#but. yeah. moderate republicans are a myth

[qqueenofhades]

Since the freedom caucus successfully bullied the RNC into nominating a far-right candidate, why don't the moderate Republicans just vote for Jeffries?

I need everyone to understand there ARE no moderate Republicans. They will go down with the flaming MAGA lunatic ship rather than work with Democrats ever, on anything. That's just how it is. They may play moderate on cable news, but that's the truth.

[ohtobeleah]

Could you do something with Bob and the reader squirting for the first time?

Brain go Brrrr. I can indeed anon I can indeed.

It has Bob in a frenzy. He can feel your legs shaking on either side of his face as he’s delving as deep as he can humanly go. Eating you out had become his new favourite venture, his new favourite snack. His favourite dessert. The pair of you had been hooking up on the down low. It was a recent thing though– You and Bob had been paired up for a game of pool against Bradshaw and Trance one night and you two seemed to hit things off very well. 

To the point where between a few too many cocktails on your end and a few not-so-light beers on his own behalf, you and Bob were back at his quicker than Hangman could make a quick-witted comment. And from that first hook up it hadn't stopped, whenever you and Robert Floyd had a free night? He could be found between your legs at either his place or your own. 

“Oh fuck!” Your fingers are carding through his hair, pulling against the slightly sweaty strands. “I'm gonna cum!”  Bobs not stopping, if anything your clear statement gives him all the more reason to keep doing exactly what it was he was doing. Tongue kicking into overdrive–the strongest muscle in the body. Flicking against your swollen bundle of nerves as he sucked an amazing pressure against you. The coil was about ready to snap as your thighs shook and your mouth slacked open. Beautiful moans escaped uncontrollably as your back arched and everything went black for a few seconds or so. “Ohhhh ahh fuck, Bob! shit–don’t stop!” 

As you pulsed and clenched around nothing, Bob felt like he'd suddenly begun to drown. It took him a moment to realise what had happened but when it clicked you’d squirted he never wanted to leave the position he was in. He’d happily die between your legs. Gasping softly with wide eyes as he pushed himself up to hover over you. 

“Holy shit–” Fuck he looked delectable, his slightly scruffed chin was shining with your nectar. “What just happened?” He knew, but he wanted to know why–what was different this time around? “That was incredible.” 

“You never heard of female ejaculation before?” As Bob fell to the mattress beside you, you took it as your opportunity to flip over and straddle his waist, leaning down to suck against the pulse point of his neck. Coaxing soft moans from him as his hands trailed the length of your exposed back.

“Oh, no I have, I just thought it was a myth like Unicorns or Moderate Republicans.” 

“You're really hard?” Yeah no shit sherlock, Bob had just witnessed a miracle play out before his very eyes. He’d never had a woman ejaculate on his face before. “Need to do something about that don't I?” You teased as you clasped your thighs around his length, Bob caught on quickly to what you were trying to do–reaching behind to help guide himself into your slick folds. Sucking him in ever so perfectly to the very hilt. “Fuck, feel so good every time.” 

“That was really hot, you should have been doing that from the beginning?” Bob knew he’d suddenly become an addict. He was going to make it his mission to get you to the point where you could cum like that every time he went down on you. 

“I cant.” The way you looked at him had Bob’s heart beating so fast in his chest as his hands gently guided your hips. “Not until I get comfortable enough around a guy.” Fuck, you’d caught feelings…. But that was more than okay because so had Robert Floyd. “Guess I'm pretty comfortable.” You winked as your hands fell to his chest for stability. Bob groaned as you rode him slowly, expertly and oh so perfectly. The sounds you were making were music to his ears. 

“Hope so.” Bob managed to say before he was falling into a mess of fucks, shits and ohs. “Oh I really hope so.”

***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***

#Strictlyscandalous Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd

[expatimes]

American Voter: Benjamin Rodgers

US President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden are battling for the presidency in a sharply divided United States.

Trump has been focusing on “law and order”; Biden has been trying to strike a conciliatory note. The Black Lives Matter movement and whether Trump will release his taxes are among the many issues Americans will consider when choosing their president.

As the hotly contested election approaches, Al Jazeera has been speaking to voters across the US asking nine questions to understand who they are supporting and why.

Benjamin Rodgers

[Courtesy of Benjamin Rodger]

Age: 32

Occupation: Full-time Student and Full-time Shift Supervisor at Starbucks

Residence: Yakima County, Washington

Voted in 2016 for: Hillary Clinton

Will Vote in 2020 for: Joe Biden

Top Election Issue: Democratisation of the American Political System

Will you vote? Why or why not?

“I will be voting in the upcoming election. And I vote in every presidential election, but I feel like this election is just especially important. And obviously this year, there are a lot of barriers. There's a lot of doubt about the sort of effectiveness of American election systems in the middle of the pandemic. And of course, we've seen a lot of efforts by Republican lawmakers to push back against people's capacity to vote early, [their] capacity to vote remotely, things like that. So there's a lot of fear about how the election administration is going to go in unprecedented circumstances.

“I would always vote, but I'm sort of especially motivated to make sure that I vote the minute I get my ballot. I'm going to take my ballot into the drop box. I'm in Washington State, so we have all mail-in balloting - but instead of trusting it to the US mail, I'm going to take it directly to a ballot box, the day I get it, so that I'm not running any risks. ”

What is your number one issue?

“I have a lot of issues that are really important to me. But I think that the sort of bedrock issue for me is the democratisation of the American political system. There's a ton of checks, veto points in our system that sort of prevent the public from exercising choice in our democracy. Obviously, the electoral college is the most famous thing.

“In the last 20 years, Republicans have held the presidency for three terms now, and in only one of those terms did they actually win the national popular vote. Currently, they hold the Senate while having received a minority of votes for senators. In recent elections, the Democrats only recently took back the House [of Representatives] after winning electoral majorities in most house elections over the last 20 years. And so we see a system not only that has nonrepresentative bodies in it, but it also seems to be systematically weighted against one political particular coalition, and in favor of another coalition built on sort of rural white voters.

“And that same coalition [is] now about to appoint a sixth member on our Supreme Court, which has a very high degree of judicial supremacy. So what I want to see is the filibuster removed, so that a majority vote in the Senate is enough to pass laws. And I want to see DC and Puerto Rico added as states and some kind of measure taken to reform the Supreme Court.

“And I think that any other issues that people on either side of the political spectrum want to get done, you're going to have to start with democratisation like that. Because when you have really polarised parties, where either party that elects a majority can't actually get its project done, that just incentivises people to send more extreme people, thinking that that's going to be how they get their program instituted. ”

Who will you vote for?

"I'm going to vote for Joe Biden."

Is there a main reason you chose your candidate?

“The baseline reason is that he's not Donald Trump. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Donald Trump is an authoritarian president. I think that he's an ethno-nationalist, who doesn't respect the rule of law. He has put his own family members in positions of authority, in some instances in contravention of the law. He's undermined the rule of law and public accountability. And I just think those things are fundamentally dangerous.

“As it happens, Joe Biden also agrees with me on a number of policies. I really like the fact that in one of the primary debates, he said that his administration would not deport anybody who has not committed a felony. I think adding more accountability to our immigration system, which has been the source of a lot of human rights abuses, would be really good. Obviously, climate change - the US taking back a leadership role, globally, in addressing climate change is just critical to the future of the world and a stable global order. So there's a lot of policy stuff that I really like about Joe Biden, but he wasn't my candidate in the primary. But when you put him up against someone that I see as sort of an authoritarian fascist, it's not really a hard choice for me. ”

Are you happy with the state of the country?

“Oh, no, not even. I think that a lot of Americans, especially a lot of people who aren't in the core base of Donald Trump - like moderate swing voters - and a lot of people would probably say they're not that happy with the current state of the United States. I mean, you've got, like I said, a president that narrowly survived, that was impeached, and survived the removal proceedings by a party-line vote after there was really, really clear evidence that he was engaged in corruption and self- dealing in foreign policy. You have children, having been separated from their parents, and just human rights catastrophes at the border, really aggressive policing encouraged, including violence encouraged by the administration. I just think that those kinds of things are just really obviously big problems.

“But I think also on a deeper level, I don't see enough appreciation in commentary about how [much of a] fundamental problem it is that our institutions just don't seem set up to tackle ordinary problems - to adapt to things that happen. You see a really, really inept and lackadaisical response to a global pandemic, where we're the wealthiest country on the planet and we have the greatest number of cases. And we like to tell ourselves this myth that we're the greatest country on Earth, but then when you try to catch that out and actually [solve] problems and [take] care of our citizens, we just seem incapable of doing it. So yeah, no, I'm not happy. ”

What would you like to see change?

“I think that the day-one immediate things I would like to see would be the removal of the Senate filibuster, adding DC as a state with senators and electoral representation in the electoral college as well, and offering that to Puerto Rico — now, it's a question of whether they vote and choose to join as a state— but offering that to them. ”

“There's a few ways to handle sort of the extremism on the Supreme Court, either by adding seats to the court or just by jurisdiction stripping, which just removes its authority to hear certain types of cases. I think there's a lot of ways you could go, but we have to do something about that.

“I favor a dramatic expansion in the permissiveness of our immigration system. And I think that for various reasons, I mean globally, I think that's just a hard sell. I think a lot of the far-right nationalist movements have risen powered by a backlash [to] immigration. And so that's a tough sell, and it's not obvious to me that that's a political winner. But I think from a humanitarian perspective, it's necessary. ”

Do you think the election will change anything?

“Well, I hope so! I think that there's a few different outcomes. There's the outcome where Joe Biden wins by a big margin, and Democrats take back the Senate. And I think that given the drastic erosion of norms, I think that there is actually a decent amount of appetite among Democrats for some pretty big changes, and systemic changes and things to hold people accountable and reinforce the rule of law and things like that.

“But I think that it's actually really an open question if the election's close. And if it's not clear on election night, who's won the presidency, I think that this administration is going to be really aggressive and litigating. I think that one of the times in the last 20 years, when Republicans won the presidency without winning the popular vote, it's because the Supreme Court just handed them the presidency. And I think with a six-three majority on the Supreme Court, where Donald Trump has appointed three of the six conservative judges, I think there's reason to be afraid that the Supreme Court will just find some justification to say Donald Trump is president.

So I think there's [sic] a lot of scary outcomes, and you read a lot of analysts talk about that this could end in civil war. I don't think those things are overblown. I think it's possible. But I think that the best defense we have to that is to deliver a really, really unambiguous election outcome. Because I think that if it's obvious on election night that Joe Biden has won the presidency, I think our institutions are at least strong enough, that in that circumstance - where it's really obvious fairly quickly— I think he'd [Trump would] have a hard time subverting that. So that's my hope. ”

What is your biggest concern for the US?

“I think the delegitimisation of mail-in ballots is a really big problem. Especially with the president really talking up the myths that they're a source of fraud— I think there's a really big risk that his supporters vote in person. And Democrats will be more likely to vote through mail-in ballots. And if mail-in ballots are counted more slowly than in-person votes, then it might well appear on election night, like Donald Trump is either winning or it's close. And then if that margin disappears, you know, over the days or weeks after the election, I think that it'll be covered as an open question whether fraud was involved, and Donald Trump will immediately say that it's fraud.

“Our federal judiciary - having been packed by far-right, sort of cronies of this administration - I think they'll look for any reason they can to be sympathetic to that perspective. So that's the thing I'm most worried about - and that's why once I get my mail-in ballot, I'm taking it into the drop box, I'm not going to mail it in, because I want it counted as quickly as possible. I want to take no chances.

“And so that's why I think, because our system is so weird, if you're in a solidly blue state, or a solidly red state, it can feel, I mean, mathematically, your vote doesn't count for much, right ? I mean it's unfortunate, but that's just the way our system is set up: your vote really counts if you're in a swing state.

“This election, with the undermining of those norms it actually does matter that people, even in solidly blue and solidly red states, do vote, because I think that the way people perceive the legitimacy of the election will be affected by what the actual raw vote totals are on election night. ”

Is there anything we haven't asked about the election that you want to share?

“I think that one of the things that we see a lot in coverage is Donald Trump breaks some extravagant norm, right? He does something really unconscionable - and that menu is long. He's done a lot of just really, really reprehensible things, and people cover it like, 'Oh, but does this matter to his base?', 'Oh, they don't care what he does, right?' Like Donald Trump himself said in the last election, “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and not lose any supporters.

“But the reality is, that's actually not true, because the fact is - it's true that his core base is not going to abandon him, but that's almost circular. Because his core base, by definition, are the people who won't abandon him. But they're also not an electoral majority. And if he's going to win re-election, it's going to be because either people who don't like him stay home, or people who he has offended come back to him. And there actually are people who we've seen, like the number of people in surveys who claim that they are Republican, has decreased, and those are probably people Donald Trump has pissed off. So I think it's really easy to say that none of the rules matter anymore. But I mean, we see even in sort of competitive authoritarian regimes, like politics still exists, and authoritarians still need legitimacy to govern.

“And so I mean, rather than letting him consolidate authoritarian tendencies in the American political system, we just have to beat him now. If we don't beat him now, I don't know what that means about four years from now or eight years from now, but we do actually have a window to beat him now. I do believe that. ”

#world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=11815&feed_id=9716

[blackandred83]

Working with Democrats to Stop the Right? Not This Crap Again.

The verdict is in, Trump is an absolute disaster; worse even than most people predicted throughout the campaign season. In his first ten days in office he managed to sign eighteen executive orders1, enacting a slew of reactionary policies ranging from dismantling the [grossly inadequate, but better than nothing] Affordable Care Act; revoking US funding for foreign NGOs that perform abortions; approving the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines; denying federal funding to sanctuary cities; halting the processing of all refugees for 120 days; closing the borders to everyone with origins in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days; and requiring that executive agencies nullify two regulations for every new regulation enacted.

 Yeah, absolute disaster. One upside to this disaster, however, is that the moderate neoliberal hue and cry of “just give him a chance!” has already died off almost completely. If this is the first ten days, only the devil could guess what the next few months will be like. The burning question is: what can be done about it?

 In the short-term, the answer has been protest after protest after record-shattering protest. The Women’s March on Washington on January 21st drew no less than 500,000 people2, with millions more marching in solidarity across the US and around the world. In response to the Muslim refugee ban—and resulting detention and deportation for many unlucky souls who were en route to the US when the decree went into effect—protestors packed out dozens of airports demanding that the banned people be allowed into the US.

 These spontaneous acts of grassroots resistance won’t exactly overthrow the Trump regime, but they are giving it a massive headache, which is an excellent start. Things get more complicated when trying to translate spontaneous anger into a long-term strategy, however. What strategy is best to keep things from reaching this point again in the future?

 I’ll preface this next part by noting the stereotype of average Americans having remarkably short political memories. Who can blame them though? Politics in the US is hardly accessible to working class people. Corporations run the entire election process at every level and intentionally present information in a confusing way in order to influence votes in their favor. Elected politicians are paid with public taxpayer funds to carry out private corporate agendas. Legislation is made in backrooms away from the eyes and ears of working people, and the content of bills is unclear behind the haze of legalese and plain bad writing.

 Following politics costs more time and energy than most working people are willing or able to expend,  so they can’t really be blamed (up to a point) for halfhearted interest in a political system not meant for them anyway.  Short political memories are far less forgivable for the socialist left—who allege to be politically astute—an astonishing number of whom have fallen into reviving the perennial myth of the progressive Democrat. Again.

 The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has always been open about their objective to act as the left wing of the Democrats, dragging them kicking and screaming into something at least vaguely resembling a progressive party. Now self-described revolutionary organizations like Socialist Alternative (SAlt) have taken up the progressive neoliberals’ call to unite with “progressive Democrats” to stop Trump. This position is based on the idea that the Democratic Party is deeply divided in the wake of the Bernie Sanders campaign and therefore it is possible to “work alongside progressive Democrats” while “not limiting our program... to what is acceptable to corporate Democrats.”3 Obviously, there are a few misconceptions behind this analysis that need to be sorted out.

 The first problem is the assertion that the Democrats are divided because Bernie Sanders is, like, totally awesome. The Sanders campaign was monumental in awakening droves of people looking for a progressive answer to the subtle, charming conservatism of the Obama administration. Sanders could have mobilized these newly awakened droves into putting some pressure on the Democrats at least, but he gave that up when he started campaigning for Hillary, taking a vast majority of those droves with him. Most of the rest went right back to sleep. The Clinton campaign clearly didn’t feel any pressure from this awakening, which was made clear by the selection of Tim Kaine, literally one of the most conservative Democrats in the party, as Clinton’s running mate scarcely a week after Sanders conceded. Even the revelation by WikiLeaks that the Democratic National Committee conspired to undermine Sanders has become insignificant, because Sanders just accepted the results as if there were no foul play and allowed the Democrats to pretend to change course by vetting some of their “progressives” as candidates for the DNC chair position. Now Sanders has consigned himself to carrying out his “political revolution” by getting more progressive Democrats elected to Congress. If you think this is new, I encourage you to do some reading on the Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s and the George McGovern campaign in 1972 (for starters). Make no mistake, the Democratic Party may have had a bit of a scare, but now is back to business as usual.

 The second problem with the idea of working with progressive Democrats against corporate Democrats is the assertion that distinctions can be drawn between this rogue progressive wing and the leadership. Let’s not forget, the Democratic Party has no membership structures for working people. The only actual members of the Democratic Party are politicians run by the Democratic Party. No one in that party, alleged progressives included, are beholden to working people, only to corporations. I feel compelled to draw parallels between “progressive Democrats” and “good cops”. Are there good people who are cops? Absolutely. Are there good cops? Absolutely not; the fact that these people belong to the racist institution of the police and will be expected to carry out the racist concepts, attitudes, and strategies behind policing in order to remain police will always take precedent over whatever personal instincts they may have to be good people. In the same way, there may be progressive people who are Democrats (may is a key word here, but more on that later), but there are no progressive Democrats because these progressives’ loyalties lie second with their own progressive instincts and first with the anti-progressive Democratic Party. In fact, the Democrat leadership will never have to answer to its working class voters because there exists a servile layer of “progressives” determined to make sure working people remain loyal to the party, regardless of their actions. You can’t work with progressive Democrats against corporate Democrats because the progressive Democrats are corporate Democrats and have no inclination whatsoever to distinguish themselves from them. They have proven so numerous times before and will very soon do so again.

 The third problem with the “progressive Democrat” strategy is in assuming that Democrats of any variety even want to stop Trump. They do not. It is extremely disconcerting how little attention has been paid to the Podesta emails revealing that the Hillary campaign and the DNC helped boost Trump to the top of the Republican field, consequently helping him win.4 It must be emphasized not only that Democrats helped Trump win, even if inadvertently, but that they promoted him because they thought he was so incredibly reactionary that he would drive people to the relatively safe choice of Hillary, in spite of her own reactionary tendencies. This is par the course for Democrats: after Reagan and Bush I, Bill Clinton genuinely could paint himself as a progressive in relative terms; same for Obama after Bush II. Of course neither of these men actually was progressive, even relative to their predecessors, once they got in office, because they never intended to be. The Democrats have not genuinely run a progressive presidential candidate since JFK (this is purely by Democrat standards) because they do not want to. They want to keep running conservatives, taking for granted that their conservative can pass for progressive compared to the Republican candidate, who will undoubtedly be worse. The Hillary campaign was the latest chapter in this strategy, except it backfired because Hillary is too conservative to pretend to be a progressive, even compared to Trump. So less people voted and Trump won. Trump winning isn’t really a problem for the Democrats though, it actually gives the Democrats the opportunity to run another not-actually-progressive progressive in 2020—which is why there’s already talk of Hillary running again as if this isn’t a profoundly stupid idea.5 The problem is that Trump is operating outside of the Democrats’ control. Democrats were shouting “just give him a chance!” loudly and often when they thought they’d be able to control him, but somehow they didn’t consider the possibility of Trump being a megalomaniac (which is what he is famous for) and recreating the state in his own image (not that it was far off to begin with). Even now the Democrats are putting up a rather weak fight to stop Trump’s excesses, because they would rather wrangle him into an acceptable position and be able to use him as a distraction to cover their own slow but steady rightward shift than to do away with him entirely. It remains unclear if they can do such a thing, but if they can, they will.

 All the above applies to “progressive Democrats” as well. If they wanted to stop Trump, they would be open with working people about how the Democrats repeatedly use the Republicans as an excuse to move right and how working people do not have a voice in the party, not insisting that working people continue to be loyal to the Democratic Party and vote for progressives until it produces results. If these progressives really wanted to fight the Trump agenda, they would be calling to break from the Democratic Party to form a working class party with radical demands. Whether or not to work with “progressive Democrats” wouldn’t be a question because these people would have broken with the Democrats by now if they genuinely wanted to build with the working class. And besides, who are these alleged progressive champions fighting the “corporate Democrat” agenda and causing a rift in the party? Bernie Sanders, who despite his progressive credentials is “100% pro-Israel” and ensures that “their very existence will be protected by the United States”?6 Elizabeth Warren, who is famous as a consumer advocate despite not once attempting to bring charges against bank executives found to have committed fraud, and who, despite her stage-worthy performance denouncing Ben Carson in his confirmation hearing, voted to confirm him as the head of Housing and Urban Development?7 Tulsi Gabbard, who has lately been speaking against banning refugees from the US but who in 2015 voted with Republicans to toughen refugee vetting procedures for Syrian and Iraqi refugees?8 Chuck Schumer, who cried on live television at the thought of Trump sending refugees back to their deaths in their war-torn home countries, but who himself stated as recently as November 2015 that “a pause may be necessary” in admitting Syrian refugees?9 Cory Booker, who voted with Republicans, and against seventy-two percent of Americans, to kill a bill that would have allowed cheaper prescription drugs to be imported from Canada?10 It’s enough to say that progressive Democrats aren’t a solution for working people as long as they are still Democrats; the fact that all the alleged progressives in the Democratic Party aren’t all that progressive is just more icing on the cake.

 All that said, is it not past time that the left stop beating this dead horse in saying “we need to reform the Democrats”? This popular front strategy has been in play since the realignment days of the 1960s—when efforts were made to push the staunchly conservative Southern Democrats into the Republican Party—and not only has it not moved the Democrats left, it has failed to stop them from moving right. The Democratic Party is a dead end, we should have learned that back in 2011-12 when they led the Wisconsin uprising and Occupy Wall Street down the rabbit hole without taking up any of their demands. We absolutely need to create a fighting force to stop Trump; we do that not by expecting the Democrats to work against their own interests and move left, but by building working class resistance in our workplaces and in the streets, by building a program of shutdown actions to show that there will be consequences for reactionary measures, and by realizing that what is happening is not a product of Trump or Trumpism, but of capitalism itself. Overthrowing capitalism and establishing a system of socialism by working people, for working people, is the only way to overthrow Trump, Hillary, and their ilk for all and for good.

   Sources

1.       http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/01/all-trump-executive-actions-000288

2.       http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2017/01/washington-dc-women-march-equal-rights-170122073242260.html

3.       https://www.socialistalternative.org/2017/01/31/100-days-build-resistance-trumps-agenda/

4.       https://www.rt.com/usa/372856-wikileaks-democrats-podesta-trump/

5.       https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/01/26/hillary-clinton-reportedly-mulling-talk-show-to-kickstart-2020-election-platform/21663644/

6.       http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/341527/bernie-sanders-insists-i-am-100-pro-israel-despite-convention-push-for-pale/

7.       http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2017/01/24/warren-markey-trump-cabinet-picks/

8.       http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/local-news/gabbard-supports-gop-bill-syrian-refugees

9.       http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/260471-schumer-refugee-pause-may-be-necessary

10.   http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/260471-schumer-refugee-pause-may-be-necessary

[dani-qrt]

North Korea, Angela Merkel, Golden State Killer: Your Evening Briefing

Mr. Trump and Ms. Merkel, who have had a chilly relationship, went out of their way to compliment each other — but it went only so far. Mr. Trump called the bilateral trade relationship “unfair,” and Ms. Merkel emerged from the White House without any notable progress on the nuclear deal with Iran or a permanent exemption for Germany from steel and aluminum tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed in March.

Both issues are time-sensitive: A temporary exemption from the tariffs for European countries expires on Tuesday, and Mr. Trump faces a May 12 deadline for recertifying the nuclear deal with Iran.

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Photo

Credit Yury Martyanov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

3. The House Intelligence Committee released its report on Russian election meddling, saying it had found no evidence that the Trump campaign was involved.

Partisan bickering ensued: Republicans, who control the committee, criticized the Obama administration for a “slow and inconsistent” response to Russia’s active measures and took aim at the F.B.I. Democrats, in a dissenting document, accused the Republicans of prematurely closing the investigation to protect Mr. Trump. Read the full report here.

And newly released emails suggest that Natalia Veselnitskaya, above, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in June 2016, had closer ties to the Kremlin than she had let on.

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Photo

Credit Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

4. Hundreds of Palestinian protesters stormed the Gaza security fence and tried to cross into Israel. Israeli troops responded with lethal force.

As of Friday night, the Gaza health ministry said that three Palestinians had been killed, all of them shot in the head, and nearly 1,000 had been wounded, 178 of them by live ammunition.

Continue reading the main story

The protest was the fifth in a series of weekly demonstrations, billed as the Great Return March, meant to highlight the decade-old Israeli blockade and to rekindle international sympathy for Palestinian refugees’ claim of a right to return to what is now Israel.

At least 40 demonstrators were killed in the first four weekly protests.

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Photo

Credit Al Levine/NBC, via Getty Images

5. “Truth prevails.”

That was Andrea Constand, whose sexual assault complaint against Bill Cosby led to his conviction, as she broke her long public silence with a Twitter message thanking the local community.

Our critic at large Wesley Morris remembers a time when Mr. Cosby’s signature TV character — and America’s favorite father figure from the 1980s — once seemed inseparable from the man who portrayed him.

“If a sexual predator wanted to come up with a smoke screen for his ghastly conquests,” he writes, “he couldn’t do better than Cliff Huxtable.”

So, is Mr. Cosby going to prison? Here’s a look at what might come next.

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Photo

Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

6. More on the Golden State Killer: Using DNA from crime scenes, investigators plugged a genetic profile into an online genealogy database. They found distant relatives of the suspect, Joseph James DeAngelo, and traced their DNA to him.

Mr. DeAngelo’s arrest came more than 30 years after the killer’s crime wave, confounding the belief that serial rapists and killers are incapable of stopping. Experts say that’s more myth than reality.

And here’s some of the original news coverage of the Golden State Killer.

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Photo

Credit Brendan McDermid/Reuters

7. The U.S. economy, which has been whacked around like a pinball in the first quarter, still grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent, the government reported, offering a preliminary glance at the effects of the tax overhaul.

Continue reading the main story

The pace is below the 2.9 percent annualized rate recorded in the fourth quarter of 2017, and short of President Trump’s goal of at least 3 percent. Most forecasters, however, expect quarterly growth to float around the 3 percent mark for the rest of the year.

One economist called the 2.3 percent figure “moderately encouraging.”

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Photo

Credit Vincent Fournier for The New York Times

8. In Oman, in the Arabian Peninsula, certain rocks have a special ability: They can turn carbon dioxide into stone.

Scientists say that if this natural process, called carbon mineralization, could be harnessed, accelerated and applied inexpensively on a huge scale — admittedly very big “ifs” — it could help fight climate change.

In theory, the rocks could remove some of the billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the air since the beginning of the industrial age.

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Photo

Credit Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

9. Report cards are in for yesterday’s first round of the N.F.L. Draft.

According to the experts, there are players who will turn their teams into winners, and others who are already terrible busts. (Sometimes it’s the same player.) Read our own analysis of every pick in the first round here.

Baker Mayfield, above, was the top pick, but the highest grade of the draft went to Derwin James, the safety selected by the Chargers at No. 17. With three A+’s, two A’s and just one B, his G.P.A. was a 3.98.

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Photo

Credit Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

10. Finally, New Jersey is set to proclaim Danny DeVito Day.

Starting this year, Nov. 17, the day the actor was born, will be reserved for Mr. DeVito. Gov. Philip Murphy is expected to issue a statewide proclamation in his honor.

“I was very flattered,” Mr. DeVito said. “Of course, they first told me I could have a beach. Yeah, but they reneged. So I said: ‘Oh, that’s perfect. It’s New Jersey.’”

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Have a great weekend.

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[zenruption]

A Real Third Political Party? It is Really Time.

Add to Flipboard Magazine.

By Brian McKay

Right off the bat you might be thinking that the U.S. already has third political party and maybe even a fourth. Those people running for President as the Green Party or Libertarian Party. Yeah, they aren’t even close to a real party. Those are simply designations to attach to a person that has no hope of ever being voted into office. A party isn’t a real third party unless it can actually compete at all levels of government and bring change.

Currently, the United States is readier for a strong third party than it ever has been. That the last election saw populist movements that crossed all ideologies and resulted in the election of the most controversial and unpredictable President in American history, is evidence of the people’s desire for change at any cost. It might even be said that controversial is a massive understatement.

The fallout from this Presidency is creating the potential for, not one, but two vacuums in the American political scene.

The abysmal approval ratings of Donald Trump and the inability of the Republican Party to pass any major legislation are currently tanking chances of future viability beyond its rabid 25% base. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog takes a weighted average, by quality of polling, of all polls and shows Trump with a current 56% disapproval rating versus a 37.9% approval rating. This continues to drop. As the legislative initiatives show that the party is moving further and further from the mainstream opinions in the United States, it might be that gerrymandering and the high voting percentages of those old and white, are all it has to keep it afloat in future elections. Certainly, the Republicans in Congress are hand wringing as to whether they currently need to moderate or continue to support an unpopular President and the unpopular far-right agenda. Poll after poll is showing their legislative and ideology proposals to be unpopular with the American public.

That the average Trump voter is so desperate to see change that they will accept economic promises that can’t be fulfilled and think the swamp is being drained while being filled with Goldman Sachs billionaires, shows the desperation inherit in their need to believe. They want to believe that Washington is being changed for them and will buy any myth to support that. Continually vilifying Hilary Clinton is a way for them to escape the reality of what is happening. It has come down to assuaging insecurity with things that will actually make that insecurity even worse in time.

Democrats aren’t much better off. That the party isn’t crafting a cohesive message that resonates with the disenfranchised American voter, is problematic. Furthermore, one can expect some complacency with the expectations of the eventual backlash to an ever more destructive Trump Presidency. With every tweet, it is too easy for a grin and to think, “We’ve got this in 2018.” While they might have what is needed in 2018, winning by default breeds laziness. Expect that message that resonates to never come to be.

The American people will continue to see economic disparity and minimal wage increases under the current Republican plan. Democrats don’t have a significant message to answer to the eventual fallout. Libertarians, the Green Party, etc. focus on Presidential races and will never establish themselves as valid thirty parties with any real message that lasts.

Now is the time for a grass roots movement that finally brings the third-party people have wanted for decades. It must be a party that achieves office at local and state levels while expanding its message nationally.

So what does that party look like in order to be successful, attract the interest of our citizenry and truly have a positive impact on our country? A realistic platform might look like this:

We believe that government cannot be for the people while individual representatives rely on ever increasing amounts of money to fund campaigns. Our party rejects becoming beholden to corporate interests and policy obligations that favor those that can dedicate millions of dollars. To this end, we will constantly strive for full and complete finance reform to return representation to the American people. We must represent you first. Funding tv commercials shouldn’t come before listening to our constituency.

The Constitution of the United States is our sole reason for existence. We pledge ourselves to support it in every policy and decision.

The strength of a country is based on its middle class. Opportunity and social mobility matter more than anything to a vibrant economy. We commit ourselves to pulling our citizens from poverty with responsible policy. Furthermore, the goal of wage growth for our middle class must always take a precedent in policy. Responsible capitalism fosters wage growth. Corporations must consider all stake holders. Long term outlook is preferable to short term profit taking.

The First Amendment is the first for a reason. Nothing is more important to our party than its protection. All the press must be protected and allowed to convey their message regardless of whether we like it or not. Without the freedom of speech, America no longer exists.

The United States must exist in the world as an example of ethical leadership. To this end, our allies matter to us, as does good diplomacy. Working with the global community will always benefit Americans. It is our goal to be world stewards and moral leaders.

Church and State must always be separate to maintain true freedom and protect the religions of all citizens.

Too big to fail is too big. The accelerating pace of boom and bust cycles only serve to hurt those that are the average American. Our country must not be allowed to return to those hallmarks of the Gilded Age.

No greater gift exists in life than education. Our party pledges to increase educational opportunities for all at every opportunity. In order to meet the needs of an information economy, we must foster the transition of the workforce.

We are data and statistically driven. A truly responsible and moderate party forgoes the blindness of static ideology and vows to change as the information changes. It is only in this manner that the United States can evolve with a world in which change constantly accelerates.

Ethics matter. Our pulpit must reaffirm them at all times.

The tyranny of the majority is unacceptable. We reject all legislation and gerrymandering designed to keep one party in power over another. The voice of the people is what matters. The manipulation of their vote is repugnant and unacceptable.

Science is neither conspiracy or political.

We exist for the people of this country. Their representation is honor and not a career goal. Our party wishes to remove privilege as a consequence of election.

Maybe this is the platform you would like to see as well. Returning the country to the people once again, now matters more than ever.

It is time for that third party that upsets the status quo.

Please give your feedback on things you’d like to see in a third-party platform. Who knows? Maybe we will create one.

zenrupt

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