#margin lever

[goshyesvintageads]

Royal McBee Corp, 1959

[malcolmschmitz]

The Insider and Outsider Detectives

So there's a lot of discourse about detectives floating around, ever since 2020 shifted a lot of people's Views on the police. Everyone likes a good mystery story, but no one seems to know what to make of a detective protagonist- especially if they're a cop. And everyone who cares about this kind of thing likes to argue over whether detective stories hold up the existing order or subvert it. Are they inherently copaganda? Are they subversive commentary on the uselessness of the police?

I think they can be both. And I think there's a framework we can use to look at individual detectives, and their stories, that illuminates the space between "a show like LAPD straight-up exists to make the cops look good" and "Boy Detective is a gender to me, actually".

So. You can sort most detectives in fiction into two boxes, based on their role in society: the Insider Detective and the Outsider Detective.

The Insider Detective is a part of the society they're investigating in, and has access to at least some of the levers of power in that society. They can throw money at their problems, or call in reinforcements, and if they contact the authorities, those authorities will take them seriously. Even the people they're investigating usually treat them with respect. They're a nice normal person in a nice normal world, thank you very much; they're not particularly eccentric. You could describe them as "sensible". And crime is a threat to that normal world. It's an intrusion that they have to fight off. An Insider Detective solving a crime is restoring the way things ought to be.

Some clear-cut examples of Insider Detectives are the Hardy Boys (and their father Fenton), Soichiro "Light's Dad" Yagami, or Father Brown. Many police procedural detectives are Insider Detectives, though not all.

The Outsider Detective, in contrast, is not a part of the society they're investigating in. They're often a marginalized person- they're neurodivergent, or elderly, or foreign, or a woman in a historical setting, or a child. They don't have access to any of the levers of power in their world- the authorities may not believe them (and might harass them), the people they're investigating think they're a joke (and can often wave them off), and they're unlikely to have access to things like "a forensics lab". The Outsider Detective is not respectable, and not welcome here- and yet they persist and solve the crime anyway. A lot of the time, when an Outsider Detective solves a crime, it's less "restoring the world to its rightful state" and more "exposing the rot in the normal world, and forcing it to change."

Some clear-cut examples of Outsider Detectives are Dirk Gently, Philip Marlowe, Sammy Keyes, or Mello from Death Note.

Now, here's the catch: these aren't immutable categories, and they are almost never clear-cut. The same detective can be an Insider Detective in one setting and an Outsider Detective in another. A good writer will know this, and will balance the two to say something about power and society.

Tumblr's second-favourite detective Benoit Blanc is a great example of this. Theoretically, Mr. Blanc should be an Insider Detective- he's a world-famous detective, he collaborates with the police, he's odd but respectable. But because of the circumstances he's in- investigating the ultra-rich, who live in their own horrid little bubbles- he comes off as the Outsider Detective, exposing the rot and helping everyone get what they deserve. And that's deliberate. There is no world where a nice, slightly eccentric, mildly fruity, fairly privileged guy like Benoit Blanc should be an outsider. But the turbo-rich live in such an insular world, full of so much contempt for anyone who isn't Them, that even Benoit Blanc gets left out in the cold. It's a scathing political statement, if you think about it.

But even a writer who isn't trying to Say Something About The World will still often veer between making their detective an Insider Detective and an Outsider Detective, because you can tell different kinds of stories within those frameworks. Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote is a really good example of this-- she's a respectable older lady, whose runaway success as a mystery novelist gives her access to some social cachet. Key word: some.

Within her hometown of Cabot Cove, Fletcher is an Insider Detective. She's good friends with the local sheriff, she's incredibly familiar with the town's social dynamics, she can call in a favour from basically anyone... but she's still a little old lady. The second she leaves town, she might run into someone who likes her books... but she's just as likely to run into a police officer who thinks she's crazy or a perp who thinks she's an easy target. She has the incredibly tenuous social power that belongs to a little old lady that everyone likes- and when that's gone, she's incredibly vulnerable.

This is also why a lot of Sherlock Holmes adaptations tend to be so... divisive. Holmes is all things to all people, and depending on which stories you choose to focus on, you can get a very different detective. If you focus on the stories where Holmes collaborates with the police, on the stories with that very special kind of Victorian racism, or the stories where Holmes is fighting Moriarty, you've got an Insider Detective. If you focus on the stories where Holmes is consulting for a Nice Young Lady, on the stories where Holmes' neurodivergence is most prominent, or on his addictions, you've got an Outsider Detective.

Finally, a lot of buddy detective stories have an Insider Detective and an Outsider Detective sharing the spotlight. Think Scully and Mulder, or Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde. This lets the writer play with both pieces of the thematic puzzle at the same time, without sacrificing the consistency of their detective's character.

Back to my original point: if you like detective fiction, you probably like one kind of story better than the other. I know I personally really prefer Outsider Detective Stories to Insider Detective Stories- and while I can enjoy a good Insider Detective (I'd argue that Brother Cadfael, my beloved, is one most of the time), I seek out detectives who don't quite fit into the world they live in more often than not.

And if that's the vibe you're looking for... you're not going to run into a lot of police stories. It's absolutely possible to make a story where a cop (or, even better, an FBI agent) is an Outsider Detective-- Nick Angel from Hot Fuzz was originally going to be one of my 'clear-cut examples' until I remembered that he is, in fact, legally a cop! But a cop who's an Outsider Detective is going to be spending a lot of time butting heads with local law enforcement, to the point where he doesn't particularly feel like one. He's probably going to get fired at some point, and even if his badge gets reinstated, he's going to struggle with his place in the world. And a lot of Outsider Detective stories where the detective is a cop or an FBI agent are intensely political, and not in a conservative way- they have Things To Say about small towns, clannishness, and the injustice that can happen when a Pillar Of The Community does something wrong and everyone looks the other way. (Think Twin Peaks or The Wicker Man.)

Does this mean Insider Detective Stories are Bad Copaganda and Outsider Detective Stories are Good Revolutionary Stories? No. If you take one thing away from this post, please make it that these categories are morally neutral. There are Outsider Detective stories about cops who are Outsiders because they really, really want an excuse to shoot people. There are Insider Detective stories about little old people who are trying to keep misapplied justice from hurting the kids in their community. Neither of these types of stories are good or bad on their own. They're different kinds of storytelling framework and they serve different purposes.

But, if you find yourself really gravitating to certain kinds of mysteries and really put off by other kinds, and you're trying to express why, this might be a framework that's useful for you. If your gender is Boy Detective, but you absolutely loathe cop stories? This might be why.

(PS: @anim-ttrpgs was posting about their game Eureka again, and that got me to make this post- thank them if you're happy to finally see it. Eureka is designed as an Outsider Detective simulator, and so the rules actively forbid you from playing as a cop- they're trying to make it so that you have limited resources and have to rely on your own competence. It's a fantastic looking game and I can't recommend it enough.)

(PPS: I'm probably going to come back to this once I finish Psycho-Pass with my partner, because they said I'd probably have Thoughts.)

(PPPS: Encyclopedia Brown is an Insider Detective, and that's why no one likes him. This is my most controversial detective take.)

[reasonsforhope]

"For the first time in almost 60 years, a state has formally overturned a so-called “right to work” law, clearing the way for workers to organize new union locals, collectively bargain, and make their voices heard at election time.

This week, Michigan finalized the process of eliminating a decade-old “right to work” law, which began with the shift in control of the state legislature from anti-union Republicans to pro-union Democrats following the 2022 election. “This moment has been decades in the making,” declared Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber. “By standing up and taking their power back, at the ballot box and in the workplace, workers have made it clear Michigan is and always will be the beating heart of the modern American labor movement.”

[Note: The article doesn't actually explain it, so anyway, "right to work" laws are powerful and deceptively named pieces of anti-union legislation. What right to work laws do is ban "union shops," or companies where every worker that benefits from a union is required to pay dues to the union. Right-to-work laws really undermine the leverage and especially the funding of unions, by letting non-union members receive most of the benefits of a union without helping sustain them. Sources: x, x, x, x]

In addition to formally scrapping the anti-labor law on Tuesday [February 13, 2024], Michigan also restored prevailing-wage protections for construction workers, expanded collective bargaining rights for public school employees, and restored organizing rights for graduate student research assistants at the state’s public colleges and universities. But even amid all of these wins for labor, it was the overturning of the “right to work” law that caught the attention of unions nationwide...

Now, the tide has begun to turn—beginning in a state with a rich labor history. And that’s got the attention of union activists and working-class people nationwide...

At a time when the labor movement is showing renewed vigor—and notching a string of high-profile victories, including last year’s successful strike by the United Auto Workers union against the Big Three carmakers, the historic UPS contract victory by the Teamsters, the SAG-AFTRA strike win in a struggle over abuses of AI technology in particular and the future of work in general, and the explosion of grassroots union organizing at workplaces across the country—the overturning of Michigan’s “right to work” law and the implementation of a sweeping pro-union agenda provides tangible evidence of how much has changed in recent years for workers and their unions...

By the mid-2010s, 27 states had “right to work” laws on the books.

But then, as a new generation of workers embraced “Fight for 15” organizing to raise wages, and campaigns to sign up workers at Starbucks and Amazon began to take off, the corporate-sponsored crusade to enact “right to work” measures stalled. New Hampshire’s legislature blocked a proposed “right to work” law in 2017 (and again in 2021), despite the fact that the measure was promoted by Republican Governor Chris Sununu. And in 2018, Missouri voters rejected a “right to work” referendum by a 67-33 margin.

Preventing anti-union legislation from being enacted and implemented is one thing, however. Actually overturning an existing law is something else altogether.

But that’s what happened in Michigan after 2022 voting saw the reelection of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a labor ally, and—thanks to the overturning of gerrymandered legislative district maps that had favored the GOP—the election of Democratic majorities in the state House and state Senate. For the first time in four decades, the Democrats controlled all the major levers of power in Michigan, and they used them to implement a sweeping pro-labor agenda. That was a significant shift for Michigan, to be sure. But it was also an indication of what could be done in other states across the Great Lakes region, and nationwide.

“Michigan Democrats took full control of the state government for the first time in 40 years. They used that power to repeal the state’s ‘right to work’ law,” explained a delighted former US secretary of labor Robert Reich, who added, “This is why we have to show up for our state and local elections.”"

-via The Nation, February 16, 2024

[pygmi-says-hi]

writing tips - weapons! (the bladed ones)

weapons are like stupid people; they're everywhere. especially in writing!

bad joke mb guys.

Welllllll for those of you sadistic nerds who like all things sharp, shiny and dangerous, here you are!

Whether or not your character is an assassin or a casual hunter, proper knowledge and use of weapons is important knowledge for a writer! especially if your editor won't get off your ass and you need to dispose of them find a new perspective.

Now, the thing about weapons is that they can be used for many things, but have one 'correct use'. such as - a knife can be used as a nail file, scalpel, scissors, razor and a fork, but it's really only supposed to be for cutting. or stabbing.

here are guides to blades and stabbies alike.

Scythes

Scythes were originally designed for reaping grain. They are a crescent shaped thingamabob with one sharp edge and one blunter edge. The sharp is on the inside of the crescent. You might see them carried by reapers in folklore, as in the idea of 'reaping/sowing souls'.

Good uses: slicing, cleaving, swiping, one-hit kills

bad uses: stabbing, blunt force, combative fighting. the blade is curved and won't make proper contact with the flesh to really jam in there. it'll just be awkward and messy.

Rapiers (NOT THE SAME AS BROADSWORDS!) i included pics dw

this bad boy.

Double edged, very sharp, thin blade.

good for: combat, thrusting/stabbing

bad for: impact hits, leverage (as in bracing a door or using as a lever), and a defensive weapon.

Swords like broadswords

Shorter blades than rapiers, with a thicker steel and a fatter handle. Can be double or single edged - double edged are good for stabbing, single are not.

Good for: fighting, stabbing, slicing, decapitating, impalement, impact

Bad for: melee

tips on swords: swords are really fucking heavy. Like idk if you have ever held an honest-to-god sword (not the amazon ones) but they weigh so much. If your character has an injured arm, they are gonna be really slow. the fighting is gonna be sloppy af.

also, the butt of swords are fantastic for blunt force trauma!!

Garrotes

garrotes are thin, sharp wires used to strangle people. can honestly be made out of anything rope-like but are most effective when wire or coarse rope.

Good for: strangulation

Bad for: everything else. except as a shoelace idk

Pretty narrowly useful, good for close-up stuff but only work if you have good bodily leverage over the opponent. small margin of error with these.

I will make a part two. bye for now!

[centrally-unplanned]

The Swing Won't Save You

The "mainstream" account of the election results is one I generally endorse. Elections are thermostatic in the sense that they bounce around an equilibrium - these days the incumbent has a disadvantage, being blamed for the problems but not credited for the successes. Democrats lost because of things like the 2021-2023 inflation spike, or the immigration surge, and the next administration will be blamed for whatever problems the cycle of history throws upon us on top of the consequences of their own actions. That is just How It Be, and it isn't something internal reform can change.

This account is probably true, but this does not lead to some of the conclusions one is hoping it will. I see many taking this as a sort of dismal c'est la vie, assuming that you can just ride it out and win next time, then do good when you do. That therefore there really isn't any need to change all that much in the Dem party structure.

The miss here is that there are fundamental inequalities in the two parties. We just went through, quite handily, the most progressive democratic administration in decades. One that was maximally committed to the idea of "FDR reborn". And it did some good stuff! But I don't really think it lived up to the name, not even close. The democratic "win" - which occurred at the peak of the Covid Crisis in an era of nigh-unprecedented discontent against an incumbent president who was deeply unpopular - delivered a razor thin margin in the House and a literal tiebreaker Senate, itself only after a series of special elections.

The Biden administration spent its political capital on macroeconomic stabilization, one authentic Dem priority in the IRA bill, and then otherwise spent much of its time on a series of rearguard actions and failed attempts to appease coalition partners like unions (who broke away from Dems in record numbers in 2024). Bad policy ideas like student debt relief were themselves undone by the courts. They had four years to prosecute Trump for a blatantly obvious mountain of crimes, and could not get a single one of them across the finish line. And meanwhile, due to awful polling numbers, they felt forced to pursue a number of policies they didn't even really agree with to stave off future defeat. Which they, of course, did somewhat badly, for many reasons but "not really believing in them" is certainly a factor.

Meanwhile surveying the Republican Party's incoming administration, I of course cannot say what they will do with their probable quadfecta, so this is speculative. But through the dice of death they handily control the courts. More importantly, they play the dice to control the courts - we already have discourse on getting the two oldest Republican jurors in the SC to retire. Republican plans include debates around say abolishing the NLRB as unconstitutional, or mass scale deportations, and more you have certainly heard of. They will not do all of them, of course not. But "winning a court case to dismantle a regulatory capacity" is far, far easier than passing a congressional bill to reinstate it. You are not "un-deporting" anybody. The entire Republican agenda is structurally easier to pursue - tearing down is just easier than building up.

And meanwhile, the levers of power are themselves biased. The Supreme Court, of course, but more importantly the Senate, which has an awful map for the Dems. Even when you give Dems their best case scenarios where they win every competitive upcoming election, you are talking 52-48 seats up through ~2032. Meanwhile, the Republican ceiling is 60-40, and is not likely to dip out of the majority.

No one can predict the future of course - I just don't think this scenario and reality is getting the proper attention. A "swing" model where Dems win in 2028 at the same margins they won in say 2020, and then it swings back and so on, is a defeat for Democrats. Republicans will likely achieve X% of their agenda over the next two years, solidify court control, and then Dems will achieve X/2% or worse and otherwise play defense on their turn. It almost certainly isn't the apocalypse, it most likely is not the end of democracy - if you don't wanna care about politics, you don't have to, go live your life. But if you are trying to win at politics, if that is your goal - which for a political party it should be - this just ain't it.

The debate I see is over whether or not this election should be a "wake-up call" for Dems. Which is the wrong question, to me - the Biden administration should be a wake up call for Dems. Even if Harris squeaked out a win, it is a defeat to the party that they found themselves running a decaying man with sub-40 approval ratings for President, or found themselves taking a former senator in the top 1% of the leftwing voting record and running her as a centrist. It should be shameful that they took literally years to act on a "border crisis" that once they did act they found themselves perfectly capable of addressing, not because they authentically believed in increasing immigration and wanted to spend capital on that agenda (which they did not do), but because they were scared of the blowback that happened anyway. It is beyond the pale that Trump is not in jail because they think "politicizing the judicial branch" is somehow not their literal jobs as political actors. It is embarrassing that solidly blue Democratic cities are hemorrhaging population to purple and red states because the Democratic party is failing to govern them.

And I know, I am in the grand, august, tiresome tradition of using an election to repeat the same shit I always say. I have been on this beat since at least 2019. But it being tiresome doesn't mean it's wrong. It might not be right! Maybe Republicans will truly collapse into squabbling infighting and get nothing much done beyond tax cuts, their truest love. I don't know. But I think the odds matrix here is pretty ruthless - the opportunities to be a better party barely have downsides. They implement bad policy half the time even when they win! There is a fundamental disconnect between "what do we want to achieve as a party" and "how are we going to achieve that", a strategy void that infighting, paralysis, and special interest spoils-grabbing fills.

I am less confident on the solution for all this - at minimum we don't even have all the post-election data, that will take time. But the problem such solutions should be solving is that the Dems have been losing for 8 years. "Thermostatic swing in 2028" is not going to change that.

[evillinuxuser]

Dear American leftist.

So you want to make the world better. Please here me out.

You recognize that your parties are ultimately just capitalist racists/sexists/lgbt-phobes and capitalist collaborators/copagandists/war criminals. You want to tear this system to the ground (understandably), just have a revolution and build a new one, a democratic-socialist utopia.

That's not gonna happen yet.

Most Americans want to make the world better. But they will not agree with you on the means or even the end goal.

And you *can't have a revolution* without widespread support (or at least most people not being outright hostile to your end goal - the dirty word socialism). Your current representative system is going to remain for some time still. Your president will have power and they will have the largest and most dangerous power over minorities and marginalized people.

It is important who gets to wield this power.

It is important who gets to appoint the next Supreme Court justices. Even if Democrats don't really care about abortion rights and are just using it as a talking point - their appontees consistently rule in favor of women. This applies equally to race and LGBT issues, and to the legislative and executive branches.

On Palestine and lesser evils

I feel like the most important or one of the most important reasons for leftists who do not vote is the situation in Gaza and independence for Palestine and the lack of action on part of the Dems.

I will not actually talk policy here because even if you think both will do equally bad things for Palestine, you just cannot reason that this means both parties are equal or equally bad. Let me draw you a table (tumblr doesn't have tables?):

How the fuck is there no lesser evil here?

If you do not vote for Dems for the sake of your conscience, you are either a coward who is too immature to make hard decisions or you plain *do not care* for LGBT people, women, PoC, or immigrants.

(Footnote: Dems wont solve your existing racism problems. But people will suffer due to government inaction rather than government WANTING them to suffer and actively using its resources to create more suffering)

You're the guy in the trolley problem NOT pulling the lever to save four lives. Sure, it would be PREFERRABLE if there were no PEOPLE TIED TO THE TRACKS. But they are right now and the state of being tied to a track is called marginalization.

Voting third party does not help.

Your system is rigged against you to allow only two parties.

See this video for explanation.

By not voting, or voting third party, you are saving no one (except your own conscience, selfishly). Vote and then do some more actually useful stuff.

How the fuck does voting impact your ability to organize politically in other ways? Do you think low voter turnout will somehow convince both Reps and Dems that actually, they're both illegitimate and willing to give way to a new system now? Obviously not?!

So you want to make the world better. This is not what US elections are for. They are for slowing down the world getting worse. Thanks for reading all of that. Sincerely, and in a deep worry tumblr user evillinuxuser (Not an American)

[thydungeongal]

what are your thoughts on Pathfinder?

Not exactly a fan of 1e. It felt like it improved marginally on 3e's design in places while doubling down on some of the worst design ideas that popped up during D&D 3e's run and also has some of the worst proliferation of excessive variants of classes to the point it ends up diluting the point of classes.

2e I like though. Classes have distinct identities, character creation is a nice minigame with lots of levers to pull, it is systemic in all the right ways without being too complex. Hell yeah!

[sigmaleph]

Standard trolley problem set up, five people down one track, one person in the other, you can push a lever to divert the trolley down the one-person track. But, also, since runaway trolleys are such a recurring problem, you finally convinced railway management to install an emergency button that will safely get the trolley to stop. However, because of space issues, the button and the lever are quite far apart. You are currently in front of the lever. You can run towards the button, but you're not sure you'll make it in time before the trolley hits the five people. You can take a split second to push the lever now, which will mean you're marginally less likely to reach the button in time (but only by a tiny amount) or you can rush towards the button immediately without pushing the lever

[thatstormygeek]

The casual cruelty with which Columbia administrators rushed to do the bidding of their reactionary masters in Congress provides a quick lesson in who actually is the elite, and who is not. The students at the fancy college, it turns out, do not in fact run the fancy college. The university doesn’t treat them as bosses, and barely even as stakeholders. Instead, it treats them as subjects to be disciplined—and in disciplining them, it has a wide range of tools. Students are a kind of indentured employee; they are dependent on the university for housing, for health insurance, for the next steps in their career and life plans. If the university decides they are not sufficiently docile, it is trivially easy for the university to destroy their lives. Everyone pretty much knows that young people have few resources and few levers of influence. We’re all aware that even supposedly rich kids don’t actually have control of their parent’s bank accounts and can be cut loose with nothing on a whim. We all know that young people have few connections and little influence compared to Congresspeople, administrators, and angry donors. And it is because people know that college students have little power that they become enraged when college students attempt to organize or demand some say in institutional or (god forbid) national policies.

Young people are “elites” not because they actually have power, but because the spectacle of them asserting autonomy in any way is at odds with the way things are supposed to be. They are pretentious for the same reason that women or LGBT people or Black people are considered pretentious elites when they contradict their supposed betters. When the right people have power; that’s natural; when the wrong people, marginalized people, have power—that’s an unbearable imposition. It's easy to make light of college student activism, and to insinuate that people attending a swanky university can’t really have anything to protest about. But young people engage in activism for the same reason other marginalized people engage in activism; they have firsthand experience of inequality and injustice, and because they are treated unequally, they don’t have a lot of other ways to demand accountability or change. The vitriol directed at young people is not because young people are powerful; it’s because they aren’t, and so their assertions of autonomy are seen as a threat to established hierarchies.

[queersatanic]

The issue is not that the United States of America needs a "better president"; the issue is that the conservative project for more than 40 years has made it such that anybody conservatives elect will achieve roughly the same policy goals regardless.

Despite the emotional reaction, no presidential election loss is actually especially damaging to conservatives because they have captured the federal courts, the state legislatures and governorships, gerrymandered the districts, and created dual power structures outside of government including media, mutual aid, and entertainment e.g. there is absolutely no leftist equivalent to the suburban evangelical church in terms of organizing. All of this is in addition to their power and class solidarity as capitalists backed up by ideologically reactionary police forces, an all-volunteer military, and right-wing militias heavily overlapping the other two.

Donald Trump has more power as president than Joe Biden because any politician has more power to do conservative things when so many levers of power are already controlled by conservatives.

Conservativism requires doing all of this because right-wing ideas are extraordinarily unpopular, and the right is willing to exercise power to make it so that popular will is irrelevant. That's the whole point of what they do everywhere.

Imagine a reverse world where ideologically New Deal Democrats routinely lost the popular vote for presidency but still regularly won the elections, cities had extra the representation compared to rural populations and kept throwing likely Republican voters off the ballot, and the Supreme Court stacked with leftists ruled something like landlording was illegal, union membership was mandatory, or healthcare was a guaranteed right. It's inconceivable that conservatives would go along with it or keep telling people, "This is why it's more important than ever to VOTE."

One last non-hypothetical example: Richard Nixon didn't sign the EPA into law because the drunken bigot had a soft spot in his heart for the environment. He did it because the law came across his desk with unanimous support from the Senate and 95 percent support from the House, and both of those only supported it in those margins because people demanded something be done.

Nixon was horrible, and he had plenty of agency to act terribly within his sphere of power, but he was made to do something he didn't want to do because of the tireless work of many, many people over decades, and very little of that work was in the field of electoralism.

[midnightmindcave]

More about last night’s debate… There was a bizarre moment during the ABC post-debate breakdown where the panel had JD Vance on briefly. The man covered for Trump’s “I have a concept of a plan!” fumble (when he was asked if, after nine years, he finally had a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act and he obviously does not) by saying that all Harris and Walz have are plans and you can’t “feed people on plans” and excuse me. America has famously done so several times in the past. The New Deal started out as… a plan. That’s what plans do. Plans are where we start to fix things.

That is absolutely what plans are for.

Trump has no plans for anything. He thinks he can improvise foreign and domestic policy between rounds of golf. Or worse, he has plans that will be so unpopular (read: dangerous) that he hasn’t even discussed them with his own running mate.

We can not allow him to touch the levers of power ever again.

This race is going to be close. Yes, Harris got under his skin and revealed him to be a soggy, flustered little man, but there are enough folks out there who still mistake bluster and anger for strength and toughness and will vote for this man even if he absolutely pisses the bed on the campaign trail.

We have to turn out. Even if you live in a deep red state. You can make a red-blue presidential margin so tight that they sweat. You can at the very least vote blue in local elections and start to turn the tide. Every last person is going to matter this year.

Make your plan.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alex Bollinger at LGBTQ Nation:

A poll conducted in the 48 hours that followed Election Day earlier this month found that voters who were undecided during the race before making up their minds in the final weeks of the campaign voted for Donald Trump by a 52-38 margin. And the survey points to the importance of trans rights issues in these voters’ decision-making. Of the swing voters who voted for Trump, 83% said that they believe Kamala Harris supported “using taxpayer dollars to pay for transgender surgeries for undocumented immigrants in prison,” according to the survey conducted by Blueprint. This is not a position that she campaigned on and is, in fact, a description of rights already accorded to people in federal custody under the Eighth Amendment, rights that were in place during Trump’s first term.

Among swing voters who voted for Harris, only 40% believed that Harris supported that policy. A large majority – 77% – of swing voters who voted for Trump believed that Harris supported “allowing children under 18 to transition genders without informing their parents,” which is never something Harris said she supported. Only 29% of swing voters who voted for Harris believed the same thing. Other Republican lies were also believed by large swathes of swing voters who voted for Trump. 82% believed that Harris wanted to ban gas-powered vehicles by the year 2035, which is not true, and 76% believed that Harris wanted to allow abortion up until the day of birth, which is also not true. 67% believe that Harris wanted to give Black people reparations for slavery, 74% said they believed Harris would ban fracking (something she faced criticism for explicitly opposing), and 73% said that she would force everyone onto a single-payer health care system.

According to a post-election poll from Blueprint, among swing voters that picked Donald Trump, 83% cited trans issues as the reason they pulled the lever for him.

[mariacallous]

Immigration and economics loom large on the campaign trail and in the minds of voters, but America’s foreign entanglements could well decide the election.

The Democratic Party is desperately trying to keep debate about the conduct of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon contained to an intramural row over policy, with marginal electoral impact. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s supporters are engaged in a concerted effort to exploit divisions within the Republican Party to defeat former President Donald Trump.

It’s unclear if either will succeed. But as a result, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are having outsize impact on key blocs of voters in several swing states, according to voters and analysts interviewed by Rolling Stone.

While both the left and the right are divided over various aspects of foreign policy, the most notable gap between majority public opinion and a candidate’s position is with Trump and his antipathy toward Ukraine.

Despite the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine, Trump inexplicably said in a podcast released last week that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “should never have let that war start. That war is a loser.”

Such views may cost him the election against Vice President Kamala Harris.

“This is the most defining and potentially divisive political issue in the most consequential election in modern times,” says Paul Rieckhoff, a political activist who served in Iraq as a U.S. Army infantry officer, who describes himself as an independent. “I don’t know if there is a single issue where [Trump and Harris] are more clearly different than Ukraine.”

While statistical models that attempt to predict voter behavior have, perhaps, proven as close to pure science as ornithomancy or astrology, it is clear that this election — like all others for decades — will be decided in a handful of swing states, likely by the narrowest of margins.

In some of those states, voters who in the pre-Trump era formed the moderate Republican center are now abandoning their party’s candidate — and they are doing so over Ukraine.

“Ninety percent of it is because of his ridiculous foreign policy,” says John Feltz, a 58-year-old software engineer in Michigan. Feltz says he is a Republican who refuses to vote for Trump. “He has no discernible principle that I can see, and that’s what the Republican party used to have: principles.”

The vice president’s campaign is pouring resources into attracting voters like Feltz, particularly in Pennsylvania. Last week, Harris began a tour of the battleground state aimed at disaffected Republican voters. She’s particularly hoping to attract backers of former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, whose long-shot bid to secure the GOP nomination showcased her hawkish foreign policy views.

During the only presidential debate between Harris and Trump, held in Philadelphia in September, the vice president took aim at a bellwether group particularly motivated by the war in Ukraine: Polish-Americans.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland,” Harris told Trump. “And why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish-Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up, for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship — with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?”

Democrats view Ukraine as an effective lever to move swing-state voters as the issue hits a nerve with many moderate Republicans. Trump’s stance on the war finds resistance even in the deep red South.

Alan Nummy, a 57-year-old EMT from Elmore County, Alabama, says he voted Republican all his life, including for Trump in 2016 and 2020 “with reservations.” This year, Nummy says he “can’t hold his nose any longer,” and will write in “Nikki Haley” in November because of Trump’s lack of commitment on helping Ukraine and “kicking Russia’s butt.”

“I’m probably 90 percent in line with the policies of his administration, maybe even higher than that,” the Biloxi native assures Rolling Stone. “But I can’t vote for him now because he will not commit to assisting a nation in destroying one of the two largest political enemies of the U.S. — China’s number one, Russia’s number two.”

Ukraine is an obvious vector of attack, because it is an issue where Trump is at odds with the general electorate.

More than 62 percent of Americans say their sympathies lie with Ukraine — including 76 percent of Democrats, but also 58 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of independents, according to research by the University of Maryland.

According to the same study, the number of Americans comfortable supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes” has been increasing — from 38 percent in March 2023 to 48 percent in August. A separate study by the University of Chicago and The Associated Press conducted in mid-September shows that people who think the U.S. is providing “too much” support to Ukraine has dropped from 52 percent last year, to 34 percent this year — 60 percent think the aid is “too little” or “the right amount.”

Contrast this with Israel’s response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and subsequent war in Gaza, where Americans are far more divided. According to the University of Chicago poll, when asked which party they most sympathized with, 25 percent said Israel and 15 percent said the Palestinians — 31 percent are sympathetic to “both equally,” while 26 percent to “neither.”

Further data from the Institute for Global Affairs, a research nonprofit attached to the risk consultancy firm Eurasia Group, indicates regardless of political affiliation, 22 percent of Americans believe the U.S. should end military support for Israel, while 23 percent think it should support Israel unconditionally. The rest of Americans want to see continued military support, but with conditions attached: 34 percent with a cease-fire, and 21 percent dependent on humanitarian aid access.

This lack of consensus on Israel-Palestine is why it has been easy for Harris to simply dodge tough questions about U.S. policy toward the conflict. Her opponent’s other faults — specifically his racism and anti-Muslim bigotry — help explain why it is difficult for motivated Democrats who support Palestine to categorically reject their party’s nominee: They want a shift in policy, not a Trump victory.

“We’re asking for her to commit to enforcing our laws, our international laws on friend and foe alike, which is what we do to Ukraine, which is what we do to everybody else,” Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American who serves on Georgia’s state legislature, told NPR on the outskirts of the DNC in Chicago in August. “And that continues to be, and has been, the ask all the time.”

Still, rifts are growing over the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Arab-Americans, who make up an influential voting bloc in the swing state of Michigan that has traditionally supported Democrats, are now evenly divided on their preferred candidate, according to data from the Arab American Institute.

“In our thirty years of polling Arab-American voters, we have not witnessed anything like the role that the war on Gaza is having on voter behavior,” James Zogby, president of the organization, wrote. “The year-long unfolding genocide in Gaza has impacted every component sub-group within the community.”

History suggests voters motivated by Gaza may find little daylight between the two candidates after the election. Trump — who in 2017 recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — is fond of claiming, “I did more for Israel than anybody,” and has shown little sympathy toward the Palestinian cause. But while the Biden administration — and by extension the Harris campaign  — has at times quietly leaked criticism of Israel’s actions, it has displayed little interest in going to the mat with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over humanitarian aid access or withholding military assistance.

Unlike Gaza, where the two parties differ mostly in how they talk about supporting Israel, there is a deep divergence on Ukraine policy — and that extends to within the Republican Party between MAGA loyalists and GOP hawks.

While most Republicans supported Ukraine at the beginning of the war, as the presidential campaign accelerated so too did discontent with U.S. policy. That’s evident in research showing half of Republicans now think Washington is supplying “too much” aid to Ukraine.

That split has forced GOP politicians to voice mealy-mouthed reservations about aid, primarily focusing on the monetary cost. 

“I don’t have an appetite for further Ukraine funding, and I hope it’s not necessary,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) said recently. “If President Trump wins, I believe that he actually can bring that conflict to a close … I think he’ll call Putin and tell him that this is enough.”

Trump running mate J.D. Vance, who in 2022 declared “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” has embraced a skeptical role in line with Trump when it comes to Kyiv.

“The problem here vis-à-vis Ukraine is, America doesn’t make enough weapons, Europe doesn’t make enough weapons, and that reality is far more important than American political will or how much money we print and then send to Europe,” Vance said in a visit to the Munich Security Conference in February, where he skipped a meeting with Zelensky, the Ukrainian president.

After becoming Trump’s vice presidential candidate, Vance clarified his stance, describing to an interviewer in September his vision for an end to the war: “What it probably looks like is the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine, that becomes like a demilitarized zone.”

Trump, meanwhile, has promised to end the war “in 24 hours” if he is elected — although he hasn’t provided specific details. But such musings throw into sharp focus his history of undermining Ukraine’s security for personal political advantage.

In 2019, Trump tried to pressure newly inaugurated Zelensky to investigate a number of conspiracies and tie them to Joe Biden, threatening to withhold military aid if he did not. A phone call in which Trump made the demands was reported by a whistleblower on the National Security Council, and it formed the core of his first impeachment effort — an attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss resulted in the second.

While the House approved two articles of impeachment, Trump was acquitted by the Senate over the Ukraine affair in a February 2020 vote that split along party lines — with Sen. Mitt Romney being the sole Republican to break with his colleagues. Four-and-a-half years later, and the sordid episode continues to lurk in the background, adding to an uncomfortable atmosphere when Trump met Zelensky last month in New York City. 

“We have a very good relationship, and I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin. And I think if we win, we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Trump said in a press conference ahead of the meeting.

“I hope we have more good relations between us,” was Zelensky’s tepid response.

The stench of the Ukraine affair permeates Trump’s legacy on foreign affairs — especially given his repeated and consistent praise of Putin, such as calling the dictator “savvy” and a “genius” on the eve of the 2022 invasion.

Such statements, and Trump’s affinity for a dictator responsible for starting a war that may have already killed more than half a million people, embarrass many Republicans. They also provide fodder for his opponents within the GOP.

“Trump is siding with a dictator who kills his political opponents,” Haley said in South Carolina while still running for the Republican nomination. “Trump sided with an evil man, over our allies who stood with us on 9/11.”

Haley has, of course, ultimately kissed the ring and closed ranks behind Trump. But not every Republican is ready to cast aside principles for their party’s candidate.

Republican Voters Against Trump, a Super PAC started by a group of GOP dissidents and funded by the billionaire venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, has churned out ads and social media posts featuring Republicans talking about Ukraine.

“Why I am extremely against Trump now is his position in Ukraine,” says one ad featuring a voter in Georgia identified as Nikita, a Ukrainian American. “I’m doing everything in my power to make sure he doesn’t get elected.”

The Super PAC’s founder, Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, says it is spending as much as $45 million to persuade “center-right voters, right-leaning, independent, soft GOP voters, to vote against Trump.”

While such groups are focused on siphoning votes away from the former president, some of Ukraine’s supporters are hedging their bets. They hope to bring the Republican Party back into line with majority opinion, and to do so they are taking aim at two traditionally conservative demographics: veterans and evangelical Christians.

“Republicans by and large support Ukraine. The question you really have to ask is: ‘Who does not support Ukraine?’” says Rieckhoff, who hosts a podcast called Independent Americans and has a long history of political activism. In 2012, Rolling Stone included him in a list of “Leaders Who Get Things Done.”

“People need to understand that J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are in a very radical minority that undermines American national security,” he adds.

The nonprofit Rieckhoff founded in 2004 — Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, more commonly known as IAVA — was essential to the passage of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, which paid for Vance’s undergraduate studies at Ohio State University. Earlier this year Rieckhoff helped start a new group: American Veterans for Ukraine, or AVU. The goal is to shape American policy toward Ukraine.

“This is the same crew who tried to get people out of Iraq, and out of Afghanistan. It’s a veteran’s Underground Railroad … We want to use our skills and our networks to support and defend democracy,” he says. Although the U.S. has provided billions of dollars in aid to Kyiv and “there is significant philanthropy helping people in Ukraine,” he says, “there is comparatively very little advocacy and lobbying.”

He thinks the lack of behind-the-scenes politicking created the crisis earlier this year, when for nearly six months Republicans in Congress blocked the provision of military aid to Ukraine, taking a cue from Trump.

The former president and his acolytes in Congress were vocal in opposing more money for Kyiv. Despite the dire warnings of the national security and foreign policy establishment, the aid was blocked — with disastrous effects for Ukraine’s defense.

It wasn’t until Johnson met a Ukrainian evangelical named Serhiy Haidarzhy in April that the newly minted speaker of the House experienced a Damascene conversion over aid. With Johnson’s backing, Republicans swept away the opposition of MAGA militants, approving a $61 billion Ukraine funding package in a bipartisan show of force.

That meeting with Johnson wasn’t accidental. Ukraine is actively courting America’s conservative Christian right in the hope of strengthening its bulwark of Republican support should Trump regain power in November.

“Speaker Johnson is a great example. He voted nine out of nine times against Ukraine as a rank-and-file member of Congress. The intelligence briefings gave him the intellectual information to support Ukraine. When he met the Ukrainian evangelicals we brought over, it gave him an emotional and spiritual connection to Ukraine,” says Steven Moore, a 55-year-old GOP operative and Tulsa native, who worked on Capitol Hill for seven years as a Congressional aide — including as chief of staff for former Rep. Pete Roskam, an Illinois Republican.

Moore has a perspective unlike that of most Beltway insiders: After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, he moved to Kyiv and started a nonprofit — one of hundreds of foreigners conducting such grassroots efforts, of varying quality and accountability, that contribute aid to Ukraine’s war effort.

Although he is not a registered lobbyist, he now spends his time networking and connecting Republicans with counterparts in Kyiv. He also works to raise funds for his Ukraine Freedom Project, shooting videos featuring military equipment and sending them to Rotary Clubs across America.

Such outreach is important, Moore says, because “what we find is that for the most part, when you give conservatives accurate information about Ukraine, they come to support Ukraine’s fight for its freedom. Unfortunately, it is difficult to compete with the massive Russian propaganda effort.”

Despite Trump’s claims he can end the war by calling up Putin, any peace deal is outside the power of an American president to accomplish without the cooperation of Ukraine. Ensuring that Kyiv’s calls are picked up in Washington regardless of which candidate sits in the White House is why Ukraine has been trying to build bridges to the GOP.

“I do not see anything surprising if Ukraine is looking for support in all directions,” says Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada — Ukraine’s parliament — who is outspoken on foreign affairs.

“Maybe we could have done more, maybe there were mistakes, both with the Republicans and with the Democrats,” concedes Goncharenko. “Our country does not have much experience in promoting itself at such a level. But we welcome the support of the U.S., especially when it comes from both [parties].”

Connecting with American evangelicals has been central to Ukraine’s outreach, as they make up an influential segment of Republicans.

To this end, Zelensky’s government has sought to highlight Russia’s persecution of evangelicals and other religious minorities in the occupied territories under its control. Putin’s regime has kidnapped, tortured, jailed, and even murdered non-Orthodox Christians, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses — regarded as “religious extremists” by Moscow — solely because of their faith, according to findings by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan agency that monitors religious freedom worldwide.

In newly conquered territories in Ukraine, Protestants have paid a terrible price, Moore says, especially evangelical Baptists, who have been singled out for persecution by the Russian military as “American spies.”

“More than half of Republicans identify as evangelical Christians, and 70 percent of evangelical Christians who vote Republican are more likely to support Ukraine when you tell them that Russia is torturing and oppressing Ukrainians like them for their faith,” Moore asserts.

The Zelensky administration has even gone so far as to hold a “National Prayer Breakfast,” similar to the one established in the U.S. in 1953.

The American original is a fixture for Beltway insiders, where global movers and shakers rub shoulders in an informal milieu with U.S. lawmakers, who themselves are keen to be seen by evangelicals as visibly straddling the line between church and state. With as many as 3,500 attendees each year, the event is a clearinghouse for influence-peddling.

When the Zelensky administration decided to begin a similar tradition in Ukraine, GOP activists like Moore hoped it would succeed in attracting the conservative Christian right — and it did.

Rolling Stone attended Ukraine’s first National Prayer Breakfast in June, joined by Zelensky and hundreds of people from multiple religious denominations.

The opening speeches were followed by a prerecorded video address from Speaker Johnson and — much to the surprise of the audience — former Vice President Mike Pence.

Pence’s face suddenly materialized on an array of screens set up around the breakfast hall, his snow-white hair and cold, resolute glare staring out from his pale features. Trump’s former VP delivered a speech praising Ukrainians for their “courage,” reminding the audience of the sacrifices made so that “the blue-and-gold flag still waves over the skies of Ukraine,” as attendees tucked in to their breakfasts and chatted amongst themselves.

“Thank you all for standing with Ukraine … May God bless the people of Ukraine, and freedom-loving people everywhere,” Pence concluded.

Trump’s supporters, of course, erected a gallows and noose while chanting “Hang Mike Pence” during a riot on Jan. 6, 2021, forcing the then-vice president to flee the Capitol.

So while it is unlikely that Pence’s presence at Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast persuaded any Trump die-hards to change their vote, the hope was his presence might help convert less extreme conservative skeptics to Kyiv’s cause. And the effort poured into the event shows that when it comes to a new administration’s policy toward Ukraine — whomever is in the White House — its supporters know victory counts on a lot more than November ballots, or even thoughts and prayers.

[smittywing]

WIP Wednesday - Marriage 101

This incredibly flimsy premise was brought to you by a post on this site that I can no longer find. It basically said you get more FAFSA money if you're married, so I picked the two characters least likely to ever use FAFSA and married them. I have no regrets.

The aroma of pizza rolls and popcorn notwithstanding, for a minute Tim had forgotten whose safehouse he was actually in.

Damian’s safehouses tended to have the video games. Tim’s were full of prototype gadgets, and Dick’s usually had fuzzy blankets and squishy pillows. Jason’s had the food.

Jason’s apparently also had a FAFSA application.

“Hey,” he said, picking it up. “Are you going back to school?”

Three things happened at once. (1) Jason vaulted off the sofa, overturning a bowl of popcorn onto Dick’s lap, (2) Damian grabbed Jason’s abandoned controller, and murdered Dick’s player, and (3) Dick grabbed Damian and mashed his face into the cushions.

“What’s this?” Dick asked as Tim turned away from Jason’s flailing hands to read the notes Jason had made in the margins. “Is my Little Wing going to be a college man?”

“No, fuckit, Timmers - no.” Jason was bigger and had a longer reach but Tim was extremely adept at dodging and weaving. He’d had a lot of practice. “Just a class or two. Dammit, Tim!”

It wasn’t a class or two. It was a full semester under the name Jason Peterson.

“Let me see,” Dick said, blocking Jason’s swipe and taking the papers from Tim. “You need money?” he asked, scanning the pages.

Jason made a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl. “Tuition’s fucking expensive, okay?” he said. “Now fuck off and give me that. That’s personal information.”

“Personal information for someone who isn’t you,” Dick commented, stepping just out of reach.

“Father would gladly pay for your tuition,” Damian piped up unwelcomely from the couch. “Why do you waste your time with tedious paperwork?”

“I am *not* taking money from Bruce.” Jason’s voice resonated with certainty.

“Didn’t you have like, some...passive income?” Tim asked, not sure if bringing up Jason’s time as a drug lord was a faux pas these days. Jason had a hair trigger temper and Tim really didn’t feel like being on the pointy side of his knife. Again.

“If you’re talking about the blood money, I donated it to some of the rehab places,” Jason mumbled. “Clearly I hadn’t come up with this brilliant plan at the time.”

“Why not take Father’s money?” Damian asked. “He enjoys spending it on philanthropic pursuits and you are clearly destitute.”

“No more pizza rolls for you,” Jason said, picking Damian up by his collar as he was peeking over Dick’s arm at Jason Peterson’s income. Damian kicked but Jason’s forearm was steady, as he levered Damian away from the paperwork. Tim quietly watched the tensed muscles running from the edge of Jason’s sleeve to his wrist.

“We’re going to have a little talk later about independence,” Dick told Damian.

“Independence is a worthy outcome,” Damian argued. “But many scholars and artists subsist under the patronage of a sponsor without shame.”

“I mean, he’s not wrong,” Dick conceded, glancing at Jason. “But look, we’ll talk about it later, okay Dami?” He turned back to Jason. “I think it’s great,” he continued, squeezing Jason’s bicep. Tim waited for violence, but the fight seemed to leak out of Jason as Dick handed him back the paperwork. “And I understand why you want to do this on your own. But if I can help, in any way, let me know, okay? Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to do everything on your own.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Jason muttered, color high on his cheeks. “Get Cosimo de Medici out of here, will you?”

Dick grinned. “It’s past his bedtime anyway.”

Tim lingered after Dick and Damian left. “Sorry I didn’t think before I said something,” he offered. “I didn’t mean for it to turn into such a big deal.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jason said, running a hand through his hair. “It’s fine, whatever.” He opened the fridge and considered the shelves for a minute before pulling out two beers. Tim would have preferred coffee but he knew Jason was offering an olive branch so he took the bottle.

“Are you thinking about Gotham U?” Tim ventured, twisting off the cap and taking a sip of his beer.

“If I can get in,” Jason said, playing with his bottle cap. “If not, then Gotham State. I took the GED just to see if I could pass.”

“Of course you could,” Tim said automatically. “You were always better at school than Dick.”

Jason looked at him oddly. “Yeah but I quit at 15.”

Tim didn’t correct him. Quitting actually did sound better than getting murdered by the Joker.

“What do you want to study?” he asked instead.

It might have been a cliche, but Jason’s face literally lit from within at the question.

“I want to minor in English lit,” he said, which was a weird place to start, but Tim was too fascinated by the change in his demeanor to comment on it. “For a major, criminal justice would be the obvious choice but the background checks for law enforcement would be too comprehensive to make a career of it. I wouldn’t want to be a cop anyway. I was thinking maybe education but I don’t know for sure. It might make more sense to study something I can use in day-to-day life, you know? This is the most solid cover I have but it could use some backstopping if I’m going to use it in the real world, you know?”

“I could, um,” Tim said, transfixed by the animation in Jason’s voice and face. He had *never* seen Jason this happy or excited, *ever* and the truth was that he would do anything, *anything* to keep seeing it. “I could build out some - you’re really, you’re really excited about this, aren’t you?”

That hadn’t been what he’d meant to say at all, but Jason’s rueful grin tugged at his chest.

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, if I can swing it. It takes more than a few Pell grants to keep me in helmets. Obviously this wouldn’t be a full time thing.”

“Yeah,” Tim found himself saying. “I know. I mean, I’m enrolled in a few classes next semester and I don’t know how I’m going to juggle those and regular patrol and the Titans.”

“You’ll do it,” Jason said immediately. “Isn’t your IQ like a million? It’ll be cakewalk.”

“Yeah,” Tim echoed, conviction solidifying. He and Jason would be starting at Gotham U in the fall, together. “Cakewalk.”

$

The concept of Jason happily studying English Lit (English Lit? Really? Jason?) at Gotham University started building itself into a happy fantasy by 4am. Tim Googled “how to pay for college” on his phone when he probably should have been trying to catch a few hours of sleep and 36 hours later, he was crawling in Jason’s window.

“Ugh, you too?” Jason greeted him.

“Hey Tim,” Dick said, looking up from his bowl of cereal.

“Hi, yeah,” Tim said, replying to both of them at once. “I uh, I had some ideas.”

Jason picked up the coffee pot and upended it into a mug. The toasty-burnt aroma hit Tim’s nostrils like a big cuddly freight train and reminded him of just how long he’d been awake. “Thanks,” he said.

Jason raised his eyebrows and lifted the mug to his own mouth. Tim felt its loss acutely. “All right,” Jason said with a sigh. “What’s your idea?”

“Ideas,” Tim clarified. “Plural.” He pulled his convertible laptop out of his backpack and rotated it into tablet mode.

“You didn’t,” Jason groaned.

“Of course he did,” Dick said. “PowerPoint was baby bird’s first computer game.”

“Scholarships,” Tim announced, drowning out the negativity.

“On my stellar GED score?” Jason asked sardonically.

“There are scholarships for non-traditional students,” Tim said, bringing up a selection of postings he had found when anticipating this exact argument.

Jason made a face. “Home-schooled?”

“Which you basically were,” Dick pointed out.

“Don’t help,” Jason told him.

“Granted, you’re probably not looking at full-tuition level scholarships,” Tim said, “but a few thousand dollars to pay for your books will help out a lot.”

Jason nodded grudgingly.

“Work-share!” Tim announced, flipping to the next slide.

“You would make a great lunch lady,” Dick suggested.

Jason glared sideways at him. “No.”

“I was thinking the library myself,” Tim offered, because who liked the library better than an English Lit major? Or minor. Or whatever. “Plus you’d have time to do your homework.”

Jason groaned, but it sounded acquiescing. “Okay,” he said. “What else ya got?”

“Income Share Agreements,” Tim went on. “GC has a program or you can apply through a private matching program for someone to front you the money and commit to paying back a percentage of your income once you graduate.”

“No,” Jason said.

“It’s like a loan,” Tim told him. “Just zero interest. And a zero balance. It doesn’t matter how much you make.”

“I’m doing this because I want to do it,” Jason said. “Not to be a nine-to-five, tax-paying drone, or to be stiffing some jerk on his investment. Next?”

“So, you’re probably not going to be a fan of this one,” Tim cautioned. “But you could get a job. And a company with tuition assistance.”

“Oh, really,” Jason drawled, narrowing his eyes and Tim knew Jason was on to him. “And would this job just happen to be at Wayne Enterprises?”

“I mean, I have an in,” Tim offered weakly.

“Or you could just get married,” Dick said.

“What?” Tim asked.

“What?” Jason asked.

“I mean, if pissing off Bruce is a prerequisite,” Dick said, in the same maddeningly casual tone, “you could just get married.” He held up the FAFSA information booklet. “You’d get double the housing money and some other stuff.”

“I’m in,” Jason said immediately.

“Wait,” Tim said, hating that he was going to be the one to throw a wrench in this extraordinarily *amazing* plan of *marrying Jason*. “Wouldn’t getting married to me fuck up his expected family contribution?”

“Um,” Dick said.

“No.” Jason had clearly been all over this paperwork. “When you file as married, you file as independent so your family isn’t expected to contribute. So our combined income would be the four thou Jason Peterson made at Bat-Burger last year and whatever your summer internship at WE paid.”

��Okay, let me see that worksheet,” Tim said, grabbing it out of Dick’s hand. He did some quick math in his head. “Yeah,” he said, the blood rush of a plan coming together hitting him full force. “I’m using the Nest as a permanent address anyway. You could do the same. I’ll work up a lease between us and Drake Industries. I don’t have legal access to my trust until I turn twenty-one, though Bruce has pretty much signed off on whatever, remind me to check and make sure there’s no marriage clause.”

“Um,” Dick said.

“Gotham has a 48-hour waiting period and blood test required for marriage licenses,” Jason said, scrolling rapidly through his phone. “But after that, we can go down to the courthouse and have the Justice of the Peace do the deed.”

“Figures,” Tim said. “Two days gives the press time to jump on this. Let’s apply on a Friday afternoon. Hopefully, whatever intern they have looking will miss it.”

“I didn’t mean you had to marry *each other*,” Dick said.

The room went silent.

“Who else are we gonna marry?” Jason sneered, clear in his opinion of Dick’s idiocy, and then turned back to the matter at hand. “Your marital status is as of the FAFSA submission date,” he said. “So we need to hook up before I submit.”

Tim shrugged. “Deal.”

[zeplerfer]

For my fellow U.S. citizens: please vote for Democrats on Tuesday if you haven’t voted already. There are a bunch of reasons (abortion, Obamacare, LGBTQ rights), but a big one for me personally is that my student loans are eligible for public service loan forgiveness in February 2025. The last time Trump was president, his administration mishandled processing so much that barely anyone got relief. He wants to get rid of the program.

If you’re thinking of voting third party or boycotting the vote because of Gaza, please know that Trump will give Netanyahu a blank check in Gaza and the West Bank because that’s what he did last time. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem and killed significantly more civilians with drone strikes.

Harris and the Democrats are infinitely better on domestic issues. They’re better on Ukraine. They’re marginally better on Gaza. This is literally the trolley problem, and I am asking you to pull the lever to save the greatest number possible. I know swing states matter most, but House representatives are on the ballot everywhere and which party controls Congress really matters. My student loans and I thank you in advance!

[freetheshit-outofyou]

When Democrats put there racisms on full display but hide it under the illusion of attacking white males and the Constitution. I'm told minority populations are under privileged and over pricing things or requiring things like a photo I.D. to make certain transactions is racist. BUT, democrats keep trying to "tax out" a Right guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, and who will this tax hurt the most? The poor, the under privileged, minority populations, marginalized populations and make it so ones RIGHT to self protection and self preservation are luxuries only the upper few percent of the population can afford. Talk about "Jim Crow" style laws, if passed it would make sure that the only firearms people could buy were stolen, thus making every firearm's owner a criminal just to be able to afford to protect themselves. The text for H.R. 5135 (2023) is not available yet, but one can assume it will have the same or similar verbiage as H.R. 8051 (2022). That means the "articles" about the new bill will call it something like “Assault Weapons Excise Act” and as this one does, talking about getting weapons of war off our streets but it's all smoke and mirrors. The 2022 included pistols, rifles, and shotguns that were greater in caliber than .22 rimfire. Lever actions and bolt actions that were tube fed or had fixed magazines AND held less than 11 rounds AND were rimfire were exempt, ALL OTHER FIREARMS WERE COVERED IN THIS BLANKET POLL TAX, sorry excise tax. You know what words are not used in the bill or any writings, crime or criminals. This bill, as with its predecessor, will not address crime, it won't address the lack of prosecution of criminals who use firearms to terrorize our population, NOPE, just the guns by punishing the legal buyer. They should name H.R. 5135 the "Firearm black-market creation" bill or "Only the rich can buy a firearm" bill.