bed, holding out his paw, Nobuki laughed. “Are you daft, young kit?” he said, “I’m a dying old tanuki. These old bones can’t even move without almost shattering.” 

“Surely, you have the strength for one last adventure.” the raccoon insisted. 

Nobuki thought for a moment. Here he was, alone with a stranger, one who wanted to take him on some sort of adventure. He thought, maybe, he should just amuse the raccoon for a short while. “Alright.” he relented, grabbing ahold of the raccoon’s paw. “Where are we going?” 

“To the window.” he answered, gently pulling the aging tanuki up and helping him off the bed and into a wheelchair.

“The window?” Nobuki pressed, both confused and curious. “What for?” 

“There’s someone who wants to meet you.” he replied, taking him to the window. 

Looking over out into the empty hospital grounds below, Nobuki saw nothing but darkness. With a sigh, he turned to the raccoon, ready to ask to be taken back to his bed. 

Suddenly, the night came alive with light as countless swirling portals opened on the hospital grounds. From them, ponies of every kind, hundreds of them, came pouring out. 

“Who are they?” the tanuki asked, his mouth agape in awe. 

“These are the families you saved.” the raccoon continued, “Who they became, and who came after.” 

“T-the window.” Nobuki stuttered, his eyes wide, “Open the window.” 

As the raccoon obliged, Nobuki pulled himself up from the wheelchair and leaned out, looking into the crowd that awaited him. He saw their faces, full of happiness, gratitude, and strangely; awe. At first, he was confused, why would anypony be in awe of him? Then he realized that those who were in awe were the children, the grandchildren, of those he saved. His thoughts then turned to those he didn’t save, those who didn’t make it out in time. As he opened his mouth, ready to apologize for his failure, he was struck by a humbling sight. 

One by one, as one last sign of respect, the ponies all bowed their heads to him. 

Nobuki turned to the raccoon, only to discover he was gone, replaced by the spectre that haunted his memories; a young filly, one that he remembered from the station. The spectre too bowed to him before looking up at him, a gentle smile on her face, and fading away. When he looked outside once more, he found that the crowds were gone as well. He felt as if a great weight was taken off his shoulders, for the first time in a long time, he felt joy.

He knew one day, others will learn of what he did, and they will wonder, they will ask; “How did you do it? Why did you do it?” 

So with quill in paw, he began; 

It was a simple act of kindness. 

[conservativefreepress]

New Post has been published on Conservative Free Press

New Post has been published on http://www.conservativefreepress.com/biden/biden-says-hes-constantly-tested-for-cognitive-decline-in-puzzling-response/

Biden Says He's "Constantly Tested" for Cognitive Decline in Puzzling Response

At long last, a reporter from Fox News overcame two significant hurdles: One, he managed to ask a question of Joe Biden, who has spent much of the last three months holed up in his basement. And two, he actually managed to get the question of Biden’s obvious mental decline on the record.

“I’m 65, I don’t have the word recollection that I used to have, I forget my train of thought from time to time, you’ve got 12 years on me, sir –  have you been tested for some degree of cognitive decline?” asked the reporter, whom Biden referred to as a “lying dog-face” only moments earlier, reprising one of his campaign’s not-so-greatest hits. 

“I’ve been tested, and I’m constantly tested,” Biden said in an odd reply. “Look, all you’ve got to do is watch me, and I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capabilities to the cognitive capability of the man I’m running against.”

Hmm. Is that really what you want, Joe? For the American people to watch you closely for cognitive decline? You sure you don’t want to expound on those constant tests you’re taking? It’s one thing to admit that you’re under constant mental supervision – a revelation in and of itself, it’s another to make that admission…and then not reveal what the results of those tests have been.

Instead, Biden turned the question around on Trump.

“This president is talking about cognitive capability, he isn’t even cognitively aware of what’s going on,” Biden said. “He either reads and/or gets briefed on important issues and he forgets it, or he doesn’t think it’s necessary that he need to know it.”

Okay, that’s a cute response and all, but it doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter, now does it?

And this is a matter that Biden needs to clear up, as is evidenced by a new poll from Rasmussen Reports. The polling outfit asked likely voters: “From what you have seen and read, do you believe Joe Biden is suffering from some form of dementia?”

38% of respondents said yes. That includes 20% of Democrats. Furthermore, a wide majority of voters believe that the issue is serious enough that Biden should address it publicly. We’re not sure that vague pronouncements about being “constantly tested” for cognitive decline qualifies as clearing the air.

“Let me get this straight,” Sean Hannity said Tuesday. “He’s constantly being tested for cognitive abilities? Why is Joe Biden getting constantly tested for a cognitive decline? After hearing that, I’m wondering if maybe all Americans need cognitive testing regularly. That concerns me. Does that concern the American people? Are they going to ask the ever-forgetful, weak Joe Biden why he’s being constantly tested for cognitive decline?”

We’re sure that Hannity is just another in a long series of lying, dog-faced pony soldiers as far as Joe Biden is concerned, but unless the former president can address these concerns head-on, he might realize too late that his “avoid and deflect” strategy isn’t working as well as he might have hoped.

[45news]

Barack Obama’s vice-president is floundering in the Democratic primary, losing key support as vital votes loomLarry Sabato is an analyst, author and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. His students are currently embedded in various presidential campaigns. Two were working for Joe Biden in Iowa. Before caucus day, they texted Sabato to say they expected to lose badly.Sabato asked why. The answer: “No energy at all.”And so it proved. Biden, who was Barack Obama’s righthand man for eight years and long the Democrats’ national frontrunner to take on Donald Trump, trailed in fourth. A week later, he fled New Hampshire before the votes were even counted, to escape the public humiliation of finishing fifth.Now, in the words of one commentator, Biden “needs a miracle” to stay in the race. A man whose candidacy a year ago seemed to be predicated on his appeal to the white working class is depending on African American voters to rescue him from the oft-quoted maxim that all political lives end in failure. What went wrong?“I’ve watched Joe Biden since he was first elected [to the Senate] in 1972,” Sabato said. “He was full of energy and joking around and had a big personality but I don’t think anyone has associated the word ‘vision’ with Joe Biden. Democrats are looking for a vision; Biden’s vision is to go back to Obama’s policies. I understand it, but it doesn’t get you standing up and cheering.”The 77-year-old’s debate performances have failed to inspire and his rallies have drawn small crowds. His rally in Des Moines on the eve of the Iowa caucuses was in a more compact venue than Pete Buttigieg’s across the city and, while delivering a heartfelt critique of Trump, offered fewer policy specifics and generated less electricity.Sabato added: “People are charged up and incensed about Trump. But if you’re standing there talking and they go to sleep, it doesn’t suggest you’re the best one to beat Trump. People keep saying he’s lost a step or two but this is the same Joe Biden I remember from the 1970s. He’s a meanderer. Some speakers get you fired up but Joe’s not that.”> In Iowa I saw one of the most inferior ground games in politics. I have never seen anything so inept> > Moe VelaThere is a distinct whiff of déja vu. Biden’s first run for president fell apart in 1987 when he quoted British politician Neil Kinnock but forgot to credit him, prompting charges of plagiarism. His second attempt went off the rails in 2007 when he described Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”. (His third-place finish in his home state, Delaware, remains his best performance in a primary.)The 2020 effort was meant to be different story with Biden, who served with distinction as Obama’s vice-president, cast as the antidote to Trump and restorer of normalcy. But he was poleaxed by Senator Kamala Harris of California in the first Democratic debate in June, when she challenged his past views on desegregated school busing.He fared little better in a debate in September when, asked about what responsibility Americans have to repair the legacy of slavery, he gave a rambling answer that included “make sure you have the record player on at night, make sure that kids hear words, a kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background, will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time we get there.”Debates came and went. Trump’s attacks on Biden’s son, Hunter, over his business dealings in Ukraine generated media scrutiny, both fair and unfair, that in some minds may have planted seeds of doubt. In Iowa it was clear the Obama magic, which swept the caucuses in 2008, had not rubbed off on his running mate. The blame seemed to lie with both an underwhelming candidate and a poorly organised campaign.Moe Vela, who was director of administration and senior adviser to Biden at the White House, said: “In Iowa I saw one of the most inferior ground games in politics. I have never seen anything so inept. He’s not being served properly by his campaign.”Vela, now an LGBTQ and Latino activist and board director at TransparentBusiness, added: “He had been the front runner for so long that I think the campaign staff became complacent. You got a sense they were so busy talking about electability and pitting him against Trump they forgot they have to deal with these 15 people first. You could see this rude awakening in Iowa as the night was slipping away.”In New Hampshire, where Biden called a student a “lying dog faced pony soldier”, he fared even worse. A comeback win in Nevada looks unlikely, setting up a potential last stand in South Carolina, the first contest in a state with a significant African American population – a constituency where he has consistently polled strongly. (Biden has been at pains to point out that 99% of the African American population have not yet had a say.)But even this advantage appears to have been eroded by Senator Bernie Sanders and billionaire Tom Steyer. Then comes Super Tuesday, where another billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, has spent nearly $350m on ads focused on the 16 states and territories that vote, eating into Biden’s support among moderates and African Americans. Several black members of Congress and city mayors have endorsed Bloomberg despite the discriminatory “stop-and-frisk” policy he supported as mayor of New York.Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), said: “Biden has lost half the black support that he had. It’s bled off and is now largely with Mike Bloomberg. Some of it has gone to Bernie Sanders, a little bit maybe to Elizabeth Warren, none of it to Pete Buttigieg. So he’s sitting there holding 22, 23% of the black vote now. Mike Bloomberg is behind them at what, 21?“Clearly whatever the decision-making process was that led them to run the first leg of this race the way they have has cost him dearly. They have to make up a lot of ground in a very short period of time. When you swing into Super Tuesday, you’ve got to have bankroll.” ‘If you’re saying you’re a winner, you’d better win’Is there still time to turn it around? Yes, but it will be an uphill struggle. Since 1972, no candidate from either party has finished below second in both Iowa and New Hampshire and won the nomination.Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who was an adviser to the Al Gore and John Kerry presidential campaigns, said: “For him to recover from this would be a political miracle unlike anything we’ve seen in modern presidential politics. I don’t think it’s impossible but it’s unlikely and would fly in the face of all our knowledge of political history.”Biden’s main pitch had been that in this moment of national emergency, he was the steady hand best placed to prevent Trump winning a second term. To centrists, he would be less of a gamble than progressives Sanders or Warren. But after the heavy losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, he is caught in his own electability trap.Shrum, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, said: “The centrepiece of the campaign was, ‘I’m going to beat Trump like a drum’. The public said, ‘If you’re saying you’re a winner, you’d better win’.”“Al Gore had this line: elections are not a reward for past performance. I think they are always about the future, not just the past. In Democratic primaries, you’ve got to have a future offer to people, no matter how dissatisfied they are with the Republican incumbent. Joe Biden has a lot of policies on his website but that’s not what comes over on the debate stage.”> There’s still to recover but if he’s not willing to restructure his campaign, I don’t think he can bounce back> > Coby OwensIn a small but telling measure of a campaign in a downward spiral, Biden’s press team did not respond to multiple phone and email requests from the Guardian seeking comment. The Trump, Bloomberg and other campaigns are generally far more responsive.Shrum added: “I suspect they have many pressures and I have nothing but sympathy for the candidate and the people around him. It’s hard to start at the top of the mountain and end up in the valley.”Biden’s struggles have dismayed supporters in his home state, where he remains immensely popular. Coby Owens, a local civil rights activist whose family has known Biden for years, and who is still trying to decide between Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, said: “There are a lot of people who are shocked and concerned about it and want to know what’s going on.“They have been hearing the message that he’s the most electable so they thought he was going to cruise through the first two states, which are predominantly white. There’s still a lot of room left for him to recover but if he’s not willing to restructure his campaign, I don’t think he can bounce back.” ‘Telltale signs’Biden has frequently referenced his partnership with Obama but America’s first black president has remained notably silent.Obama reportedly discouraged Biden from running in 2016 because he believed Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning. This time, rumour has it that he nudged Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, to make a late bid because again he was dubious about Biden’s viability (Patrick dropped out after a poor showing in New Hampshire).Steele, the ex-RNC chairman and former lieutenant-governor of Maryland, commented: “The telltale signs were there: the lack of interest that Barack had in the Biden campaign, the fact that the word on the street was that Deval Patrick was in the race was because Obama encouraged him to get in the race. Why would you do that with your vice-president already in the game?”While cautious about writing Biden off just yet, Steele added: “For me, just watching the Biden campaign, I get the sense that he’s kind of walked through it. I think he’s going through the paces of it. I’m not convinced at this stage that he really wants it any more. I don’t think you take the front runner status that he’s held for over a year, anchored by 50% of the black vote in a party where that is a very important and huge demographic edge, and just leave it on the table.“I’ve never seen a candidate do that the way it’s been done. Maybe there’s a little bit of hubris and you assume that you’ve got the weight to throw around to win this thing. But then again, at the same time, I think at a certain point the gas is out of the tank and you just sleepwalk your way through it.”

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