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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Thursday, November 12, 2020

Canada Is Relieved at Biden’s Win (NYT) On a snowy evening in December 2016, a month after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada held a rare farewell state dinner for the departing vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr. It was like a tearful goodbye between two old friends. “We are more like family. That’s the way the vast majority of Americans feel about Canada and Canadians,” Mr. Biden said to a hall packed with politicians in Ottawa. “The friendship between us is absolutely critical to the United States.” He ended with a toast: “Vive le Canada. Because we need you very, very badly.” After four years of surprise tariffs, stinging insults and threats from President Trump, a giddy jubilation and sense of deep relief spread across Canada on Saturday, with the news that Mr. Biden had won the presidency. Many Canadians hope to return to the status of cherished sibling to the United States, and that the president-elect’s personal connection to Canada, and that of his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, will help heal the wounds.

States cite smooth election (AP) The 2020 election unfolded smoothly across the country and without any widespread irregularities, according to state officials and election experts, a stark contrast to the baseless claims of fraud being leveled by President Donald Trump following his defeat. Election experts said the large increase in advance voting—107 million people voting early in person and by mail—helped take pressure off Election Day operations. There were also no incidents of violence at the polls or voter intimidation. “The 2020 general election was one of the smoothest and most well-run elections that we have ever seen, and that is remarkable considering all the challenges,” said Ben Hovland, a Democrat appointed by Trump to serve on the Election Assistance Commission, which works closely with officials on election administration. Following Democrat Joe Biden’s victory, Trump has sought to discredit the integrity of the election and argued without evidence that the results will be overturned. Republican lawmakers have said the president should be allowed to launch legal challenges, though many of those lawsuits have already been turned away by judges and those that remain do not include evidence of problems that would change the outcome of the race.

Future of business travel unclear as virus upends work life (AP) For the lucrative business travel industry, Brian Contreras represents its worst fears. A partner account executive at a U.S. tech firm, Contreras was used to traveling frequently for his company. But nine months into the pandemic, he and thousands of others are working from home and dialing into video conferences instead of boarding planes. Contreras manages his North American accounts from Sacramento, California and doesn’t expect to travel for work until the middle of next year. Even then, he’s not sure how much he will need to. “Maybe it’s just the acceptance of the new normal. I have all of the resources necessary to be on the calls, all of the communicative devices to make sure I can do my job,” he said. “There’s an element of face-to-face that’s necessary, but I would be OK without it.” That trend could spell big trouble for hotels, airlines, convention centers and other industries that rely so heavily on business travelers like Contreras. Work travel represented 21% of the $8.9 trillion spent on global travel and tourism in 2019, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council. Amazon, which told it employees to stop traveling in March, says it has saved nearly $1 billion in travel expenses so far this year. The online shopping giant, with more than 1.1 million employees, is the second-largest employer in the U.S. At Southwest Airlines, CEO Gary Kelly said while overall passenger revenue is down 70%, business travel—normally more than one-third of Southwest’s traffic—is off 90%. U.S. hotels relied on business travel for around half their revenue in 2019, or closer to 60% in big cities like Washington, according to Cindy Estis Green, the CEO of hospitality data firm Kalibri Labs.

Final weeks of historic hurricane season bring new storms (AP) Just when you thought it should be safe to go back to the water, the record-setting tropics are going crazy. Again. Tropical Storm Eta is parked off the western coast of Cuba, dumping rain. When it finally moves again, computer models and human forecasters are befuddled about where it will go and how strong it will be. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Theta—which formed overnight and broke a record as the 29th named Atlantic storm of the season—is chugging east toward Europe on the cusp of hurricane status. The last time there were two named storms churning at the same time this late in the year was in December 1887, Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said. But wait there’s more. A tropical wave moving across the Atlantic somehow survived the mid-November winds that usually decapitate storms. The system now has a 70% chance of becoming the 30th named storm. That’s Iota on your already filled scorecard. If it forms, it is heading generally toward the same region of Central America that was hit by Eta. Never before have three named storms been twirling at the same time this late in the year, Klotzbach said. Hurricane records go back to 1851, but before the satellite era, some storms were likely missed.

Religious Persecution Is Worsening Worldwide (CT) Dictators are the worst persecutors of believers. This perhaps uncontroversial finding was verified for the first time in the Pew Research Center’s 11th annual study surveying restrictions on freedom of religion in 198 nations. The median level of government violations reached an all-time high in 2018, as 56 nations (28%) suffer “high” or “very high” levels of official restriction. The number of nations suffering “high” or “very high” levels of social hostilities toward religion dropped slightly to 53 (27%). Considered together, 40 percent of the world faces significant hindrance in worshiping God freely. And the trend continues to be negative. Since 2007, when Pew began its groundbreaking survey, the median level of government restrictions has risen 65 percent. The level for social hostilities has doubled.

Critics, protesters call removal of Peruvian president a legislative coup (Washington Post) The little-known head of Peru’s Congress took the helm of the South American nation Tuesday amid a public outcry over the surprise removal of the country’s popular president, Martín Vizcarra. Vizcarra’s ouster late Monday and the inauguration of interim president Manuel Merino amounted to a return of the political chaos that has long plagued Peru, where nearly every president since 1990 has resigned, been indicted or been jailed amid clouds of corruption. One former president killed himself. Yet at a time when the Andean nation is confronting one of the world’s most lethal coronavirus outbreaks, Vizcarra’s ouster, based on still-unproven bribery allegations, appeared to be fundamentally different. Critics called it a congressional coup staged by Machiavellian legislators desperate to halt his anti-corruption and political reform campaigns, which took aim at their pocketbooks and threatened to end many of their political careers. Under Vizcarra, Peru adopted laws that took on festering malfeasance within the 130-member legislature, where 68 lawmakers are now under investigation or indictment for alleged crimes ranging from money laundering to murder. Members of the current Congress have been prohibited from seeking reelection, and anyone with active charges is barred from running. Critics now fear that Merino—who previously sought to turn the military against Vizcarra and attempted an earlier removal on different grounds in September—will seek to lift those rules, allowing a compromised political class to preserve itself and setting up a new period of instability in this nation of 32 million.

Generation COVID (Foreign Policy) A report from the British school inspection agency found that children had suffered from being outside the regular school system during lockdown, with some younger children regressing from being potty-trained back to diapers and older children showing reduced reading stamina. The chief inspector for schools found that the children experiencing the worst effects were those whose parents’ employment did not allow for flexible or at-home working.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tests positive for Covid-19 (AP) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced Monday that he has tested positive for coronavirus infection and will be working in self-isolation while being treated. “There are no lucky people in the world for whom Covid-19 does not pose a threat,” Zelenskiy said on Twitter. “However, I feel good. I promise to isolate myself and I continue to work.” Zelenskiy became president in 2019 as a political neophyte, previously known as an actor and comedian. He became popular in the country for a TV sitcom, “Servant of the People,” in which he played the role of a teacher who unexpectedly becomes president after making a rant about corruption that goes viral. He handily defeated incumbent Petro Poroshenko. Ukraine’s coronavirus infections began surging in late summer and have put the country’s underpaid doctors and underequipped hospitals under severe pressure.

Nagorno-Karabakh: Turkey wins the war? (Foreign Policy/Eurointelligence) Russia may have secured a peace deal to end a six-week conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, but Turkey has won the war. Ankara threw its political support behind Azerbaijan and employed Turkish cutting-edge drones and military expertise to allow Azerbaijan to roll over Armenian positions in the difficult mountain area under dispute. The conflict is not new, and occasional fighting has been going on there since 1994, but this time it is a decisive victory. This victory will boost Erdogan’s image as a strongman with geopolitical weight, and helps him put a foot into the South Caucasus. Hard power impresses former Soviet countries.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers resign en masse (AP) Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers said Wednesday that they were resigning en masse following a move by the semi-autonomous Chinese territory’s government to disqualify four of their fellow pro-democracy legislators. The 15 lawmakers announced the move in a news conference Wednesday, hours after the Hong Kong government said it was disqualifying the four legislators. The disqualifications came after China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee, which held meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, passed a resolution stating that those who support Hong Kong’s independence or refuse to acknowledge China’s sovereignty over the city, or threaten national security or ask external forces to interfere in the city’s affairs, should be disqualified. Beijing has in recent months moved to clamp down on opposition voices in Hong Kong with the imposition of a national security law, after months of anti-government protests last year rocked the city. A mass resignation by the pro-democracy camp would leave Hong Kong’s legislature with only pro-Beijing lawmakers. The pro-Beijing camp already makes up a majority of the city’s legislature.

Iran sanctions continue (Foreign Policy) The Trump administration doesn’t intend to give up its “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran just because it lost an election. On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions on six companies and four people accused of supplying components to Iran Communication Industries, a company run by the Iranian military that is already under U.S. and EU sanctions. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the United States would continue to take action against those that support Iran’s “militarization and proliferation efforts.”

Frantic search after medicines vanish from Lebanon shelves (AP) She is a nurse at a Beirut hospital, and still Rita Harb can’t find her grandfather’s heart drugs. She has searched pharmacies up and down Lebanon, called friends abroad. Not even her connections with doctors could secure the drugs. Unlike many amid Lebanon’s financial crash, she can afford them—they just aren’t there. To get by, her 85-year-old grandfather is substituting his medicine with more pills of a smaller concentration to reach his dosage. That too could run out soon. Drugs for everything from diabetes and blood pressure to anti-depressants and fever pills used in COVID-19 treatment have disappeared from shelves around Lebanon. Officials and pharmacists say the shortage was exacerbated by panic buying and hoarding after the Central Bank governor said that with foreign reserves running low, the government won’t be able to keep up subsidies, including on drugs. That announcement “caused a storm, an earthquake,” said Ghassan al-Amin, head of the pharmacist syndicate. Lebanese now scour the country and beyond for crucial medications. The elderly ask around religious charities and aid groups. Family members plead on social media or travel to neighboring Syria. Expats are sending in donations. It’s the newest stage in the economic collapse of this country of 5 million, once a regional hub for banking, real estate and medical services. More than half the population has been pushed into poverty and people’s savings have lost value. Public debt is crippling, and the local currency plunged, losing nearly 80% of its value. The health sector is buckling under the financial strain and coronavirus pandemic.

‘Countdown to catastrophe’ in Yemen as U.N. warns of famine—again (Reuters) Millions of men, women and children in war-torn Yemen are facing famine—again, top United Nations officials warned on Wednesday as they appealed for more money to prevent it—again. “We are on a countdown right now to a catastrophe,” U.N. food chief David Beasley told the U.N. Security Council. “We have been here before ... We did almost the same dog-and-pony show. We sounded the alarm then.” The United Nations describes Yemen as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 80% of the people in need of help. “If we choose to look away, there’s no doubt in my mind Yemen will be plunged into a devastating famine within a few short months,” Beasley told the 15-member council. In late 2017, U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock warned that Yemen was then facing “the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims”. “We prevented famine two years ago,” Lowcock told the Security Council on Wednesday. “More money for the aid operation is the quickest and most efficient way to support famine prevention efforts right now.”

#headlines #news

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the-foxes-fangs · 5 years ago

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Warmup fragments with Ikesen/OC’s

I’ve been behind on requests so I promised @otomediary I’d post these little warmups even though they feature my OC’s

***

She had thought it was the wormhole opening two months too soon as the sky split like a rent cloth on the day the warlord’s had taken her out hawking, she had been riding next to Hideyoshi who had the presence of mind to grab her horses reins as it reared and jerked away in terror, nearly unseating her.

That same feeling, nauseating pressure, the crackle of static building to a painful roar, and the sky coming undone as Hideyoshi lifted her bodily out of the saddle and held her protectively, his arm growing tighter around her as the sounds of a massive battle rolled in as if on a wave that broke against them. She held his sleeve, heart pounding as their group bunched up, each of them peering into the midday twilight, turned ochre through a cloud of choking dust that whipped across their faces and twisted into serpentine columns, falling from the broken sky.

And then the noise receded and they appeared, four figures riding hell for leather out of the dust, pursuing something that flashed unnaturally bright even in the haze, a massive twisting mass that reminded her of a huge crumpled thermal blanket whipping and rolling in some way that was horribly alive and malicious, and utterly silent.

They were yelling to each other in some language she had never heard, even in her own time, women crouched low on their horses, circling it, it whatever it was. The language was unintelligible, but the urgency wasn’t.

She saw one of them vault off her horse and into the writhing malevolence, before being immersed in a silence so complete and abrupt that for a moment she felt as if all of the sound had been excised from the world at once. The snorting and stamping of the horses and the buzz of voices started her out of the dull shock of the scene, which had seemed to expand into hours but must have taken no more than half a minute in reality, if reality could still be considered a reliable thing. She had fallen through time, and now time and space were falling around her as she clutched Hideyoshi’s hand.

It was gone, and the dust was drawing back apparently of its own volition, revealing a placid, uninterrupted sky as it receded into the outstretched hand of the woman closest to them, and she felt that same instinct for flight as she had the night she’d arrived at Honno-ji when the two groups faced each other.

“Hey!” Masamune thundered, wheeling his horse out, sword unsheathed, always the first to run toward a fight, “explain yourselves!”

“Masamune, stand down.” Nobunaga said quietly, holding himself quite still and carefully observing the otherworldly invaders.

“Be cautious my lord.” Hideyoshi said protectively.

Ieyasu and Mitsuhide were too busy aiming their respective weapons to speak, and you could almost hear the speed of Mitsunari’s thoughts as he surveyed the scene.

***

She was arrestingly beautiful, he thought, the tallest of the strangers with the darkest skin he’d ever seen, lithe grace in her body and fearlessness stamped into her fine features, from the graceful column of her neck, the gentle smile with no hint of timidity on her full lips to the good natured intelligence that burned in her dark eyes.

He laid out the Go board and watched her pad silently about the Tenshu, hands held behind her back, taking inventory to the smallest detail as she seemed to always do.

“Tiaret.” He said, her name heavy on his tongue. “Why is it that the others call you one thing, but you ask us to call you another?” Nobunaga asked curiously, watching the way the golden cloth of her dress seemed to gather all of the light in the room to itself.

“I am from a place where magic is as common as water, and there’s magic in a name-- power to bind, power to break.” She answered, her voice soft and low, a trace of amusement on her face. She wore her thick curly black hair elaborately braided close to her head, with ornaments of gold and red that gave her face a warm glow even in the moonlight where she stood on the balcony.

Of all their guests from the further shore, she was the most amiable, but he felt as if it were the disinterested amiability of a tiger looking at a falling leaf. He had never believed in the possibility of an unseen world, of anything so childish as magic, until he had seen what she could do. As every challenge ever had, she filled with him a fierce desire to capture her attention, to conquer her disinterest, and to know her.

“And you have my name now.” He said, tapping his fingers against his cheek as he rested his chin on his hand.

“If I wished to harm you with magic, it would be of a far more direct kind. I was elected as intermediary to maintain some semblance of peace while we’re here, not as an assassin.” She said, with an elegant gesture of dismissal.

“I have seen it, and I still cannot grasp the nature of magic.” He replied, searching her untroubled face.

She seated herself elegantly across from him and studied the board thoughtfully. “It is unnatural to you, and thus beyond your grasp.” She said bluntly, but without any incivility.

A faint scent of honey and some flower whose name was as much a mystery as hers drifted across to him, heady and soft, with the warm late summer breeze. “I commend you on your grasp of tactics, it’s rare that I am outmatched in Go.”

“My vocation is to remember, it would be strange if I were so well acquainted with the details of so many battles and yet knew nothing of the general principles of war.” She answered with an indulgent smile as she rolled a white go piece between her slender fingers.

***

“You have a lot of freedom for a prisoner of war,” Ieyasu said, looking askance at the unsettling wisp of a woman, sickly pale as a radish with her face framed by hair the color of an orange autumn leaf and her eyes barely a shade lighter.

“My prison is living, but my hell is being alive to be questioned by the likes of you.” Zenaida replied acerbically as she glanced up from her reading, bitterness in her expression, distant and hard.

“Try to be polite, Zenaida.” Tiaret said mildly from across the library, without glancing up from her book.

“Try to be less sickeningly saintly, Sulwe.”

The entire room seemed to seethe with cold anger, but he saw, or imagined he saw a shadow of anguish flit across her drawn features for a fraction of a moment before it dissipated.

“Well excuse me for breathing.” He muttered.

“Ask the gods for pardon, all I know how to do anymore is spit poison at the world that poisoned me.” Zenaida answered very softly, looking up at him with haunted eyes that said he would get no more of an apology than that.

***

“Darling boy, you couldn’t out ride me if your life depended on it! I was just about born on the back of a horse, and I expect I’ll die there too.” Sankho said merrily, irreverent and flip, with a wildness all about her that made Masamune feel downright conventional.

“Oh you think so? Let’s have a race then. Loser cooks dinner” He shot back amiably, watching as she made another strange dish, with a mouth watering aroma he couldn’t place at all. She had said that since she didn’t know what ingredients were safe for humans it was better that he not try it all, but his curiosity as a cook was killing him.

Of all of them, she looked nothing like a barbarian, she could almost have passed for a resident of the castle if not for the reckless glitter in her eye, her raucous laughter and utter lack of manners that had its own kind of charm.

He couldn’t shake his fascination with her, it was like watching a typhoon coming in knowing that it would blow you halfway to hell and still not wanting to move out of the way.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just have a duel? It would make you look more cool losing to magic, you know.” She said with a crooked smile and a daring wink.

He grinned back at her, and felt the heat rise in his face. “And they say I’m overconfident!”

“You’re reckless, far more reckless than a real dragon ever would be, and I’ve met a few, but I like it. There’s a little of the wild old magic in you, I think. The rest of it has gone to sleep in this world, but I feel the faintest echo from you.” She said, looking him over appraisingly.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you should take my advice.” She said, and reached out to take hold of his chin, her eyes so dark they nearly looked like ink boring into him, into some part of him that he himself didn’t know. “Don’t let it make you cruel. It will make you feel like you can do anything, the mote that lives in you. Don’t always heed the call.”

***

“Play your hand, pretty fox.” Tura said, her voice pleasantly low, and took another drink. Mitsuhide glanced at his cards, and back at her. She was impossible to read, even for him. It was as if she could simply vanish into herself, into some stillness that held no thought or feeling.

Her silky black hair fell down her breast in disarray, and she didn’t so much sit across from him as sprawl. But even in repose she was imposing, as tall as him or taller, with plenty of hard muscle under her curves that gave a serpentine impression.

“My, are you in a hurry to lose, or trying to cheat while I’m distracted?” He asked, peering uselessly into her eyes, grey as ash in her angular tanned face. He fancied he could see the faint red glow of embers in their depths.

“See, that’s why I like you. Half the fun of the game is trying to cheat each other.” She replied with a half smile softening her angular features.

“Oh? Is that why I’m your favorite?” He asked, a little more seriously than he intended.

She looked at him and smiled and there was a little of the wolf in her white teeth, as she laughed good humoredly. “I’d feel a little bad trying to cheat the Chatelaine or her man, but you can take it.” She drained her cup in one go. “Maybe it’s just that you haven’t got the good sense to be afraid of me.”

The incense she always kept burning sent up a ribbon of smoke that drifted between them and gave him the discomfiting sense that he had been there before, and had waited a long time to return.

“I could say the same to you.” He said and filled both their cups.

“Everything I ever feared has already come to pass.” She replied with no particular feeling.

#ikemen sengoku #ikesen x ocs #warmups #fragments

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epistolizer · 5 years ago

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Hit and Run Commentary #125

When liberals insist that there needs to be a conversation, what they really mean is that they intend to browbeat and berate the general public until they surrender ideologically just to be allowed a semblance of peace and where the prevailing conventional wisdom is allegedly altered to such an extent that disenfranchisement and even potential violence against the few remaining stalwart critics is viewed as a viable option.

Of conditions at facilities warehousing urchins dragged across the border, a Southern Baptist theologian lamented, “Those created in the image of God should be treated with dignity and compassion, especially those seeking refuge from violence back home. We can do better than this.” But at no time did he offer to board these individuals in posh and palatial Southern Baptist Convention properties. If we as a nation weren’t concerned about the dignity of these souls, wouldn’t they be disposed of at the border crossing? One notices at no time did he urge parents to remain with their children in their respective homelands or for the regimes from which these individuals originated to improve conditions for their citizens.

For Boo Beep failing to consent to being Woody’s breeding sow and for Jessie The Cowgirl taking over as the new sheriff in Toy Story, homeschool activist Kevin Swanson invoked I Corinthians 11:11, stating that man is not independent of woman nor woman independent of man. But that only applies to those that are married. For no one else has right to control you in that sort of manner. As much as aspiring cultists might want to, you can’t make someone marry someone else.

The same homeschool elites jacked out of shape that characters at the end of Toy Story aren't married off would probably toss a bigger fit if these pairings were formed in a manner other than the parents selecting the mate with the decision subject to approval by pastoral authorities.

It was said in a homily on SermonAudio that one will not find the right relationship until one has found satisfaction in Christ. Given that we still endure results of a sin nature until we depart this world, such never fully happens. Ironically, these hardline exegetes are usually of the sorts that toss fits if people aren’t married by the time they are 23 years old. Second, if one has found satisfaction and completeness in Christ, why bother getting married? Solely for increasing the size of the herd as the brainwashed girl remarked in the South Park episode on homeschooling?

In analyzing the Avengers films on Issues Etc, columnist Terry Mattingly referenced in what seemed an almost condescending tone “Evangelicals and their minivans.” So exactly how else is one supposed to get around if one spawns the requisite number to be categorized as sufficiently pious? It’s not like there is a variety of station wagons on the market to select from these days.

Instead of condemning singles that stay to themselves, perhaps Southern Baptist elites should have gotten after those for the most part married that can’t seem to keep their hands off the underaged.

The media is outraged at the existence of a secret social media group where border agents are alleged to have used vulgar terminology. So apparently the media can teach us to say these naughty sorts of things. We apparently just aren’t allowed to repeat them.

If the government is not allowed to ask how many residing within the nation’s borders are actually citizens, by what right can it ask how many flush toilets are in my house when I am the one paying for the amount of water that flows through both?

Pastor Mark Dever and his herald theologian Jonathan Leeman of the Capitol Hill Baptist network of churches insist that one is in a state of sin if a believer does not hold formalized membership in a church. But aren’t their membership contracts (or “covenants” laying over the vernacular a hyperpious coating most will lack the courage to question) terminable only upon death or membership transferred not to a congregation holding to the fundamentals of the Christian faith but rather one within their particular network of churches themselves sinful? How is this appreciably different than the billion year contracts aspiring Scientologists are compelled to sign before induction into the sect?

In remarks about church membership in a Ligionier Ministries podcast, theologian Jonathan Leeman remarked that those leery of such commitment are doing so to avoid accountability. But aren’t such individuals in a sense justified to be skeptical of such intrusion into their lives when a number of congregations that look to this particular thinker as one of their leading theological beacons stipulate in their membership covenants that such an arrangement is terminable only upon death or one sidedly when those in authority rather than the mere pewfiller decides that their walk with Christ might best be cultivated elsewhere? Contrary to Dr. Leeman’s flippant dismissal, there is more to this reluctance than not “wanting to live in the light”. It is about reticence over being compelled to live by pastoral preferences spelled out nowhere indisputably in the pages of Scripture and about the perdition it sounds like some churches might put an individual through if they come to the conclusion that they just have got to leave a miserable situation.

Elder Jonathan Leeman of Cheverly Baptist Church in an oration on church membership at Southeastern Theological Seminary admonished that great care must be taken to keep the line between world and church clear. Has he brought this up with his 9Marks colleague Isaac Adams who affiliates with a group of Christian hip hop artists advocating recreational cannabis? In this same oration, Jonathan Leeman pointed out the dangers of allowing non-Christian musicians to play in church. Perhaps he could similarly clarify his position regarding Christians extolling the delights of recreational cannabis or do they get a free pass when they are not White?

In an oration at Southeastern Theological Seminary, Elder Jonathan Leeman says that he likes to drive along Embassy Row in Washington, DC to see the flags of the various nations. Many of these represent nations engaged in outright tyranny and oppression. Others subtly restrict freedom of expression in the name of tolerance and diversity. Yet to this theologian, the flag of the United States is so vile that it must be removed from the nation’s churches for fear of upsetting foreigners often from these repressive lands happening to visit an American church in America.

In an oration at Southeastern Seminary, theologian Jonathan Leeman said that there needs to be a conversation about the requirements of church membership. Usually when someone says that there needs to be a conversation than means that they will be the ones doing the talking which will likely consist of a lengthy list of demands and you will be seriously berated if you raise any objections, questions, or calls for clarification.

In an oration on membership at Southeastern Theological Seminary, theologian Jonathan Leeman joked that the first membership interview was Jesus asking Peter who do you say that I am. But nowhere in that did Jesus strongarm Peter into signing a contract stipulating that the Apostle was bound to a single congregation for life or that he could only transfer with permission to another within a particular network of specified churches. Secondly, nowhere in the interview was Peter required to elaborate a serious of raunchy past escapades that would make a soap opera screenwriter blush.

In a Capitol Hill Baptist podcast discussing race, it was remarked that Black South Africans have a remarkably forgiving ethic. So are tires filled with gasoline placed around the necks of victims set ablaze and land seized from farmers for little reason other than that they are White the sort of social justice policies these New Wave churches would like to see implemented?

In a Capitol Hill Baptist podcast discussion about race, theologian Jonathan Leeman remarked that some have been hurting for months and some have been hurting for several hundred years. So wouldn’t one of these individuals have to be an immortal like Duncan McCloud born 400 years ago in the Highlands of Scotland?

In the new wave Baptist circles out there, the American flag and patriotic anthems are out. In apparently are hip hop albums where on the cover the artists appear to be puffing weed with insignias resembling three intertwined sixes bringing to mind the Mark of the Beast. But what do i know? I apparently just stoke unfounded fear.

If the party line is that an elder of a church no more represents a church than any other church member when the name of the particular elder is among the first things that pops up when researching a particular church, those about to have their church manipulated out from under them are hopelessly naive regarding about what is on the verge of rolling over them.

In discussing race in a podcast, Pastor Mark Dever and Dr. Jonathan Leeman discuss how they wished more racial minorities would take part in the pastoral internship program of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. You will note that at no time did the duo ever articulate their willingness to resign their own lucrative, prestigious positions to toil in manual labor and obscurity for the purposes of giving life to the utopian vision that they not only want imposed upon everybody else but also demand you celebrate enthusiastically if you wish to retain the church-bestowed designation of acceptable Christian.

I was verbally upbraided that I am obligated to “set my prejudices aside” and “to be open minded” in regards to two pastors discussing things as Christians when the perspective being addressed might end up becoming the preferential interpretation among the potential leadership of an unspecified in these posts congregation. So, in other words, I am apparently obligated to set aside the Biblical admonition to be a Berean in a church that claims to adhere to sola scriptura. So what other Biblical injunctions am I to also set aside for the time being? So why am I obligated to open my mind to new interpretative winds blowing into a church when apparently other minds are as closed regarding cautions I have raised?

In a sermon on church membership, theologian Jonathan Leeman rhetorically asked do you hang with those that do not look like you? Other than my father and brother, I don’t “hang” with anyone. Is family interaction also now to be verboten in New Wave Baptist Churches that don’t simply impart to you knowledge regarding God’s word but seek to take control of those aspects of your life over which the church once offered teaching but left you to yourself to implement?

It was remarked that, if a church member skipped several Sundays during the summer to go fishing, they ought to be disciplined. But in such an instance wouldn’t the church run the risk of the individual leaving altogether?

By Frederick Meekins

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thepermanentrainpress · 6 years ago

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REVIEW: FAN EXPO VANCOUVER AT THE VANCOUVER CONVENTION CENTRE - MARCH 2ND TO 3RD, 2019

The first panel on Saturday was Mehcad Brooks, currently known for his work as James Olsen/Guardian in CW’s Supergirl. He had an inspiring panel, touching on race and gender, social media ‘keyboard warriors’ who attempt to put others down, music (his stage name is King Gvpsv), and doing things one is passionate about. He discussed how DC Comics’ Jimmy Olsen was historically Caucasian, and how proud he was to be apart of creating diversity, portraying a black male version on the show. In fact, one superhero he would love to play is Bruce Wayne/Batman. That being said, he noted the importance of “creating your own superheroes” if you’re passionate about creativity, whether that be starting from the drawing board or adding attributes to those already brought to life – Mehcad is currently developing a superhero of his own, with a graphic novel to stay tuned for.

The one statement he said that stuck with me was, “perfectionism is the highest form of procrastination.” As an artist, it’s the best excuse not to do anything, and he uses that to fuel his spiritual journey as a creator and human being. I was really impressed with his connection to the audience in his words, and look forward to seeing his projects as they continue to unfold.

I caught a brief portion of George Takei’s self-moderated panel, hearing him take the stage with an emphatic “Oh Myyy” (to the delight of audience members)! He recognized the original Star Trek fans, and the new generation that keeps the franchise alive and thriving, noting the success of CBS’ Star Trek: Discovery. He recognized the importance of keeping ideals in mind (“in an insane reality” as the current situation in the US). A fan asked his opinion if achieving a utopia in the real world was a possibility, to which Takei replied no, but it is “still a dream that we should aspire to reach.” Takei is currently in Vancouver filming AMC’s The Terror, set in a Japanese internment camp during WWII.

The Flash panel was wild, this cast knows how to have fun. Featuring Tom Cavanagh, Robbie Amell, Carlos Valdes, Danielle Nicolet and Hartley Sawyer, the panel had mini donuts a plenty (they asked, and devoted fans delivered, not once but multiple times throughout their time on stage)! They talked briefly about the upcoming episode set to feature King Shark vs. Gorilla Grodd, and the large budget they had for its special effects. Danielle addressed the absence of Joe West this season (cast member Jesse L. Martin took a medical leave after suffering a back injury this past summer), but said he would be back on-screen soon. Amell, who no longer appears as Ronnie Raymond/Firestorm, is currently working on Amazon’s Upload, with sci-fi/action film Code 8 having premieres across the globe beginning in April. Cavanagh joked about Amell moving on from The Flash to “more expensive projects” and “greener pastures,” and this continued to be a running joke throughout the panel. New additions Nicolet and Sawyer were praised, for their work ethic and what they brought to their characters DA Cecile Horton and Ralph Dibny/Elongated Man.

During fan question period, Amell was asked about the crowdfunded Code 8 and working with cousin and Arrow star Stephen Amell (who he insisted was pronounced “steph-in” rather than “steve-in”). The pair always hoped to collaborate after having brief interactions in a past Arrowverse crossover, and were happy to do so with the sci-fi flick filmed in Toronto in 2017. There were also plugs for the Tom Cavanagh directed heist short Tom and Grant, which is now available for streaming on Vimeo. One of Cavanagh’s favourite and most challenging scenes, was when Reverse Flash killed Cisco Ramon (Valdes’ character) in Season 1’s “Out of Time.” One daring fan asked Valdes if there was truth to the rumours he’d be leaving the show after Season 5. He stayed mum, answering with an appropriate “I have a donut in my mouth.” It was a nice attempt. Nicolet and Valdes only had kind words to say about co-star Danielle Panabaker’s directing debut in episode 18, shot in February, describing her as a “boss lady” and “in control.” It was a fun panel, and you can see the family atmosphere created on-set translates similarly to their interactions with one another off-set.

During breaks in between panels, I had an opportunity to roam around the floor, to get a glimpse of the vast number of retailers, artists, and cosplayers on-hand for the event. I purchased a few postcards from illustrators Jenny Hsieh and chanteii – they have incredibly adorable artwork of shiba inus and cats, respectively. I also had to buy a couple of stickers from PIKARAR, because of my love for animals, naturally. There were booths with Funko pops, wigs, pins, medieval swords and armour, unique jewelry, kimonos, tees, fan art, boxes chalk full of comic books, and other pop culture memorabilia. It was overwhelming (in a good way)!

We stopped by the booth advertising locally filmed web series Followers: “An Internet Superhero Story.” The plot line is “a group of superheroes inspired by social media must collaborate together to take down Hater, who threatens to destroy the internet.” The trailer looked amusing with their special effects and action sequences, DIY costumes, and I look forward to checking out more of the episodes online!

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On the cosplay side, I’m not too knowledgeable on anime/pop culture characters (I’ll be the first to admit this!) but there were many amazing costumes. I saw a Spider-Gwen posing for pictures with young girls, Iron Man, Deadpool, Harley Quinn, Disney princesses, and characters I was told were from popular video games League of Legends and Overwatch.

On Sunday, I sat in on some of Pamela Anderson’s panel. Anderson is known for her modelling and acting work in Baywatch and Home Improvement, but currently uses her platform to do activist work for animal rights, our environment, and climate change. I heard her response to a fan’s question: “everything you do has a repercussion” and the importance of enjoying experiences over consumption. The Pamela Anderson Foundation supports “organizations and individuals that stand on the front lines in the protection of human, animal, and environmental rights.” It is nice to see Anderson (who was born in Ladysmith, BC) be passionate about these global issues, and encouraging listeners to do the same in their everyday life.

My final full panel of the day was the Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow talk with Juliana Harkavy, Brandon Routh, and Courtney Ford. This was largely a fan Q&A panel, with one fan dressed as Roy Harper/Arsenal informing the cast how their characters have provided happiness and strength in darker personal times. It was a touching moment, and you could see the actors’ expressions shift, truly listening to each of the fan questions with understanding and empathy. Harkavy said her favourite part about playing Black Canary was meeting fans, while Routh expressed some disappointment in the Legends being left out of this past season’s ‘Elseworlds’ crossover event, but hoped they might make an appearance in the already announced ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths.’

They admitted that they don’t socially interact much with cast members of their fellow CW shows other than at conventions and dinners to celebrate season kickoffs (on-location filming, studios not being on the same lot), but it’s always fun when they do meet-up to catch up. Routh said that while he loves playing Ray Palmer/Atom on LOT, his role as Superman in Bryan Singer’s 2006 film Superman Returns is his favourite role to-date because of its significance in his career (as his first leading role). All three prepared for their current roles using comic books as guidance, imagery and past iterations of their characters.

We had a wonderful time at FAN EXPO Vancouver, being surrounded by like minded others with an excitement and passion for the arts, cosplay, comics, film and television. Our team also had an opportunity to interview Gotham’s David Mazouz, a stellar actor who shone as a young Bruce Wayne and who’s using his platform to shed light on animal rescue and advocacy, and creating positive change as young adults. The interview will be posted soon! Until then, we can’t wait until FAN EXPO’s return to our city next year.

Written by: Chloe Hoy Photo credit to: Timothy Nguyen

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ladystylestores · 5 years ago

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When Jail Becomes Normal – The New York Times

Want to get The Morning by email? Here’s the sign-up.

Good morning. Protests continued late into the night, without the destruction of recent days. George W. Bush offered praise for the protesters. Let’s start by looking at how mass incarceration has shaped black Americans’ lives.

For most white Americans, interactions with the police happen rarely, and they’re often respectful or even friendly. Many white people don’t know a single person who’s currently behind bars.

In many black communities — and especially for black men — the situation is entirely different. Some of the statistics can be hard to fathom:

Incarceration rates for black men are about twice as high as those of Hispanic men, five times higher than those of white men and at least 25 times higher than those of black women, Hispanic women or white women.

When the government last counted how many black men had ever spent time in state or federal prison — in 2001 — the share was 17 percent. Today, it’s likely closer to 20 percent (and this number doesn’t include people who’ve spent time in jail without being sentenced to prison). The comparable number for white men is about 3 percent.

The rise of mass incarceration over the last half-century has turned imprisonment into a dominant feature of modern life for black Americans. Large numbers of black men are missing from their communities — unable to marry, care for children or see their aging parents. Many others suffer from permanent economic or psychological damage, struggling to find work after they leave prison.

A recent study by the economists Patrick Bayer and Kerwin Kofi Charles found that 27 percent of black men in the prime working years of their lives — between the ages of 25 and 54 — didn’t report earning a single dollar of income in 2014. “That’s a massive number,” Charles, the dean of the Yale School of Management, told me. Incarceration, including the aftereffects, was a major reason.

The anger coursing through America’s streets over the past week has many causes, starting with a gruesome video showing the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But that anger has also been building up for a long time. It is, in part, anger about incarceration having become normal.

An explainer podcast: How has mass incarceration happened? “Justice in America” — hosted by Josie Duffy Rice of The Appeal — tries to answer the question. The Times’s Caity Weaver recommends starting with the first episode, about bail. “I learn so much from this freaking podcast,” Caity tweeted yesterday.

FOUR MORE BIG STORIES

1. Less violence on Tuesday night

The amount of violence, fires and looting declined last night, relative to the chaos of previous nights. Instead, peaceful protesters in many cities defied curfews and remained on the streets late into the night to protest police violence.

Other protest developments:

Minneapolis police used force against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people during the past five years, city data show.

In his first speech outside his home since the coronavirus lockdown, Joe Biden likened President Trump’s language to that of Southern racists of the 1960s. “We cannot let our rage consume us,” Biden said.

Former President George W. Bush praised peaceful protesters. He said that he and his wife, Laura, were “anguished by the brutal suffocation of George Floyd and disturbed by the injustice and fear that suffocate our country.”

2. Fears of ‘autocracy’

Attorney General William Barr gave the order to clear the square across from the White House on Monday night, The Times explains, in a story reconstructing the incident. The order led law enforcement to use smoke and flash grenades to scatter peaceful protesters so that Trump could appear at a church for a photo opportunity.

Former military leaders and democracy experts condemned the use of force against citizens. Retired Adm. Mike Mullen wrote in The Atlantic that Trump had “laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country.” Kori Schake, a former Pentagon official and Republican policy adviser, said, “If we were seeing this in another country, we would be deeply concerned.” Gail Helt, a former C.I.A. analyst, told The Washington Post: “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”

3. Voting in a shaken country

People in eight states and Washington, D.C., cast ballots in extraordinary circumstances yesterday, and it seemed to go more smoothly than some people feared. “If Tuesday’s vote-by-mail primaries were a test for November, elections officials have reason to be encouraged: a few bumps but no major disasters,” said Stephanie Saul, a Times reporter.

Among the results:

Steve King, who’s represented an Iowa House district for nine terms and has a history of racist comments, lost his bid for renomination.

Theresa Greenfield, a real estate executive backed by the Democratic Party establishment, won Iowa’s Democratic Senate primary. She will face the Republican incumbent Joni Ernst

Ella Jones became the first African-American and the first woman elected mayor in Ferguson, Mo., where the 2014 killing of Michael Brown helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.

Find the latest election results here.

4. Zuckerberg defends his approach

In a tense company meeting, the Facebook C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg stood by his decision not to remove or flag Trump’s inflammatory posts.

Some Facebook employees have been in open revolt over the policy. “Mark always told us that he would draw the line at speech that calls for violence,” said one engineer in a resignation note this week. “He showed us on Friday that this was a lie.”

Here’s what else is happening

A Times’s investigation explains how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fumbled its response to the coronavirus, leaving the country without adequate testing early in the crisis. Here are five takeaways from the reporting.

Republicans said they were moving Trump’s convention speech out of Charlotte, after a stalemate with Democratic officials in North Carolina about virus restrictions.

The College Board is postponing plans for an online version of the SAT because of technological challenges, further complicating the college-application process for students stuck at home.

Lives lived: Elsa Dorfman used a 200-pound Polaroid camera to create a brand of photographic art all her own, making instantaneous giant, natural-looking portraits of celebrities and everyday people — even while Polaroid, outpaced by technology, was fast going out of business. She died on May 30 at 83.

BACK STORY: WHAT SCIENTISTS REALLY THINK

“A lot of people are reading scientific papers for the first time these days, hoping to make sense of the coronavirus pandemic,” Carl Zimmer writes in his latest Matter column. Unfortunately, many scientific papers are hard to read. They’re full of jargon and aren’t intended for a general audience.

But when Carl speaks to scientists on the phone, he often finds that they can tell a riveting, clear story about their research. Of course, most people aren’t going to cold-call scientists — but there is still a good alternative to trying to muddle through academic research papers: Follow the scientists on social media.

“Leading epidemiologists and virologists have been posting thoughtful threads on Twitter,” Carl writes, “laying out why they think new papers are good or bad.” I asked Carl for a list of scientists that people should follow, and he sent me 19 names. They include the virologists Florian Krammer and Angela Rasmussen, the epidemiologists Marc Lipsitch and Caitlin Rivers and the immunologist Akiko Iwasaki.

I’ve created a list of all 19 on Twitter. And if you have ideas for other scientists to follow on social media, send an email to [email protected], with “virus scientists” in the subject field.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT, ROAST

Kitchen nightmares: Home edition

Not everyone is using extra time at home to cultivate a sourdough starter. The food writer Priya Krishna has documented how necessity has forced fledgling home cooks to confront their biggest fear: using their kitchens. The result is a lot of blackened pots, smoke-filled apartments and frozen pizza disasters — but also some victories, like fried eggs and a decent carbonara.

For even the most hapless cooks: Make this roast chicken. It requires salt, pepper, olive oil and a whole bird.

N.B.A. takes Disney World

The N.B.A. is in talks to resume its pandemic-shortened season by hosting the league at Walt Disney World in Florida. Players would live in Disney hotels, and all games would be held at the nearby ESPN Wide World of Sports complex.

Why Disney World? Well, it doesn’t hurt that the ESPN facility is already wired to broadcast games on its network — and that Disney, its parent company, pays the N.B.A. more than $1 billion a year for the right to air them.

Brush up on some history

Three years ago, Ibram X. Kendi, a National Book Award-winning-author and professor, compiled a history of race and racism in America through 24 books for The Times Book Review. He highlighted influential works about the black experience for each decade of the nation’s existence, including the poems of Phillis Wheatley and Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer-winning novel “Beloved.”

Together, he writes, the books “tell the history of anti-black racism in the United States as painfully, as eloquently, as disturbingly as words can. In many ways, they also tell its present.” You can revisit the list here.

Diversions

Games

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: B, on the periodic table (five letters).

You can find all of our puzzles here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The word “coronavirologists” appeared for the first time in The Times yesterday, as noted by the Twitter bot @NYT_first_said.

You can see today’s print front page here.

Today’s episode of “The Daily” includes an interview with Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis

The Times is providing free access to much of our coronavirus coverage. Please consider supporting our journalism with a subscription.

Ian Prasad Philbrick and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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fostersffff · 5 years ago

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It’s nearly the end of the year, and barring me entering some kind of wild hyper-focused fugue state, I don’t believe I’ll be finishing any more games by the 31st. So with that said, instead of doing a strictly best/worst thing, here’s a list of awards- both positive and negative- I made up to assign to games that I felt were worth talking about in some way.

The Exceeded Expectations Award

A tight race between Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Devil May Cry 5. I really don’t think anyone was expecting Three Houses to be the smash hit it would become, but the surprising and exciting E3 timeskip trailer was followed by a steady steam of promising information about the gameplay and story that wound up coalescing into fantastic experience. Ultimately, DMC5 wins out for Hideaki Itsuno making the unbelievably bold claim that the game would “exceed fans’ expectations” to an audience with the second highest expectations in the history of the industry, behind only Final Fantasy VII Remake, and then actually delivering on that claim with one of the finest action game experiences I’ve had in recent memory.

The Most Clearly Sent Out To Die Award

Daemon X Machina. It didn’t stand a chance in it’s release window and was cannibalized by its own publisher putting out like three other high profile games both before and after it. As such, this game will most likely be remembered by people thinking back to E3 2018 and going “whatever happened to that really cool mech combat game?”, and by people who did play it for the weird crossover DLC like Code Geass and The Witcher 3.

The Most Overrated Game of the Year Award

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition. Yuri Vesperia is every bit as good a character as people said he was, but if this is the peak of the “Tales” series, it’s decidedly not for me. It was honestly kind of upsetting to see that this game occupied one of my “most-played” slots on Nintendo’s "Year in Review” page instead of Valkyria Chronicles 4.

The Least Overrated Game of the Year Award

A Hat in Time. A lot of the praise I saw for this game came from people who were disappointed with Super Mario Odyssey back in 2017, and as someone who gleefully played Odyssey like five times in a row, I figured it wouldn’t resonate with me in the same way, but it’s every bit as good as people said it was. The base game was perfectly satisfying on its own, but it was an absolute treat to see how well both the Seal the Deal and Nyakuza Metro DLC turned out and how much better Gears for Breakfast got with every aspect of the game over time. The only genuine problem I have with it are the technical issues present in the Switch port, the most severe of which have been patched out at this point, and while it’s still not the optimal way to play, the issues with Hat’s Switch port didn’t really impede my enjoyment at all. Speaking of which...

The Be Careful What You Wish For Award

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. I really love the Switch both in concept and execution, and up until August of this year I was adamant that all but the most technically demanding games should try to put out a Switch port. That’s changed thanks to the Switch port of Bloodstained: it was goddamn near unplayable at launch, and even with the multiple-month-delayed SUPER PATCH, I still encountered an unacceptable number of crashes and atrocious visual glitches while dealing with a compromised-under-the-best-possible-circumstances version of the game. It was so bad I genuinely considered stopping near the end to restart on the PC version, but I soldiered on. It’s a shame too, because in terms of actual content, Bloodstained is a success story on par with A Hat in Time or Shovel Knight, but it’s gonna be a while before I give a better optimized version of the game a whirl.

The Returning Champion Award

Capcom. The four-hit combo of RE2make, Devil May Cry 5, Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, and the announcement of RE3make to close out the year following the kickoff of the Mega Man Apology Tour in 2018 firmly cements Capcom as being back after what felt like a full decade of mediocrity and disappointment across the board. Square-Enix gave them a run for their money here between Kingdom Hearts III, Dragon Quest Builders 2, Dragon Quest XI S, and Collection of Mana, but barring THE BLUNDER OF THE DECADE I think they’ve got this particular award in the bag for 2020.

The Dropped Ball Award

Super Mario Maker 2. I actually didn’t care all that much about no local multiplayer, but between that and the online multiplayer being offensively broken in terms of how awful the lag was, it seems like Nintendo let what should’ve been an evergreen Switch title flop to the ground and start gasping for air. Either that, or the original Super Mario Maker only succeeded because there was so little else to do with a Wii U. Granted, the recent Zelda update is super neat, but coming a full six months after launch with almost no fanfare when other Switch games like Splatoon 2, Mario Tennis Aces, and even Arms had more consistent post-launch support is such a strange and bad look.

The Stuck Landing Award

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. After six and a half years, Shovel Knight has delivered on all of its Kickstarter campaign promises, and while the original game and the Plague of Shadows campaign were excellent, Specter of Torment, King of Cards, and Shovel Knight Showdown all went far above and beyond what people were expecting of Yacht Club Games by creating new stages with remixed music, wildly divergent gameplay mechanics, a fully fleshed out card game, and a Smash Bros.-tier multiplayer game. It’s the only game I can think of in my entire history of playing video games where the price has gone up over time and I’ve found myself nodding in agreement.

The Still Good One Year Later After The Hype Has Faded Award

Mega Man 11. Still excellent!

The Achievements In Localization Award

Another tight race, this time between Collection of Mana in recognition of Square-Enix deciding to localize a 23 year old game from scratch when a total remake is coming out in less than a year’s time, Judgment for having two separate scripts for the English dub and the Japanese dub’s subtitles, and Trails of Cold Steel III for NISA doing a genuinely terrific job that had no obvious cut corners in a game with this much text that was consistent with the naming conventions established by an entirely different localization company, even hiring back like 99% of the other company’s voice cast. Despite all of that praise for NISA, this one goes to Judgment for what I hope will become a standard in the industry.

The Worst Ending and Voice Acting Award

While I appreciate how committed to the joke WayForward was, the ending of River City Girls gets worse the further away I get from it, especially since they could’ve actually alleviated so many problems with one extra line of dialogue from Hasebe and/or Mami about how they were the ones who “abducted” Kunio and Riki (by sending them to the spa) and that they also sent the text that kicks of the plot just to fuck with Misako and Kyoko. Also: in general, don’t hire e-celebs to do voicework for your project if they are not actual voice actors, either by trade or by aspiration. At least most of them were kept to shopkeeper cameos, but I’ll never understand the decision to cast Big Capital-“Oi” Irish Brogue Jacksepticeye as recurring character Godai other than “CLOUT PLEASE”.

The Best Ending and Voice Acting Award

Dragon Quest XI S. This game should be front and center when conversations come up about having to earn a happy ending, because the ending you get when the credits roll is perfectly satisfactory... but you can do better. And not only can you do better, you can get what is effectively the most perfect ending that can be in the entire history of Dragon Quest as a gaming franchise, which sounds like a dramatic overstatement until you see it. And, to contrast the previous award, I really appreciate how DQXI’s voice cast didn’t include anyone I was familiar with and thus I never had the experience of “oh shit it’s x from y”, but this award exists in particular for Serena’s voice actress, Jessica Clark, and her reading of the line “I hate to ask, but would you mind awfully not going anywhere for a little while? I think I’m going to cry...”

The Most Wrong I Ever Was About A Story Award

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered. For years, I thoughtlessly regurgitated the opinion that “parts of FF8 are good, but it’s definitely a bad game with a lame romance and Squall is a terrible protagonist” based on the memory of playing the demo as a child and enjoying it, but seeing the internet at large bash it without mercy. I was wrong, because not only is it not bad, the central romance is totally compelling and Squall has become my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist, in the very same year that I finally also played Final Fantasy VII and came to terms with the fact that Cloud has been good all along, actually.

The 2019 Was A Ridiculously Good Year For Games In General Because I Didn’t Actually Play It That Much Despite The First Game Being My GOTY 2016 And This Game Is An Improvement In Every Single Possible Way Award

Dragon Quest Builders 2. I cannot believe how little of DQB2 I’ve played! And it’s so good!

#long post #video games

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democratsunited-blog · 6 years ago

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Political Scene: R.I. Democrats haul in campaign cash - News - providencejournal.com

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=7398

Political Scene: R.I. Democrats haul in campaign cash - News - providencejournal.com

With an assist from Gov. Gina Raimondo’s national donor network, the Rhode Island Democratic Party is on a blistering fundraising pace this year as it plans a large, coordinated get-out-the-vote effort in November.

Between April 1 and June 30, the R.I. Democratic State Committee took in $566,762, far more than the $41,800 it raised in the first three months of year or at this point in other recent elections cycles. In 2014, for example, the last time statewide officeholders were on the ballot, the Democratic committee raised $10,585 in the second quarter.

Like Raimondo and the state’s congressional delegation, the state committee’s contributions come from across the country. State party donors hailing from Rhode Island gave $118,712; California $116,500; New York $102,000 and Massachusetts $77,000.

And they include high-profile names like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and “superlawyer” David Boies.

State Democratic Party Executive Director T. Kevin Olasanoye on Friday said the sudden fundraising surge was tactical.

“The party in the first quarter made a decision not to be raising money, because we didn’t want to flood the zone and be competing with candidates,” Olasanoye said. “Once we knew where people were, we decided to ratchet up our fundraising.”

But the surge in donations also coincided with a meeting of the minds between state party leaders and top 2018 campaigns, including Raimondo’s.

You might recall a series of controversies over the winter stemming from a short-lived fundraising agreement between the Raimondo campaign and the Providence Democratic City Committee, which ultimately drew a complaint to the Rhode Island Board of Elections from state Republican Party Chairman Brandon Bell.

The agreement would have allowed Raimondo to raise money for the City Committee and collaborate on how to spend it. Bell alleged that it violated campaign finance law because then City Committee chairman Patrick Ward, who signed the deal, was a state employee in Raimondo’s administration.

The Board of Elections dismissed the complaint (Ward was too far removed from the governor to be a direct subordinate, commissioners said) and after he stepped down under scrutiny for posting controversial Facebook memes, new City Committee Chairwoman Maryellen Goodwin abandoned the idea of coordinating with Raimondo.

But the agreement raised questions about whether Raimondo was trying to do an end-run around the state committee, and the influence wielded over it by House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, as well as whether donations to party committees could be used to skirt individual donation limits.

Olasanoye said the state party had been working with Raimondo and other campaigns, including the congressional delegation, since last October on the details of the state’s coordinated campaign, but came to a general understanding around March before finalizing a pact in June.

Rhode Island campaign finance law limits donors to $1,000 in campaign contributions to any one candidate per year. But donors can also give up to $10,000 per year to party committees (either state or city) for the purpose of “party building,” a somewhat broad term generally understood to mean not benefiting one candidate.

Of the $566,762 the Democratic state committee received in the second quarter, $496,000 was for party building.

Exactly how much of the money coming into the state committee was raised by Raimondo is difficult to know, but even a cursory comparison shows significant overlap between the two lists of donors.

Raimondo’s fundraising was a big part of the state committee’s large second quarter fundraising haul, but not the only part, Olasanoye said.

Boies, who worked on the legal defense of Raimondo’s signature pension overhaul law and also worked extensively for indicted film mogul Harvey Weinstein, gave the state committee $11,000 in June and $1,000 individually to Raimondo.

Longtime donor and sometimes-rumored presidential candidate Bloomberg, who has hosted fundraisers for Raimondo in past years, gave $11,000 to the state committee and $1,000 to Raimondo.

Alfred Carpionato, the real estate developer who has donated to and been a landlord for numerous Rhode Island politicians through the years, gave $10,000 to the state committee and $1,000 to Raimondo. (Carpionato also gave $1,000 to Republican candidate for governor Allan Fung.)

Bell, whose own Republican State Committee raised a more modest $2,319 in the the second quarter, said he wants the Democratic State Committee to release a copy of its coordinated campaign agreement and for the Board of Elections to clarify how party-building funds can and cannot be used.

“Michael Bloomberg is not giving to the Rhode Island Democratic Party unless Gina Raimondo tells him to,” Bell said. “I don’t have enough information to know if there was an actual violation … But that party-building money cannot be used to benefit Gina Raimondo.”

Democratic committee

seats to be contested

The aftershocks of the Democratic Party endorsement of a Donald Trump supporter over Rep. Moira Walsh this year are still rippling through the state and could shake up down-ballot races many Rhode Islanders pay little attention to.

Outraged that Walsh and two other progressive incumbent lawmakers saw their primary challengers get the party’s endorsement, at least two progressive groups — the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats and Our Revolution RI — have been recruiting left-leaning candidates to run for state Democratic Party Committee seats and legislative district committee seats.

Whether or not they can move the balance of power in the party, the effort appears to have caused an uptick in activity in these typically low-profile positions.

This year 170 candidates declared for the 150 directly-elected Democratic State Committee seats, 30 more candidates than in 2014 and 27 more candidates than 2010.

As a result, after taking into account candidates withdrawing or failing to qualify, there are 19 contested races for state committeeman or state committeewoman in 2018, more than double the eight contested races in 2014, according to lists provided by the secretary of state’s office. In 2010 there were 10 contested state committee races.

“We have had a lot of citizens come to us concerned about these endorsements,” said Nathan Carpenter, coordinator for the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats, which for the first time this year intends to release a list of 30 to 40 preferred candidates for state committee races. “We can repair the broken down Democratic committee leadership that failed to endorse these incumbents that we find have Democratic values.”

Our Revolution RI, the local branch of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ movement, points to the state party’s handling of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, in addition to this year’s endorsement flap, as a reason to mobilize.

“Our Revolution Rhode Island saw how the RI State Committee denied Sen. Sanders the proper amount of delegates to the DNC 2016 Convention,” said Maggie Kain, chairwoman of Our Revolution RI. “We made it a goal to remove the secrecy and nepotism involved in a body that wields much power in Democratic politics in the state.”

There are around 250 Democratic State Committee seats, many of them appointed by the state party chairman. The 150 seats up for election represent the state’s 75 House districts, with one seat per district for a male and female candidate. If a seat is uncontested, it does not appear on the primary ballot.

The state committee endorses candidates for statewide office and Congress. It also adopts a state party platform and elects the chairman, who in the Walsh race made the decision to endorse challenger and recent Republican Michael Earnhardt.

Morgan releases poll,

says GOP race is close

Rest assured — there’s intra-party conflict over on the GOP side too, where last week one candidate for governor, House Minority Leader Patricia Morgan, made an unusual push to highlight a poll showing her trailing as we head into the home stretch of the Republican primary.

Her reasoning: to discredit earlier polling numbers publicized by Allan Fung.

A poll commissioned by the Morgan campaign in late July with responses from 400 “likely Republican primary voters” showed Fung leading Morgan 44 percent to 33 percent. Morgan shared her poll with media outlets last week, starting with WPRI-TV.

That 11-point deficit is significant, Morgan told Political Scene, because it shows a much closer race than the “polling memo” Fung released last month with selected results from a Public Opinion Strategies poll indicating he held a 40-point advantage over Morgan.

A “push poll” is how Morgan describes what Fung released. “It was really misleading.”

Among voters who cast ballots in the last four GOP primaries, the most likely of likely voters, Morgan’s poll showed her trailing by 4 percentage points, she said.

It should be noted that Morgan’s telephone poll only tested a head-to-head contest with Fung and did not include fellow Republican primary challenger Giovanni Feroce. (Fung’s poll had put Feroce at 4 percent.)

Other notes from Morgan’s poll: The most important issue for respondents was “getting the state budget under control.”

Trump’s job approval rating among those polled was 79 percent.

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#Democrats

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thisdaynews · 7 years ago

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Breaking News: Hillary and Bill Clinton Go Separate Ways for 2018 Midterm Elections

New Post has been published on https://www.thisdaynews.net/2018/05/21/breaking-news-hillary-and-bill-clinton-go-separate-ways-for-2018-midterm-elections/

Breaking News: Hillary and Bill Clinton Go Separate Ways for 2018 Midterm Elections

For years they dominated the party, brandishing their powerful financial network and global fame to pick favorites for primary elections and lift Democrats even in deep-red states. They were viewed as a joint entity, with a shared name that was the most powerful brand in Democratic politics: the Clintons.

But in the 2018 election campaign, Hillary and Bill Clinton have veered in sharply different directions. Mrs. Clinton appears determined to play at least a limited role in the midterms, bolstering longtime allies and raising money for Democrats in safely liberal areas. Her husband has been all but invisible.

And both have been far less conspicuous than in past election cycles, but for different reasons: Mrs. Clinton faces distrust on the left, where she is seen as an avatar of the Democratic establishment, and raw enmity on the right. Mr. Clinton has been largely sidelined amid new scrutiny of his past misconduct with women.

Mrs. Clinton is expected to break her virtual hiatus from the campaign trail this week, when she will endorse Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York in a contested Democratic primary, her spokesman, Nick Merrill, confirmed — a move sure to enrage liberal activists seeking Mr. Cuomo’s ouster at the hands of Cynthia Nixon, the actress turned progressive insurgent. Mrs. Clinton has also recorded an automated phone call endorsing Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic leader in the Georgia House, who is competing for the party’s nomination for governor on Tuesday.

It is unclear whether Mr. Clinton will be involved in either race.

Mrs. Clinton’s stunning defeat in 2016 delivered a blunt-force coda to the family’s run in electoral politics, and many Democrats are wary of seeing either of them re-engage. They worry that the Clinton name reeks of the past and fear that their unpopularity with conservative-leaning and independent voters could harm Democrats in close races. And among many younger and more liberal voters, the Clintons’ reputation for ideological centrism has little appeal.

President Trump, meanwhile, has continued to level caustic attacks that have made the Clintons radioactive with Republicans. A Gallup poll in December found Mrs. and Mr. Clinton with their lowest favorability ratings in years.

So far, the couple have avoided high-profile special elections in Alabama, Georgia and Pennsylvania, and engaged sparingly in the off-year elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia.

Even in their former political backyard — in Arkansas, where Mr. Clinton was governor — there is scant demand for their help. In Little Rock, Ark., where on Tuesday there is a Democratic primary election for a Republican-held House seat the party covets, none of the four candidates running has reached out to seek the Clintons’ support, their campaigns said.

“I see the Clintons as a liability,” said Paul Spencer, a high school teacher running as a progressive in the Arkansas race. “They simply represent the old mind-set of a Democratic Party that is going to continue to lose elections.”

Still, Mrs. Clinton plainly maintains a following in the party and aims to help in corners of the country where she can. She introduced a political group, Onward Together, after the 2016 election, and has directed millions to liberal grass-roots organizations, like Indivisible and Swing Left. And she is in talks about campaigning for some Democratic candidates in the fall, likely in a cluster of House districts where she defeated Mr. Trump.

“We have to win back the Congress,” Mrs. Clinton said during a seven-minute speech Friday in Washington, at a women’s leadership conference organized by the Democratic National Committee.

Her interventions for Mr. Cuomo and Ms. Abrams are rare steps for the former secretary of state, who has rebuffed other requests for help and signaled even to close allies that she would not meddle in primary elections.

The difference in her approach toward the two races underscores the delicacy of her role: In New York, where Mrs. Clinton is popular and Mr. Cuomo needs help mainly with fellow Democrats, she intends to deliver her endorsement publicly, at a state party convention on Long Island. In Georgia, where Mrs. Clinton’s imprimatur could harm Ms. Abrams in a general election, the endorsement will be delivered only through phone messages to Democratic voters — making the appeal imperceptible to everyone else.

But Clinton associates say the bulk of her activities will be in the fall.

Former Representative Ellen Tauscher of California, a close ally who is on the board of Onward Together, said she expected Mrs. Clinton to campaign later in the season and cited Senator Dianne Feinstein’s re-election campaign in her home state as a likely choice.

“People she has supported for a long time, like Dianne Feinstein and others, know she’s with them,” Ms. Tauscher said.

Mrs. Clinton’s husband appears far less welcome on the trail, with his unpopularity among Republicans compounded by new skepticism on the left about his treatment of women and allegations of sexual assault.

Mr. Clinton is said to remain passionately angry about the 2016 election — more so than his wife — raising concerns that he could go wildly off message in campaign settings, several people who have spoken with Mr. Clinton said.

Democrats have been keeping their distance: During the special election for Senate in Alabama in December, Doug Jones, the Democrat who won the race, considered enlisting Mr. Clinton’s help before abandoning the idea as too risky.

When Mr. Clinton offered to campaign for Ralph Northam, now the governor of Virginia, Mr. Northam’s camp responded cautiously. Rather than headlining a public event, Mr. Clinton was urged to attend a fund-raiser already scheduled in the Washington area — a suggestion that offended the former president, according to people briefed on the awkward exchange. The Northam and Clinton camps discussed a church visit in October but failed to agree on a date.

Yet Mr. Clinton appears eager to engage where he can, holding an event last fall with Phil Murphy, now the governor of New Jersey. This year, Mike Espy, Mr. Clinton’s former agriculture secretary who is running for Senate in Mississippi, told a fellow cabinet alumnus, Rodney Slater, that he was hoping to reach Mr. Clinton. Minutes later, Mr. Espy has told associates, his phone rang: It was the former president, who launched into a monologue advising Mr. Espy on campaign strategy and pledging to deliver fund-raising help.

Angel Ureña, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton, said the former president has been focused on nonpolitical projects, including the publication of a thriller next month. Noting that Mr. Clinton left office nearly two decades ago, Mr. Ureña called it “remarkable” that questions were being asked about his role in the midterms.

“Candidates from across the country have been in touch about him supporting their campaigns,” Mr. Ureña said. “But we’re not past primary season, and he’s focused on the work of his foundation and his book.”

Mr. Merrill, the spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said she had been largely focused on her new political group, and promised “there will be more to come.”

“While Republicans are hellbent on focusing on the past, she is focused on the future,” Mr. Merrill said.

But Mrs. Clinton has stirred frustration among Democrats who hope she plays a muted role in 2018. Last year, she chose to focus quite a bit on the past, revisiting the particulars of her 2016 defeat in a memoir, to the consternation of other Democrats. And in a series of public speeches, she has offered cutting criticism of American political culture.

During a visit to India in March, she seemed to suggest that many women who voted for Mr. Trump did so because of pressure from their husbands. This month, Mrs. Clinton declared in New York that her support for capitalism had hurt her in 2016 — because so many Democrats are now socialists.

At least two Democratic women have nearly begged Mrs. Clinton to stay away from their high-stakes red-state Senate races. After Mrs. Clinton said in March that she won parts of America that are “moving forward,” unlike Trump-friendly areas, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri rebuked her.

“I don’t think that’s the way you should talk about any voter, especially ones in my state,” Ms. McCaskill said.

Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota was blunter when asked, on the radio, when Mrs. Clinton might “ride off into the sunset.”

“Not soon enough,” she replied.

Associates of Mrs. Clinton said she is aware of the political pressures that make her unwelcome in red states, and they do not expect her to charge into races where she is undesired. They generally anticipate she will focus on fund-raising.

Her bond with Democratic donors was on grand display last month: In late April, Mrs. Clinton convened a gathering in New York for the liberal groups backed by Onward Together, meeting for hours with organizers and donors at an airy conference center overlooking the East River.

Mrs. Clinton delivered an unsparing critique there of the Democratic Party’s political infrastructure: She said the left had failed to match Republicans’ enthusiasm for party-building and lamented what she called the poor state of Democrats’ electioneering machinery in 2016, according to several attendees.

“On the Democratic side, she talked about how we want to fall in love with the candidate and Republicans will fall in line,” said Cristóbal Alex, president of the Latino Victory Project, a group backed by Mrs. Clinton’s organization.

But Mr. Alex said Mrs. Clinton had not taken aim at the man who defeated her.

“I don’t remember her uttering the word ‘Trump,’” he said, “but so many others did and you couldn’t escape that context in this meeting.”

#A Gallup poll in December found Mrs. and Mr. Clinton with their lowest favorability ratings in years #and raw enmity on the right #bolstering longtime allies and raising money for Democrats in safely liberal areas #brandishing their powerful financial network and global fame to pick favorites for primary elections and lift Democrats even in deep-red sta #But in the 2018 election campaign #confirmed — a move sure to enrage liberal activists seeking Mr. Cuomo’s ouster at the hands of Cynthia Nixon #For years they dominated the party #has continued to level caustic attacks that have made the Clintons radioactive with Republicans #Her husband has been all but invisible #her spokesman #Hillary and Bill Clinton Go Separate Ways for 2018 Midterm Elections #Hillary and Bill Clinton have veered in sharply different directions #It is unclear whether Mr. Clinton will be involved in either race #meanwhile #Mr. Clinton has been largely sidelined amid new scrutiny of his past misconduct with women #Mrs. Clinton appears determined to play at least a limited role in the midterms #Mrs. Clinton faces distrust on the left #Mrs. Clinton is expected to break her virtual hiatus from the campaign trail this week #Nick Merrill #President Trump #the actress turned progressive insurgent. Mrs. Clinton has also recorded an automated phone call endorsing Stacey Abrams #the Clintons #the former Democratic leader in the Georgia House #They were viewed as a joint entity #when she will endorse Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York in a contested Democratic primary #where she is seen as an avatar of the Democratic establishment #who is competing for the party’s nomination for governor on Tuesday #with a shared name that was the most powerful brand in Democratic politics:

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garancefranke-ruta · 7 years ago

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The resistance is organized and ready in district where Trump is visiting

Conor Lamb reacts to winning the Democratic nomination for Pennsylvania’s District 18 special election. (Photo: Jeff Swensen for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

MOUNT LEBANON, PA. — Former Marine Capt. Conor Lamb has been described as a central casting vision of a heartland American politician. A former assistant U.S. attorney general and novice political candidate, he’s running in a special election to replace eight-term Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, who resigned last fall following news reports that the family-values conservative had asked his mistress to get an abortion.

Pennsylvania’s 18th district, including affluent suburbs of Pittsburgh and working-class areas on the West Virginia border, has been the definition of a safe Republican district. Donald Trump won the district by 20 points. It’s not on the Swing Left map for flipping red districts to blue, and it’s not a priority red to blue district for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In fact it’s so red that in the last two election cycles, no Democrat even challenged Murphy there, allowing him to win each time with 100 percent of the vote.

But Donald Trump’s visit to the district on Thursday to shore up support for the Republican candidate, State Rep. Rick Saccone, a stalwart Trump defender and surprise victor of the GOP primary, shows just how much has changed since the reality TV star was elected president.

Public polling by Gravis Marketing at the start of the year showed Saccone with a 12 point lead, but internal polls show the race much closer, in the single digits. In a low-turn-out special election, in an environment where Democratic statehouse candidates in ruby red districts across the country are improving on their party’s 2016 performance by 15 to 27 points, a Democratic victory here no longer looks impossible, even if it the odds remain against it.

GOP Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone had announced he was running for the U.S. Senate, but after eight-term Rep. Tim Murphy stepped down switched gears and won the primary to run as the Republican candidate in the state’s 18th congressional district. (Photo: Marc Levy/AP)

But if Lamb has a shot in this race, any shot at all, it will be because of an uprising in the district that began long before his candidacy. Since the 2016 election, a grassroots rebellion has been upending politics as usual in Southwestern Pennsylvania and across the state, driven in large measure by suburban middle-aged women.

If a Democratic wave carries Lamb into office in the March 13 election, it will be one that has been building, drop by drop, since the day Trump was elected.

+++

The story of the fight by Democrats to retake PA- 18 doesn’t start with Murphy’s resignation on October 21, or even with the revelations over the summer that he’d had an affair.

It started a year ago, when women like Lara Huber, 40, went to the Women’s March in Washington D.C., taking their rage and disappointment over Hillary Clinton’s loss and Donald Trump’s victory to the streets. It was the beginning of a process of self-education and activism that has flowered across the state, even in the reddest precincts.

“I was not an activist prior to November 8th,” Huber told Yahoo News at one of the organizing meetings for the activist group 412 Resistance, held in an upstairs backroom at the public library in Dormont, a working-class suburb just outside of Pittsburgh that’s easy to drive to from across the South Hills. “I voted in every election. I read the newspaper. I thought that was good enough.”

After Trump was elected, though, it was clear that wouldn’t be good enough any more. As it did for women in communities across the country, the Women’s March had two powerful effects on her – it created a sense of solidarity and momentum when she was looking for a way to express her despondency over the election outcome, and it suggested concrete steps for action that took her life in a surprising new direction.

“We came off the march and we were like, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” said Huber, who lives in Castle Shannon. “And we all started creating these little groups.”

Nevertheless they persisted: Four members of 412 Resistance, including Valerie Fleischer (right) and Lara Huber (second from right) show off their tattoos. In the spring of 2017, the group hosted a fundraiser in Pittsburgh where women got tattoos of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellâs words, which have become a feminist rallying cry. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

Other women in the South Hills were following similar paths, using step-by-step instructions sent by older national groups such as MoveOn and new insurgent ones like Indivisible, along with emails from the Women’s March organization based in New York City.

“The first action was, have a postcard party,” recalled Huber of how 412 – the name refers to the Pittsburgh and Allegheny County area code — Resistance got its start. “And I created a Facebook event and I invited my friends and thought a few of them would show up and support me—and about 37 people showed up and most of them were not my friends, they were new people.” Today 412 Resistance counts more than 500 members, and is working to elect its most active members to district and county positions within the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, hoping to reshape and reinvigorate it from the inside. And its members are working to elect Conor Lamb – canvassing for him, phone-banking for him, putting up lawn signs and talking to their friends and neighbors about how their lives and communities might be affected by changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.

Lynn Hughes, 34, a registered independent until Trump’s win radicalized her, tells a similar story. “Before the Inauguration, MoveOn.org called for community meetings all across the country to resist Trump at a local level. I was like, I have a house, I can just host a meeting,” she said after a meeting at a Panera in Mount Lebanon co-hosted by 412 Resistance and the group she founded in mid-January, Mount Lebanon Rise Up. “I never intended to be any kind of organizer really.”

But then she tapped into something, she recalls: “I thought maybe five people would show, and I think there ended up being 20 people, and then we had one person walk in from off the street. She saw my signs and she parked her car, and came in. So then we just started talking about what we should do at a local level. Someone mentioned the Indivisible Guide and so we kind of became an Indivisible group. People started finding us through there. At our next meeting we had 60 people, then the meeting after that we had over 100.” Today the group has more than 300 members, and there are at least eight Indivisible groups working in the 18th district to fight the Trump agenda and elect Lamb.

In the group’s early days, Hughes followed the MoveOn.org community meeting agenda instructions, which suggested forming committees. Then those took on a life of their own. The biggest ones focused on gerrymandering – Pennsylvania is one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country — and planning for the midterm elections. The goal from the start was to create enough momentum in the district to attract a strong Democratic challenger to Murphy, and provide a deep network of grassroots volunteers, and maybe even money, for that eventual candidate’s campaign to rely on.

They got their chance sooner than expected. “It came about eight months earlier than we had planned. But we were ready,” said Valerie Fleischer, 40, a mother of two and member of 412 Resistance who has since the election begun to consider running for office herself and is now taking a training class for would-be women candidates by Emerge America.

A meeting of 412 Resistance at the Dormont Public Library last spring. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

Another Mount Lebanon Rise Up committee spun off into a group called Mondays with Murphy, targeting Murphy’s field offices around the district with vivid, boisterous — and sometimes musical — protests every Monday that eroded support for him in the district even before his affair went from local rumor to national news.

“I thought, I’m not going to be standing on the sidelines when something so crucial is happening,” said Mykie Reidy, a former Bernie Sanders delegate and part-time copywriter who set up Mondays with Murphy’s planning committee and went on to emerge as a leading activist in the district. “I needed some more bodies on board, especially if we’re going to last until Nov. 2018. And as time went on every week there was another assault of some kind on people’s rights and their well-being and it really wasn’t that hard to keep it going because there was a new inflammation all the time.”

Mondays with Murphy morphed, after the congressman’s resignation, into Progress 18 PA. By that point it had more than 500 members. And when the time came for the Democratic Party’s convention to select a nominee, it threw its weight against the main primary competitor to Lamb, Gina Cerilli. A coalition of 10 of the new Southwestern Pennsylvania resistance groups, claiming collectively more than 20,000 members in the 18th district or near enough to it to be a source of volunteer labor for an eventual candidate, sent a letter to the Democratic Party announcing they would not do work on her behalf, owing to her anti-abortion position and other actions she had taken to alienate the progressive upstarts.

Protestors with Tuesdays with Toomey outside Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey’s Pittsburgh district office. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

Further flexing their muscle, members of the resistance groups had also been working to become Democratic committee members so they could attend the more than 500-person convention to select the party’s nominee. They succeeded in winning a small number of slots that allowed them to be in the room where the decision was made. Lamb led six other candidates on the first round of balloting and won overwhelmingly over Cerilli on the second round.

“We were ready to make it competitive in the general election. The fact that a shameful resignation — that he had to leave office in shame only sweetened the deal,” said Fleischer.

+++

Pennsylvania’s 18th district stretches from the gritty working class suburbs south of Steel City through a stretch of tony communities full of stand-alone homes where regional CEOs and business leaders reside, continuing south and west through coal mining communities and rural areas whose rolling hills are indistinguishable from those across the district’s southern and western borders with West Virginia. The residents are more than 90 percent white and substantially more suburban than rural.

It is an oddly shaped district, drawn in the last round of redistricting in the state in such a way as to be especially favorable to Republicans. It covers parts of Alleghany, Greene and Washington counties and a spur juts out to take in part of Westmoreland County to the east.

Activists groups in each of those counties are now doing grassroots volunteer organizing for Lamb — even in the GOP stronghold of Westmoreland County, where Voice of Westmoreland has grown from a lone man holding a banner outside the courthouse a year ago to a group of more than 200.

Angela Aldous, 37, a hospice nurse by day, is one of the lead organizers of Voice of Westmoreland, an issues-based organization that started early last spring when six people who had met protesting outside Murphy’s district office and the local courthouse against Trump’s refugee ban decided to build something more pragmatic and less “sporadic.”

“None of us knew what we were doing,” she said. “So we did that training through Harvard, the Resistance School,” an independent training project created by students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in the spring of 2017. The digital training tools national groups were providing became a huge part of their life. They did MoveOn’s Resistance Summer Online Trainings as well. “I don’t know how many teleconferences we’ve been on,” Aldous said. She’s also been listening in on conference calls from a local health policy group, and did a Sierra Club lobby day training.

Though formally non-partisan, the group finds its members casting their lot with Lamb, because Saccone did not answer the group’s policy position questionnaire and Lamb provided detailed answers.

An umbrella group of more than two dozen resistance groups across the state called Pennsylvania Together operated as another tutor. And the educating went both ways, as Aldous and her Westmoreland colleagues were able to provide a perspective from Trump country about what messages they think would work and what could be alienating in communities like hers, where Trump’s personality appeals to many voters. They may, for example, be worried about what impact changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act would have on the local opiate epidemic and people’s ability to get care, for example, she said, and be more open to a local issues based conversation than any direct attacks on the president.

Lamb, a former assistant U.S. attorney and U.S. Marine Corps veterans running to represent Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, leaves the American Legion Post 902 after a rally on January 13, 2018 in Houston, Pennsylvania in the southwestern corner of the state. (Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

“It really will be local people talking to each other that will make the difference,” in the special election, said Hannah Laurison, a Philadelphia-based leader of Pennsylvania Together and a force behind Tuesdays with Toomey, which has been targeting Sen Pat Toomey’s district offices with weekly protests since the winter of 2017. “The left is energized and organized in a way it hasn’t previously been and that makes races competitive.”

The Republican Party is meeting this new energy with more resources than it’s previously had to pour into the 18thdistrict. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC affiliated with House Speaker Paul Ryan, has opened two offices in the district and committed to hiring 50 full-time door-knockers to get the vote out for Saccone. Trump’s visit puts the race on the national map, and makes it a fresh test of his ability to influence down-ballot elections after the Roy Moore debacle in Alabama. Mike Pence is scheduled to visit in February and continue the push for Saccone.

Even if Lamb loses on March 13, the resistance groups have no intention of disappearing. There will still be a general election in November, a second chance to elect Lamb or another Democrat, with a longer runway to build the organizing infrastructure they’ve been working to create.

And even if they lose then, every new Democrat they turn out and mobilize, every person who moves from a passive to an active participant in the process is one more person who can achieve one of their other long-term goals: rebuilding the Democratic firewall in Pennsylvania in time for 2020.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:

Skullduggery podcast: It was 20 years ago today – a look back at the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal (available here or wherever you listen to podcasts!)

Trump’s language on immigrants provokes a backlash in the pulpits

Can Jeff Flake turn the tide in the Republican war on the media?

New York’s Donald J. Trump State Park: A story of abandonment and decay

Photos: Activists protest against Trump’s immigration policies

#pennsylvania #congress #_revsp:Yahoo! News #_author:Garance Franke-Ruta #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #Conor Lamb #_uuid:661fff10-ff95-3ba9-9186-fba0eeaf884d #resistance #Rick Saccone

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Graphics by Yutong Yuan

A couple of months ago, I found myself in the curious position of examining Joe Biden’s head.

On television, the former vice president comes across as perpetually tanned and coiffed — always with the aviator glasses and the crisp shirtsleeves. He still works out every morning, often lifting weights and riding a Peloton bike, and his face is still golden, his brow remarkably unfurrowed for a man of his 76 years. Up close — like, six inches up close — Biden is slighter than you might imagine. From my aft position in a press gaggle in Dearborn, Michigan, I could see the baby-pink of his scalp peeking through wisps of gleaming white hair and the faint mottling near his ears. They caught me off guard, all those fragile little human details you miss on television.

And it was a very human summer for Biden, if you’re going by “to err is human” standards. On June 18, speaking at a New York City fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel (a swank spot on the Upper East Side where Woody Allen has a standing gig to play jazz clarinet), Biden began talking about the need for consensus-building. According to the pool report, he broke into a southern drawl as he brought up a segregationist senator from Mississippi: “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Biden said. “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son.’” Herman Talmadge — “one of the meanest guys I ever knew” — was another southern segregationist Democrat who Biden worked with. “Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished.”

The outrage was swift. The following day, fellow White House hopeful Sen. Cory Booker put out a statement. “You don’t joke about calling black men ‘boys,’” it began, adding, “He is wrong for using his relationships with Eastland and Talmadge as examples of how to bring our country together.” Biden responded by saying Booker should apologize. “There’s not a racist bone in my body,” he said. “I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career.”

So a month later, when a reporter in the sweaty Dearborn gaggle started by asking what Biden made of Booker calling him “the architect of mass incarceration” — a reference to his involvement with the passage of the 1994 crime bill — Biden let out a little gust of a sigh before answering. “Cory knows that’s not true.” He seemed weary of the question, and aware that it wasn’t going away.

Biden has largely led in the polls since entering the Democratic primary. Yet his front-runner status is complex: a cornerstone of his primary support is the black community — a recent poll from YouGov and The Economist showed Biden with as much as 65 percent of black support — even as his decades-long record on racial issues has transmuted into something deeply troubling to some Democratic voters. Though Sen. Elizabeth Warren has nipped at his heels in recent polls, Biden remains a peculiar front-runner — numerically indisputable yet, perhaps, fatally flawed.

Biden has a number of swirling factors to thank for his strength with black Democrats. He was President Obama’s vice president and has staked out a spot in the primary’s relatively uncrowded moderate lane — one that ideologically suits many black voters just fine. He’s also hit on a lurking note of pessimism among some black voters about what sort of person they think might be “electable” in a country that made Donald Trump president after the first black man had the job. Biden’s general election proposition, after all, involves winning over white Trump voters who some Democrats have spent the past three years accusing of racism and xenophobia.

Something about the man himself seems to be resonating with black voters, too. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a Democratic power broker, told me that Biden’s greatest asset with black voters might well be his own life story, which is strewn with personal tragedy. “We can be no more noble than what our experiences allow us to be. And black voters, by and large, see so much of their experiences in Joe Biden.”

The cornerstone of Biden’s candidacy is support from the black community and his long-standing relationships in it. In June, he attended Rep. James Clyburn’s “World Famous Fish Fry” and spoke to Rev. Al Sharpton.

WIN MCNAMEE / SEAN RAYFORD / GETTY IMAGES

But while Joseph Robinette Biden, the Irish-American speaker of self-conscious Scrantonese, is black voters’ current choice in a Democratic primary featuring two viable black candidates, there’s a sense that the winds could shift at any moment. He spent the better part of the summer relitigating his decades-long voting record. His opponents have pressed him on what they say is an antiquated outlook on race relations in America, all in an effort to chip away at his support among people of color. Prominent Democrats openly fret that he might be too old for the job. The supposed ephemera has accumulated against him even as the numbers check out nicely on paper.

The oddity for present-day Joe Biden is that he was sure America already knew him and what he was all about. But the politics of 2019’s Democratic Party can be slipshod and capricious. Its candidates are viewed more often than not through a kaleidoscopic refraction of peoples’ frustrations with the system or their anger at the president. Biden isn’t really “Uncle Joe” these days, but he presents a pretty enough picture; squint and you’ll see the halcyon Democratic era of the Obamas. If things stay that way — for black voters most especially — Biden might yet win a presidential nomination. But one or two ticks off the mark and the colors and patterns all change. Suddenly Biden could look like a wholly different man.

Biden’s current resonance with black voters is perhaps chiefly owed to Obama, a man he once called “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

In one sense it’s ironic that Biden’s Achilles heel is the past, since a central argument of his campaign is that he can turn back the clock — but not too far back. He wants voters to remember him from the placid (by comparison) days of the Obama administration. Further back in Biden’s past, things get iffier. To that end, it is Obama’s name that Biden seems to mention most on the campaign trail — so much so that at the recent NAACP national convention, moderator April Ryan asked Biden if he used the former president as a “crutch.” (The answer was no. He then went on to talk about Obama some more.) Obama, it should be noted, is wildly popular among Democrats these days — a Gallup post-presidency poll found that he had a 95 percent favorability rating.

The continued Obama name-dropping might have seemed cringeworthy following Biden’s opponents’ critiques — verging on an I-have-black-friends line of defense — but it was also powerful. Many black voters buy the idea that if Biden was good enough for Obama, Biden’s good enough for them. Sheila Hill, an NAACP convention attendee from Arlington, Texas, was emblematic of many voters when she put her fondness of Biden in familial terms: “Joe came up like he’s a member of the family, like he might sit down and have a bite to eat, pull him up a plate, let him get some greens and cornbread. And you know how everyone was introduced? He didn’t need to introduce himself because he’s part of the family.”

A lynchpin of the Biden campaign’s strategy is embracing President Obama’s legacy whenever possible.

SAUL LOEB / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

A couple of days later, in the midst of the Booker vs. Biden news cycle, I was sitting in the Indianapolis Airport when I spotted Rev. Al Sharpton across the terminal. I was coming home from the National Urban League Conference, where I had squished myself into an uncomfortable chair to watch the crowd titter as Rep. Tim Ryan walked on stage to Johnny Cash. I had spent the morning with one ear on the speeches and one eye on Twitter, where Biden acolytes were touting a general election head-to-head poll that put him several points up on Trump in Ohio, the only Democrat ahead of the president. Sharpton had been there too, addressing the assembled members of the civil rights group.

“I think that he certainly enjoys a lot from the Obama connection,” Sharpton said, wearing a beautifully tailored suit and reclining in his seat just in front of the gate. “That’s what I think Biden’s hidden advantage is, deservedly or not: he gets associated credit for Obama dealing with Trayvon [Martin] and Obama dealing with policing commissions.”

(Despite numerous requests for this story on black voters, the campaign did not make Biden available for an interview with FiveThirtyEight.)

Sharpton, for one, seemed unsurprised by Biden’s lead over Sens. Kamala Harris and Booker. “You can’t now take the black vote for granted, and Joe has relationships,” he said. “And they’re long-standing relationships. You need a Jim Clyburn in South Carolina, I don’t care who you are.” By his estimation, Harris and Booker still had a chance to win over black voters, but their paths were far from assured. “I think that racial politics has changed — not dramatically, but to some degree — post-Obama because the novelty is no longer there.”

Sharpton, who expertly fielded the handshakes of a stream of strangers as we spoke, has himself entertained white candidates like Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg at Sylvia’s soul food restaurant in Harlem. He was judging the 2020 Democrats, he told me, on the strength of their platforms. For what it was worth, he liked Buttigieg’s Douglass Plan, a framework to solve fiscal and societal inequities that affect the black community.

The quiet stirring of businessmen near the gate told me it would soon be boarding time. I asked Sharpton how much time Harris and Booker had until it was too late. The end of September, he answered. “Unless of course, Joe does something absolutely off the wall,” he said, chuckling. “Which is not beyond the possible — we are talking about Joe.”

Biden has caught heat from activists for unpopular policies of the Obama administration, like deportations.

BASTIAAN SLABBERS / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

There’s a bookstore near my office that I sometimes browse on my lunch hour, a happy way to avoid the harsh fluorescence of office life. Over the summer, a book caught my eye: “Hope Rides Again: An Obama Biden Mystery.” The cover featured a cartoon Obama dangling from the end of a rope ladder — which itself was dangling from an airborne helicopter — while grasping for Biden, trying to pull him up. A few shelves away was the title, “Hugs from Obama: A Photographic Look Back at the Warmth and Wisdom of President Barack Obama.” While bookstores on Manhattan’s Upper West Side cater to a specific subset of America, the books’ mere existence tells a person something: a lot of Democrats still really like Barack Obama and his moderate-in-2019 policies. That’s why the lynchpin of the Biden strategy is embracing the former president’s legacy and coalition whenever possible.

Sometimes, though, that strategy can catch Biden heat. At the second Democratic debate at the end of July, he said that illegal immigrants should “get in line” and wait to enter the country legally. Julián Castro, Obama’s former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, skewered the administration’s deportation policy. “It looks like one of us has learned the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t,” Castro told Biden in a heated exchange.

Biden faced fallout from this exchange. Activists said that he had been echoing conservative talking points, so he met with Latino leaders in person to smooth things over.

“To me that was surprising because I had written that line for Barack Obama multiple times in every immigration speech we ever did,” former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau told me. “Even language that was, in the Obama years, approved and fine and culturally sensitive — it’s suddenly not.” (A former senior Obama White House advisor said of the debate, “On the Obama side we’re not defensive. The party and the country are in different places than we were in 2008. It would be silly to run on the exact same policies and ideas that we implemented.”)

That’s in part because of the conversation happening online. A favorite line of the Biden campaign is that Twitter isn’t real life, a nod to the fact that young, progressive, vociferously anti-Biden voices seem most amplified on the social networking site but are less representative of the broader base of the party. “We’re not going to let Twitter dictate this primary process for us,” said Symone Sanders, a senior advisor to the Biden campaign. “If we did, frankly, I think we’d spend all our time talking about 1994,” a reference to the 1994 crime bill, Biden’s support of which has helped label him as almost-Republican in certain circles.

The campaign operation has been focused instead on messaging Biden’s moderation and his close ties to Obama. On the morning of the third debate in mid-September, the campaign tweeted out a video with the caption, “Barack Obama was a great president. We don’t say that enough.” Greg Schultz, Biden’s campaign manager, wrote, “Barely a week goes by where some Democratic presidential candidate doesn’t directly or indirectly criticize Pres. Obama. The attacks are out of touch with the majority view of the Democratic Party voters.”

In order to win the nomination in a crowded race, Biden needs to cultivate support across demographic groups, to at least feint at his ability to win back the Obama coalition in the general election. His bedrock of support is black voters. Black voters made up around one-quarter of the 2016 Democratic primary electorate and are a crucial demographic group for any candidate. According to Gallup, 63 percent of non-Hispanic black Democratic voters self-identify as moderate or conservative. This, even as the Democratic Party overall has gotten more liberal — 2018 was the first year that over half of Democrats (51 percent) identified as liberal (in 1994, that number was only 25 percent.)

But while black voters have remained more moderate or conservative, white voters have become increasingly likely to identify as liberal — 65 percent of non-Hispanic white Democrats called themselves liberal and have become rapidly more liberal on issues of race over the past 10 years. With white liberals comprising a key demographic not just in the first two primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, but also in the media, it’s no wonder that Biden’s campaign has felt the pile-on of Twitter chatter.

Yet Biden has given his progressive critics ample opportunity to say he’s carelessly retrograde when he talks about race. In early August, for example, he said “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” While he immediately tried to correct himself, Biden has a long-time reputation for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Favreau told me there was “an anxiety that lasted throughout the White House [years] — ‘will Biden say something sort of off?’ Biden’s reputation before he became vice president wasn’t ‘middle-class Uncle Joe’ and it also wasn’t too old and out of touch — it was that he was a blowhard,” he said.

While a summer of attacks hasn’t shaken Biden’s black support overall, younger black voters don’t seem to like what they see as much as older black voters. CNN polling analysis from this summer showed that Biden’s overall support from black voters is 44 percent, but his support with black Americans under the age of 50 is lower, at 36 percent. CNN modeling suggested that his support is likely less than 30 percent among black voters under the age of 30. A recent poll suggested that Warren might be making inroads with black voters. She has also gained overall on Biden in key states like Iowa and in some national polls.

Younger voters, black ones included, are concerned about issues of race and justice — things like fixing the school-to prison-pipeline, lowering incarceration rates for black men and curbing police violence. Which is why Biden’s vote on the 1994 crime bill has become such a problem and a fixation for the campaign. It might be that younger voters, who previously only knew Biden as the friendly older man next to Obama, are perturbed when they see the crime bill through 2019 eyes: mandatory life sentences after “three strikes” for federal crimes and incentivizing states to pursue harsher sentencing.

Biden, January 1990

LAURA PATTERSON / CQ ROLL CALL VIA GETTY IMAGES

Obama has reportedly expressed worry that Biden World advisors are too old school for the candidate’s good. Some of his advisors, like Sen. Ted Kaufman and Mike Donilon, have been with Biden for decades.

But younger advisors have come on board, too — Schultz and his deputy, Kate Bedingfield, are of a newer generation — and Sanders, a high-profile hire who served on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign, is 29 years old. I asked Sanders, who is black, what if any advice she had given to Biden about talking to younger black voters. “I’m not going to divulge the particulars of the conversations that I have with Vice President Biden, but what I’ll say is that he and I have a good rapport, we have a good relationship and the nature of our relationship is that Joe Biden is a frank guy, he’s authentic and he speaks his mind and he empowers the people around him to do the same.”

The polls, Sanders said, bore out that Biden’s approach was working. “Anyone who purports that we don’t understand this moment or our campaign doesn’t get it — I think we uniquely understand this moment because this has been our argument from day one.”

But the crime bill remains a vulnerability for the campaign, something that engenders defensiveness from the candidate. In June, while answering a question about prison reform he brought up the crime bill, “which you’ve been conditioned to say is a bad bill,” he told the audience.

Biden has spent a lot of time in a defensive crouch about the legislation. His proposed criminal justice reform plan outlines ways to reduce incarceration, a pointed policy rebuke to the effects of the 1994 bill. But at events, he goes to lengths to defend what he calls the good parts of the bill — including the Violence Against Women Act — and his surrogates are quick to say that people are purposefully leaving out the historical context of what America was like when the legislation was passed. Clyburn — who has not yet endorsed a candidate — recalled for me a town hall meeting he had back in the 1990s in a mostly black town in South Carolina. “I spoke out against mandatory minimums, I spoke out against the crack cocaine policy. I almost got physically attacked in that place. There wasn’t a white person in the room,” he said. “To them, crack cocaine was a scourge in the African American community and they supported this crackdown.”

Biden’s grappling with his pre-Obama history is fraught, in part, because before being Obama’s vice president, he wasn’t much of a known figure in black communities. When Biden briefly ran for president in the 1988 election — a June to September endeavor that ended in a plagiarism scandal — he had little apparent appeal in the black community. A pre-scandal poll from that summer shows that he didn’t even register with black voters — he was at 0 percent while Jesse Jackson, one of the first major black Democratic candidates, had 48 percent of the black vote.

Still, hopes for Biden were high, particularly in the political media. One Los Angeles Times story from that June called Biden “the white Jesse Jackson” and noted that his opposition to federally mandated busing was savvy, “a sign of both his keen political instinct and a social imagination — a sense of the real-life consequences of government action that is rare in Washington.” Biden opposed busing because it threatened to destroy “the consensus on civil rights within the white middle class that permitted progress’ for blacks,” the story surmised. Even on hot-button issues like race, Biden was proud of his ability to foster compromise and centrism. It’s a legacy that hasn’t aged as well in a Democratic Party which is more apt to burn its one-time idols than study their historiography.

The day after the second debate, Jonathan Kinloch, a black Democratic Party official in Detroit, sat with me at a local cafe eating forkfuls of something sweet while saying something bitter: “Based on where we’ve come over these past three years and looking at the person, that Tasmanian Devil in the White House, it’s going to take another same sort of type of white man to go toe-to-toe with him.”

Kinloch doesn’t think America is going to elect a black candidate, not right now. “I’ve come to only one conclusion: Trump was elected out of eight years of repudiation for having a black man in the office. I think right now, where this country is, the flames that have been fanned by Donald Trump, we have to take a measured approach to this upcoming election.”

Biden faced blowback in July’s Democratic primary debate for his comments about fostering compromise with segregationist senators and for his stance on federally mandated busing.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / GETTY IMAGES

This is the sort of electability argument that the Biden campaign can’t quite say out loud, but to which some black voters seem at least partially resigned. They might not love Biden’s semi-frequent verbal washouts but Trump in the White House grates on them more. It’s this logic, as bright and shining as their candidate’s teeth, that Biden allies allude to. Whatever his sins, whatever his prior stances, Biden’s 2020 intentions are pure — certainly purer than Trump’s. And, the theory goes, he’s got the sort of mass appeal that will talk sense into Obama voters who defected to Trump the last go-round. (Recently, a whistleblower complaint surfaced claiming that Trump leaned on the Ukrainian president to find damaging information on Biden and his son Hunter. In response to the news, Biden said that Trump was going to such extremes only because “he knows I’ll beat him like a drum.”)

There’s a risk, of course, that in trying to appeal to everyone, in refusing to play too woke, Biden risks flagging enthusiasm from black voters come the general election. The black vote disastrously didn’t surface for Hillary Clinton in 2016. There’s also some serious doubt that any candidate besides the singular first black president could inspire high turnout in the black community. In a Detroit press gaggle, I asked Biden how he planned to get Obama-era levels of votes in the black community in key general election states. I got a typically-rambling response in return. “They want to know someone — first of all, are they telling them the truth, are they laying out straight exactly what they’re going to do? No double talk. What are you going to do. And then secondly, ‘Do I believe you understand me? Do I believe you know my heart?’ I’m not a black man, to state the obvious, but I’ve gone out of my way to understand the best I possibly can what the concerns are.”

Some of the weirdness of the 2020 primary, including Biden’s leading it, is that for a party professing to be fighting for the soul of America — like, for real for real this time — there isn’t much soaring idealism afoot. It’s a contest about pragmatism. As Jill Biden put it, “You may like another candidate better but you have to look at who’s going to win … Joe is that person.”

“People are not excited, they’re not inspired,” said Anton Gunn, Obama’s former South Carolina political director. “Young people want to be inspired, everyone wants to be inspired. I don’t think we have a sense from anyone in the field that’s inspiring.”

When I spoke with Jackson, I asked what he thought about black voters’ support for Biden, his old rival. “The absence of Trump is not the presence of justice,” he said. “In the days to come I’m sure those who put forth the most hope for tomorrow and plans will gain the most traction in time. That may be Biden, but the question is wide open.”

The morning of the second debate, I met Rep. Cedric Richmond, the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and a co-chair of the Biden campaign, in the lounge of a downtown Detroit hotel. Various suits wandered the halls and a forlorn offering of pasta salad stood sentinel in one corner. I asked Richmond about the same thing I asked Sanders: had the campaign done any additional preparation with the candidate to ready for a new racial discourse?

“I didn’t know we had a new language on race,” Richmond answered wryly. Millennials, he went on, “are the beneficiaries of things that they don’t know they’re beneficiaries of — for example, murder was at an all time high in the early ‘90s. The streets were violent. You had children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sons being killed in the streets, you had rampant carjackings, you had drug dealing everywhere. The African American community was up in arms asking people to do stuff.”

For black voters, Richmond said, the stakes of the 2020 election were clear: “Donald Trump could be a one man end of Reconstruction.” Beating him is what matters. Dwelling on Biden’s vocabulary is just frippery by comparison.

Biden supporters cheer during the South Carolina Democratic Party Convention in June. South Carolina, with its predominantly black electorate, is crucial to Biden’s success in the primary.

LEAH MILLIS / REUTERS

Richmond told me the campaign sees a path to victory through the South, a region packed with black votes. Dave Wasserman, editor at The Cook Political Report, agreed. “I think his strengths lie on Super Tuesday,” he said of the slate of March 3 primaries a month after the very first contest in Iowa. Candidates like Warren are more likely to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, Wasserman said. Biden campaign officials have told reporters they don’t think he needs to win Iowa, where liberal white activist voters hold sway. “But when you’re talking about a massive one-day clearance sale on Super Tuesday where it’s all about mass appeal and name recognition and strength — particularly black voters in the south, that’s where Biden really needs to hold on,” Wasserman said.

South Carolina’s Feb. 29 primary is a bellwether for Biden’s Southern strategy with a primary electorate that’s almost two-thirds black. Biden was at 43 percent in a recent CBS News/YouGov poll of the state, and it is a must-win for him. But strategists there hardly seem to think that things are sewn up for Biden. “I don’t believe polls because the same polls at this time in 2007 would show Obama was losing to Hillary Clinton by 18 points,” Gunn said. Obama would go on to win South Carolina. ”We kept organizing. Organizing is about touching people and knowing how many voters you’ve identified.” Booker’s field organization looked pretty good to Gunn, though he said it wasn’t as robust as Obama’s had been in the 2008 primary. “Definitely don’t write off Booker,” said a senior South Carolina Democrat who asked for anonymity to more freely discuss the campaign. “He has the best operation.”

I headed to South Carolina in late August, just as my inbox was signaling crunchtime of the presidential campaign slog: Buttigieg in L.A., Warren in Washington state, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Biden in South Carolina.

As a rule, Biden campaign events — which take place less often than other 2020 candidates’ — tend to be large affairs. His late August town hall in Spartanburg was no exception. Massive rollup American flag displays were stretched taut at either end of an echoing room. The campaign’s “Biden President” logo was slapped up everywhere. The omission of the word “for” was a not-so-subliminal message about the job he wants. A large contingent of media typed in back; a brawny blonde reporter joked with a brawny salt-and-pepper reporter about some home state sports thing.

Basically every Biden event — every 2020 campaign event for that matter — is a chance for a secular revival. And Biden is good at being churchy; he knows what to give a crowd. He can be folksy and familiar — the ghost of Uncle Joe — as well as discursive on issues of morality. When talking about guns or abortion he is most eloquent; you get the sense that Biden has devoted a whole lot of time inside his head to those topics. He starts every town hall or speech by setting the stakes with a mention of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017: “It shocked the whole world.”

Biden’s speech is riddled with “I’m being serious” and “seriously, folks” and “no kidding, folks,” to the point where it’s become a running joke in the press corps. I spoke with a former speechwriter of his who thinks that the “folks” tics might be something Biden has developed over time to deal with the stutter he had in childhood. “It’s how he handles transitions,” he told me.

Biden has struggled to gain ground with younger voters despite his strong showing in the polls overall.

SEAN RAYFORD / GETTY IMAGES

The childhood stutter is one of many personal details that voters have learned about Biden over the years — people have a relationship with him. Those I spoke with who know Biden all tended to say the same thing: he actually is an earnest guy. The care is real. But there’s also a carefully refined rubric of folksiness at work, all mixed with a 76-year-old’s out-of-date sensibilities. Those things can rub some people the wrong way, but both might be political strengths in the general election. “Above all else, it’s just human, it’s a storytelling voice,” Biden’s former speechwriter told me about the candidate’s preferred public voice. “It actively tries to connect with the people who are literally in front of him. Not with some kind of abstract, ethereal voter demographic or anything like that. It’s personal.” In Spartanburg, for instance, Biden talked about women deserving equal pay, but framed the problem through the lens of blue-collar men wanting their wives to be paid more. It wasn’t exactly a politically correct formulation of the issue, but its practicality rang true.

There is a gentle affect about Biden, too. When telling stories about his adult children, he refers to them as “honey” — the doting dad. Stories about his parents start with “Joey …” and suddenly he’s the adoring son. He apologizes for blocking the sign language interpreter. When he shakes hands with people, he stares deeply into their eyes — the kind of eye contact that some have called creepy but others find intoxicating coming from a very famous person. Biden has an ability to make people feel as if he has really listened. One voter I talked to in Spartanburg, Vanessa Logan, emailed me later to say that she’d asked Biden a detailed question; he had made sure his aides got her contact info so they could send her his book for a more in-depth explanation.

This attentiveness coupled with the routine vulnerability Biden shows is partially why people can’t help but be a little fond of him. “He’s down to earth, has a lot of warmth,” Sheran Littlejohn, a middle-aged black voter who came out to see Biden during his South Carolina swing, told me. “At first I thought about Kamala Harris, but then she started coming down on her own party. She went after Biden.” Somehow, even as Biden is running to protect America from Trump, he’s made voters feel like they want to protect him.

A few hours after the Spartanburg event I was at Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina, where it was sweltering hot even a little after 5 p.m. The only breeze came from the pep band flag twirlers entertaining a waiting crowd and the ladies in it who sat fanning themselves. Biden was running late, so I dipped into the library for a few minutes of A/C, then strolled through the crowd. I found Rosa Webber, 64, under the shade of a Magnolia tree, waiting for the event to begin with her friends from the Gaffney Women’s Democratic Club.

Webber had already made up her mind about who she’ll be voting for, come February’s primary. “If he was good enough for Obama, he’s good enough to be my president,” she said of Biden. But Anita Chambers was still candidate shopping. She liked Biden and Harris, but, “also, what’s her name? Elizabeth Warren. I like her. She’s very outspoken, very direct.”

Webber didn’t think any of the women could win, though. I asked why and before she could answer, Annette Byers, 75, interrupted: “Because the men, they’re going to do females just the way they did Hillary.” Webber agreed. “Yeah, the men are not going to vote for women. I don’t think it’s time for the women to step up.” Chambers tried to say something positive about the promise of a reinvigorated women’s movement. Byers wasn’t moved. “They will cheat her out of the election just like they did with Hillary. They will lie, lie, lie.” The conversation ended soon after, as a man with a honey-soaked accent got on the microphone and commenced proceedings.

Biden’s long career in the public eye means that voters have formed a long-standing relationship with him. This familiarity has helped him weather blunders and flare-ups throughout the campaign that might have endangered lesser-known candidates.

SEAN RAYFORD / GETTY IMAGES

Jalon Roberson, a 22-year-old senior at Limestone, said that when he and other black students talked 2020, he found most of them were still on the fence about whom to support. Roberson liked both Biden and Harris, but saw issues with both. “I like that she’s devoted to law, but a lot of her past doesn’t line up with the angle she’s taking now,” he said of Harris. “A lot of black males are going to jail, getting put away, but now she comes out and she’s like, ‘Hey, I’m for black people, I eat pork chops, blah blah blah.’ I feel like she’s trying too hard to appeal to black people. I feel like there is a way to try and come across as sincere but you have to first acknowledge that you’re an outsider and say, ‘Hey, I want to appeal to you guys.’”

Biden, Roberston said, seemed like a moral guy, a good person. But, “he was in Iowa and he slipped up and he said poor kids are just as talented and bright as white kids. And I know that’s not what he meant and that’s not how he meant it to come across, but you can tell that there is an unconscious bias.” Roberson wanted to ask Biden about how to tackle that bias.

Roberson did get a question in, just not that one. As the beginning of golden hour set in over the crowd and the hottest part of the day came to an end, Biden was taking questions from the crowd in blue-and-white shirtsleeves. “A lot of young people my age, my race, we are trying to find the incentive to vote Democratic. Why should we trust the party, and how would your administration go about holding the party accountable?” Roberson asked him.

A good question, a fair question, Biden said. He began to weave his way through the folding chairs, a meandering walk to make eye contact with students seated a little further back on the lawn. One young black man stood on a short brick retaining wall in sunglasses, a pink button-down and a hoodie. Biden made his way toward the young man while he answered, hoping to drink up some eye contact. Just as Biden approached, almost standing in front of him, the young man flipped his hood up defiantly and Biden skillfully pivoted away. A confrontational moment avoided.

The answer continued for another few minutes, and the young man kept his eyes on Biden throughout. Biden mentioned the number of incarcerated black men and the crime bill — how most black people had supported it at the time. He talked about racial profiling in Newark, New Jersey — his favorite dig at Booker. Then, “We have systemic racism in the United States of America and it’s a white man’s problem. White men are responsible for it, not black men.” The young man on the wall said, “I agree,” to that, and clapped. It was a good answer for Biden, overall. He got applause for lines about teaching prisoners how to read, positioning prisoners to get proper housing after their time served. But Jalon Roberson and the young man in the hoodie are college kids, not prisoners. It struck me that Biden’s answer wholly ignored most of the issues that the black students at Limestone and elsewhere told me they were most worried about: student debt, raising the minimum wage, the environment. Biden’s defensiveness of his past had dominated the answer. Though he did throw in a sentence or two at the end about the American Dream — “that’s why we have to rebuild the middle class and this time, we bring everybody along” — he didn’t offer any specifics.

Biden had wanted desperately to prove himself worthy to the audience of students, but a vast gulf of age and experience separated him from Roberson and the young man in the hoodie. “Let’s hear it one more time for the next president of the United States, Joe Biden!” the MC intoned over the microphone. Everyone clapped. That was that.

If Biden wins the nomination — his third attempt to do so — he will be 77 years old. The party he leads has changed rapidly during his time in public life, becoming more liberal and diverse.

JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what Clyburn said about Biden’s tragedies. How the way he dealt with them had raised Biden in the esteem of many black voters, given the systemic hardships inflicted on them and their families over a couple of centuries in this country. Biden repurposed his suffering so it could be something more — a blessed experience, Clyburn said.

I’ve also spent a lot of time wondering why Biden ran for president this time around. He says publicly it has a lot to do with the wishes of his son Beau, who died in 2015, that he stay involved in public life. There’s ego at work, of course — it takes a massive one for a person to ever even consider running for president. But why after running for president twice, and losing soundly each time, would you do so again at age 76?

Biden might feel some sense of vocation this time around. Being a Catholic, he would recognize the Sunday school-ness of it all: what are you called to do? The way he gets fierce when he talks about winning back the Midwest, the bluster he spits when speaking about Trump’s misdeeds — it makes you think that there’s something twinging inside Biden that says, without a hint of irony, “I alone can fix this.” He wants to give people enough time to come to terms with a new American paradigm, while offering the familiar visage of an older white man standing guard. Biden sees himself as a singular salve and so do many black voters, pragmatic about the ability of America to readily accept change.

Biden isn’t alone, of course. There’s a moral imperative for each of the top three primary contenders, all in their 70s. Bernie Sanders and Warren proffer a promise of a golden, hopeful new system; Biden the restoration of one that was pretty good, if not perfect. If anything, the Democratic primary is something of a paean to old age, to lifelong ambitions and vocations yet to be fulfilled. It’s a monthslong slog as a trio of older white people bid to lead a country more black and brown than it’s ever been. I can see them — with more years behind them than ahead, in a world so different from the one they were born into — lingering longer than the rest of us over the most hashed-out lines of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”:

“You and I are old / Old age hath yet his honour and his toil / Death closes all: but something ere the end / Some work of noble note, may yet be done.”

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Our site is made possible by showing online ads to our visitors. Competence sufficient to identify present and also arising information technologies that may have strategic worth for enterprise; assess where those modern technologies have worth; and also manage the implementation of those innovations in the business. The College of Informatics and also Computer is a community of varied professors, students, and personnel from a wide range of cultures, citizenships, races, and social histories. BUT (yes, there's that huge yet again) ... that details is no longer important to her. It begins with the evaluation of integers and a complete insurance coverage of the fundamentals of limited group theory complied with by the RSA and also ElGamal ciphers. The second info within this set is that they can workout furthermore apart from decreasing the calorie intake to multiply the impact. The university or college will provide a letter of confirmation or deal which need to be generated for the DIBP for trainee visa application processing. Directly over to the internet search engine for even more details texas property taxes details. Your e-mail address will certainly never ever be offered to ANYONE (Personal privacy Plan) but if you want to join this information site, after that please recognize that this site has to remain in communication with it's members every so often. This Privacy Policy does not put on information we gather by various other means (including offline) or from various other resources. The website I make use of to collect cell phone number details has generated constantly trustworthy results for over 2 years currently. You will be shocked at just how this can sustain you right into the filtering of info to prevent such an overload. First off, if you have the ability to take care of information overload, there can be focus in any way times. Check out our timeline on exactly how the School of Info has actually developed over the years! Also, we might offer bank card as well as getting info to payment processors, including Paypal ®, however we do not preserve such info. This consists of linked solutions (such as Facebook Connect) that You license to share information about You with HubPages. Yet, along with brand-new chances, the reliance on info systems brought brand-new threats. Send write-ups or find cost-free write-ups are the single owner of the details which is gathered on A1 Articles. Removaling adverts are extra boosting to view than a notification board that may contain identical info. Or send details the waiting space booth could also take treatment of this if site visitors require to load in a form. It is equally as critical to the survival of businesses, as cyberpunks could obstruct or obtain business data as merely as the can steal client information or finance. If you are submitting your charm with conventional mail, both the letter as well as envelope should be clearly marked Liberty of Info Act Allure." Please mention your FOIPA request number to ensure that it may be quickly identified. Or discover contact details for MET divisions or administrative and program workplaces.

info Subjected.

Have a look at the ideas and also details that you have and identify that while all of it could be good" or fascinating" not all of it is offering your purpose. The applications are widespread when it comes to ecological modern technology but many means, we still lack doing sufficient. Telecommunications are made use of to connect, or network, computer systems as well as wearable and also mobile gadgets and to send information. Trainees learning Computer Details Solution could elect a thesis choice, to be finished within twelve months. After that, as opposed to selectively reading the information that appeared, if anything is of also the outmost of passion you review it or just strike print. When signalling and testing are done on an industrial scale, higher info proportion is achieved within the marketplace. Is one of the very best driver work boards that allow trucking specialists locate the best CDL jobs in San Antonio, Non CDL works in San Antonio as well as many other cities of the U.S. It is among the greatest truck driver employment platforms online. This is particularly useful if you should make certain you have up to this day info regarding your client, or you are trying to find advertising feedback, or if you wish to gain info that may aid you to help them additionally or go across sell. Terrific, though provoking, mind broadening recap of the development of both the framework, saving and also concept of info, varying from the very early adoption of the created word to DNA and also genetics and also naturally to IT, as we currently understand it. Takes a while to read through, I occasionally needed to reread a paragraph a number of times to understand the reasoning of a specific point (particularly when it came to Godel, Shannon and information degeneration) however it deserves the effort! We might use your Directly Identifiable Details for billing purposes, repayment purposes (including any tax-related purposes), administrative functions, such as informing You of significant changes in Service, news, and also for various other customer care objectives. The third set of details present people one more essential item of details which is not straight related to weight-loss however exceptionally crucial as it could end up that some people might simply depend on this infographic alone for their weight loss program. information now mps (deviataplindeenergie.info) relating to Name Check requests could be located on the FBI's National Call Examine Program page Please keep in mind that the National Call Inspect Program just approves demands sent by various other government firms; demands gotten from the public will certainly not be accepted.

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anniegbarr29 · 8 years ago

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SEO & website design: Everything you need to know SEO is important to any business that operates online, and many don't realize it needs to be built into the web design process -- not added in later. Here, columnist Marcus Miller has provided a comprehensive guide to SEO and web design. Marcus Miller on April 19, 2017 at 12:33 pm MORE Your website is the center of your digital marketing world — the place that all digital rivers run toward. And of course, the largest of its traffic sources is generally organic search. Yet all too often, businesses don’t think about SEO until after having a website designed (or redesigned), and these sites are often sadly lacking on the SEO and digital marketing front. They may look shiny, but if the marketing smarts are not cooked in at design time, then you will be running the marketing race with a wooden leg. Or at the very least, faced with going back to the drawing board and wasting a whole load of time and money. We have been thinking about the SEO and web design connection a lot recently at Bowler Hat and have just published a website design planning guide to help in what can be a complicated process. This is a companion piece to that guide that really covers the SEO considerations in far more granular detail. In this post, I have a look at how SEO should be an integral part of your website design (or redesign) process. We are going to look at what you need to consider to have a site that is built for search marketing and lead generation — and how focusing on happy users keeps the Google gods on your side. We will also take a look at some of the common pitfalls that can befall businesses looking to build a new website that is central to your digital marketing efforts. In brief, I am going to help you ensure your next site is a lean, mean SEO and digital marketing machine. What usually happens… A phone rings at Bowler Hat HQ. Marcus: “Hey, Bowler Hat here. How can we help?” Caller: “Hi there. We have just had a website built and… we seem to have lost a considerable amount of traffic.” OR “… we don’t rank for the keywords we used to be visible for.” OR “… we are just not getting any inquiries.” OR “… we want to look at what we can do to improve our SEO.” Marcus: “Ah, okay. If you can let me know your URL and a number to call you back on, I can take a look and make some suggestions.” There is a problem here. SEO is not some band-aid you can just plaster onto an existing site. Website SEO is fundamental to succeeding online for the majority of businesses. And the same concepts that fuel solid SEO help with paid search, social and any other inbound marketing efforts. Get this wrong and you will certainly fail to hit your digital marketing goals. Developing an SEO-friendly website At a fundamental level, an SEO-friendly site is one that allows a search engine to explore and read pages across the site. Ensuring a search engine can easily crawl and understand your content is the first step to ensuring your visibility in the search engine result pages. A search engine utilizes a web crawler for this task, and we are trying to work with the search engines rather than against them. Unfortunately, there are many ways to make a website, and not all technologies are built with search engine optimization in mind. Building an SEO-friendly site requires careful planning and a structured approach to representing your business and the services you provide. For many businesses, this can be complicated — it’s not always easy to document exactly what you do. As a marketing tool, your website should be built upon a solid digital marketing plan with a clear business model and value proposition. If that’s unclear, then you need to revisit that first. Assuming you have all that good stuff in place, let’s dive in. Fundamentals There are a few core elements that set the stage for a well-optimized website design process. Domains Your business may use example.com as the primary domain. But you may have others. Ensuring your domain makes sense and relates to what you do is super-important. Ensuring that all variations and subdomains correctly point at the main site and redirect to a single canonical version of the site is important. Our business is called Bowler Hat. We operate in the UK. We are a web-based business. It naturally follows that our domain is www.bowlerhat.co.uk. All subdomains 301 redirect back to the main URL www.bowlerhat.co.uk. We have few domain variations that 301 redirect back to the main URL. This all makes sense. Don’t be fooled into thinking that having-my-keywords-in-my-domain.com helps. It just looks daft. It can help a little for local businesses, but ensure you are mapping to the real world. Be sensible. Hosting Your hosting is also important. A slow site makes for unhappy users. Your hosting should follow common-sense rules. Be situated where your audience is situated. Be fast. Be platform-specific, if necessary. WP Engine is a great example, as it provides a platform tailored to WordPress websites. CMS The CMS (content management system) you choose for your business can hugely influence how successful you are. WordPress is a great option in many situations, but it’s not the only one. It certainly is wired up at a basic level in a way that Google can understand. This is not to say it is the best choice for all situations, but certainly, it’s a good starting point for most businesses. Just be sure that the CMS you choose is the right one for your situation, rather than the one your chosen web company prefers to work with. Crawling & accessibility The first step is ensuring a search engine can crawl your site and understand what it is that you do (and where you do it). Indexation To understand your site, they have to be able to read the content of the page. This means that the main content of your site should be text-based behind the scenes. Not images. Not flash or video. Even in this ever-advancing world, your main content should still be text-based. There are some great tools, like web fonts, that mean you can still look the part, and your images have a place, but be sure to talk in clear language about what it is you do so the search engine can read and understand your offering. Images, videos, PDFs and content are also important and can be a source of search engine traffic. Again, these need to be discoverable and indexable. Link structure To index your content beyond the home page, you need internal links that the search engine can crawl. Your primary navigation, search engine directives and tools like XML sitemaps all help the search engine crawl your site and discover new pages. Tools like Screaming Frog can help you ensure that your site can be easily crawled by a search engine. Information architecture and structuring your site I have always like the filing cabinet analogy for website structure. Your site is the filing cabinet. The major categories are the drawers. The subcategories are the folders in the drawers. The pages are documents in the folders. Cabinet: your website Drawer: high-level category Folder: subcategory File: individual document/page Context is indicated not only by the site it exists on but also by the position within that site. Our own site has a drawer for services, and each service has sub-services in folders. Your site will be largely the same. If we consider the following structure of the Bowler Hat site as an example: Home – Services – – Service Area – – – Individual Service Home – Services – – SEO – – – SEO Audits So, there is a page in this information architecture that is simply /audits/. The /audits/ page exists in the SEO folder in the services drawer. Nice and organized. This can follow through with other SEO elements to clearly indicate context far beyond that which can be indicated by the document alone. This is relevant to blog posts, articles, FAQ content, services, locations and just about anything else that is an entity within your business. You are looking to structure the information about your business in a way that makes it understandable. Some sites may take a deep approach to structuring content. Others may take a wide approach. The important takeaway here is that things should be organized in a way that makes sense and simplifies navigation and discovery. A three- to four-level approach like this ensures that most content can be easily navigated to within four clicks and tends to work better than a deeper approach to site navigation (for users and search engines). URLs Context is further indicated by the URL. A sensible naming convention helps provide yet more context for humans and search engines. Following are two hypothetical sets of URLs that could map to the Services > SEO > SEO Audit path laid out above — yet one makes sense, and the other does nothing to help. www.example.com http://ift.tt/1l8Y2cP http://ift.tt/2onf2kB http://ift.tt/2pCtjxn www.example.com http://ift.tt/2onwZ28 http://ift.tt/2pCaria http://ift.tt/2onxrNU Of course, the second set of URLs is a purposely daft example, but it serves a point — the first URL naming convention helps both search engines and users, and the second one hinders. Navigation Your navigation is equally important. When a site is well-structured, the navigation works with the structure, the URLs and other components, like XML sitemaps, to help solidify what each page or piece of content is about. Navigation is more than just the menu at the top of your website. It is how you signpost users to the most relevant part of your site. Navigation can be a tool to raise awareness of additional services and includes not just text links but content on all pages and in the templated design elements of your site. I have always liked the signpost analogy. I walk into a supermarket and look for the signs to find what I need. Your website is no different. If a user is referred and searches for your brand name, then they will land on your home page. They then need a signpost to get them to the relevant service. And it had better be easy to find! It is very easy to get this wrong, and careful thought must be applied — before you build the site — regarding the needs and wants of your users. A website is a digital component that should execute the strategy from your marketing plan. Understanding users here is crucial so you can ensure you are meeting their needs. Navigation should not need any real cognition — it should not make the user have to think. The following image is a sign from my local home improvement store. Which direction takes you to the car park and which direction takes you to the deliveries entrance? My brain follows the “customer car park” line from left to right, so I of course turn right. However, the customer car park is to the left. There is nothing there to clearly illustrate which is right or wrong. I have to think. Or in practice, I go in the wrong direction a few times before I learn. However, if users don’t find what they are looking for on a website, they will return to the great ocean of competition that Google search results represent. Ensure your navigation is crystal-clear — if one user can make a mistake, many others can, too. Common problems There are many potential issues with content that can’t be found or can’t be understood by the search engine that can work against you. For example: Orphaned content that can’t be found Content only available via site search Flash files, Java programs, audio files, video files AJAX* and flashy site effects Frames — Content embedded from another site can be problematic. Subdomains — content split into subdomains rather than sub-folders * Google has gotten a lot better at reading AJAX pages, but it is still possible to obscure content with pointless effects. Be sure that important content is easily discoverable, understandable and sits in the overall structure of the site in a way that makes sense. Summary If everything is done well, a human and a search engine should have a pretty good idea what a page is about before they even look at it. Your typical SEO then just builds on this solid foundation that is laid out by your information architecture and site structure. Mobile-friendly design The most popular device used to conduct internet searches and to browse websites is the mobile phone. We live in a mobile-first age. Sites optimized for search engines should give equal consideration to the mobile layouts of their websites (rather than just bolting on simple responsive website design). Yet, in 2017, responsive design is not enough. We were talking about the importance of responsive website design in 2012. Five years later, with massive technological progress and greatly improved mobile data networks, your future customers are using mobile as the first, and often only, device to interact with your business. To create a truly mobile-friendly design and maximize results from mobile search, you must think of the needs and wants of mobile users. What a user will do on a phone is often far different from what they will do on a computer. And even if your conversions tend to be on a desktop, that crucial first touch may well be on mobile. A few months back, I looked at 28 key factors in creating mobile SEO-friendly websites that will help you move beyond simple mobile-friendly responsive design. From an SEO perspective, it is worth noting that mobile-friendliness is a confirmed ranking factor for mobile search, and it is the mobile version of your site that will be used by the search engine to review and rank your site. However, far more important, mobile is how your prospective customers are searching for and browsing your site. Work hard on optimizing the user experience for mobile users and you will reap the rewards for your efforts in terms of traffic and user engagement. Page speed Another key consideration in the mobile era is page speed. Users may be impatient, or they may not always have a great mobile data connection. Ensuring your pages are lean and mean is a key consideration in modern SEO-friendly website design. A great starting point is Google’s mobile-friendly test. This tool will give you feedback on mobile-friendliness, mobile speed and desktop speed. It also wraps everything up into a handy little report detailing what exactly you can do to speed things up. I went into a little more detail on how to optimize for speed in a recent column on mobile optimization. Suffice it to say, page speed is yet another important consideration that spans how your site is built and the quality and suitability of the hosting you use. Usability Web usability is a combination of other factors: device-specific design, page speed, design conventions and an intuitive approach to putting the site together with the end user in mind. Key factors to consider include: Page layout. Important elements should have more prominence. Visual hierarchy. Make more important elements bigger! Home page and site navigation. Clearly signpost directions for users. Site search. Large sites need a sensibly positioned search option. Form entry. Make forms as lightweight and easy to fill as possible. Design. Great design makes everything easier. This is just scratching the surface here, and usability really has to be customized to the individual site. A couple of resources I would check out would be the book, “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability,“ by Steve Krug and my mobile optimization checklist. The content marketing funnel Your website has a hell of a job to do: it must help your business get in front of prospective customers on search engines, and then it has to engage and convert those customers. Your site needs content to help with all of these stages of the customer journey. Content and SEO is an important combination here, as you may get in front of a customer as they look for similar services from another company they are already considering. A structured way to consider the content you need here is a typical marketing funnel: Awareness — top of the funnel Awareness content will typically be your blog and informational articles. We are helping your prospective customer understand the problems they face and illustrating your experience and credibility in solving them. Blog posts Informational articles Webinars Comprehensive guides FAQs Consideration — middle of the funnel The content at the consideration stage helps your prospect compare you against the other offerings out there. This tends to be practical content that helps the customer make a decision. Case studies Product or service information Product demonstration videos User guides Conversion — bottom of the funnel Bottom-of-the-funnel content drives conversions and should gently encourage a sale or lead. Reviews Testimonials Free trial Free consultation Remember that customers will search across this entire spectrum of content types. Therefore, ensuring all of these areas are covered aids discovery via search engines, consideration and conversion. SEO nuts & bolts As you can see, there is a lot to consider before we even look at the more familiar elements of optimizing your site and pages. We should only really start to think about keywords and basic on-page optimization once we have this solid foundation in place. And hopefully, if we have structured everything correctly, then the actual optimization of the pages becomes far easier. Keyword targeting Nailing your keyword strategy is so much easier once you have a solid structure without internal duplication. If we look at our previous examples for site hierarchy and structure, then adding keywords is relatively straightforward (and is something we would often do in a spreadsheet pre-design). – Services – – SEO – – – SEO Audits http://ift.tt/1l8Y2cP http://ift.tt/2onf2kB http://ift.tt/2pCtjxn If I use these pages as an example, we have a natural progression from broad keywords to more refined search terms. We can even consider basic modifiers such as location if we are a local business. Home – digital marketing agency – digital marketing company + Birmingham + UK Services – marketing services – digital marketing services + Birmingham + UK SEO – SEO – Search Engine Optimization + Company + Agency + Birmingham + UK SEO Audits – SEO Audits – Technical SEO Audits + Agency + Company + Birmingham The point here is that a well-structured site gets you a good way toward determining your keyword strategy. You still have to do the research and copywriting, but you can be sure you have a solid strategy to target broad and more detailed terms. HTML title tags The

tag is the primary behind-the-scenes tag that can influence your search engine results. In fact, it is the only meta tag that actually influences position directly. Best practice for title tags are as follows: Place keywords at the beginning of the tag. Keep length around 50 to 60 characters. Use keywords and key phrases in a natural manner. Use dividers to separate elements like category and brand. Focus on click-through and the end user. Have a consistent approach across the site. Even in 2017, we still see a lot of overoptimized page titles. We want our keywords in the title tag, but not at the expense of click-through and human readability. A search engine may rank your content, but a human clicks on it, so keep that in mind. Meta description tags Meta descriptions don’t directly influence rankings. We all know that, right? But of course, that is completely missing the point here. Your meta description is the content of your advertisement for that page in a set of search engine results. Your meta description is what wins you the click. And winning those clicks can help improve visibility and is absolutely vital in driving more users to your pages. Meta descriptions must: truthfully describe the page content. advertise the page and improve click-through rates. consider the user’s thought process and why they will click on this page. include keywords where relevant and natural to do so. The search engine will highlight search terms in your page title and meta description which help a user scan the page. Don’t use this as an excuse to spam the meta description, though, or else Google likely will ignore it, and it won’t lead to that all-important click! There are also situations where it can make sense not to create a meta description and let the search engine pull content from the page to form a description that more accurately maps to a user’s search. Your brief meta description can’t always cover all the options for a longer-form piece of content, so keep this in mind. Heading tags Heading tags help structure the page and indicate hierarchy in a document: H1, H2, H3 and so on. Text in heading tags correlates with improved rankings (albeit slightly), but what really matters is that alignment between the structure of the site, behind the scenes optimization like page titles and meta descriptions and the content itself. Line everything up, and things make more sense for users, and we help search engines categorize our content while eking out every last bit of simple, on-page optimization we can. Remember to align header tags with the visual hierarchy. Meaning the most important header on the page (typically the

) should also be the biggest text element on the page. You are making the document visually easy to understand here and further ensuring that design and content are working together for the best end result. Page content The content should generally be the most important part of the page. However, we still see archaic SEO practices like overt keyword density and search terms with a lack of connective words used in the copy. This does not work. It certainly does not help with your SEO. And it makes for a poor user experience. We want to make sure the context of our page is clear. Our navigation, URLs, page titles, headers and so on should all help here. Yet we want to write naturally, using synonyms and natural language. Focus on creating great content that engages the user. Be mindful of keywords, but certainly don’t overdo it. Considerations for page content: Keywords in content (but don’t overdo it) Structure of the page Position of keywords in the content — earlier can be better Synonyms and alternatives Co-occurrence of keywords — what else would other high-quality documents include? Rich snippets Rich snippets are a powerful tool to increase click-through rates. We are naturally attracted to listings that stand out in the search engine results. Anything you can do to improve the click-through rate drives more users and makes your search engine listings work harder. Factor in possible ranking improvements from increased engagement, and you can have a low-input, high-output SEO tactic. The snippets that are most relevant to your business will depend on what you do, but schema.org is a great place to start. Image optimization Image SEO can drive a substantial amount of traffic in the right circumstances. And again, our thoughts regarding context are important here. Google does not (yet) use the content of images, so context within the site and the page and basic optimization are crucial here. As an example, I am looking for a hobbit hole playhouse for my five-year-old, and the search brings up image results: I can dive right into those image results and find a multitude of options, then use the image to drive me to the site that sells the playhouse. Optimizing your images increases the chance of improving prominence in the image search results. Image optimization is technically straightforward: Image name — provide a name that clearly describes what the image is. Alt text — use descriptive alt text to help those who can’t see the images to reinforce the image content. Add OpenGraph and Twitter Cards so the image is used in social shares. Use the image at the right physical size to ensure fast downloads. Optimize the image’s file size to improve loading times. Consider adding images to your XML sitemap. Image optimization is relatively simple. Keep the images relevant. Don’t spam the filenames and alt text with keywords. Be descriptive. Common problems SEO projects at Bowler Hat often include an SEO audit as the first port of call. We can’t cover every eventuality here, but the following are the usual suspects that crop up and that web designers should be mindful of. Duplicate content There tend to be two kinds of duplicate content: true duplicates and near-duplicates. True duplicates are where the content exists in multiple places (different pages, sites, subdomains and so on). Near-duplicates can be thin content or substantially similar content — think of a business with multiple locations or shoes listed on a unique page in different sizes. Keyword cannibalization Keyword cannibalization refers to the situation where multiple pages target the same keywords. This can impact the ability of your site to have one page that strongly targets a given term. Where the site architecture and hierarchy has been carefully planned, you should eliminate this during the planning and design stages. Domains, subdomains and protocols Another potential issue where duplication crops up is where the site is available on multiple domains, subdomains and protocols. Consider a business with two domains: Example.com Example.co.uk With www and non-www versions: Example.com Example.co.uk www.example.com www.example.co.uk And the site runs on HTTP and HTTPS: http://example.com http://example.co.uk http://www.example.com http://ift.tt/yp1udc https://example.com https://example.co.uk https://www.example.com http://ift.tt/1owT7EK Before too long, we can get to a situation where the site has eight potential variations. Factor in the site resolving on any subdomain and a few duff internal links and we can often add things like “ww.example.com” to the list above. These kinds of issues are simply resolved with URL redirections, but again, they deserve consideration by any web design agency that takes care of hosting and is serious about the SEO of their customers’ websites. Botched canonical URLs Another common issue we see is an incorrect implementation of canonical URLs. What typically happens here is that the person building the site looks at canonical URLs as an SEO checklist kind of job. They are implemented by dynamically inserting the URL in the address bar into the canonical URL. This is fundamentally flawed in that we can end up with the site running on multiple URLs, each with a canonical URL claiming that they are the authoritative version. So the canonical implementation exacerbates rather than resolves the issue.

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kevindbuenrostro · 8 years ago

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democratsunited-blog · 7 years ago

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Contests for key state offices offer clear contrast between Democratic challengers, GOP incumbents | State

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=5584

Contests for key state offices offer clear contrast between Democratic challengers, GOP incumbents | State

Texas Republicans and Democrats are like oil and water, so voters generally have an easy time distinguishing between the conservative and liberal ideologies of the parties.

Nowhere is the choice between Democrats and Republicans as clear as it is in the races for lieutenant governor and the state senate. From sanctuary cities legislation to so-called bathroom privacy bills, the senate has been the flash point for some of the most conservative, often controversial proposals in the Legislature.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is seeking re-election to a second term in November against Democrat Mike Collier, is steadfast in his promise to continue to produce conservative legislation, while Democrats want more progressive laws.

In North Texas, several staunch conservatives face challenges from Democrats who contend thier rivals are not in step with most Texans. But like Patrick, the incumbents defend their brand of conservatism.

“Too conservative for whom?” asked conservative talk radio host Mark Davis. “The only market place that matters is in the districts and in Patrick’s case statewide. Texas conservatives are firmly behind their leaders.”

But Democratic strategist Matt Angle said incumbents like Sens. Don Huffines of Dallas and Konni Burton of Colleyville would have trouble.

Burleson school board member Beverly Powell is challenging Burton in District 10 in Tarrant County and Dallas lawyer Nathan Johnson is running against Huffines in District 16 in Dallas County.

“You basically have Empower Texans Republicans, tea party Republicans and Trump Republicans,” Angle said. “It illustrates how out of touch they are and that they are running against candidates who want to solve problems.”

Taking aim at the leader

Collier knows the pain of a statewide loss.

In 2014, he was the Democratic nominee for comptroller and lost to Glenn Hegar.

The Houston accountant wrote an autopsy of the 2014 effort for Democrats, concluding that the votes were there to win.

“I see opportunity,” he said. “There’s enough Democrats. The whole game is to get Democrats to the polls and the way to get Democrats to the polls is to campaign on the things that they care about.”

Those things, Collier said, involve bolstering public education, making sure the state has enough water, expanding Medicaid to provide affordable health care, true property tax relief and other kitchen table issues.

“The difference between the two of us couldn’t be any more stark,” he said. “My mission is to spend all of my time, and as much resources as I can marshal, to make the people know the difference on those issues between Dan Patrick and me. It’s very easy to make the contrast.”

Patrick has outlined part of his agenda for the 2019 legislative session. He wants to freeze all taxes for residents age 65 and over. Teacher pay will be a priority, he says. And school safety in the aftermath of the deadly shooting in Santa Fe tops his legislative agenda.

He has defended last session’s push for the so-called bathroom bill that Democrats and business leaders said would have discriminated against transgender residents.

A consultant in his re-election campaign pointed to Patrick’s recent speech to delegates at the Texas GOP Convention to characterize his view of the upcoming elections.

“There are those in this state who would kill our prosperity, take innocent lives in the womb, and those on the left who even mock our faith in God. We call these people Democrats,” Patrick said.

He later said he would fight back against the agenda of Texas Democrats.

“The party is made up of socialists, liberal and progressives,” Patrick said. “If they were in charge, they would raise your taxes, they would support amnesty and open borders. They would repeal the ban on sanctuary cities. They would force your boys and girls to take showers in together in school and allow men into the ladies room.”

The “bathroom bill” passed in Patrick’s Senate. But it twice failed in the House, including after Governor Greg Abbott made it one of several priorities when he called lawmakers back to Austin for a special session last summer.

“They want to bring a blue wave; we’ll just build a bigger surf board,” Patrick said. “I’ve never, ever backed down in representing the values of the Republican Party of Texas, which is a conservative party.”

Running in tandem

Collier said Democrats will win in November because of their down-ballot slate. He has been campaigning with state senate candidates Johnson and Kendall Scudder, who’s running against incumbent Sen. Bob Hall.

“Just is as important as talent at the top is people running for state house and state senate and county commission and county judge,” Collier said. “After 2014, I’ve always viewed this as a reverse coattail state.”

With Collier in the room, Johnson told the Funky East Dallas Democrats that Huffines needed to be unseated.

“We think that this is a desperate time because the legislature has been moving backwards with a regressive social agenda,” Johnson said. “We’re even more scared now because Anthony Kennedy just resigned.”

In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat President Donald Trump in the 16th Senate district that Huffines represents in the Legislature.

With a huge Democratic turnout expected with Dallas County Democrats, Johnson is confident he can win.

“North Texas is the epicenter of the blue wave that’s going to save Texas,” Johnson said.

He said the contrast between Texas Democrats and Republicans is easy for voters to determine. And he warned that the U.S. Supreme Court would not serve as a check against extreme conservative legislation, even such that attacks gay rights, civil rights and gay marriage.

“Those bills are coming back, and the only way we can stop it is to put people in the Legislature and the lieutenant governor position that can stop that stuff from happening in the first place,” Johnson said. “We’re not paying attention to the core basic principles government is supposed to be paying attention to. Let’s get back to those things by electing the right people.”

But Huffines said conservative policies have made Texas a great place to live and do business.

“The Texas economic success story is proof that smart, responsible governance works,” he said. “It is accountable to the voters in our great state, but we’re not going to rest on our remarkable record. I’m eager to make sure all Texans benefit from more jobs, higher wages and a brighter, more prosperous future.”

Huffines said the majority of voters would accept the GOP view, including “fighting back against failed, irrational ideas like higher taxes, more spending, gun control and open borders.”

“I talk to North Texas voters every day, and they expect their leaders to make the American dream more affordable by cutting property taxes,” he said. “Voters are asking me to keep Texans safe by securing the border and stopping illegal immigration. Voters are asking me to make our schools safer, and I’m working on that right now with commitment and a sense of urgency.”

Conservative versus progressive

Scudder, a Sulphur Springs businessman, says urban, rural and small town residents need better education and health care.

Appearing in Dallas with Collier and Johnson, Scudder outlined what he called Hall’s greatest hits, including sponsoring the bathroom bill, supporting the right of Texans to carry guns without a permit and having state laws superseding the laws of the federal government.

“None of you should be surprised to find out that Bob Hall never successfully passed a bill before,” Scudder said. “And we’re going to keep it that way.”

Scudder said he could do better in the Senate.

“I was raised in Sulphur Springs with two brassy mamas that are tougher than two-dollar steaks,” Scudder said. “They taught me to never walk away from a fight worth having and I believe that our public schools are the fight worth having. When people like Bob Hall and Dan Patrick and Don Huffines go to Austin and they defund our public schools to school vouchers, I have a problem with that.”

But Hall, a first-term senator who in March won a tough primary fight against state Rep. Cindy Burkett, R-Sunnyvale, said he was committed to the conservative policies that make Texas the envy of the nation.

“That’s what they are, liberal progressives,” Hall said. “We’re on the opposite end of the spectrum. What we do is protect individual liberties, grow the economy and push for the efficient use of money for public education.”

He says he’s not concerned about not passing bills during his first term in the Senate.

“I’m not one to try to get my name in lights when it comes to passing bills,” Hall said. “I see myself as part of a team.”

On whether he could lose to Scudder in a district drawn for a Republican, Hall said he would take nothing for granted.

Democrats have candidates in legislative districts across North Texas, including the open seat in Collin County-anchored Senate District 8. That’s where Republican Angela Paxton is running against Democrat Mark Phariss.

“Anything is possible,” Hall said. “We do know that Dems are somewhat energized, but I do think the people of Texas, when it’s time to vote, will make the right choices.”

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'Tiny Trump' Is the Internet Modern Meme Obsession

He Net’s Ultra-modern dig at President Trump has arrived in the shape of the Tiny Trump meme. It’s precisely what it appears like: People are Photoshopping pix of the president to make his appearance about two feet tall in six. It’s a pointed manner to take shots at Trump’s ego, as the president has been known to be a bit touchy on the subject of his length.

Jokes approximately the dimensions of Trump’s frame have already ruffled his feathers as soon as earlier than. During the 2016 election, Senator Marco Rubio suggested that he had small arms, obviously insinuating a connection to something else. Trump became so disillusioned that he took time In the course of the following Republican debate to guarantee us of a, “I assure you there’s no problem.” With Tiny Trump, Human beings are over again looking to capitalize on Trump’s apparent lack of confidence in this region.

The meme seems to have begun with a pair of posts on the r/pictures subreddit on Wednesday. The primary, with the aid of u/RedBlimp, depicts an overly huge President Obama.

five Matters about Donald Trump You Failed to Understand

Donald John Trump, born on June 14, 1946, in Queens, NY, the man who is aware of “a tiny leak can sink a delivery” is a very influential media character along with his very own Television display – “The Apprentice”, presently a Presidential candidate and has married three instances with five children. The Trump brand is an end result of industries which encompass actual estate, mortgages, entertainment, hospitality, restaurants, and many others. The actual property billionaire synonymous for a luxurious dwelling is famed for having the most celebrated addresses in NYC and around the sector. The Trump signature is visible thru his sumptuous structures together with the Fifth Avenue skyscraper, Trump Parc, Trump Tower, Trump plaza, The Trump World Tower, 610 Park Avenue, and so forth. Under are a number of the exciting data about Trump that one desires to Understand:

1. Financial disaster – Donald Trump did not always devour from silver plates and had his share of misfortunes. inside the 12 months 1990, he almost went bankrupt and changed into left with nearly $four billion USD in debt. He needed to surrender 50% of the stakes of the renowned Taj Mahal Online casino to the bondholders to grope out of the dire situation. It changed into a prime hit and Trump in no way confronted such threatening Financial ruin issues in his lifestyles; although, he did face numerous crises which had been negligible to his position. These days, Trump stands because the CEO of the “Trump Corporation” that owns over 100 businesses.

2. Soccer – inside the year 1983, Donald Trump owned the new Jersey Generals which changed into a franchise of the USFL (U.S.A. Soccer League). despite the fact that, the entire event needed to come to a halt after 3 years (1983-1985) there’s no denying that the team of Trump produced some of the skilled gamers of the game like Herschel Walker.

three. Wrestling hustles – The consultant of Trump won over the consultant of McMahon In the course of the Wrestlemania-23 which hosted the fund titled “Warfare of billionaires”. Trump got the privilege to shave the pinnacle fo McMahon which changed into the wager agreed before the healthy. There was a lot controversy when Trump turned into said to have sold the infamous wrestling display “Uncooked” in the year 2009 from the owner Vince McMahon. However, There was reputable assertion that There was no such ‘sale’.

4. Teetotaler – Donald Trump lives the existence of a wealthy prince, however in no way got interested by taking alcohol. He’s believed to be a teetotaler without an awful lot affection to booze, which should be an inspiration for people who drool in the mirth of this risk addiction.

5. Board recreation – there is a board sport on Trump and it’s far known as “Trump: the sport” and it changed into launched inside the yr 1989, but it needed to be discontinued as this recreation Did not have become famous in phrases of opinions and sales as well. the sport is similar to monopoly but it could not obtain the attention. However, it stands out as a record due to the fact no different Presidential candidate has a board sport named after them.

Dismissing the controversies and extrovert nature of Donald Trump, his life is a lesson for all people needing to obtain unscalable heights through dedication. The billions in his pockets display his willpower as a man or woman and he can be a proposal for many generations to come back.

Is Donald Trump the Satisfactory Baby-kisser in the world?

The media is complete of vitriol for Donald Trump.

Even amongst those political commentators who generally incline in the direction of proper wing views, he is a discern often mentioned in phrases towards naked hatred than goal political analysis.

Yet what is Trump surely saying? Is he being misrepresented in the press when portrayed as talking totally for ‘the lunatic fringe’? Does he absolutely constitute mainstream The use as an alternative extra than his warring parties would really like to suggest?

The Pressures in US Society

All societies have stresses and tensions inside them – and the united states are not any exception.

Because the Sixties, US society has changed out of all popularity and has arguably fractured alongside fundamental fault traces. those stress points are not exactly news and consist of Things which include abortion, gay marriage, race, social care, gun laws, immigration, multiculturalism, financial control and so forth.

Although it’s very easy to portray those as a typically Republican proper wing as opposed to Democrat left wing political inclinations, this is overly simplistic. There are People with robust opinions on all facets and it is faulty to assume all Democrats assist abortion on demand as it’s a “female’s proper” or that everyone Republicans guide loose get entry to guns on call for.

But what has undeniably befallen increasingly more over recent decades is that liberal viewpoints captured the ethical high floor and are Nowadays frequently represented as being ‘mainstream’, ‘enlightened’, ‘simply’ and ‘politically correct’. by using contrast, viewpoints that argue towards (e.G.) extended social care provisions are labeled as ‘reactionary’, ‘outdated’, ‘oppressive’ or the area of marginalized cranks.

However, the intelligentsia in DC political and media leadership circles seem to have made the error of believing their very own propaganda on this appreciate.

it’s perhaps understandable due to the fact they’d ‘seen off’ the previous rumblings of groups which include the Tea Birthday party. So, they extremely underestimated the frustrations in very large sections of ‘conventional’ US society who lacked an outlet for his or her views, fears, hopes and aspirations – and into that breach stepped Donald Trump.

Trump – A Voice for the Unheard

Something one thinks about character factors of Trump’s method In the course of the Primaries, there’s little question that he has tapped right into a tremendous reservoir of discontent in US society.

Nobody should doubt that Trump has the big-scale and spontaneous help of many in the US. His perspectives, whether or not one agrees with them aren’t, are those of a large range of normal Individuals who’ve been annoyed by using no longer having a spokesperson.

within the past, Democrat Presidential candidates have portrayed this institution as political ‘dinosaurs’, with perspectives that haven’t any area in current America. Many conventional ‘comfortable’ Republican contenders have similarly distanced themselves from this section of society, as they strove to undertake centrist stances and positions that were each ‘Computer’ and of their view, ones which would lead them to doubtlessly electable.

Trump’s splendid thought and intelligent vision become to apprehend the scale of this group of dissatisfied voters, who were something but a tiny fringe minority. Even had it been in his nature, which it possibly isn’t always, he wasn’t going to tone down his perspectives certainly to make himself famous with the media or the ‘men in clubs’ in Washington.

He has efficaciously long past over the pinnacle of the political and media establishments and appealed to the masses – and masses they may be. that is why to this point he has been so a success and why he is created a political earthquake.

If not anything else, he is forcing the ‘unheard hundreds’ back into awareness inside the corridors of electricity.

Is Trump Electable?

Already, the Washington status quo is in hazard of writing Trump off, must he get to face against Hilary Clinton. The same worn-out-antique clichés are being wheeled out, branding him a racist, sexist and unfortunately deluded parent who doesn’t constitute a sizable proportion folks society.

those views could be VERY naive.

it’s already clear that Trump does not simply appeal to older white and ‘pink neck’ citizens. His undeniable-speak and a shortage of worry of controversy are hanging a chord with many – and that could move traditional Republican-Democrat demarcations.

For instance, it’s absurd and patronizing to postulate that African-Individuals may not vote for Trump due to his perspectives on immigration through Mexico. If they are struggling to discover paintings and housing, then looking at local immigration troubles as a possible contributory element is probably simply as possibly for African-American voters as White citizens.

equally, his stand on abortion would possibly properly ring a bell with full-size numbers of predominantly Catholic Hispanic People, regardless of his perspectives on unlawful immigration across the border or gun manipulate.

Many citizens of all political inclinations are probably attracted to his stance on breaking the Washington establishment – Anything section of society they arrive from.

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