#is he the only viable democratic candidate running this year? unfortunately

[vieraslaji]

hello lovely european friends

I understand that what happens in American politics (unfortunately) affects the entire world, but as the American election approaches this year, please don't make/reblog posts about how useless voting is in this country. America already suffers from low voter turnout, especially among younger people, and we've all seen time and again how "oh well voting doesn't matter anyway" rhetoric gets terrible governments elected.

I hate joe biden with all my heart and soul but I will be voting for him again, because that's the only choice I have. it may not seem that way to you from the outside, but it's true. with the way things are looking right now there is a very real possibility he'll lose, and that's bad for everyone.

it's not your political system, it's not your election, but it is the future leader of the most militarized nation in the world so please just. keep those posts to yourself for a bit.

[mightyflamethrower]

Nate Silver Lists 24 Reasons Why Kamala Is Heading for Defeat

Harris is the favorite to win the popular vote, but the Electoral College bias favors Republicans by about 2 percentage points. In an era of intense partisanship and close elections, this is inherently difficult for Democrats to overcome. 

Inflation hit a peak of 9.1 percentage points in June 2022. It has abated now, but prices remain much higher than when Joe Biden took office, and voters are historically highly sensitive to inflation. Democrats can also plausibly be blamed for it given intensive increases in government spending during COVID recovery efforts. 

Though the reasons for this are much debated, voter perceptions about the economy lag substantially behind objective data, and growth in take-home income has been sluggish for many years for the working class amid rising corporate profits. 

Incumbent parties worldwide are doing very poorly, and the historical incumbency advantage has diminished to the point where it may now be an incumbency handicap instead given perpetually negative perceptions about the direction of the country. 

Populism is often a highly effective strategy, and many Trump voters are indeed “deplorable” in the Hillary Clinton sense of the term. 

Illegal/unauthorized immigration increased substantially during the first few years of the Biden/Harris administration amid a rising global backlash to immigration. 

Harris ran far to her left in 2019, adopting many unpopular positions, and doesn’t really have a viable strategy for explaining her changing stances. 

The cultural vibes are shifting to the right, and the left continues to pay a price for the excesses of 2020 on COVID, crime, “wokeness,” and other issues. 

Voters have nostalgia for the relatively strong economic performance in the first three years of Trump’s term and associate the problems of 2020 with Democrats, even though they weren’t in charge at the time. 

Democrats’ dominance among Black voters and other racial and ethnic minority groups is slipping. It may be unfortunate timing: the memory of the Civil Rights Era is fading. Educational polarization, which implies deteriorating Democratic performance among working-class voters of all races, may also be coming to dominate other factors. It’s possible this works out well for Democrats if Harris makes corresponding gains among white voters, who pack more leverage in the Electoral College, but there’s no guarantee. 

Many men, especially young men, feel lost amidst declining college enrollment, contributing to a rightward shift and a growing gender gap. 

Biden sought to be president until he was 86. Voters had extremely reasonable objections to this, and it neuters what should have been one of Harris’s best issues about Trump’s age and cognitive fitness. 

Harris also got a late start to her race, inheriting most of the staff from the poorly-run Biden campaign. She’s proven to be a good candidate in many respects, but it’s always a big leap when the understudy is suddenly thrust into the spotlight. 

Harris is seeking to become the first woman president. In the only previous attempt, undecideds broke heavily against Hillary Clinton, and she underperformed her polls. 

Trust in media continues to fall to abysmal levels. One can debate how to attribute blame for this between longstanding conservative efforts to discredit the media, a secular decline in trust in institutions, and various overreaching and hypocrisy in the press. But it’s hard for even legitimate Trump critiques to penetrate the mass public. Trump’s conviction on a series of felony charges hardly made any difference, for instance. 

Trump has traits of a classic con man, but con artistry is often effective, and Trump is skilled at convincing voters that he’s on their side even if his election would not be in their best interest. Furthermore, Trump presents Democrats with a Three Stooges Syndrome problem: a range of plausible attacks so vast that they tend to cancel one another out. 

Democrats’ college-educated consultant class has poor instincts for how to appeal to the mass public, while Trump has done more to cultivate support among “weird” marginal voting groups. 

Democrats’ argument that Trump is a critical threat to democracy is valid and important, given January 6 and Trump’s broad disrespect for the rule of law. But it’s a tough sell: ultimately, January 6 was a near-miss — it could very, very easily have been much, much worse — and Democrats hold the White House, the Senate, and many key governorships now. It isn’t intuitive to voters that democracy is threatened and Democrats may have staked too many chips on this line of attack. 

Foreign policy might not matter much to voters, but the world has become more unstable under Biden’s tenure. There has been a decline in democracy worldwide and an increase in interstate conflict, crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, deteriorating US-China relations, increasing immigration flows because of global instability, and a pullout from Afghanistan that negatively impacted Biden’s popularity. 

The Israel-Hamas war split the Democratic base in a way no comparable issue has split the GOP base.

There are more left-leaning third-party candidates than right-leaning ones, and the former leading third-party candidate (RFK Jr.) endorsed Trump and undermined Harris’s post-convention momentum. 

The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has become a huge Trump stan and is doing everything in his power to tip the election to him. Twitter/X remains an influential platform among journalists but has shifted far to the right. Elon and Silicon Valley have also created a permission structure for other wealthy elites to advocate for Trump explicitly and provided a new base of money and cultural influence.

Trump was very nearly killed in an assassination attempt, and then there was a second one against him. The first attempt was closely correlated with an increase in favorability ratings for Trump, and polling shows he’s considerably more popular and sympathetic than in 2016 or 2020. 

Harris has been running on vibes and has failed to articulate a clear vision for the country. It might have been a good strategy if the “fundamentals” favored her, but they don’t. 

[phoenixwrites]

Is it really impossible to simply push for a different Democratic candidate? As an outside observer Biden is a Rebublican in all but name. He might be closer to the "center" but your politics have skewed so far to the right that 'Center Leaning Republicans' are still deeply right wing.

To the majority of the international community, most "Democrats" or "liberals" actually are quite republican.

Unfortunately, that makes little difference to uberconservatives and the Evangelical conservative community that thinks anyone brushed with the word "liberal" is condemned to Hell.

So that would be called a primary challenge, and that might have been an a genuine option to replace Biden with someone better--but it's too late.

This is kind of a huge problem with progressive politics. Everyone wants to change the system right during the crux of presidential voting season; no one wants to do the hard, dry, boring work that entails during off-election years. The fact of the matter is that since the primary election system that was established in 1972, no challenger has ever defeated an incumbent president that chooses to run.

That is a huge challenge, but not an insurmountable one. If people started presenting a viable candidate two years ago, during midterms, started organizing around defeating Biden and replacing him with someone better, I genuinely think the combined efforts of millennials and gen Z could pull that off, especially using the fervor and passion once harnessed during the 08 election of Obama.

But.

It is too late. It's too late to make that happen. The election is in November, I just do not see how a revolution, a historically significant political overthrow of Biden could occur in only eleven months. There just isn't enough time and I can't gamble with my refugee friends, with my trans friends, with PEOPLE who might not survive a Trump presidency.

We millennials and gen Z are so full of passion and innovation and creativity, we are so good at challenging the existing paradigms.

But we absolutely suck at organizing effectively.

[hardynwa]

Edo poll: APC aspirant eyes victory after three failed attempts

A governorship aspirant of the All Progressives Congress, Major General Charles Airhiavbere (retd), on Tuesday, stated that having made spirited attempts to win Edo election on three previous occasions, his wealth of experience put him in pole position to become the next state governor. Airhiavbere, who once ran for governorship on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, also boasted that he has what it takes to collapse the structures of the PDP to further enhance his chances ahead of the September poll. The aspirant made the submission when he arrived at the APC National Secretariat to submit his Expression of Interest and nomination forms in Abuja. He said, “Just like our president, it is my turn to govern Edo State and the party needs a candidate with the capacity to face the incumbent governor, Godwin Obaseki. This 2024 is my fourth appearance in the Edo gubernatorial race. I have run three times on the platform of the APC and once on the platform of PDP. I was the candidate of the PDP in 2012 before leaving to join the APC and I can collapse the PDP structure for APC to win come September 21, 2024. “The race to Edo state 2024 is to replace Governor Obaseki who has done seven years plus and by the special grace of the Almighty God, he will hand over to me on December 12, 2024. Let me take you into the insight of what I will do differently because no state in Nigeria today can say internally generated revenue can rise without bringing development partners. We have the opportunity to make Edo State safe and peaceful using the security apparatus available to us, using internal democracy. We cannot afford to receive vigilante and put arms in the hands of untrained people. “In 2016, I was among the aspirants but Obaseki was picked. At that time, we listened to party leadership. We were told the best among us was Obaseki and that was why he was chosen. Unfortunately, he (Obaseki) took the governorship ticket in 2016 and ran away with it. He didn’t even consult us for contributions but carried on with the campaign, saying party leaders wanted him to share money. I wasn’t one of those that wanted him to share money. This year, the only thing I will do differently is to obey only the instructions from the APC headquarters in Abuja. If APC today says stop, I will stop. If they say move, I will move to make sure that we present the best candidates to win the election.” The race to choose a viable candidate via the APC primary in Edo State has started gathering momentum. Read the full article

[sumukhcomedy]

Our Next President Will Be Really F***ing Old

In the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, 70-year-old Donald Trump defeated 69-year-old Hillary Clinton. The subsequent reactions to this result and the nature of the country since then don’t need to be discussed. They play out every day.

But, in the wake of it all, Democrats were preparing themselves for 2020. They knew they needed to line up a candidate to defeat Donald Trump and most have posed that as a top reason to vote for them as the primaries play out.

What we’ve also seen since the 2016 election is plenty of debate over generational issues: Baby Boomers blaming Millennials, Millennials blaming Baby Boomers, Generation Xers apparently just hanging out, Generation Zers just looking at their technology, me wondering what the next generation will be called since we’ve run out of letters. But what’s clear is we do have a spirited youth that are intelligent, politically and socially active, and whose votes and voices will matter.

Yet, here is where we stand: the Republican Party has aligned itself with the now 73-year-old Trump’s protocol even after desperately wanting to push him out of their primary years earlier. The Democratic field’s top candidates by polls currently are Joe Biden (77 years old), Bernie Sanders (78 years old; will be 79 on date of 2020 presidential election), and Elizabeth Warren (70 years old; will be 71 on date of 2020 presidential election). Mike Bloomberg (77 years old; will be 78 in a few weeks) has enough money to put himself in this field as well.

What is going on here? I’m not writing this with any political leanings one way or the other, but more from just a general societal perspective.

If you walked into any company and asked employees what they thought of any co-worker over the age of 70, I guarantee that a majority of those polled would say, “Why are they still working here?” And, yet, these are all the most viable candidates that both parties have fielded for President of the United States?

I’m sure I could be called out as ageist, but that isn’t entirely the point. It’s fine to field candidates that are senior citizens, but the notion that all the top ones are and that the parties chose to structure themselves in this way speaks to the fundamental problem and alienation that the younger generations felt after the 2016 election. They’ve become more vocal and more political and yet both parties don’t seem to be truly addressing it or caring about it.

                                            The future of America

Trump is already pretty majorly disconnected to the youth unless they happen to be conservative and then he’s unfortunately molding them into a really distorted view on Republican ideals or even faith. Biden has already shown signs of both age and an inability to relate to the current times whether it be with his viewpoints on marijuana or his touchiness with women. Warren and Sanders seem to have the most youth-backing and yet they are now locking heads for votes. It seems absolutely absurd that the voice that seems to be able to relate to the issues of the younger generation the most is coming from the oldest person in the field.

Trump loves junk food so much that he fed it to the college football championship winning Clemson team. His Twitter account doesn’t even need to be mentioned at this point as a sign of a concern. Sanders suffered a heart attack in October. Biden’s mental capacity in debates keeps coming under fire. We’ve seen from George W. Bush and Barack Obama how much a President can age in 8 years in office. There’s nothing wrong as a voter holding a concern for how old the leader of their nation will be and their health and yet this doesn’t seem to truly to matter to anyone right now.

One would think that the outlook of either party with a candidate isn’t just winning for 4 years but winning for 8. I don’t know that Trump could make it that far. I certainly don’t know that I feel that way about a mid-80s Biden or Sanders. So, it makes the vice president position all that more important and we’ve watched in the past how the frightening notion of Sarah Palin as president may have buried a campaign.

I’m not one to rally around and promote candidates or even my political preferences, but at a general level, it would seem that only focusing in on one age group and the most aged of them all for the highest office in the country doesn’t do a great job of speaking to the entire country. We have a minimum age limit of 35 which is good because that means an Instagram influencer won’t become our President which would be likely to happen. But it’s safe to question why we don’t have a maximum age and why our major political parties are slanting towards unbelievably older candidates.

They may be clinging to their final ways of shaping their worldview and, in the process, only further alienating a large youth population that is ready to take over.

[billehrman]

Navigating the Years Ahead

Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole entitled “Navigating the Decade Ahead” was pivotal for investors as he presented the Fed’s revised view of the inter-relationship between employment and inflation on Fed policy. Powell/the Fed basically acknowledged that the Philips curve was dead (something that we wrote about several years ago). The Fed will remain all in for years permitting the economy to expand and inflation to increase beyond where it once would have begun to raise rates and reduce liquidity. Notwithstanding, we believe that long term inflationary pressures will stay muted due to the competitive effect of globalization, technological advancements, disruptors, and rising productivity such that the Fed has little to fear. We totally agree with this new Fed policy.

Powell and the Fed has committed to keeping the funds' rate near zero while providing all the liquidity needed by the economy for several more years without worrying whether inflation rises over 2%, their historic benchmark.  The simple truth is that the Fed is concerned more about a persistently weak economy and deflationary pressures just like their ECB and BOJ counterparts. Since we are now even more convinced than ever that the Fed will provide wind to our backs for several more years which is our number one core belief, we, therefore, remain favorably inclined toward the stock market, industrial commodities, and gold. On the other hand, we would continue to avoid bonds of all durations.

Our favorable investment outlook is supported by our belief that we will have vaccines before year-end; more effective therapeutics/cocktails and procedures to further minimize the death rate shortly; and quick response testing before the end of September such that opening can accelerate as we move into 2021. We expect the economy to improve sequentially but not return to pre-pandemic levels until we all can be vaccinated which won’t happen until sometime in 2022. Unfortunately, there is no agreement on a supplemental stimulus program to replace the Cares Act which expired on July 31st. Hopefully, they come to their senses soon as we can already see changes/reductions in food purchases by those most affected.

Since the Fed policy shift is really a game-changer, we want to discuss it a little more. The Fed unanimously agreed to change a practice that it had followed for three decades, that of preemptively lifting interest rates to head off higher inflation. Powell acknowledged that “a robust job market can be sustained without causing an outbreak in inflation”. The policy shift is that the Fed will wait to see a surge in inflation before acting rather than anticipating an increase in inflation as unemployment dropped beneath a certain level, historically 4.5%. While the Fed still wants inflation to run around 2% over time, it is now willing to let it stay above that level for an extended period of time just like it has run beneath 2% for the last few years. Powell concluded that the “persistent undershoot of inflation from our 2% longer-run objective is a cause of concern.”  The implications are that the Fed will let the economy run further even when inflationary pressures are increasing before tapping the brakes. Right now, we do NOT see the Fed altering its policy until the economy has been on firm footing above pre-pandemic levels for several quarters which will not occur until the end of 2022. Net-net: zero federal funds rate for 2 plus years plus immense liquidity creation which will continue to force investors further out on the risk curve favoring equities, industrial commodities, and gold.

Another game-changer was the news that Abbott’s $5 COVID-19 rapid antigen test got emergency use status from the FDA. This low-cost rapid response test can be administered in a doctor’s office or school nurse’s office and uses technology similar to home pregnancy tests. It returns results in about 15 minutes and is about 97% accurate. The company expects to ship over 50 million tests in October and far more by the end of the year.  The government alone is contracting for 150 million tests to be distributed nationwide. Use of tests such as this will broaden out and be used by companies, airlines, hotels, restaurants, etc., throughout 2021 which will permit a faster, safer opening of America which bodes well for our economy.

The government commented that it expected a vaccine produced by Astra Zeneca to be available by November. We remain optimistic that Moderna and Pfizer will successfully conclude Phase 3 testing before November, too. The Regeneron cocktail is being shown to be a very effective treatment of the coronavirus. Additional comments from Merck last week support our view that they, along with J&J, will have the most efficacious vaccines by mid-2021 along with several billion doses available to distribute worldwide.

The one near-term fly in the ointment is the failure of our government to agree to a supplemental stimulus plan but we expect pressure to build exponentially over the next few weeks such that a plan will be agreed to before the end of the benefits provided by executive order. If not for that, we would be raising our economic outlook for 2021 now as the rapid response test is a near-term game changer.

It is interesting to note the differences between the Democratic and Republican virtual conventions. The Democrats were all about the difference in personalities while the Republicans focused on substance/programs. We are socially liberal but fiscally conservative like most of our friends. We wish that there was a viable independent candidate who shared our views. We expect the election to get closer by the week as so much will depend on the virus, the economy, and social unrest. We found it interesting that Pelosi and many Democrats do not want any debates about substantive topics.

Investment Conclusions: Navigating the Years Ahead

Our positive outlook for Fed policy, vaccines, therapeutics, and testing has only been reinforced by the events of the week. On the other hand, we remain so disappointed by the failure of our government to represent the people over politics. Notwithstanding, we expect an additional stimulus bill, even a slimmed-down version, to be agreed upon by the end of September pressured by the growing needs of individuals and small/medium size companies for support just to survive.

We know for a fact that the Fed is “all in” for at least another two years meaning virtually zero cost of short-term funds plus all the liquidity needed to bridge to and go beyond the other side. While we see the yield curve steepening as our economy, as well as that of the rest of the world, improves in 2021, we do not see inflation rising anywhere near 2% on a sustained basis until sometime late in 2022 after we all have the ability to be vaccinated and the economy is finally above pre-pandemic levels.

Low interest rates, which is the discounting factor for valuation, for an extended time plus excess liquidity/strong banks capital ratios translates into a stock market multiple averaging around 25 for the next few years. We have long argued that pure growth companies whose earnings have grown throughout this period and will only get stronger on the other side deserve to at least maintain their relative multiple premiums while value companies, whose earnings won’t return to pre-pandemic levels until early 2022, justifiably sell at discount to the market.

While we do not agree with much of Biden’s economic program, we doubt, regardless of what he says, that he would raise taxes until the economy is on firm footing which won’t be until sometime in 2022. We do expect, however, Biden or Trump will attempt to pass several demand stimuli bills in 2021 to boost the economy and increase employment.

Our portfolios continue to be concentrated in the new normal winners. As Marc Benioff, head of Salesforce, said “the era of digitalization has accelerated by several years” which only adds to our conviction in those companies tied to the internet. Fortunately, Salesforce is one of our largest holdings. Its stock advanced nearly 30% last Wednesday after its surprisingly strong earnings and outlook. Its best days remain ahead. The same can be said for all of our new normal winners.

We added last week to our holdings in economically sensitive stocks as we see sequential gains in the economy as vaccines successfully pass Phase 3 testing, become available in the fall, and fast response tests are rolled out across the country within two months. Each of these companies have navigated successfully through the pandemic; are financially strong; continued to invest while generating substantial free cash flow; will come out winners on the other side; sell at a substantial discount to the market; and yield around 3%.  

We recommend a portfolio of defensive growth companies yielding above 3% instead of bonds. These companies are growing earnings and dividends between 8 and 12 percent a year; generate substantial free cash flow and offer 12-15% total annual returns.

Our weekly investment webinar will be held on Monday, August 31st at 8:30 am EST. You can join by entering https://zoom.us/j/9179217852 into your browser or dialing +646 558 8656 and entering the password 9179217852,

Remember to review all the facts; pause, reflect, and consider mindset shifts; look at your asset mix with risk controls; turn off your business news; do independent research and …

Invest Accordingly!

Bill Ehrman

Paix et Prospérité LLC

917-951-4139

[thweaty]

For me it's not that the only way I'd trust the system is if he won.... I would trust the system if there wasn't obviously schiesty ass political moves being made in order to keep the party moderate and fairly pro-corporation becuase they know their funding would tank if a candidate that was anti-corporation anti-war etc. was their nominee. It's disheartening to know that like... our opinions don't really matter in all of this because the shit is predetermined for political reasons

no, and i get that completely. the fundamental issues with our political election system won’t be changed overnight. as much as the notion seems absolutely ridiculous and likely contributes a hefty amount to why things can’t practically change, money is extremely, extremely important. and, unfortunately, i don’t see that changing any time soon. the issues here have multiple factors:

the dnc is under no obligation to invest in bernie. he only runs as a democrat to hopefully garner enough support to win the presidential election to the best of his ability under our current “two party” structure. is there anything wrong with that? hell no, this is a game that everyone is playing and he knows that this move works to his advantage in terms of the general population. does that mean that the dnc has to respect him since he’s running as a democrat? also hell no. he’s listed as a dem for the sole purpose of winning this election. if i knew someone was aligning themselves with me only to give themselves a best shot at winning something, i’d be pissed, too.  if he is going to alienate the years of financial support that bolsters the party with his choices, that just doesn’t seem like a wise choise, does it? not when funding is (unfortunately) as important as it is. people can argue ‘til they’re blue in the face over whether or not it’s a smart or selfish idea, but acknowleding the fact that financial support has quite a bit of weight doesn’t change the truth of its importance. he is an inherently risky candidate, so to call the prior candidates choice to endorse what they consider to be a more viable, less risky option corrupt or underhanded isn’t exactly taking the whole situation into consideration (and i know you didn’t say this specifically). changing votes or altering results would be absolutely unfair and deserves due criticism and outrage, but choosing to strategize against the political equivalent of a trojan horse? eh. he doesn’t like the dem establishment, they don’t like him. why should either have to compromise?

this also brings up the fact that there’s little stopping bernie from running as an independent, if he sees himself as a strong enough candidate to win the election. this is something that personally irks me and has been highlighted by his behavior thus far-- if you don’t like option A or option B, yet you feel like you are the best possible person to be the president of this country, what’s stopping you from presenting yourself as an entirely separate option C? history shows that this isn’t a practical idea and would likely hurt the dems more than the republicans, but again, if bernie doesn’t consider himself a democrat and yet still believes that he can will a majority of the electoral votes, it should be a non-issue. don’t make it obvious that you’re aligning yourself with A out of pure necessity, then create infighting within A, and then cry corruption when the other members of A make a decision to coalesce behind another candidate. it’s juvenile, imo. 

the only way something like this could be genuinely, truly pre-determined is if we knew from day 1 that bernie wasn’t going to win. the stats suggested otherwise. bernie himself making a bid suggested otherwise. the prominent dems or the ~establishment~ choosing to endorse a differing candidate doesn’t detract from the fact that he’s had over a year to generate the support of the democratic voters. buttigieg endorsing biden didn’t automatically guarantee biden all of his supporters. bernie had a year to assure that if he wasn’t a voter’s first choice, he was the second, or if not the second, then the third-- and so on. this isn’t to say that endorsements aren’t an important factor, but if bernie truly resonated with these voters enough then the numbers would currently show that. 

if i had felt that i had done all of the research necessary to declare my support of one candidate above all else, no amount of endorsing could make me change my mind. however, me choosing to support who i think is best doesn’t tend to be the only factor to consider once voting approaches. people start to factor in whether or not they think their choice could win the general election (and prior data suggested bernie could, so effectively i find this a moot point regarding how many votes he ultimately gets). people who are stuck between a rock and a hard place, but understand that the lesser of the two evils truly lies within the general election, may switch their vote. again, the data didn’t really show that bernie stood 0 chance against trump. in fact, most if it suggested the opposite. so then why, if he was previously a clear front runner and data suggested that he would fair well in the general election, would the race suddenly be this close between biden and bernie? it’s not corruption. it’s not a conspiracy. complacency disguised the fact that this race is a lot closer than his supporters assumed. 

in short, if bernie himself and his supporters find him and only him to be the best candidate out there capable of winning the presidential election, then he should have entered this election without needing the support of democratic party. 

[askalibertarianus]

Viability Of The Libertarian Party

Travis Hallman  September 5th

Many voters assume 3rd party candidates can’t win, so they resort to voting for the lesser-of-two-evils presented by the two major parties. This is becoming less of a problem because the Libertarian Party is growing daily. The purpose of this article is to present a few facts supporting the viability of the Libertarian Party. FACT #1:

“The number of U.S. voters registered as Libertarian has surged by 92 percent since 2008, reports Ballot Access News in its March 2018 edition. That increase has come at the expense of both Democrats, who are down by 8 percent over the same time period, and Republicans, who are down by 5 percent. The number of voters registered as independent or with other parties has increased by 19 percent.”

FACT #2:

“The Libertarian Party is the third-largest political party in the United States after the Republican and Democratic parties.”

FACT #3:

“The recently concluded Libertarian National Convention, held in New Orleans, set attendance and fundraising records. Preliminary figures indicate that this year’s convention may have surpassed the 2016 presidential nominating convention in both attendance and fundraising.”

FACT #4:

“Nationwide, there are 174 Libertarians holding elected offices: 55 partisan offices, and 119 nonpartisan offices.”

FACT #5:

“Gary Johnson was the Libertarian Party presidential nominee in 2016. He was on the ballot in all fifty states plus D.C., but was only listed as a Libertarian on the ballot in forty-seven of those states plus D.C. Nationwide, he received approximately 3.24% of the vote. He received between 1.19% and 9.34% in each of the fifty states plus D. C.

Because presidential candidate election results affect ballot access [in most states], Johnson’s run was able to secure ballot access for the Libertarian Party for at least one election cycle in twenty-two states. In eighteen of those states, Libertarian Party ballot access is secured for all offices. In two of those states, Johnson only secured ballot access for the 2020 Libertarian Party presidential nominee. In Georgia, Johnson only secured ballot access in 2018 to Libertarian candidates running for statewide offices, while in Pennsylvania, Johnson was only able to secure Libertarian Party ballot access in special elections in 2017 and 2018.”

This means the candidates nominated by the Libertarian Party in these states can redirect resources (typically spent on gaining ballot access) to marketing and campaigning.

FACT #5 continued:

“As of July 2018, we have 2018 ballot access in 44 states.”

Unfortunately, because of a variety of factors, we are unable to pursue statewide access in Alabama, Tennessee, or Rhode Island this year. But we are pushing forward aggressively in the other 3 states.”

“It is likely that the Libertarian Party [LP] will have at least one nominee for a federal or state office on the ballot in all 50 states in November 2018, for the first time in a midterm year.”

FACT #6:

“December 28, 2017, Washington, DC — Attorneys with the Our America Initiative, a nonprofit advocacy organization, have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a Writ of Certiorari asking the Justices to reinstate an antitrust suit brought against the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) by former presidential candidate Gary Johnson and others challenging the Commission’s boycott of third party and independent candidates from nationally televised debates.”

FACT #7:

Libertarian candidates like Craig Bowden, Larry Sharpe, Laura Ebke, Bill Gelineau, Honor “Mimi” Robson, Autumn Browne, Gail Lightfoot, Derrick Michael Reid, and many others are breaking old records with their campaigns.

In conclusion, the Libertarian Party is becoming very much more viable every day. However, viability should not determine the way we vote. The founding fathers created a representative republic so we could vote for the candidates we want to win (as opposed to voting for who we think may win). Voting for who we think can win will always give us a less desirable government. We should only be casting support for the projected winners during sport matches, not political campaigns.

In liberty,

-Travis Hallman

Follow us at http://www.facebook.com/askalibertarian

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The author’s views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the entire Ask A Libertarian Team or its followers.

[ayittey1]

The African Solution to Ethiopia’s Civil War

George BN Ayittey, PhD

More than 40 Civil Wars have raged in postcolonial Africa since independence in 1960. These wars have wreaked wanton destruction; reduced infrastructure to rubble, uprooted people sending refugees creaming in all directions. Several states have failed or collapsed as a result of war -- CAR, Congo DR, Liberia, Libya, Somalia, among others -- on the African continent

Some wars never end –in the Spanish Sahara, Casamanche in Southern Senegal and Somalia. Other wars descend into genocidal expeditions to settle ethnic scores. Still, others metastasize into sheer banditry. War and attendant insecurity provide rebels with the cover to fleece villagers and impose “security taxes.” In Somalia warlords extract “taxes on goods – even foreign aid shipments – passing through Mogadishu. Elsewhere, unpaid government soldiers disguised themselves as “rebels” at night and bedrob civilians. In Sierra Leone’s Civil War in 1996, government soldiers were indistinguishable from rebels at night. They would shed their uniforms, don rebel attire and commit atrocities including robberies.. So they were called “sobels” (the combination of soldiers and rebels) because both were predators.. In many countries – such as Ethiopia and Zaire -- unpaid government soldiers openly sold their weapons to rebels. And for their part, corrupt and incompetent governments often used the war as an excuse to shield budgetary expenditures from scrutiny and award lucrative contracts to cronies.” Either way, war created its own “profitable” logic,” making it more difficult to stop it. In short, there are no winners in Africa’s Civil Wars.

Some wars don’t even make sense – none whatsoever. Ethiopia’s harrowing Civil War is a case in point. It is the second most populous African nation with over 100 million people and at least 82 ethnic groups. The country was never colonized but has been ravaged by at the least three wars since 1972. The most grievous occurred in the 1980s. It wreaked so much havoc and destruction that it instigated the onset of a famine that claimed at least one million lives. And while the rest of the world was organizing rock concerts and songs (“We Are the World”) to save famine victims, then leader of the military junta, Comrade Mengistu Haile Marian – a Soviet-backed Marxist coconut-head – was spending $10 million on imported Scotch whiskey to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Soviet imperialism in Ethiopia! Over $423 billion was raised for famine victims but much of it was embezzled.

In 1989, a coalition of determined rebels decided to put their differences aside and made a renewed effort to topple Comrade Mengistu. They comprised the Tigrayan People Liberation Front (TPLF), Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). After Mengistu was ousted in 1991 – he fled to Zimbabwe. The rebel groups, together with others formed the Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Interestingly, all the groups were Marxist with a jaundiced view of “revolutionary democracy,” whatever that meant. And inexplicably adopted a colonialist stratagem that reeked of “divide and conquer.” It allowed for the practice of ethnic federalism and even permitted secession. Eritrea seized upon this opportunity and declared itself independent in 1993. But its leader, Isaias Afewerki, was no freedom fighter nor democrat. Always itching for war and constantly beating the war drums to keep an iron grip on his people and divert attention from economic problems and domestic malfeasance, he seized upon a dispute over a worthless piece of real estate at the border town of Badme to start a war with Ethiopia in 1998.

It was a war that defied logic. The world’s two poorest nations that relied on food aid were spending about $1 million a month to hammer each other, take a break to bury a innocent civilian casualties and then get back at it again pounding each other. Hostilities came to an end in 2000 but Pres. Afewerki kept stoking the fire to use as justification for state of emergency that conveniently served as a conscription tool. Young Eritreans, upon graduation from college, were required to sign up for an indefinite “National Service.” It has been the main reasons driving Eritrean youth to flee the country for Europe -- to avoid that National Service. Unfortunately, many do not make it and drown in the Mediterranean. As it turned out, Afewerki has been just like the rest of the African crocodile liberators, who betrayed their people. EPRDF did too; never brought democracy to Ethiopia in 1991.

In 2005, it held its first elections which were blatantly rigged. When people protested in the streets, security forces opened fire killing about 1500 people and also arrested at least 20,000 opposition supporters. The election in 2010 brought no respite. The EPRDF won 99.6% of the vote (546 of the 547 parliamentary seats). In the 2015 elections, the opposition did not win a single seat! Its rule was characterized by brutal repression.

Ethiopia’s economic fortunes remained bleak under the morose leadership of the EPRDF regime until it embarked on the construction of its $5 billion Renaissance Dam. In May 2018, a young man by the name of Abiy Ahmed emerged from the ruling elites and begun to reform the rotten system. He freed all political prisoners and invited exiled opposition leaders to return home. He opened up the economy placed several state-owned enterprises – such as the airline, banking, among others – on the auction block. He reached out to President Afewerki whom Ethiopia had been at war to cement a peace deal. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Ethiopians hailed him as the “Messiah.” Nursing mothers named the other babies after him. But this is precisely the problem with African reformers or Messiahs – such as Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana’s and Abdel al-Sisi of Egypt. They started out well but cult personality set in. With their heads in the clouds, they become unreachable. John Jerry Rawlings of Ghana or J.J. Rawlings became known as “Junior Jesus” and Abiy Ahmed as “Messiah.”

Under pressure to reform Ghana’s decrepit political system, Rawlings’ hand-picked Constitution assembly prepared a Constitution according to his dictates and set up his own party the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in 1992. While the Constitution stipulated a two-term rule, Rawlings argued that all those years he served after he seized power in a 1981 coup (1981 to 1992), did not count toward the two-term rule because Ghana was not a democratic country and had no Constitution. Museveni pulled off a similar ploy in 2003. In 2018, PM Ahmed of Ethiopia established his own political party, the Prosperity Party. It is a monumental conflict of interest situation. Reformers do not reform the political system, set up their own party, run for the presidency and expect to lose. In fact, in Nigeria, Gen. Sani Abacha allowed only five political parties to be established in 1995. Immediately, the all chose him as their presidential candidate!

Military officers have left an opprobrious record of governance in postcolonial Africa. ALL collapsed dates were ruined by military coconuts. And iIn case after case where they managed a transition to democratic rule, the results were often disastrous. They either created their own parties (Gambia in 2003, Ghana in 1992, Egypt in 2014) or shoo in their favorite political parties (Nigeria in 2001). PM Ahmed is most likely to succumb to this proclivity – especially when the completion of the Renaissance Dam appears imminent. The formation of PM Ahmed’s own Prosperity Party is a serious violation of conflict of interest. His partiality toward his own ethnic group – Oromo – has caused alarm. Ethnic tension between Oromos and Amharas, Afar and Somali, as well as other ethnic groups could lead to the unraveling of Ethiopia. Elections were slated for August 22, 2020 but the coronavirus pandemic necessitated a postponement to 2021 to the displeasure of TPLF.

Tigrayans constitute only 6% of Ethiopia’s population but the TPLF so dominated the EPRDF it was indistinguishable from the apartheid system in South Africa. It even operated an ID card that documented the bearer's ethnicity (for the first time in Ethiopian history). Blatant favoritism was demonstrated in all sectors of society, including the economy, military, education, and even religious institutions. Resentment and impatience boiled over.

The TPLF re-drew boundaries of regional states in Ethiopia along ethnic lines. Seeing power slip out of its hands by the emergence of Abiy Ahmed, TPLF began a campaign to reclaim its old glory back by defying the central government. It held elections in Tigray region. But it was the massacre of central government troops on Nov 4 in Mai-Kadra that broke the camel’s back and started the war. PM Ahmed probably thought he could finish off the Tigrayan hotheads in a couple of weeks but this has dragged on for six months.

Naturally, appeals would be made to the international community but they are unlikely to elicit much response. The international community is thoroughly fed up with Africa’s incessant wars and appeals for aid. Even then, the international community does not understand Africa’s problems and unlikely to offer viable solutions. It often suggests a “government of national unity” (G(NU). But time and again GNU has failed spectacularly – in Angola (1993), in Zaire (1998); in Sierra Leone (1998) and, in Liberia (2003); and Ivory Coast (2005); in Zimbabwe (2009) and Kenya (2009). Africa’s experience shows that GNU is just a short hand device for joint plunder of the state. It requires distribution of government posts between government and rebel forces. Quite often nobody is satisfied with what they got and they return to the bush to fight it out.

The Village Meeting/National Conference

When a crisis erupts in an African village, the chief and the elders would summon a village meeting. There the issue is debated by the people until a consensus is reached. During the debate, the chief usually makes no effort to manipulate the outcome or sway public opinion. Nor are there bazooka-wielding rogues, intimidating or instructing people on what they should say. People express their ideas openly and freely without fear of arrest. Those who care participate in the decision-making process. No one is locked out. Once a decision has been reached by consensus, it is binding on all, including the chief.

In the early 1990s, this indigenous African tradition was revived by pro-democracy forces in the form of "Sovereign National Conferences" (SNCs) to chart a new political future in Benin, Cape Verde Islands, Congo, Malawi, Mali, South Africa, and Zambia. “Sovereign” because it wielded sovereign/ultimate power and its decisions could not be abrogated by anyone.

Benin's nine-day "national conference" began on Feb 19, 1990, with 488 delegates, representing various political, religious, trade union, and other groups encompassing the broad spectrum of Beninois society. The conference, whose chairman was Father Isidore de Souza, held "sovereign power" and its decisions were binding on all, including the government. It stripped President Matthieu Kerekou of power, scheduled multiparty elections that ended 17 years of autocratic Marxist rule.

Congo's national conference had more delegates (1,500) and lasted longer three months. But when it was over in June 1991, the 12-year old government of General Denis Sassou-Nguesso had been dismantled. The constitution was rewritten and the nation's first free elections were scheduled for June 1992. Before the conference, Congo was among Africa's most avowedly Marxist-Leninist states. A Western business executive said, "The remarkable thing is that the revolution occurred without a single shot being fired . . . (and) if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere" (The New York Times, 25 June 1991, A8). Unfortunately, General Sassou-Nguesso did not accept his defeat graciously and overthrew, with the help of France and Angola, the civilian government of Pascal Lissouba in October 1997.

A similar national conference in Niger in 1991 denounced the military dictatorship of Colonel Ali Seibou and stripped him of his power, leaving him with one main task: To organize the transition to civilian rule. “For the first time since the independence of the country in 1960, free and fair elections were held and in March 1993, Mahamane Ousmane became the newcomer in the political arena” (West Africa, Dec 6-12, 1999; p

In South Africa, the vehicle used to make that difficult but peaceful transition to a multiracial democratic society was the Convention for a Democratic South Africa . It began deliberations in July 1991, with 228 delegates drawn from about 25 political parties and various anti-apartheid groups. The de Klerk government made no effort to "control" the composition of CODESA. Political parties were not excluded; not even ultra right-wing political groups, although they chose to boycott its deliberations. CODESA strove to reach a "working consensus" on an interim constitution and set a date for the March 1994 elections. It established the composition of an interim or transitional government that would rule until the elections were held. More important, CODESA was in "sovereign." Its decisions were binding on the de Klerk government. De Klerk could not abrogate any decision made by CODESA -- just as the African chief could not disregard any decision arrived at the village meeting.

Clearly, the vehicle exists -- in Africa itself -- for peaceful transition to democratic rule or resolution of the war and political crisis in Ethiopia. Ethiopia from all walks of life – leaders of political parties, religious organizations, trade unions, student groups, ethnic groups, etc. should demand the convocation of SNC. Forget about the Africa Union. It is hopelessly useless; it can’t even define democracy.

If Ethiopia appeals international community for aid in resolving its Civil War and humanitarian crisis, it should be told that the solutions to its problems lie in Africa itself.

The wise learn from the mistakes of others while fools repeat them. Idiots, on the other hand, repeat their own stupid mistakes.

[dallasareaopinion]

Lets start complaining about 2024.

This is my second attempt at this post. I start these on an apple laptop that doesn’t have word, so if you hit the wrong key it all disappears and I have no idea how to get it back. Originally this was one of the children’s laptops and I inherited it. I never spent any energy learning what to do with it. I am old so Word works because you can always hit the go back key.

Anyway you ask, why start talking about 2024? Aren’t you the person that says, we start politicking too soon? And how can you talk about 2024 when all hades is breaking loose in Texas (besides Ted Cruz). And it is and it is terrible. We are some  of the lucky ones, we lost water twice temporarily and power once temporarily. Literally within hundreds of feet from our front door it has been much worse, flooding and loss of water simultaneously for some of our neighbors. So we do feel lucky, our thermostat has been at 66-68 and lights are on most of the time in just the one room we are inhabiting for the moment. Probably not perfect, but we are trying, but I say this knowing this is no consolation for the millions who had no power for a good portion of this week. 

Grocery stores are closed or the shelves are bare. I haven’t even tried to drive to see if any fast food or restaurants are open. I can walk to a grocery store so again we are among the lucky ones. So why on God’s green earth do I want to start talking about 2024?

Well because.   It is going to matter and yes we still need new parties, but I haven’t managed to convince too many other people of this need so we are going to be stuck with Democrats and Republicans again. And what happened this week in Texas is only snapshot of the incompetence of things to come. The hate will continue; practical governing is not going to happen, and disasters will come and go, but will we have any real solutions to helping the people, basically the vast majority of the country?

So why be a hater, you ask me. Well here is one that Democrats and Republicans really do not want to think about, but 2024 has a good chance of being Haley v. Harris.I am not saying these are the best people to be president, I am just saying these are the two people with the best chance of being candidates at this point for 2024. And I think this may carry forward to 2024. For the Republicans, Cotton, Sasse, maybe? Haley won’t get Trump’s support because she is a woman so it doesn’t matter if she fails to mend fences with Trump, what matters is the Republican operatives are going to realize anyone Trump supports will lose in a general election, Sasse and Cotton won’t get Trump’s support so the Party won’t or cannot coalesce around them. And by then some of Trump’s sway will have migrated to only the most diehards, but enough Republicans will still be diehard Trumpers to keep certain candidates from winning. Haley though will offer the Republicans the best chance of winning because the thought of Harris running will scare the dickens out of the diehards enough to accept Haley as the best counter and the Republican operatives understand politics enough to know to win they need to win back votes they lost in 2020. And Haley gives them this chance.

And for the Democrats, seriously who else do they have in 2024? Absolutely no one. I said it six years ago, the Democrats have not been developing a base to create electable candidates. They had Joe Biden and he is old, Sanders is old, Clinton should have never happened, after that who have they got? No one new, no one somewhat young that is electable on the national stage except by 2024, four years of being in the national news behind Biden makes Harris the only viable candidate the Democrats will have by then. Think back a year, who ran in the Democrat primaries? If they couldn’t muster up enough excitement to beat Biden in 2020, who is going to grab your attention between now and 2024? Seriously who? Sure AOC will be in the headlines, but she is nowhere near electable at the national level. Democratic socialism or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t reach a majority of this country’s interest, much less votes. Think I am wrong then why did the Republicans not lose more in the Senate and did gain in the House? Hmmmm? For the upteenth time, most Americans are moderately conservative including minorities. And most are in the middle class and this whole group are the people who decide elections especially at the national level. For this very reason Biden won. The women in the suburbs could stand Biden because he drifts towards the middle. Haley v Harris splits all this vote and makes the race very interesting, but a dollar to a dime the party leaders of both parties do not want this race. They would be fools to fight it, but hey they are fools and they will fight it. And yet, I am telling you now as we sit here freezing our back ends off, this is the hottest race going for 2024. 

Tell me how I am wrong.

And I could have dumped a ton of hate on the Republicans right now, something about them not being conservative or Christian and are hypocrites, and wrote all the reasons why, but that can be a real simple post. What is the Golden rule you didn’t ask, love God first and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. Simple and to the point, right?

So if you put all your energy into Trump and hold him up as your leader then you have someone who puts himself above God and spends his days disrespecting everyone who doesn’t kowtow to him and has absolutely no idea what is conservatism, how can you call yourself a Christian and a conservative? So it is an easy dig, and even the never Trumpers or people who avoided Trump can fall into this, but hey I didn’t write that post, because you know I said I would stay positive with this blog. 

Hey the Democrats are clueless with their ideas, but at least they are honest and consistent with their cluelessness.

For a long time there were many four letter words you could not say on TV or the radio, but unfortunately the word hate was never one of them. 

Or maybe it is time to go to confession since it is Lent.

[jamr0ck83]

What, Exactly, Have You Done to Help Build a Less Racist America?

So, here it is, the end of November.  I think we can all agree that 2020 was not the year we wanted (although I might argue that it’s not all of us who didn’t deserve it).  Yes, this year has been an absolute mess.  But also, it’s not some grand accident that just happened to befall us.  Everything that has transpired this year has been in the making for years, decades, centuries even.

We are getting rocked by Covid-19 because our healthcare system is so inadequate and predicated upon profit that it’s not at all set up to deal with this situation.  Also, one of the things that’s always been held as a virtue in America is its citizens’ sense of individualism.  Everyone is responsible for their own destiny and has the right to make any and every decision for themselves.  That’s what we’ve told ourselves makes us a great nation.  The problem with that is, in this pandemic scenario, many people then don’t feel obligated to withstand any kind of personal inconvenience to help keep others alive, even if those others are their own family members.  We want what we want when we want it, and we won’t take “no” for answer.  Unfortunately for us, pandemics aren’t really concerned with making sure Americans don’t have to play by the same rules the rest of the people on this planet do, and when viruses come to kill you, they will kill you if you don’t respond appropriately, and there’s no chapter in The Power of Positive Thinking that effectively helps you wish death away.

It’s an election year, which should’ve been a surprise to no one, especially not to those of us who have been counting down to this year since the 2016 Presidential Election.  And let’s be real; this was an awful election year.  Due to the realities (as opposed to promise) of living in a democratic republic, we really only have two viable political parties, and real talk, neither of them are meeting the needs of the people, and that’s definitely not new.  The Democratic Party offered way too many candidates, especially when they had absolutely no intention of letting anyone but Biden secure the nomination.  And it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that they did this.  The Democrats have BEEN riding the wave of appealing to the idealistic and progressive portions of the population for votes and then once those votes are received, their focus is keeping their own jobs.  And not even keeping their jobs for the sake of leading the nation and providing the people with what they need; they just want to keep their jobs. And Trump has spent a lifetime of telling half-truths and outright lies, so there was no scenario where he was going to abandon that to become a “respectable politician” this go-round.  So, his entire campaign was propaganda nonsense, and because all of our mainstream news outlets are so concerned with ratings, they played and replayed and replayed every ridiculous thing he said, which was helpful to no one.  Point being, the way our media corporations are cogs in the wheel of unfettered capitalism, that’s not new at all, either.

And then the #BlackLivesMatter Movement became a thing more than black people were talking about.  And to be clear, the movement itself isn’t new and black people being murdered by police with astronomical frequency isn’t new, but apparently things don’t matter until white people care about them, so this became a huge “aha” moment for many of them.  But again, all of this?  Not new.

My point is that all of these things have been building for some time, and it’s unfortunate that they all decided to implode in the same year, but the implosions were inevitable.  But when it comes to #BlackLivesMatter, it seemed like we had reached a crucial moment back in the spring.  People saw that video of George Floyd and then heard about Ahmaud Arbury and Breonna Taylor, and there seemed to be an urgent desire to get some societal changes made which would include tackling racism.  And a lot of people vowed that this time would be different.  White allies were going to rise up in droves and be the ones to see to it that this world, in which their privilege serves to oppress others, was going to change.  They said, “we’re going to have to be the ones to end racism, and we will.”  And as I recall, black folks were optimistic but skeptical, and there was a sense that many allies were basing their allegiance in their need to make themselves feel better instead of a need to see the humanity of all respected.  And to be fair, many of us black folks tried to warn them not to do this.  “It’s not about your feelings,” we said.  “Basing it on that alone isn’t sustainable,” we said.  But allies assured us they were in it for the long haul this time and would prove it with their actions.  And I, for one, was willing to see how that went.  So, I offered resources where they were needed and provided perspective on some of the issues and then trusted that white people were doing the work.  And this was a mistake.  And I don’t think the failure of most white allies to actually do the work is the mark of people being malicious; I just think they got bored and were ready to move on.  And I think they also saw that this wasn’t going to be as easy as getting everyone to “find common ground”.  And as the work began to require them to do more than post a black square and say “black lives matter” out loud, that became too inconvenient and too uncomfortable.

So now, it’s November.  And white allies, many of you were beside yourselves with shock to see Trump get so many votes, and it was nearly like 2016 all over again.  But what exactly did you perceive had changed since May that would mean less voters would align themselves with the white supremacy antics of the Republican Party?  How did you expect those votes to go from Republican to Democrat when you knew just from talking to your family that they had no intention of voting for Democrats?  What exactly did you think had been accomplished in the struggle to fight racism?  And what were the specific things you did in order to help make this happen?  Here; I will list a few examples of action steps, and you can see which of them you did.

Have you read any books by black authors regarding the history of racism in this country and the ways in which we’ve fought against it in the past?

Have you read anything by black authors regarding the contemporary issues facing Black America like higher unemployment and prison rates and the wealth gap to learn more about the systemic reasons why these problems persist?

Have you watched any documentaries about Black History and/or contemporary black issues like Eyes on the Prize, I Am Not Your Negro, and Central Park 5 by Ken Burns?

Have you arrived at the conclusion that the version of American History you were taught is fraught with grandiose lies promoting white supremacy and basically ignores any black people of prominence who weren’t Dr. King or Rosa Parks?

Have you wondered why it’s those two people that have been chosen as our black heroes by mainstream white culture?

Have you realized that even the version of Dr. King and Rosa Parks that you were taught that painted them as passive and nonthreatening is wholly inaccurate?

Have you checked out any black entertainment that you might have never thought to notice before like:

TV shows such as Living Single (which was ripped off and reworked into the mega hit we know as Friends) and A Different World (which tackled many issues of its day including AIDS, bigotry, and date rape AND had such an impact on the black community that, during its original run, enrollment in HBCUs increased drastically)?

Famous playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson?

Famous authors like Colson Whitehead and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?

Famous poets like Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni or even someone more up-and-coming and contemporary like Kai Davis?

Famous artists like Jacob Lawrence and Kehinde Wiley?

Famous musicians like John Coltrane, Earth Wind & Fire, A Tribe Called Quest, and Talib Kweli?

Famous films like Malcolm X, The Hate U Give, and BlacKkKlansman (none of which rely on the overly-played and inaccurate trope of the white savior who ends up diffusing hostile racial conflicts by merely learning to care)?

Have you had any meaningful conversation with friends and family in which you explained the basis and need for the BLM movement and why it’s not a political stance to say that black people should not have to still be fighting to be acknowledged and respected in 2020 AND have you done that without validating any of their bigotry and misconceptions with phrases like “Yes, I agree that both sides are the problem” or “Yes, it’s valid to feel that being pro-western culture does not necessarily mean being pro-white”?

Have you looked inward and really thought about the biases you harbor within yourself, where they came from, and what you can do to re-conceptualize these ideas?

Have you checked on your black friends in these past several months?

Have you realized that you don’t really have any black friends or that you don’t have any black neighbors or that there are no black kids that go to your kids’ schools and see how problematic ALL of those things are?

Have you been aware of all the terrible things that have happened since the death of George Floyd that have traumatized the black community such as the death of Quawan Charles and the fact that the grand jury convened in Kentucky was not even given the option to issue murder indictments against the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor?

Have you been following any contemporary black activists like Shaun King, Tamika Mallory, Gary Chambers, and Stacey Abrams who have been doing the legwork of enfranchising black voters, leading protests, and using their voices to lead and denounce systemic racism?

Have you been willing to determine whether white fragility is something you might unknowingly harbor and resolve to change that?

Have you grown concerned that support for BLM has dwindled significantly between the end of May and now, and have you decided to do something about that?

Have you realized that, if you were shocked by how many people STILL voted for Trump in this election, that probably means you’re not as in tune with the prevalence of white supremacy in modern America as you thought you were?

Have you re-examined your base level of respect for the Republican Party after witnessing them spend the last couple of months trying to steal this election and how that was in direct response to the belief that they couldn’t allow too many black votes to be counted because they’d likely be against them, which is not at all the way of a democracy?

Have you maintained the same anger and determination to “be the change” that you felt when you watched that video of George Floyd having the life choked out of him?

Have you finally come to the conclusion that grounding your fire to combat racism in your feelings CANNOT be the way to move forward, because the second you feel better, your desire for change will wane, even if nothing has really improved?

How many of these things can you honestly say you’ve done?  And I don’t ask that as some sort of indictment on your character or to shame you.  I ask because I am being honest and realistic when I tell you that any plan you might have that does not include the majority if not all of these things is not a plan that will work.  There are established methods for being effective allies; nobody is asking you to figure that out on your own.  People have been working to secure the rights of the oppressed for centuries, and it’s pretty certain that you’re NOT going to invent some new way that gets the job done AND allows you the comfort you are used to.  This can’t be like Covid-19 when many Americans assumed the rules of science don’t apply to them because they didn’t want them to.  And you don’t get to sit on this until you feel like playing a more active role is convenient, because people are dying while you make your plans for the holidays.  And maybe that’s a low blow, but I don’t know else to put it.  Black people are not a cause you can keep putting on the back burner because you’re not ready to deal with it.  And obviously no one has the power or ability to make you engage in ways in which you are not comfortable, but if that’s the case, then you need to own that.  And stop acting like racism is some rare occurrence in America that is largely on the run.  IT IS NOT.  So, stop telling black people that lie, because none of us believe it, and it’s insulting to constantly be told that, anyway.  You don’t have to be an ally, but you don’t get to opt out of being one and still claim to be a defender of all humanity.  Either you are someone who believes something is wrong and you want to work to change it, or you are someone who doesn’t care.  There is no middle ground, there are no further considerations to be made.  It’s not hard to decide which of these people you are.  So, which one are you and what are you going to do about it?

Above image from WAM Theatre

[whereareroo]

IN A DARK DARK PLACE

WF THOUGHTS (11/6/20).

It's 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The election was on Tuesday. We still don't have an "official" winner.

Except for one particular person, everybody in America knows how this movie will end. I won't name that individual. He lives in the White House, he has orange hair, and he has a bad spray tan. His time at the White House is coming to an end.

Out of respect for the election process, I'm not going to talk about the election result today. I'm happy to wait for the official results. Instead, I want to talk about a related issue.

As we all await the official declaration of a 2020 winner, let's take a broader look at the current state of presidential politics in America. Let's look at what happened in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. What can we learn from those four elections, which spanned 12 years?

Before we begin, I think I should give you a warning. I think the last 4 presidential elections prove that America has arrived at a very, very bad place. If you can't handle more darkness this week, stop reading now.

To understand what happened in 2008, you need to go back to 2004. At the Democratic National Convention in 2004, which nominated John Kerry to run against the sitting President George W. Bush, a speech was given by a nobody. His name was Barack Obama. Nobody knew who he was. He was an unknown senator in the Illinois legislature. Because Obama was running for the U.S. Senate, and because he was reputedly an outstanding speaker, Kerry's team gave Obama a major speaking spot at the convention.

Obama's speech was exceptional. Some people say that it was one of the best political speeches of all time. By the next day, the lowly state senator was a celebrity. Obama loved the spotlight. It was clear that he always wanted to be a celebrity.

Kerry lost. Obama won his Senate race, which made him an even bigger celebrity. By the time he took office as a Senator in January of 2005, he was already one of the biggest names in the Senate. Obama immediately set his sights on winning the 2008 presidential election. He didn't have any experience. He didn't have any established policy positions. He simply realized that, on the basis of his personality and his performance skills, he had a cult following that he could exploit to take the White House. He set out to become our first celebrity president.

Sadly, Obama's plan worked. In the Democratic primaries, he defeated the better-qualified establishment candidate (Hillary Clinton). In the presidential election, he demolished a very experienced and highly qualified candidate (John McCain.) Obama was our first celebrity president. He wasn't qualified. He didn't have any track record. He was a cultural icon who could give a great speech. We didn't know it at the time, but a dark new era had started in American presidential politics.

By the time the election of 2012 rolled around, Obama was a much bigger celebrity and he had a much bigger cult following. Despite the fact that he had accomplished very little, except for Obamacare, he was untouchable. He totally destroyed a very high quality Republican candidate, Mitt Romney. Mitt, who would have been a very good president, didn't stand a chance against one of the biggest celebrities in America. Unlike Obama, Mitt didn't have a cult following.

I bet we can all agree on one thing. Donald Trump has always wanted to be famous. Fame is his thing. He's spent his life trying to become a bigger and bigger celebrity.

Trump was watching Obama in 2008 and 2012.

He instinctively understood Obama's "game." Becoming president was no longer about experience. Becoming president was no longer about policy. Winning the White House was now about developing a cult and exploiting your personality. It's just like a reality television show. You play a character that is appealing to the masses. You say, and do, anything to drive up your ratings and your Twitter following. You use your celebrity status, and your performance skills, to win the game. Trump understood that the game had changed to 100% show business. Trump understood that it was a new era and that you didn't have to know anything, or believe in anything, to become president.

That's how Trump won the Republican primary in 2016. His numerous Republican opponents, all with more experience and better qualifications, couldn't compete with his celebrity status and his outrageous behavior. The crowds loved Trump. He was like a movie character who would say anything, and do anything, to become president. All he cared about was getting loud cheers at his rallies. After stomping all over traditional Republican principles and the elders of the GOP in the primaries, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the general election. It was a very close race, which Trump won in the Electoral College after losing the popular vote by more than 3 million votes. Nonetheless, a win is a win. For the third consecutive election, America had elected an unqualified celebrity president. Trump was an expert at show business. He didn't give a crap about government or governing.

That takes us to the current election. Win or lose (probably the later), Trump will get 70 million votes. In 2016, he only got 63 million votes. What does that tell us? The cult stuff works. The love for celebrities continues. Even if Biden wins (the likely case), the fact is that a celebrity candidate has done very, very well in 4 consecutive presidential elections. That's not a fluke. That's a trend. We are living in a new era of presidential politics. The old days, which valued competence and experience, are gone.

I can guarantee you that other celebrities, people with cult followings, are watching this trend. We're undoubtedly going to see an ever-growing number of celebrity candidates, and they will frequently win the presidency. You just need to play a role and be capable of uttering a few coherent sentences. The past 4 elections prove that the new game works.

Oprah Winfrey or Michelle Obama could be president. George Clooney or Tom Hanks could be president. Michael Jordon or Lebron James could be president. Any of the Fox News anchors --- Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham --- could be president. Tom Selleck could be president. Mark Cuban could be president. Judge Judy could be president. I'm serious. In this new era, the pool of viable candidates is huge. The quality of the candidates is abysmal.

This is absolutely terrible news for America. As we can see from presidential performance over the past 12 years, celebrity presidents do not bring progress or unity. It's all about them. There's a reason that, until Obama, we had a long history of elevating senior Senators or Governors to the presidency. In the old days, the public recognized that only seasoned candidates had the necessary wisdom, knowledge, and judgment to meet the demands of the presidency. In the old days, Americans would not even consider a presidential candidate unless he had a proven record of trying to make America a better place. In the old day, Americans understood that the presidency isn't about the occupant of the office and his cult. Our traditional presidents believed that the president served all Americans, and that creating unity was a primary presidential function. The last 4 presidential elections prove that our traditional standards have been obliterated.

I'm an optimist, but our recent history leaves no room for optimism. With rare exceptions, the string of celebrity presidents will continue. In the absence of true presidential leadership, our domestic issues will spiral out of control. Conditions within the United States will worsen. In the absence of true presidential leadership, America will cease to be the dominant world power. Without strong American leadership, the whole world will suffer and become increasingly chaotic. In 20 or 30 years, after great damage has been done to America and the world, angry American citizens will probably return to the practice of putting experienced Senators and Governors in the White House. Unfortunately, the damage to America will be irreversible. America will never be the same. The world will never be the same. How did we get so stupid? How did we get so lost?

I honestly believe that the next 4 years could be the final glory days for America. Biden could be our last "traditional" president. He doesn't give a hoot about fame or celebrity status. He just wants to make America better for everybody. He's not perfect, but he will do a solid job. He won't embarrass us. He won't disrespect or misuse his office. He will be taken seriously by other world leaders. Even if you don't like Biden, please try to enjoy the next 4 years. It's very likely that incompetent celebrity presidents will be elected in 2024, 2028, and 2032. Our children, and our grandchildren, will pay the price for the fact that the voters from 2008-2020 allowed celebrity status and cult leadership to become the major factors in presidential selection.

I'm totally serious about all of the above. With all of my heart, I was hoping that the 2020 results would show a strong repudiation of fake, celebrity presidents. That didn't happen. Trump continued to play his reality television role, and he almost won reelection. His very strong performance will encourage other celebrities to become presidential candidates. America still has a strong, and apparently growing, appetite for celebrity presidents.

All of the above is gut wrenching. Great leadership made America. We're in a downward spiral. The facts are the facts. Because the new trend is so cataclysmic, nobody else is talking about this. You deserve the truth. The new America will be a place of perpetual decline and escalating divisiveness. Be prepared.

[hutchhitched]

The Vintage Joshifer Series: End of Love—Chapter 17

End of Love by hutchhitched

Author’s note: Hello, all! We’re so close to the end, and it’s heating up between Josh and Jen, as well as spiraling out of control. My parents were in college when the events in this chapter occurred, and their dismay at the events was similar to those of the characters in this story.

Historical events in this chapter include the following:

Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, JFK’s younger brother and U.S. Attorney General, was assassinated in Los Angeles, California, on June 6, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the California Democratic Primary. Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian nationalist, shot Bobby as revenge for American actions and inaction in the Middle East following the Six Day War. Because he’d won the California primary, many political pundits believed he would have been the Democratic nominee for president and won the election. When he was killed, the Democratic Party failed to nominate a viable candidate, allowing the Republican Party to win the presidency in 1968 and rollback many gains made since 1961.

The EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, was founded in 1963 by JFK as a result of complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination of women in the workplace. It is also mentioned in Chapter 13.

WMAQ Channel 5 is the local NBC affiliate in Chicago. It assumed its call letters in 1964.

Chicago, Illinois, June 1968

 Josh woke to Jen’s mouth moving down his torso. Something had happened since their frantic coupling the day King was assassinated, and Jen had become much more aggressive with him in bed.

 “Good morning,” he mumbled sleepily, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she sucked him into her mouth and bit gently until he yelped at the sensation of her teeth scraping the skin of his morning wood. He cursed, but he couldn’t help but admit it felt amazing.  He gripped her hair in his fists and groaned encouragement.

 Jen sucked harder and jerked her hand up and down his shaft as her lips and tongue ran over his head and around his girth. Josh arched his back and pressed into the pillow as his hips bucked upward.

 “I’m gonna blow, Jen. Fuck, yes,” he moaned as thick ropes of fluid spurted over his abdomen. Jen watched, a satisfied smirk on her lips, as he stopped shaking from his release.

 “Good morning. I’m going to take a bath. You’ll have to wait to clean up until I’m done. It should be nice and dry by then.” She winked at him and slipped from her bedroom, her waist long blonde waves brushing just above the curve of her firm ass.

 He heard the water running in the bathtub and imagined Jen slipping into the warm wetness. He thought about her long legs covered in soap and her tits just breaking the surface of the water as she shampooed her hair. He was pondering how her fingers would fan over her flat abdomen when he was jarred from his reverie by the ring of the telephone.

 “Josh, can you grab that? It’s early, so it’s probably my mom.”

 “Sure, hon. I’ll just mosey into your kitchen with dried cum all over my stomach,” he teased and slipped a pair of boxers and a white undershirt on before hurrying to the other room and ripping the phone from the base.

 “Lawrence residence. Josh speaking,” he answered and was shocked to hear his mother on the other end of the line. She was sobbing into the phone, and her words slurred into a garbled mess. It took several minutes before he could calm her enough to understand what she was trying to tell him.

 “He’s dead, Josh! He’s gone,” his frantic mother wept into the receiver, and Josh’s heart clutched.

 “Who? Is Dad okay? Is it Connor? Mom, tell me!” he begged with his heart in his throat.

 “Bobby. Bobby’s dead.”

 Josh’s knees folded, and he sank to the floor. The phone hung loosely and worthless from the wall as the world whirled around him. He blinked a few times as his vision darkened until he could hardly see. He slumped sideways and closed his eyes as he concentrated on breathing in and out through his nose.

 “Josh?” Jen called, but he didn’t have the energy to answer. “Josh! Oh my god! What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

 “He’s gone,” Josh whispered, too in shock to say anything else.

 “What?” she asked as her eyes tore over him. “Who’s gone? Is it Jackson? Talk to me, Josh!”

 The room spun around him, and Jen’s face blurred into a murky smudge of color. A rushing sound filled his ears, and his vision darkened. He’d said and heard those words too many times in the past few years. He didn’t want to face anymore loss. It was too much. Too much for him to handle. He wasn’t that strong.

 “Josh!” Jennifer screamed as he closed his eyes and slipped into darkness.

 ****

 Jennifer howled and pulled Josh to her. His chest rose and fell gently, and his face settled into a relaxed, peaceful expression. She rocked him back and forth as she cried, but she was frozen to the floor. She couldn’t think of anything but keeping him in her arms, safe and protected from whatever he’d heard on the phone.

 It seemed like hours before he stirred, but it was likely only a few minutes. His hazel eyes blinked open, and she gasped at the pain she saw there.

 “Tell me what’s wrong,” she begged as she stroked his dark hair back from his forehead. He squeezed his eyes closed and swallowed hard. She could hear the phone beeping as it swung from the wall, but she didn’t care. He was more important than any call from her mother.

 “It was my mom,” he gasped and struggled to sit up. He choked and heaved for several moments before he blathered. “Bobby Kennedy was assassinated last night.”

 Laughter burst from her before she could stop it. What he’d said was too preposterous for her to fathom. That wasn’t possible. They’d stayed up late to watch the election returns on the news the night before, and Kennedy had narrowly won the California primary. Josh celebrated the news, convinced that the victory meant the former Attorney General would be the next Democratic candidate for President in November’s election, since Johnson had declared he wouldn’t run for re-election.

 “No, he wasn’t,” she guffawed, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. “I would have gotten called in if… Shit. I’m on vacation. Why am I on vacation?”

 “I keep thinking things can’t get any worse,” he mumbled, “but then they do. I don’t think things are going to get better, Jen. I think worse is coming, and no one’s there to stem the tide anymore. Bobby’s gone. King’s gone. I— It’s just hopeless.”

 “It’s not hopeless,” she insisted. “Not when people like you are out there fighting.”

 “But I’m not out there fighting, am I, Jen?” he retorted. “I’m playing house with you in Chicago while Jackson’s slogging through the jungle and Andre’s in New York working.”

 “I’m not asking you not to fight.”

 “No, you just asked me not to leave.”

 She shook her head so hard the towel she’d wrapped around her hair came loose and wet curls tumbled onto her shoulders to soak the top of her thin summer robe. “That’s not fair! I asked you not to go, but I’m not holding you hostage. I can’t stop you now any more than I could two years ago when you graduated. That’s why I left that night at Berkeley. I knew I couldn’t win. I knew I wouldn’t be first. If you’d stayed, you’d resent me, and I think what you’re trying to accomplish is too important to want you to stop.”

 Scared and vulnerable, she pulled her robe closed over her chest. No matter what she said, she wanted her words to carry more meaning than her naked breasts.

 “Choosing my work doesn’t mean I didn’t choose you.”

 “I don’t believe you,” she whispered and rose. Trembling, she squared her shoulders and walked back to her bedroom. Closing the door, she sat on the bed and studied her hands. She knew she was in shock, but she didn’t seem to be able to snap out of it. News of the former president’s brother’s death hurt as much as learning her own grandfather had passed last year. What was different was the political implications of losing the candidate best suited to beating the Republicans and continuing to work for change for minorities and the poor.

 She knew all of those worries were at the root of Josh’s tears and anger. They were at hers too, but so were her own personal fears that she’d lose him again. She loved him, and she didn’t want to live without him.

 Unfortunately, she was positive she couldn’t win. His beliefs ranked higher than her—especially when he wouldn’t even admit they were dating, despite them living together. If she pressed him, she guessed he’d say they were roommates and celebrating free love. She didn’t want an open relationship, but she had no idea how to convince him to make it official between them.

 “Jennifer?”

 She looked up at him with sorrowful eyes. She wiped tears from her cheeks she didn’t know she’d shed, and he entered the room to sit next to her on the bed. He didn’t speak for several minutes. Finally, he broke the silence.

 “Please don’t cry, doll.”

 “I didn’t know I was until you walked in,” she admitted.

 “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

 “I might have deserved it a little,” she teased listlessly.

 “Or you might deserve this.”

 Josh lifted her chin and pulled her lips to his. With just a breath between them, he leaned forward and kissed her so sweetly it tasted like candy. She leaned into him, and he wrapped his arms around her as his tongue traced and explored her mouth. She moaned softly and threaded her fingers through his shoulder-length hair.

 He leaned her back onto the bed and hovered over her. As her chest heaved, he tugged at the tie on her robe and brushed it open to reveal her pebbled skin. He dropped his mouth to her stomach and kissed her until she thought she’d pass out. When she whimpered, he moved upward to her breasts and sucked her right nipple into his mouth. She arched under him, but he refused to do anything other than suckle her into a rigid peak before moving to the other side.

 She concentrated on steadying her breath and the grunts he released as his mouth laved and sucked and nuzzled her. She ran her hands over his shoulders and through his hair. He moved slowly, unhurried, intentionally as he covered her body and wound her tighter.

 He bit her earlobe and hissed in her ear, “You’re so beautiful, Jennifer.”

 “Josh,” she breathed in response. “Josh, I need you.”

 “What do you need?” he teased and slid down to her waist.

 “You. I need you.”

 He nudged her legs open and blew on her inner thighs. “Your voice is trembling, sweetheart.”

 “Please…”

 The first brush of his mouth against her swollen lips forced a deep moan from her. She grasped the sheets as he guided her right leg over his shoulder and angled his head to bury his tongue inside her. She squirmed, but he held her down as he feasted on her.

 Heat built within her, and she stopped struggling. She trusted him, and there was no reason to believe he’d do anything other than make her feel amazing. It was too early to have received such horrible news, and she knew this was a way for both of them to gain comfort from the other. She needed him, and he was there. She decided to trust him and enjoy it.

 The wave built inside her, and he pulled back just as she was about to crest. When she moaned her disappointment, he returned and began again, slower and with more attention to her clit. He drove her to the edge and retreated several times before he slid his fingers inside her and sucked until she arched and came.

 It took forever. Waves of pleasure rolled through her one after the other, which gave him time to settle himself between her legs and push into her. Her walls continued to spasm as he pumped into her. He chanted her name as he filled her, hard and rigid from the length of their foreplay. He buried his face in her neck, and she tugged at his t-shirt. She wanted his skin against hers, but the thin cotton was in the way.

 “Jen, I’m so close.”

 She tightened her grip on him as his movements grew more erratic. “Let go. I’ve got you.”

 “I can’t… Jen, I can’t.”

 “You can’t what, baby?”

 He cursed and bit her shoulder as he stilled and spilled into her. He lifted his head and kissed her before curling onto his side and pulling her against him. They lay together for hours, both scared to admit things between them had to change. Neither knew what to say, so they remained silent as they drifted in and out of sleep. The summer breeze wafted through the open window and caressed their skin. It was late afternoon before Josh finally washed his chest clean.

 ****

 “If that jackass calls me sweet cheeks one more time,” Jen fumed, “I’ll—”

 “Walk out the door and never come back,” Jack guessed while he continued to type furiously.

 She groaned as she sank into her chair and placed her head in her hands. “I would, but then I’d be unemployed and broke and on the streets.”

 “The offer still stands to give you my friend’s number. You could make the move to television easily. You’ve got the looks.”

 “Thanks, old man,” she joked, “but I like it here with you.”

 “I’m not going to be here much longer, Jen. You might want to reconsider.”

 Jen snapped her head to stare at her colleague, but he continued writing. It took several minutes for her to work through her confusion to ask him for clarification.

 “I’m retiring in a few months, sweetheart. I’ve been doing this for a while, and my kids have been begging me to get out of the business and come live near them. I’ve got grandchildren to spoil, you know. Can’t work forever.”

 “But Jack!” she sputtered.

 Finally, he stopped pounding on his keyboard and turned to face her. “Jennifer Lawrence, it’s time to take the next step. Mr. Murrow isn’t ever going to stop making comments about your legs, no matter how many times you threaten him with the EEOC. Take the interview, Jen. Go report for the local affiliate. You’re so talented. You’ll move up there just as quickly as you have here, and you won’t have to deal with that buffoon anymore.”

 She sat quietly for several moments, but the idea didn’t become any less strange to her. She didn’t know how to do television. She had no experience. Her training was in newspaper. She’d have to disguise her southern accent. She’d have different hours than she did at the Tribune.

 Then again, maybe that would be a benefit. Things were strained at home. They had been since she’d gone back to work after her vacation in early June. Josh was unhappy in Chicago, but that’s where she was. He stayed for her, but she knew he wouldn’t for too much longer. It was a miracle he’d remained with her as long as he had while the world swirled around them.

  Maybe this new career move would be good for them, give her a new purpose that would make him leaving easier. Because he was going to. She’d seen it before when he was preparing to graduate from Berkeley, and he was behaving much the same way. She woke every morning expecting his side of the bed to be empty. So far it hadn’t been, but it was only a matter of time.

 “Maybe I will take that number, Jack.”

 He grinned at her and scribbled a name and series of numbers on a slip of paper and handed it to her.

 “Good luck, Jen. You won’t need it, but you deserve well-wishes anyway.”

 “Thanks, old man. I’m going to miss you.”

 “Missing people is one of life’s greatest sufferings and privileges.”

 “That it is, friend. That it is.”

 ****

 “Right there, baby. Right there,” she whimpered as she moved over Josh’s face. He gripped her hips as she rode his mouth, her long legs doubled against his shoulders and flexing every time she rocked against him.

 He grunted and sucked harder on her clit causing her to lose her rhythm and buck against his nose. He inhaled her musky scent and reached up to cup her tits and pinch her nipples until she yelped in pain.

 “Make me come, Josh,” she begged. “Please. I need… Dammit, yes!”

 He licked and sucked harder causing her to grab the headboard and grind onto his chin until tremors raked through her and she climaxed. Her mewls filled the air as his face grew wetter. He didn’t stop until she fell off him and into a heap on the bed. He reached over to kiss her as he grabbed his cock and tugged. He was so hard and ready to burst, but she was in no condition to assist.

 “Let me help,” she slurred, but he shook his head and gripped himself harder.

 “I’ll be done in a minute. It’s fine, doll.”

 Her hand closed over his, and the feel of her skin on his made his groan. Together they pumped him faster. His hips bucked upward, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Jen scooted closer and whispered dirty phrases to him that made him jerk and spasm. When she nibbled his ear, he bit his lip and ejaculated. The fluid covered their hands, and he slid his fingers against hers.

 “This is so filthy,” she grunted and wrapped her legs around his thigh.

 “I like filthy. It looks good on you.”

 “Good enough for the newest female reporter at WMAQ Channel 5 to take Chicago by storm?”

 He flipped her onto her back and nudged her legs apart. With his eyes open, he kissed her hard and circled her clit with the pad of his thumb. Her lips parted when he pulled back to watch her reaction, and he alternately pressed and circled for several minutes. He grinned when she nudged his neck and lazily licked along his jaw.

 “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he whispered as he buried his middle finger in her pussy.

 “I’m an investigative reporter, you know,” she gasped and raked her fingernails up his back. “I’ll find you if you leave me.”

 “Creepy,” he teased as he stroked her.

 “I know.” It came out as a moan, but she smiled as he continued to work her.

 “I’m not leaving,” he insisted.

 “Yes, you are.”

 “I don’t want to.”

 “I know you don’t.”

 Her eyes remained closed, and he watched as her back arched and her forehead scrunched.

 “You’re close again,” he marveled. “I’m jealous.”

 “Multiple orgasms. Best part of being a woman.”

 He bent to bite her nipple and sighed as she broke around him. Her legs clamped shut over his hand, and she pulled his hair for several seconds before relaxing her fist. He sought her mouth with his, and they kissed until they fell asleep together. Josh woke in the middle of the night when Jen got up to use the bathroom. As he lay alone in the dark, he realized she was right. He was preparing to leave. He’d been mentally packing for weeks. He craved her, but he needed more.

 This love he felt for her wasn’t free. It was restrictive and painful, and he needed some space. They’d joked several weeks earlier that 1968 was their own private Summer of Love, but Josh wondered if maybe it was the end instead.

[faithfulnews]

Voting rights for terrorists and rapists, death penalty for unborn babies up to 9 months

Boston Marathon terrorist about to place bomb behind 8-year-old child

Wow. It seems to me that the Democrats had a pretty good chance of competing against Trump in the 2020 election, with their presumed nominee, Bernie Sanders. He’s wildly popular with young people. He’s raising tons of money from rich progressives. All Bernie has to do is just not say anything crazy, and he’ll be competitive. Unfortunately, he can’t control himself.

Here’s a report from the radically-leftist Boston Herald:

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders says the right to vote should extend to those in jail — even the Boston Marathon bomber.

“If somebody commits a serious crime — sexual assault, murder — they’re going to be punished,” Sanders said in his CNN town hall talk Monday night. But, “I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people.”

The majority of convicted criminals would vote Democrat if they could, because Democrats are less strict on crime than Republicans. Democrats are always looking to allow more people who will vote Democrat to vote. They want to lower the voting age, because young people who don’t pay taxes naturally vote for free stuff. And they also want to import low-skilled immigrants and put them on a path to citizenship. Low-skilled immigrants pay less into the system than they use in education, health care, etc. They also vote Democrat.

Medicare for All

Bernie also has a long list of big spending programs, because he thinks that $22 trillion in debt and trillion dollar deficits is no big deal. But the truth is, we’re already out of money for the big social welfare programs that Democrats already passed. We certainly don’t have money for any new ones.

Far-left CBS News explains:

Social Security is on a path to become insolvent in 2035, with only enough money cover about 80 percent of its obligations.

Medicare would become insolvent even sooner, by 2026, if no changes are made to payroll taxes or how health providers are paid.

[…][M]any Democratic presidential candidates are calling for expanding Medicare benefits — even proposing “Medicare for All” — rather than addressing the program’s worsening finances.

How will Democrats pay for MORE spending when we can’t pay for the spending we already have? Tax increases won’t be enough, so they’ll have to nationalize private 401K retirement plans like other socialist nations have.

And what about Medicare for All? Well, they can just seize the money that’s being used to buy private health insurance now, and put everyone into a government-run single payer system. That’s what happens in Canada right now. People who pay taxes pay for the all the costs, but they still have to get in line behind those who don’t pay anything in taxes. The average cost (to middle-class taxpayers) is about $11,000 per year. That’s a lot more than people pay for private health insurance which delivers higher quality care. But the costs are higher for less quality, because the people who pay into the system are covering the people who don’t pay.

And remember, abortion through all nine months of pregnancy is taxpayer-funded in Canada’s single payer system. Pro-life taxpayers subsidize abortions. If you don’t like it, you can leave the country.

Infanticide

All of the Democrat presidential candidates support infanticide, according to this article from The Stream:

 On February 25, 44 Democrat senators, including all 6 declared presidential candidates, voted against the Born Alive Protection Act. Put another way, they voted for infanticide.

New candidate Pete Buttigieg is also in favor of infanticide: abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

If you’re voting for a Democrat in 2020, then you’re going to get infanticide if they win. No use complaining later that you’re pro-life if you support the killing of viable unborn children who survive botched abortions.

Raising the minimum wage

Another policy supported by many Democrats is raising federal minimum wage rates.

Let’s take a look at a study reported  in the Daily Caller:

California’s minimum wage increase has cost the state thousands of jobs worth of growth in the state’s booming restaurant industry, according to a recent study by the University of California Riverside.

California passed a bill in 2016 to bring the state’s minimum wage up to $15 an hour. For businesses with more than 25 employees, the state’s minimum wage rose to $12 in January and will hit $15 in January of 2022. Other businesses have until 2023 before the full $15-an-hour minimum takes effect.

[…]Researchers also found that the minimum wage slowed growth more in low-income areas.

[…]Researchers estimate that the minimum wage increases will cost the state roughly 30,000 jobs from 2017 to 2022.

If you force businesses to pay workers more, them employers are left with no choice but to lay off workers, or cut hours.

Minimum wage jobs are entry level jobs. They’re not meant to allow people to buy a house, have children, or travel the world on private jets. People get them in order to get something on their resumes so that they can move up to more challenging jobs that pay more. If a person doesn’t want to move up to a more challenging job that pays more, then they shouldn’t be complaining that they can’t make the same life choices as software engineers, nurses and electricians. Jobs don’t all pay the same, because some are harder than others.

If voters chose candidates based on whether their policies would actually work to prevent poverty, they would never vote for Democrats. But so many people in America don’t vote based on what results policies will achieve. They vote in order to feel something about themselves. Transferring wealth from “rich” employers to “poor” minimum wage workers feels good. So they vote for it. And when those workers are laid off, they don’t care because they’ve already stopped paying attention.

Go to the article

[hardynwa]

Edo poll: APC aspirant eyes victory after three failed attempts

A governorship aspirant of the All Progressives Congress, Major General Charles Airhiavbere (retd), on Tuesday, stated that having made spirited attempts to win Edo election on three previous occasions, his wealth of experience put him in pole position to become the next state governor. Airhiavbere, who once ran for governorship on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, also boasted that he has what it takes to collapse the structures of the PDP to further enhance his chances ahead of the September poll. The aspirant made the submission when he arrived at the APC National Secretariat to submit his Expression of Interest and nomination forms in Abuja. He said, “Just like our president, it is my turn to govern Edo State and the party needs a candidate with the capacity to face the incumbent governor, Godwin Obaseki. This 2024 is my fourth appearance in the Edo gubernatorial race. I have run three times on the platform of the APC and once on the platform of PDP. I was the candidate of the PDP in 2012 before leaving to join the APC and I can collapse the PDP structure for APC to win come September 21, 2024. “The race to Edo state 2024 is to replace Governor Obaseki who has done seven years plus and by the special grace of the Almighty God, he will hand over to me on December 12, 2024. Let me take you into the insight of what I will do differently because no state in Nigeria today can say internally generated revenue can rise without bringing development partners. We have the opportunity to make Edo State safe and peaceful using the security apparatus available to us, using internal democracy. We cannot afford to receive vigilante and put arms in the hands of untrained people. “In 2016, I was among the aspirants but Obaseki was picked. At that time, we listened to party leadership. We were told the best among us was Obaseki and that was why he was chosen. Unfortunately, he (Obaseki) took the governorship ticket in 2016 and ran away with it. He didn’t even consult us for contributions but carried on with the campaign, saying party leaders wanted him to share money. I wasn’t one of those that wanted him to share money. This year, the only thing I will do differently is to obey only the instructions from the APC headquarters in Abuja. If APC today says stop, I will stop. If they say move, I will move to make sure that we present the best candidates to win the election.” The race to choose a viable candidate via the APC primary in Edo State has started gathering momentum. Read the full article

[djrelentless]

“2014...Friend Or Foe?”

December 23, 2014 at 3:08pm

Well, another year has come and gone. And what can be said about the year that bought usThe Ice Bucket Challenge, Lumberjack Beards and The Battle of Celebrity Silicone Parts. 2014 cemented history for some and unraveled it for others. We watched the product of racism grow into an epidemic of police brutality and learned a lot more about ourselves than we wanted to know. So, let's jump right in and do a recap!

I can't think of anyone else who deserves this cover more than President Obama.

Politics is one of those subjects that we are told never to discuss at a dinner party, but this year I don't think any of us could escape this topic. In the United States, President Obamahad a roller coaster ride that I don't think any otter president has ever had to face. His uphill battle with the Republicans just got nastier as they continued to be "The Party Of No". It amazed me that their hatred for the first Black President would drive them to put in place rezoning laws to secure the elections later in the year. Republicans cunningly said "no" to many ideas just to later blame Obama for things not getting done. This hatred and racism would spill into other areas later in the year.

Here in Toronto, we started out the year with Mayor Rob Ford being defiant by not stepping down after admitting that he smoked crack on The Jimmy Kimmel Show. His arrogance would make him believe that he would win the next election. But as my grandmother used to say….."God don't like ugly (and he ain't too fond of pretty either)." Health issues would eventually take him out of the mayoral race and have his brother take his place in the running. But the good folks with common sense had the good taste of send the message to the Ford brothers that they are not welcomed in City Hall anymore. And although the gay community were really hoping that Olivia Chow would have been our next mayor, the inner core of downtown could not out voted the conservative suburbs and John Tory was voted in.

It was really interesting to watch the blogs and twitter-sphere talk about what was going to happen and what should have happened. I was surprised to see how many conservative acquaintances I had on my facebook friends list. I even had someone in my circle who is super-gay and a Ann Coultier fan. Talk about a walking contradiction…..I mean….who knew we had gay republicans in Canada? And one of my favorite things (….this is sarcasm), is watching some Canadians who only know what is sensationalized on the internet and on TV talk and post about life in the states. As if what they read or heard is the only life for Americans. Everyone has guns, everyone voted Bush in office in both elections and all Americans are stupid. That's no different than the Americans who think Canadians live in igloos and say "a-boot". I guess that's why many Canadians believe that the racial problems that happen in the states are not here in their own backyard. I often joke with my husband that I now know why Canadians get mugged and shot in The Big Apple. They go in with preconceived notions and carry their Canadian philosophies with them when traveling (like walking directly behind New Yorkers instead of giving a little breathing space while walking down the street…..definitely a good way to get shot or at least cursed out).

2014 could be described as history repeating itself. With the re-election of President Obama came more racial divide in the world. Remember….what happens over here effects over there. In his first term, the Republicans accused him of going on an Apology Tourthrough Europe. But Obama realized that in order to fix the US's standing in Europe, he had to repair relationships. Recently he began speaking about fixing things with Cuba. As an American (especially from Florida), I was surprised when I came to Canada and saw commercials for vacationing in Havana. This would never happen in the states. But with the Democrats' big loss in the Senate election this year, Obama lost any power in Congress. And try as he might to reach out to work with the Republicans……they are not having it.

The Ebola Crisis, Russia, North Korea, the Israeli-Palestine Conflict, the missing Malaysia aircraft, Healthcare Enrollment, "The Interview"……..whatever Obama said or did was not good enough or was not soon enough. But I guess the Republicans were not counting on him to remain so level-headed. Just once I wanted him to explode and show full anger for all the shit that he has had to endure as the first Black President. But he knows that he has to remain focused and stay on course. When it is all said in done after he leaves office, his legacy will out live the assholes who tried to sabotage him every step of the way. Let's just hope that Hillary Clinton really does throw her hat in the ring for the 2016 election (I wanna see the US make history again as Bill Clinton becomes the First Husband). So far, the Republicans have not presented a viable candidate.

Unfortunately for Obama, his presidency has brought up the old "Jim Crow" mentality. Just as the US took two steps forward, bias crimes and hatred slowly started to rise and knocked us four steps back. We are still recovering from the Zimmerman Verdict. Paula Deen andDuck Dynasty are still on the air (and I just got back from a trip to Florida where I was surprised by how many Redneck reality shows are in production). Chick-fil-a became the fast-food headquarters for homophobia while some gays tried to turn the situation into black people and the n-word situation nothing changed.

In July, I heard a report about a mentally challenged black man named Milton Hall being shot 46 times in Detroit. And then we watched on YouTube as Eric Garner died in a police choke hold because it was believed that he was selling loose cigarettes (known as a "lousy" on the streets) on Staten Island. Shortly after that came the news of Michael Brown being shot and left in the street in Ferguson. The  reports of 12 year old Tamir Rice being shot and killed by police in Cleveland left me stunned. Earlier in February, I wrote a blog called"Hunting Season Is Open In The U.S." which talked about the rise of hate crimes against black youth. Little did I know that this blog would become a prelude to a summer of killings by the police. And all of these shootings would open a huge debate about what is excessive force. Of course we want to support the law enforcement officers who are really out there to protect our communities, but something has to be done about the percentage of cops who are hunting down people of color while the judicial system seems to not be holding them accountable. Yes….there are bad people and bad cops. Out of all the names I mentioned above, there were no cigarettes found on Eric Garner. The rest had probable cause to be stopped…..but not killed.

And while the internet can be the perfect place to see the world and learn new things, it can also be the breeding ground for hate and misinformation. It's scary to think what and who is lurking behind the keyboards out there. Agendas to start a race war and spread propaganda is at every turn. Folks writing sensational articles and blogs to get hits to their sites (without regard for who they hurt or discredit). For every positive article or blog there are probably hundreds to counteract that message. And unfortunately, many people don't check the sources or credibility of these sites and articles and then just accept them as truth. Look before you leap, people.

With the rise of cyber-bullying, teen suicide is slowly becoming common place. Many deaths happened in 2014 (including the death of Bill Cosby's image). And although we lost quite a few celebrities and icons this year (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams, Joan Rivers, Jan Hooks, Maya Angelou, Ruby Dee, Casey Kasem, Shirley Temple) there was one particular non-celebrity death that struck me really hard. It was the suicide of 16 year old Sergio Urrego. His story really got me because he did not kill himself because of bullying by classmates. No…he killed himself because of the faculty at his Catholic School in Colombia found a photo on his cellphone of him kissing his boyfriend and began harassing them both. Forcing the boyfriend to out himself to his parents about his sexuality then forcing him out of the school. Then they went as far as not releasing Sergio's records so he could not transfer to another school. The poor child posted the lyrics and the YouTube clip of Pink Floyd's "Goodbye Cruel World" on his facebook page on August 4th and then killed himself.

This is the danger of allowing religion into politics. People kill in the name of religion. And now people are killing themselves because of religion. And with idiots like Andrew Caldwellproclaiming that he is not gay no more and dancing around with the holy spirit on YouTube, it's hard to believe that in this same year Pope Francis in the vatican declared that "homosexuals need to be welcomed…..and have gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community." But the majority of black churches are not following the Pope's words. In the communities of color, there remains homophobia (which is completely silly because there are plenty of gay people in the church). When will everyone understand that we are not free until everyone is free. It is hard to break down the years of institutionalized hatred, racism and homophobia. We must first look at ourselves and ask the question…."how would I like to be treated?"

Another topic that has risen since the summer is the appropriation of Black Culture. One of the great things about the United States is the concept of making something out of nothing. Ideas being turned into reality fuel the imagination and the economy. So, the concept of Hip Hop and Ballroom Culture being repackaged and marketing under white artists has come under fire. Since the Eric Garner choke hold, many of the black community have asked where is the outrage from folks like Miley Cyrus, Robin Thicke, Justin Timberlake, & Iggy Azalea. And it seems that since Iggy's sales have been through the roof and she has been deemed the new Elvis of Urban Music, she has been the subject of complaints. Rivals Nicki Minaj and Azealia Banks have voiced their distain for the gal from down under. Because I am leery of most things I read nowadays on the internet, I don't know what to believe about Iggy. I like her music and her flow, but is she really stealing thunder from other black artists? I mean….Kendrick Lamar seems to have moved on since the Grammy's. And it's funny that we haven't heard very much from Macklemore since all his accolades. The argument is that "everybody wants to be black to sell records", but when it comes down to actually being down for the cause of fighting for justice no one is around. Don't use our music and culture for record sells and then turn your back on us when we need your voices as much as ever. And don't think because you adopt black children that it gives you card blanche to say the word "nigger"….I'm talking to you Madonna. Even though you are about to drop your new album, I haven't forgotten your Instagram comment on your son, Rocco back in January.

And the continuation of Ballroom Culture appropriation continues as many gay white men love to ki-ki and duck walk to RuPaul's "Sissy That Walk" (which is another kind of appropriation since Ru was never a Ballroom kid either). But the funny thing is watching"Paris Is Burning" and seeing all the appropriation of the 80s rich Republican Culture as they aspire to be all the things they watched on "Dynasty". And today's Kardashians don't help either. Getting rich off of poor people's lust for power and fame. So, who's wrong and who's right. Should we take this opportunity to adapt and accept each other's culture instead of pitting black women against white gay men? I mean….we can all be "Gone With The Wind Fabulous" if that's what we aspire to be. We are all guilty of admiring something about another race or culture. Some imitate it and others try to destroy it to make themselves look superior. Everyone wants to point the finger, but no one wants to look in the mirror.

So, as this year comes to a close I am grateful for a few things. One of the things I am most proud of for 2014 is that I received the 2013-2014 "Friends Of The Foundation Award"from the Toronto Peoples With AIDS Foundation for my fundraisers, POZ-TO andSUNDAY NIGHT FEVER. My husband and I have worked really hard to create a space for the HIV+ Community and raising awareness. My "HIV/AIDS IS EVERYONE'S BUSINESS" Campaign has brought a lot of people together to raise their voices in the fight. And we celebrated our second year anniversary of the POZ-TO event on World AIDS Day(December 1st). Another is the sense of community that rallied together to help me after my bicycle accident in October that left me with a fractured cheekbone and jaw accompanied with a chipped tooth. It was amazing to see how many people cared and came out to perform, donate and support me in my time of need. I am also grateful for reconnecting with my family. I know too many gay people who do not have the support of their biological family (and there is nothing wrong with our adopted family, but there is something really special about being connected to those who are in our blood line). And lastly, I am forever grateful for my loving husband, John Richard Allan. I have never met anyone who has understood me or supported me as much as this man. I am truly blessed.

I don't know what 2015 will hold. But I do know that our conversations and debates about justice and racism will probably be more intense until we change some laws and outlooks in the United States. I know that Bill Cosby needs to address all of the rape accusations against him. It's tough watching the death of another black man. I know that not all cops are bad. I know that not all black youth are bad. I know that shooting police officers just because they are cops is not going to help the solution of fixing what is wrong with the relationship between communities of color and the law enforcement. I know that there are still some good people out there who are working to make their immediate worlds better (and honestly….that's all we can do on a personal level). I know that if you can't see passed the bubble you live in, you are not gonna go very far in life. And as for me….I am looking forward to seeing what else I can do to make my immediate world a better place.