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nordleuchten · 4 years ago

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Hi ! Facts about the Lafayette couple. Thanks.

Hello Anon,

well, well, the La Fayette couple, Adrienne and Gilbert - where to even begin with these two? Their marriage was arranged and arranged marriages were very common for the time and people of their position. A family with wealth, a title and influence was keen on preserving all of this – and tried to add to it by trying to arranging marriages with families who as well had at least one of these things. A truly popular combination was a family with a great name/title that had fallen on hard times and a very rich family without too great a name. Now, La Fayette and Adrienne were lucky in so far as that they really loved each other. Their marriage was far more than pure convenience. Still, not everything was picture perfect. La Fayette had different mistresses and although he loved Adrienne, I always feel like it took him quite some time to realise just how wonderful Adrienne truly was, how loyal and devoted. It was not entirely uncommon that a man and a women in an arranged marriage barely know each other prior to their marriage. That again was different with La Fayette and Adrienne. La Fayette actually lived with his future in-laws together in their house prior to the marriage. Behind the scenes everything had already been sorted out, but the bride and the groom were still none the wiser (although La Fayette was told before Adrienne was told). Partly responsible for this living-arrangement was Adrienne’s mother, the Duchess d’Ayen. She was the metaphorical lioness protecting her cubs. She was fiercely protective of her daughters and thought that Adrienne was still way too young. So La Fayette moved in with them, they had some time to get to know each other and to mature a bit. La Fayette also won over the Duchess, who was a bit skeptical at first.

When La Fayette and Adrienne finally married, she was fourteen and he was sixteen. Their marriage contract stated that they should continue to live with Adrienne’s family and that their marriage was not be consumed for some time. This rule again was included due to the input of the Duchess – who still thought her daughter way too young for any martial endeavours. Regardless of that, Adrienne became pregnant with the couples first child during this proposed period – the popular opinion is, that La Fayette after some time simply wanted to be with Adrienne and sneaked into her room (something that he supposedly confessed to later in life). Whatever happened, they both seemed quite happy.

When La Fayette departed for America, Adrienne was completely clueless, she said that herself but there is also circumstancel evidence to support her statement. She had a young and sickly daughter to look after, a daughter that would die a few months later when La Fayette was still in America. She furthermore was pregnant with their second child and Paris was on fire with rumours. Newspapers printed rumours about La Fayette’s death on the field or something similar every other day and she often had no possibility of hearing from her husbands for months and months (before La Fayette’s first return to France they had not heard from one another for roughly eight months). The news of the death of their oldest child Henriette reached La Fayette so late that he send Adrienne many letters asking about Henriette, asking if she was well, long after Henriette was deceased. But despite all of it, Adrienne put up a brave face in public and never complaint. In general, whether she agreed with her husband or nor, weather she liked what he did or not, she never criticised him in public, never embarrassed or questioned him in front of others.

After the conclusion of the war in America La Fayette and Adrienne together with their children moved into their own home. They were, for people of their time and status, very engaged parents. They started hosting their “American Dinners” on Mondays and Adrienne was also included in La Fayette’s “Plantation-Project”. La Fayette kept a lively correspondence with George Washington but Adrienne also exchanged letters with Washington. There is one lovely, humours account by Washington in a letter to La Fayette dated September 30, 1779:

“(...) But at present must pray your patience a while longer, till I can make a tender of my most respectful compliments to the Marchioness. Tell her (if you have not made a mistake, & offered your own love instead of hers to me) that I have a heart susceptable of the tenderest passion, & that it is already so strongly impressed with the most favourable ideas of her, that she must be cautious of putting loves torch to it; as you must be in fanning the flame. But here again methinks I hear you say, I am not apprehensive of danger—My wife is young—you are growing old & the atlantic is between you—All this is true, but know my good friend that no distance can keep anxious lovers long asunder, and that the Wonders of former ages may be revived in this—But alas! will you not remark that amidst all the wonders recorded in holy writ no instance can be produced where a young Woman from real inclination has prefered an old Man—This is so much against me that I shall not be able I fear to contest the prize with you—yet, under the encouragement you have given me I shall enter the list for so inestimable a jewell.”

This is just such a funny, carefree, teasing letter between the three of them. Its adorable. But these carefree times soon came to an end with the onset of the French Revolution (you could argue that the Revolution had already begun long prior to 1789 but in that year it rapidly gained speed).

La Fayette entangled himself in the political and military matters of the day and when everything started to go down the hill (from his perspective at least) he tried to fled to America and got caught before he even could reach a harbour. Adrienne and the children stayed behind in France. Now, it had became some sort of custom that the women of (aristocrat) man who fled France during the Revolution “divorced” her husbands. (“Divorce” because these divorces were often not real civil divorces in accordance with the law but more a sort of public separation from their “treacherous and anti-republican” husbands that could get these women a passport and/or out of prison. It also opened them the opportunity to marry again later in life.) Somebody proposed a divorce to Adrienne and she was absolutely repelled by the idea. She had married La Fayette for better and for worse and she would not, not under any circumstance divorce her husband. Period. In fact, she started signing all her papers with “la femme de Lafayette”, “the wife of Lafayette”. After and eventful and fearful time, Adrienne was eventually released from her prison in France. She gathered her two daughters (her son was safe in America with his tutor) and went to Austria were La Fayette was still imprisoned in Olmütz. She had some family connections to the court in Vienna and eventually obtained the permission of sharing her husbands imprisonment. Although accounts vary, all accounts agree that Olmütz was a true hell-hole. Adrienne and her children were treated better than La Fayette - but the treatment was still not good. Soon Adrienne became ill and the prison doctor could not really do anything. Adrienne was told that she was free to go, leave this place behind, find a good doctor, settle down somewhere more comfortable. Nobody wanted to see her suffer or even die. The only stipulation, if she would leave now she was not allowed to ever return – and with that Adrienne stayed and suffered and hasted her death because she would not leave her husband behind. In my opinion her sacrifice at that moment made La Fayette understand just how incredible his wife was. He never forgot what she endured for him and her actions probably lead their relationship to unknown heights.

After they were eventually all released from prison they settled first in Danish-Holstein and then in the Netherlands before returning to France. Adrienne managed to regain a lot of the property that they had previously lost during the Revolution. Although she was successful in that regard, her health (and beauty) was forever ruined. Despite all that she took great joy in seeing her children marry and becoming a grandmother. When Adrienne died on December 24, 1807 La Fayette was absolutely shattered. He wrote a very, very long and very, very sad letter to a friend, retelling Adrienne’s last days and expressing his grieve:

“As yet you have always found me stronger than circumstances, but now this event is stronger than me. Never shall I recover from it. During the thirty - four years of an union in which her tenderness, her goodness, the elevation of her mind, charmed, adorned, honoured my life, I felt myself so used to all that she was to me, that I could not distinguish it from my own existence. She was fourteen, and I was sixteen, when her heart amalgamated itself with everything that could interest me. I knew I loved her, I knew I needed her, but it is only now that I can distinguish what life which I had thought was to have been entirely devoted to worldly matters. (...)”

The letter is really long but so worth the read if you are interested. Really! It is such an honest, open, affectionate and reflected statement of their relationship. Adrienne’s last words were “Je suis toute à vous” (I am all yours) and La Fayette had these words inscribed on a miniature of Adrienne that he constantly had upon his person. Here is an account of the portrait from Jules Germain Cloquets book “Recollections of the Private Life of General Lafayette, etc”:

“In his children he cherished the memory of their mother, (Mademoiselle de Noailles,) whom he had loved most tenderly, and whose name he never mentioned but with visible emotion. One day during his last illness, I surprised him kissing her portrait, which he always wore suspended to his neck in a small gold medallion. Around the portrait were the words, “Je suis à vous ,” and on the back was engraved this short and touching inscription, “ Je vous fus donc une douce compagne: eh bien ! benissez moi .” I have since been informed that regularly every morning Lafayette ordered Bastien [his valet] to leave the room, in which he shut himself up, and taking the portrait in both hands, looked at it earnestly, pressed it to his lips, and remained silently contemplating it for about a quarter of an hour. Nothing was more disagreeable to him than to be disturbed during this daily homage to the memory of his virtuous partner.”

I hope you have/had an awesome day!

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46ten · 4 years ago

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The Disappearance of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton

“Hers was a strong character with its depth and warmth, whether of feeling or temper controlled, but glowing underneath, bursting through at times in some emphatic expression.”*

[This is as much a reminder to myself as to anyone else reading once I start quoting extensively from AH’s letters to ESH, as I will do in an upcoming post. ESH very much gets lost because of their one-sided correspondence.]

Unless you’re willing to dig a bit (and I don’t mean reading Tilar Mazzeo’s atrocious biography that makes her even more of a cipher, or taking seriously both Miranda and Chernow’s fictional creations), ESH is sort of a phantom. She’s not unknowable, but nothing is left of her letters to her husband, and we have comparatively few letters to her family during the years of her marriage (and to find those, one has to put in the work - they aren’t easily available transcribed on Founders or in a publicly accessible online volume, although a few letters from others to her do appear in Intimate Life of AH - the letters from Kitty Livingston are especially fun). We find most of ESH’s thoughts/reflections on AH in letters from 1804 and 1805, after his death, and then in her quest to get material for a biography. We also then get a lot of her voice in her letters to others. But to many, the real question is: what was Elizabeth Schuyler like when being courted by, and then married to AH? Who is this person that AH was stating was “the sole proprietor [of my heart]” (13July1781)?

We have around 120 of AH’s letters to her - and we’re missing about another 60 that are mentioned in other letters - but we’re left with the lingering question: who in the world is he writing all of this highly emotional, gushy stuff to? Does she feel the same way? Does she feel more of this/less of that? How does she express herself to him? How does she think and feel?

I’ve tried to do posts about A. Hamilton’s relationships with Nicholas Fish and Matthew Clarkson, and without letters from both sides, there’s no there there. And my post about AH’s feelings about Philip Schuyler was one of the most difficult: because we don’t have AH writing personally to PS in any but a handful of letters, I’m stuck reading what he wrote to other people about his father-in-law to get his take on his father-in-law. I’m doing a few posts quoting extensively from AH’s letters to her, but without her response, it’s like reading into a void.

But there’s something else going on with ESH too, a mixture of misogyny and lack of understanding of the roles of women in the 18th century and just a total dismissal of women’s work. It often plays out as: why would a genius like that have been interested in her. Sometimes (Chernow), it descends into the “this guy was so smart and complicated he would have always needed multiple women to fulfill him intellectually/romantically/physically” trope.

The sum total, when combined with heaping doses of misogyny, disregard for women’s labor, and lack of knowledge of the time period, is to erase her out of both his professional and intimate life. She’s around, maybe doing something, definitely having babies, but she just must not be that important. AH’s own testaments to her and to others about her are ignored.

Elizabeth Schuyler attended diplomatic and political meetings at a younger age than we have any record of AH doing so. She had relationships - often predating AH’s own - with nearly everyone important person in AH’s American life, including members of the Continental Congress, Washington, and members of Washington’s military family. ESH performed all the duties of soft diplomacy, from hosting and entertaining important politicians (Washington, Jefferson, Talleyrand, among many others) to performing the social visits that were so important in the Federalist political era. ESH ran their home (including negotiating where they lived, the rent, the furnishings, the servants, etc), educated their children (besides risking her life nine times that we know of to have them), helped AH with his correspondence, attended political and social events solo and alongside him, communicated political and military news to him and to her family, and advised him on political speeches. ESH was also pretty excellent at handicrafts (but oh wait, those are made by women, so they don’t matter). And I haven’t even touched on her life after his death!

If one is interested in life of the historical AH in 1780 and beyond, one has to grasp that ESH is a real person deeply involved in all aspects of his life thereafter, whose affections AH regarded as “ the only blessing which can make life of any value to me” (10Jul1781), even if we don’t get to hear/read her side of things.

* p105 of Intimate Life of AH. I do not know who wrote this about ESH. Chernow cites Intimate Life, but Allan McLane Hamilton did not write that McHenry wrote that, nor does it appear in The Life and Correspondence of James McHenry (1907).

#Alexander Hamilton #Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton #18th century letters #Chernow #James McHenry

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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What Is The Percentage Of Democrats And Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-is-the-percentage-of-democrats-and-republicans/

What Is The Percentage Of Democrats And Republicans

The Role Of The Supreme Court

Gravitas: US Election 2020 | How Republicans & Democrats are wooing Indian Americans

President Donald Trumps two appointments to the Supreme Court, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, gave Republican-appointed justices a majority on the nations highest court.

Anti-abortion advocates see the courts makeup as a chance to weaken or overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 court ruling that legalized abortion.

They want to make hay while the sun shines and pass as much of their pet legislation as they can while they have the opportunity, said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines.

Some state lawmakers and activists have said theyve specifically written legislation to spark a legal challenge that will end up before the Supreme Court.

Anti-abortion marchers rally at the Supreme Court during the 46th annual March for Life in Washington, on January 18, 2019. Some state lawmakers have said the bills they are pushing aim to ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade. Photo by Joshua Roberts/Reuters

The current focus on overturning Roe v. Wade has parallels to the early 1990s, when the court had eight justices who were appointed by Republican presidents. In 1992, the court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which questioned a Pennsylvania law that implemented a number of restrictions on abortions. The court upheld most of the provisions but also established that state rules cannot impose an undue burden on a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.

Forty Percent Of Young Americans Expect Their Lives To Be Better As A Result Of The Biden Administration; Many More Feel A Part Of Bidens America Than Trumps

By a margin of 2:1, young Americans expect their lives to become better under the Biden administration, rather than worse ; 25% tell us that they dont expect much of a difference. We found significant differences based on race and ethnicity.

Whites: 30% better, 28% worse

Blacks: 54% better, 4% worse

Hispanics: 51% better, 10% worse

Forty-six percent of young Americans agreed that they feel included in Bidens America, 24% disagreed . With the exception of young people living in rural America, at least a plurality indicated they felt included. This stands in contrast to Trumps America. Forty-eight percent reported that they did not feel included in Trumps America, while 27% indicated that they felt included . The only major subgroup where a plurality or more felt included in Trumps America were rural Americans.;

39% of Whites feel included in Bidens America, 32% do not ; 35% of Whites feel included in Trumps America, 41% do not .

61% of Blacks feel included in Bidens America, 13% do not ; 16% of Blacks feel included in Trumps America, 60% do not .

51% of Hispanics feel included in Bidens America, 12% do not ; 17% of Hispanics feel included in Trumps America, 55% do not .

Gender And Marital Status

The Democratic Party has a significant advantage with women. Thirty-seven percent of women affiliate with the Democratic Party, giving them a sizable advantage over the 24 percent who identify as Republicans. Marriage tends to have a significant impact on how a woman votes. Unmarried women vote Democrat about 62 percent of the time, while married women tend to be evenly split between the parties.

Exactly 27 percent of men affiliate with each party, with 43 percent declaring themselves Independent. Gays, lesbians and bisexuals support Democratic candidates around 70 percent of the time.

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Voter Turnout In 2020 And Beyond

The new census data makes plain that the 2020 election was record-breaking in terms of the magnitude of its voter turnout. Yet there are two aspects of this turnout which need to be emphasized. One is the sharp rise in the turnout among white non-college votersa group that has strongly favored Republicans. The other is the accentuated turnout among young people and people of colorrepresenting the increasing influence of voters who heavily lean toward Democratic presidential candidates.

Both of these groups exerted countervailing forces on the results of the 2020 election, leading to close popular vote totals in a handful of states. However, the underlying demographics of the nations voter population show that Democratic-leaning voter populations are on the rise in both fast-growing and slow-growing parts of the country.

This raises the question as to whether even greater turnout among white non-college voter groupsor Republican efforts to alter voting requirements in their favorwill be enough to counter the influence of young voters and voters of color in future presidential elections.

Black Hispanic And Asian Voters Remain Overwhelmingly Democratic

There are sizable and long-standing racial and ethnic differences in partisan affiliation, and they have shifted only modestly in recent years.

White voters continue to be somewhat more likely to affiliate with or lean toward the Republican Party than the Democratic Party .

Since 2010, white voters have been more likely to align with the GOP than with the Democrats. However, the share of whites identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic has edged upward . This growth is attributable to a slight increase in Democratic-leaning independents, rather than a rise in Democratic affiliation.

While black voters remain solidly Democratic, identification with the Democratic Party has declined modestly in recent years: About two-thirds of African Americans have identified as Democrats in the last several years, down slightly from the first half of Barack Obamas presidency, when about three-quarters affiliated with the Democratic Party.

There is a similar balance of partisanship among Asian American registered voters: 65% identify with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic, compared with 27% who identify as or lean Republican.

In 1998 , 53% of Asians identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party and 33% identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party. .

A gender gap in partisan affiliation and leaning is seen across racial and ethnic groups.

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Republican Women And Abortion

EmbedEmbed

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds that men and women hold similar views on abortion overall, but Republican women are more opposed to abortion rights than Republican men.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

A majority of Americans support keeping Roe v. Wade in place. Thats the finding of a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll on abortion. And most favor allowing abortion in at least some situations. But there is one group that stands out for opposing abortion Republican women. NPRs national correspondent Sarah McCammon joins us. Sarah, thanks so much for being with us.

SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Youre welcome.

SIMON: We certainly have had a lot of demonstration about the heavy partisanship on the abortion issue. Tell us about how gender comes into this discussion.

MCCAMMON: Well, its not in the way that a lot of people might think. Theres often a lot of rhetoric about a so-called Republican war on women in the context of abortion debates, or we hear the idea that efforts to restrict abortion rights are about men trying to control womens bodies. But when it comes to public opinion, many polls bear out the idea that men and women actually have very similar views on abortion. In our poll, 60% of women and 54% of men describe themselves as pro-choice. And I talked to Barbara Carvalho, the director of the Marist Poll. She says thats a pretty insignificant difference.

SIMON: Sarah, what do you think accounts for the difference between Republican men and women on this issue?

Supported Members Of Congress

This section does not cite any . Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

The organization has quoted the Republican Partys Statement of Principles, suggesting that this encompasses the option to choose abortion: the Party wants n America with a smaller less burdensome government that trusts its people to decide what is best for them n America where freedom of expression, individual conscience, and personal privacy are cherished and respected.

It has called for the Human Life Amendment to be removed from the abortion plank and that the platform reflect real policy that represents a common ground approach where both sides of the GOP can work together to make abortion unnecessary without taking away womens rights.

RFC has successfully gotten language into the platform that encourages Republicans to follow their conscience on this and other divisive issues. They do not ask those who disagree with them to leave the GOP but rather to join with them to return to the real core Republican values that call for smaller government and protecting personal freedom. They believe this should extend to both men and women. Ultimately they believe in a GOP that helps get the government out of the boardroom and the bedroom.

In that light, Republicans for Choice has suggested changes to the Republican National Platform with regard to societal attitudes towards gay and lesbian issues.

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California Voter And Party Profiles

NOTES: Likely voters are registered voters meeting criteria on interest in politics, attention to issues, voting behavior, and intention to vote. For a full description of these criteria and regional definitions, visit www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/SurveyMethodology.pdf. For race and ethnicity, results are presented for Latinos, non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic Asian Americans, non-Hispanic African Americans, and non-Hispanic other race and multiracial adults.

Sources: Seven PPIC Statewide Surveys from September 2019 to July 2020, including 11,725 adults and 7,243 likely voters. California Secretary of State, Report of Registration, August 2020. US Census Bureau, 20142018 American Community Survey.

Related Content

With The Population Diversifying Non

In Battleground States, Newly Registered Democrats Are Outnumbering Newly Registered Republicans

The voter population for presidential elections continues to change in its demographic makeup. This relates both to turnout and to the changing shifts in the nations overall population. Because of the rising growth rates of nonwhite race and ethnic groups nationally and the increased educational attainment of younger voters, the share of all voters identifying as non-college white continues to shrink. Thus, for the first time in a presidential election, white voters without college degrees comprised less than two-fifths of the voter population.

These changes look quite different from 2004, when non-college white voters comprised more than half of the voter population and nonwhite minorities comprised only one-fifth. Since then, the formers share dropped to 39.7%; the share of white college-educated voters increased modestly, from 27.7% to 31.3%.; and the share of nonwhite voters rose to 29%, almost equaling that of white college graduates.

The shift in the race-ethnic makeup of the populationespecially the younger populationis evident when looking at voters in the past five presidential elections. During this period, younger generations of voting-age citizens have become more racially diverse. In 2020, for the first time, at least 10% of the total voter population identified as Latino or Hispanic, as did 15% of voters below age 40. The white share of the under-age-40 voter population declined by 10 points from 2004 to 2020, to 64% .

Read Also: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

Which Political Party Is The Most Successful In Usa

In the United States, there has usually only been two main political parties. Since the 1860s, these two main parties have been the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has the most seats in the House of Representatives while the Republicans and Democrats split the Senate at 50 Senators each.

A Plurality Believe History Will Judge Trump As A The Worst President Ever; Less Than A Quarter Of Young Americans Want Trump To Play A Key Role In The Future Of Republican Politics; Young Republicans Are Divided

Thirty percent of young Americans believe that history will judge Donald Trump as the worst president ever. Overall, 26% give the 45th president positive marks , while 54% give Trump negative marks ; 11% believe he will go down as an average president.

Twenty-two percent of young Americans surveyed agree with the statement, I want Donald Trump to play a key role in the future of Republican politics, 58% disagreed, and 19% neither agreed nor disagreed. Among young Republicans, 56% agreed while 22% disagreed, and 21% were neutral. Only 61% of those who voted for Trump in the 2020 general indicated their desire for him to remain active in the GOP.

If they had to choose, 42% of young Republicans consider themselves supporters of the Republican party, and not Donald Trump. A quarter indicated they are Trump supporters first, 24% said they support both.

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Ies See Big Demographic Changes Despite Overall Static Split

WASHINGTON The last decade was one of the most politically consequential in recent memory, one in which partisan divisions dominated. But under the surface, an enormous churn is redefining and re-sorting the two major parties.

A look at the numbers helps explain the larger story.

By events alone, the decade was tumultuous from the Republican tsunami in 2010 to the rise of Donald Trump in 2016 and the Democratic correction in 2018. And yet, when you look at the percentage of voters who identify at a Democrat or Republican, the picture is one of stability.

In 2010, the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that 42 percent of registered voters identified as Democrats, while 37 percent identified as Republicans. At the end of 2019, the figures showed 42 percent were Democrats and 37 percent were Republicans. Unchanged.

In other words, Barack Obama and Donald Trump may each be transformative presidents in their own ways, but viewed from 30,000 feet, the net effect of their time in office on the political landscape has been negligible.

Look a little closer, however, and the picture is much more fluid.

Start with education. The last decade has seen noteworthy shifts among voters with and without a college degree.

Those are dramatic swings among big parts of the electorate that have impacts across the country. Its a big part of the reason Democrats have increased their margins in highly educated urban areas.

Gallup: Percentage Of Pro

A new Gallup survey out today finds the percentage of Americans who identify them selves as supporting legalized abortion has dropped to a record low.

The 41% of Americans who now identify themselves as pro-choice is down from 47% last July and is one percentage point below the previous record low in Gallup trends, recorded in May 2009, the polling firm noted. On the other hand, 51 percent of Americans call themselves pro-life, one percentage point away from the record high.

The percentage of Americans identifying themselves as pro-life has trended higher since 1995, when the partial-birth abortion debate began in earnest and ultrasound technology made it so pictures of unborn children were the first baby pictures most parents saw. Gallup has found the pro-life position significantly ahead on two occasions, once in May 2009 and again today and the number of pro-abortion Americans has steadily dropped.

Gallup says the decline in Americans self-identification as pro-choice is seen across the three U.S. political groups with Republicans increasingly becoming pro-life.

Since 2001, the majority of Republicans have consistently taken the pro-life position, but by a gradually increasing margin over pro-choice. That gap expanded further this year, with the percentage of Republicans identifying as pro-life increasing to 72% from 68% last May, and those identifying as pro-choice dropping to 22% from 28%, Gallup noted.

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Mellman: The Rise Of The Pro

Cold War babies like me were taught to abhor communism as children.

My earliest memory of such instruction came from a teacher who raged against what she claimed was communisms demand that people inform on family, friends and neighbors, turning them over to the secret police for actions or views critical of the regime.;;

I shudder to think what those now deceased teachers would say about Republicans in Texas, and elsewhere, encouraging citizens to intervene in their neighbors most intimate decisions by suing them for giving a friend a ride to an abortion clinic or being a woman who received one.

Joe BidenSocial media making political polarization worse: reportBiden and UKs Johnson to meet for talks this month: reportToyota, Honda knock union-made EV incentive in Dems spending packageMORE called it vigilantism. In my youth, it wouldve seemed a form of creeping totalitarianism.;

This disastrous policy, designed to outlaw abortion while enabling recent Republican Supreme Court justices to parry well-founded accusations of perjury in their confirmation hearings, is a dagger pointed at the political heart of the GOP.

Though it was never counted as one of the most important problems facing the country , abortion played a lead role as culture developed into our central line of political cleavage.;

In recent years, two facts emerged clearly: First, the vast majority of Americans are what the political class would call pro-choice .

Public opinion is clear.;;

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The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

Reprinted with permission from DC Report

The overwhelming failure in the recall of California Gov. Gavin Newsom should send a powerful message to those Republicans who think their future lies with Donald Trump and Trumpism. It doesn’t.

That’s better than the record margin by which Newsom won in 2018. He won that race with just under 62 percent of the vote. It also equals the share of California votes for Biden against Trump in 2020.

The recall vote is a clear repudiation of the Trumpian tactic of trying to disrupt and delegitimize government when anyone but a Trumper wins the popular vote. Havoc will continue, but it can be defeated always if enough sensible Americans cast ballots.

Trumpism isn’t dead, not yet. But it’s not attracting new adherents, either. That’s because all it offers is anger, the lethal rejection of medical science and cultish devotion to a deeply disturbed con artist who just makes stuff up like his very recent delusional claim of being rescued on 9/11 by two firefighters.

Trumpism is not an ideology, just political masturbation.

And no one in America is more captured by self-love than Donald Trump.

In spring, it looked like Newsom could become the third governor in American history to be recalled because rank-and-file Democrats weren’t paying attention. Neither were the independents, whose numbers equal those of Republicans in California.

Also Check: Did Republicans Riot When Obama Won

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marta-is-queen · 8 years ago

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This is gonna be a personal for me. However, it needs to be written.

It took a long time for me to realise my queerness. The fact I was pansexual. You see where I was born there were only male and female couples, even that in marriage. Though, the marriage part was also kind of, well, not sacred. My old home was a cult so obviously they abused the bodies of women frequently. Our gospel told us that incest was allowed. To Papa Knoth anyone was allowed. It took me some time, after the storm, after the towers were gone, how insidious this all was. Of course, there had been some queer people in my town. In Temple Gate, queerness was either a secret or a condemnation. This was concomitant with how people would be treated if they denied Knoth anything or anyone. I remember coming up a woman chained in an underground room. Chairs put out for an audience. She was a child once. In fact, there was a command to kill her. Instead, someone decided to keep her for her promise of beauty and decided to condemn her to a life of rape and torture.

I do identify as female. However, I was never allowed to be a woman. I will explain this further. Being a woman requires a yokemate as being a man. I was not allowed these things. I was Papa Knoth’s “Avenging Angel” — I was born very tall and strong thus no man or woman in Temple Gate could really provide me a challenge in physical strength. I was called Knoth’s Eye. I was the angel who could act as both witness, judge and executioner. However, by being an angel you are also condemned to a form of “purity” that requires you to extend yourself outside of being human. I was not allowed to have physical intimacy with anyone nor sexual intimacy. I believe, I don’t completely remember, that perhaps when I was younger I had some exchanges with Papa Knoth. That was the only thing I had and after that as I grew taller and stronger I became the sentinel of the The Testament of New Ezekial.

Obviously, this was hard for me. At times, I felt very lonely traveling alone at night. Hearing the laugh of a man, or a woman, would warm me in ways I could not always explain. And, I found myself in great detail thinking of the man or woman who had laughed. At times, these details were simple and even platonic. Other times, they invaded my waking dreams and I craved to share in the laugh, be covered by it and become a butterfly within it. Of course, some of my waking dreams were now, as I know, courtesy of this corporation called Murkoff. However, I can say not all of them were.

I knew when I was around nineteen that I wanted desperately close with this girl I knew. I remembered not being happy at her wedding and wishing to rid the yokemate with my pickaxe. I remember in my 20s I had correspondences with a young man. He later would become a Heretic. I did not need to kill him. I remember Papa Knoth got angry finding my letters; he told me the letters made me weak and foolish and womanly. That I was to be an angel. An angel that helped him by avenging the enemies of the clan, which was what I was born to do he told me. Papa Knoth also told me that it was because of these ‘foolish’ letters that I was doubting my mission to kill mercilessly. He saved if I possessed a woman’s heart and not the angel’s duty I would always be this ‘foolish’, so it was significant that I put away all these feelings as they were not befitting an avenging angel.

At the time, Knoth and I were close. I think he just used me while I just loved him as anyone could love anyone as a friend and only friend. I thought I should grow into my role. I shunned my feelings and became the enforcer The Testament of New Ezekiel needed. Only Val once questioned me while they were going to be the leader of the Heretics or already were, how I was living such an austere and lonely life which did not seem fit for piousness but more fit as a poison. I told them to hold their nor I would hold it for them and so our conversation ended. Val never made the mistake of approaching me again.

I thought Knoth and I were the same. Two of us were devoted to our duties so having a yokemate was impossible. We had to be duty first. We had to deny our humanity so we can preserve the humanity of Temple Gate. I saw it that way. However, even if Knoth didn’t really marry he did always just have sex with whoever he wanted. I thought we were equals. We were never equals. Knoth was selfish and he selfishly told me to do things he would never do. Obviously, he would never easily kill others aside his own children, which he mostly did by other people such as Val. In the end, reflecting, I feel remorse and sympathy for Val. Perhaps, they also felt they were facing a horrible inequality to which their chaos sprung and could not be put away.

By forcing me to become an angel, an angel in the house, Papa Knoth and those closest to him, were trying to take away my humanity. Rip it off, as it never had existed and never will find existence. I craved for human company many a times. People were afraid of me. My size, my strength, my emaciated appearance reminded them of the grim reaper or an angel of death. Sex and physical intimacy alluded me. I could hear moans and even sweet, soft whispers of lovers and would sometimes start rubbing my pickaxe on a tree, tearing the poor creature’s bark out of frustration and anger. When I became wet in dreams I hated myself for my “weakness.” I hated my female sex because it did not let me have perfect faith. It did not let me become the ideal sexless angel who was duty bound and good.

Though I did not necessarily hate being the avenging angel. I loved that I could be the protector of women and of men. It also piqued my interest that most men ran away from me but most women just walked away or just didn’t do much. I believe they identified with me. I was to be their voice of strength. Them, who have been banished to lives of domesticity where they made coffins aside from a home even before the killings began, saw me as a respite, as a possibility. Perhaps, if not them, their female children would grow tall and strong like me and we all be the army that protected the village. And, they having birthed the soldiers would be deemed good, pure mothers and women. The wombs were angels had sprung from. I realise now how ambitious and strong women can be — even in the face of the most coldhearted abuse and misogyny, they hope, pray and work towards changing the system or bending it to their wills. That is a power that women and females have that I think no one should ever underestimate.

Now, that I am away from all that. Away from the spells of narrow minded dogma and science, I see myself for the first time. I see who I am. I guess it took some time. I found solace in the prayer song sung by Jessica. I believe we would have been good friends. I feel it is this young girl who once knew a young Blake gave me some strength to be who I want, without shame. So, I think I have deep affections now for this tall woman called Garnet. I hear she is not of this world; which is fine as I am an avenging angel and I think a gem of another world and an angel are both “heavenly” in a way so we may get along well. I have some affections for Val — even if I did not agree with all their methods I am just glad they became honest of what they felt. It must have been hard for Val living in a town that did not value that they had no defined sex or gender.

I also realised I will always, in some way, have affections for Blake. I think he and I come from the same place. We were both manipulated by someone we trusted and lost a lot in the process. I think he made some of his peace. Now, it is time to make mine. As you people in this modern world say, coming out of the closet.

I am Marta. I am Pansexual. I love all genders and sexes. And, I am hoping someone will love me back too.

#Outlast 2 #Marta #Marta is Pan #Marta is Queen

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nancygduarteus · 6 years ago

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The Big Problem Your Favorite Kitchen Gadget Can’t Fix

There are a lot of fundamental problems with existence, but among the most pressing is that you need to feed yourself three times a day, basically every day, for like 80 years. If you’re an American woman, the stakes of food preparation are likely to be even higher. Statistically, you’ll probably get married and have at least one kid, and although your family will probably need you to get a full-time job, you’ll also be saddled with the majority of the domestic labor, of which food acquisition and preparation is an omnipresent component.

Lately, women’s trendiest ally in this battle is a kitchen-dwelling robot pod called an Instant Pot. The Instant Pot’s massive popularity—Amazon sold 300,000 units of the product during 2018’s Prime Day sale alone—is based on a simple promise. If users insert some ingredients, press some buttons, and pay careful attention to the details of a recipe, then out comes a hot meal of fresh ingredients, big enough to feed a family and in less time than traditional cooking methods.

By inspiring hope for the automation of the domestic, the Instant Pot joins a lineage of kitchen gadgetry that includes the crock pot and the microwave: consumer sensations that attempt to retrofit traditional women’s work into modern women’s lives. But like its predecessors, it can only do so much, even if those abilities include making everything from bone broth to cheesecake. While the Instant Pot might be the most sophisticated fix yet for Americans’ dwindling opportunity to prepare their own food, it can’t address the bigger problem of where that time and skill went in the first place, and how much more stands to be lost.

The Instant Pot is the right product at the right time, and by all indications, the vast majority of people who own them seem to adore them. Often abbreviated as the “IP” online, the device’s devotees sing its praises on social media, and Facebook in particular has been a fertile ground for its word-of-mouth spread. When I asked around on my account, I expected mixed reactions; nothing is universally beloved on social media. Still, so many people reported using their pots multiple times per week, and almost all of them were doing it to feed spouses and kids. A friend from high school, usually a bit of a curmudgeon, called his family’s “fairly amazing.” Another, the spouse of a college coworker, said she uses hers to meal-prep for her household of 12. One guy said he and his wife were considering buying a third, smaller IP because they got so much use out of their first two.

Even Kaitlin Garske, a social-media manager and food writer from Michigan who wrote a popular article about not being impressed with her own Instant Pot, can see their allure to others. “I have friends who don’t cook who got one for Christmas, and they were so happy to just put chicken in it and walk away,” she says.

That act of walking away seems like the IP’s most consistent draw. You don’t have to stir anything or monitor your food’s progress while using one, so although pressurizing and depressurizing the pot means many recipes actually don’t cut that much time off their traditional counterparts, they change how that time can be spent. According to the New Yorker food correspondent and kitchen-gadget aficionado Helen Rosner, that’s where Instant Pot has an advantage over stovetop pressure cookers, which have been around for decades, especially in India and the Middle East. “You have to stand in the kitchen with those, and know how to use them, and monitor their behavior,” she says. With the Instant Pot, you just “set it and forget it.”

The pull of domestic multitasking is strong for American women. A recent study found that reducing time spent on household chores and performing multiple tasks at once are the main ways working mothers in the U.S. are able to dedicate time with their children, and the Instant Pot is optimized for efficiency in not just its use, but also its acquisition. Amazon was long the only place to buy an Instant Pot, and according to Coco Morante, the author of an Instant Pot cookbook and founder of a half-a-million-member IP Facebook group, Amazon discounts are still such a huge sales driver that she can see them reflected in her membership. “Whenever there’s an Amazon sale, there’s a whole new crop of thousands of people who are excited about it,” she says. Buying an Instant Pot has never required price comparisons or shopping around: You get the sale alert, you add it to your cart, it’s in your home in two days.

Once their new Instant Pot is in hand, shoppers then turn to online resources like Morante’s to teach them exactly they’re supposed to do with it. The IP purports to do a bit of everything: It pressure-cooks, slow-cooks, sautés, steams, sears, and makes yogurt, among other things. Even its biggest proponents readily admit that using one isn’t terribly intuitive, and success requires carefully following a good recipe. As a result, IP-centric collaborative resources have both taught millions of people the basics of the device and helped turn the isolation of family meal prep into a somewhat communal activity for the women (and Morante says it’s mostly women) to whom the task generally falls. “You have this back-and-forth among the community where people are encouraging each other and sharing their recipes, and I think that really helps keep people’s enthusiasm going,” Morante says.

Even for enthusiastic home cooks, the relentless need to feed a family can turn the task into drudgery, so the Instant Pot and its community feel like a boon to both reluctant chefs and their more skilled counterparts. Still, it’s not great that the need to make chili in half an hour is so widespread that millions of people are willing to shell out a hundred bucks for the ability to do some version of it several times per week. Even if American moms have achieved maximum productivity, the forces that require them to lifehack ever-more-clever ways to spend less time caring for themselves are still at work. Over the past 50 years, kitchen gadget trends have come and gone, but their appeal in the United States has always been predicated on negotiating the expectations placed on women’s time and energy, starting with the crock pot’s enormous popularity in the 1970s. Shifting cooking’s burden of vigilance off of a person and onto a machine wasn’t necessary when women were largely relegated to the home during the day, but as more sought employment, workarounds became necessary. Women were still expected to be the project managers of their households.

It’s not a guarantee that finding an effective way to self-optimize will result in more personal time, for mothers or anyone else, though. As the journalist Anne Helen Petersen recently explained, for millennials, increasing efficiency often doesn’t have the positive results it promises. “The more work we do, the more efficient we’ve proven ourselves to be, the worse our jobs become: lower pay, worse benefits, less job security,” she writes. “Our efficiency hasn’t bucked wage stagnation; our steadfastness hasn’t made us more valuable.”

While some of those workarounds are meant to accommodate modern schedules, others are meant to alleviate what Rosner says is a domestic-skill loss between generations. “In some cases I think [these skills] were intentionally discarded by women who are like, ‘I reject this, I reject my role as the keeper of the domestic flame, and I don’t want to receive this knowledge from my mother or transmit this knowledge to my children,’” she says. But in the vacuum left by women unwilling or unable to perform domestic tasks like cooking, no other family members rushed in to help. Instead, brands did. After crock pots lost their luster, microwaves made leftovers easier to revive and frozen dinners a viable product category. Foreman grills helped moms prepare meat quickly while draining off the fat they weren’t supposed to be feeding their families. Vitamixes help them make sure everyone was getting enough fresh fruits and vegetables.

Now we have Instant Pots. The device seems tailor made to address the symptoms of a laundry list of modern problems. In additions to their tight schedules, millennials distrust the packaged foods of their youth, and many of the time-saving gadgets of the past have all fallen out of favor with them—even microwaves. But if the Instant Pot is a good compromise for being overburdened at work and still wanting to cook with fresh ingredients, it’s still a compromise. It doesn’t address the fact that work has seeped into an ever-larger portion of Americans’ waking hours, taking time and energy away from the basic tasks of familial maintenance, or that a lot of people would rather have a little more time to take care of their families or a more helpful spouse instead of another gadget to do it for them.

Maybe the air fryer will fix those things. I hear those are supposed to be hot for 2019.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/01/instant-pots-kitchen-gadgets-compromise/579769/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 6 years ago

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The Big Problem Your Favorite Kitchen Gadget Can’t Fix

Maybe the air fryer will fix those things. I hear those are supposed to be hot for 2019.

Article source here:The Atlantic

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clubofinfo · 8 years ago

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Expert: When I think about North Korea, what first comes to my mind is a mist over the calm and majestic surface of the Taedong River near Pyongyang. Next I always recall two lovers, locked in a tender and almost desperate embrace, sitting side by side on the shore. I saw them every day, while taking brisk walks at dawn. Now I don’t know for sure whether they were real or just a product of my fantasy; a sad and gentle reminder of all that has been already lost, as well as of all that should have happened but never really materialized. Currently, as Donald Trump’s “armada” is speeding towards China and DPRK, I keep recalling those moments: the cliff, the lovers and a lone fisherman with his long rod at the other side of the river. Everything in my memory connected to those dawns is now motionless, serene. Sometimes I wonder whether words still have the power they once used to have. In the past, a beautiful poem, a confession, or a declaration of love, were capable of changing one’s entire life, and sometimes even the entire destiny of a nation. But is this still the case, in this time and age? As a writer I often feel futility, even despair. Still, as an internationalist, I refuse to succumb to pessimism, and I try to use words as my weapons, again and again. I have already said a lot about North Korea. I have shown images. I have spoken about the unimaginable pain this country has had to endure. I have spoken broadly about its tremendous gesture – of helping to liberate and then to educate so many parts of the world, including the enormous and devastated continent of Africa. Me in DPRK, Ramsey Clark Delegation, DPRK copy. Still the propaganda against the people of DPRK rules. Let me try again; let me try again and again and again: Countryside women greeting your correspondent and other delegates. North Korea is a beautiful country, inhabited by human beings, with blood circulating through their veins. Despite what you are directly and indirectly told, these people feel pain and they are capable of experiencing great joy. Like others, they often dream, fall in love, and suffer when being insulted or betrayed or abandoned. They laugh and cry, they hold hands, get angry, even desperate. They have great hopes for a better life and they work very hard trying to build their future. ****** So listen well, manager, or supervisor of what you yourself call the “free world”. Or how should I call you, President? Ok, fine, President… If you shoot your Tomahawk missiles at them, at DPRK, (as you recently did at Syria), or if you drop your bloody “Mother of All Bombs” on them (as you just did on some god-forsaken hamlet in Afghanistan, just in order to demonstrate your spite and destructive force), their bodies will be torn to pieces, people will die in tremendous agony; wives will be howling in despair burying their husbands, grandparents will be forced to cover the dead bodies of their tiny grandchildren with white sheets, entire neighborhoods and villages will cease to exist. Of course, you people do it everywhere; you think that you are the masters of the world, so used to spreading agony and desolation all over the world, but let me remind you one more time and put it on the record: it may all look like some fun-to-play computer game or a TV show, but it is not; it is all real, when your shit hits the targets, it’s damn real! I have seen plenty of it, and I have had really enough! DPRK free public housing – is it what the West hates about DPRK?. I know this is not what you have been told, and this is not what you tell the others. North Koreans are supposed to look and behave like a nation of brainless robots, lacking all basic emotions and individuality, staring forward without seeing much, unable to feel pain, compassion or love. You don’t want to see the truth, the reality, and you want others to be blind as well. The way the West portrays DPRK Even if you’ll blow the entire DPRK to pieces, you’ll actually not see much anyway, you’ll see almost nothing: just your own missiles shooting from battleships and submarines, your own airplanes taking-off from aircraft carriers, as well as some computer-generated images of powerful explosions. No pain, no reality, and no agony: nothing will get to you; nothing will reach you and your citizens. North Korea Country Road It is you who is blind; it is not they. You actually like it, don’t you? Admit you do. Let’s have it all in the open. And many citizens in the West like it as well – new titillating experiences, free ‘entertainment’, and a welcome break from the dire and empty, grey, loveless and meaningless routine of daily life in both North America and Europe. Hundreds of millions glued to their TV screens. Your popularity is going down, lately, isn’t it? The more missiles you shoot, the more bombs you drop, and the more countries you intimidate and confront, the broader your ‘support base’ gets. You are a businessman, after all. The trade, the deal is simple, easy to grasp: you give to the majority of your people what they desire, and they give you support and admiration. True, isn’t it, if stripped of all that ‘political correctness’. The psychologist Jung called this culture ‘pathological’. It has already destroyed basically all continents on Earth. It is now, perhaps, attempting to finish what is left of the world. Public Pool Still, you ought to know and understand and should be fully aware of the following: you might now get some generous endorsement from your fellow mentally ill citizens, but if you blow up the DPRK or any other country on Earth, sky-high, and if we as the planet Earth still somehow manage to survive, you and your ‘culture’ will be cursed for centuries and millennia to come! Think about it. Is it really worth it? Perhaps you don’t give a damn. Most likely you don’t. Still, give it a try, try to think, and try to imagine: you will go down in history as a degenerate mass murderer and a bigot! ***** Three years ago, this is how I described the 60th anniversary of the Victory Day in the DPRK: The brass band begins to play yet another military tune. I zoom on an old lady, her chest decorated with medals. As I get ready to press the shutter, two large tears begin rolling down her cheeks. And suddenly I realize that I cannot photograph her. I really cannot. Her face is all wrinkled, and yet it is both youthful and endlessly tender. Here is my face, I think, the face I was looking for all those days. And yet I cannot even press the shutter of my Leica. Then something squeezes my throat and I have to search in my equipment bag for some tissue, as my glasses get foggy, and for a short time I cannot see anything at all. I sob loudly, just once. Nobody can hear, because of the loud playing of the band. Later I get closer to her, and I bow, and she reciprocates. We make our separate peace in the middle of the boiling-hot main square. I am suddenly happy to be here. We have both lost something. She lost more. I was certain she lost at least half of her loved-ones in the carnage of those bygone years. I lost something too, and now I also lost all respect and belonging, to the culture that is still ruling the world; the culture that was once mine, but a culture that is still robbing people of their faces, and then burns their bodies with napalm and flames. It is the 60th Anniversary of Victory Day in the DPRK. An anniversary marked by tears, grey hair, tremendous fireworks, parades, and by the ‘memories of fire’. That evening, after returning to the capital, I finally made it to the river. It was covered by a gentle but impenetrable fog. There were two lovers sitting by the shore, motionless, in silent embrace. The woman’s hair was gently falling on her lover’s shoulder. He was holding her hand, reverently. I was going to lift my big professional camera, but then I stopped, abruptly, all of a sudden too afraid that what my eyes were seeing or my brain imagining, would not be reflected in the viewfinder. This is how I still remember the event. The West has already killed millions of North Koreans. How many more have to vanish, just for not surrendering? What is the price of not agreeing to serve the Empire? Would it be one million more, or ten million? The number, please: you are a businessman; so do define the price truthfully! ***** The DPRK has never attacked anybody. The United States which claims it now ‘feels threatened’, has attacked dozens and dozens of countries, robbed millions of people of life, and raped freedom, democracy and cultures all over the world. There is one image inside my head, which I want to share with all my readers, even if I will be risking that this time my writing will be bordering on sentimentality. I don’t give a fuck, for once; this is no time for ‘polished and elegant style’. So here it is: At one point I managed to break free from our delegation. It was in the capital, Pyongyang. I just walked and walked, along the mighty river, through an enormous park alongside ancient fortifications. I spotted a girl, tiny, with a big ribbon in her hair. She was wearing white shoes. It was sunset. Her mother, a simple but beautiful lady, was talking to her. It was so obvious how much she loved and cherished her daughter. The two of them could not see me; I was observing them from some distance. There was so much tenderness, so much serenity between these two human beings. The mother was caressing her daughter’s face, explaining something, pointing at the trees. Their faces were totally relaxed, no fear, no tension, just love. I walked further, and still in the park, I saw a couple surrounded by a group of people. It was a family photo session. A man and a woman were obviously getting married; he was wearing a formal suit, she was dressed in a wedding gown. Then I noticed that large black sunglasses were hiding a large part of the man’s face. He was blind. Most likely, he was badly burned behind the dark spectacles. His future wife was younger, and she was attractive. She was happy! She kept chatting, laughing cheerfully. I was stunned. In the West, people have been betraying each other, abandoning one another over the tiniest inconveniences or doubts, for the most egotistic reasons. And here, a young attractive woman was joining, happily, her badly injured man, so they could walk together, side-by-side, for the rest of their life journey. ***** I saw a lot of North Korea after those few hours in the park. I was faced with the most fortified border on Earth. I met and discussed philosophy and how the West tries to de-humanize its enemies, with Yang Hyong Sob, the Vice President of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Committee. I discussed philosophy and existentialism with the great theologian and philosopher John Cobb, on board a bus that was taking us from Pyongyang to the borderline. There were ‘big moments’ during that trip, great celebrations all around me. There were elaborate performances and speeches, marches and music. Yet, nothing touched me so deeply as those moments in the park. There, I observed enormous tenderness given to a child by her mother. And I witnessed that natural and beautiful, simplicity and joy of love, mixed with serenity and dignity radiating from a young woman marrying her blind and injured partner. On one of the river banks That is North Korea, which I have been privileged enough to have observed with my own eyes. That is North Korea which the manager wants to ‘take care of’, which means ‘to destroy’. And that is North Korea where I realized, as on so many other occasions, in so many countries, that there is still so much love that resides on this Earth, and that no barbarity, no cruelty, would ever be able to defeat it. ***** This essay is not my ‘usual stuff’. It is not a philosophy, or reportage. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care what it is. I just wanted to share something with my readers: something that is inside me right now, something that is breaking and shouting and rebelling against the state of things. What I am certain of is that at this moment, I want to be there, in Pyongyang. I want to go back, although no one has invited me to return, yet. If the supervisor, the manager, decides to attack, I want to be on my feet and alert and ready, facing his ships and missiles. Just like that, as always, without any cover or bulletproof vest, just with my cameras, and a pen and a simple notepad, as well as a tiny Asian dragon – a good luck charm – in my pocket. I will not be afraid. I don’t think most of the people of North Korea would be afraid. Only those who are ready to commit mass murder, over and over again, in all corners of the world, are now most likely scared; at least subconsciously, at least in their own essence as well as of their own insanity. http://clubof.info/

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Internet Dating Tips and Advice

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/2017/04/14/internet-dating-tips-and-advice/

Internet Dating Tips and Advice

An online internet dating site is (in my opinion) the easiest way to find a partner in today’s world. With the ever-increasing technology aids, not only can you correspond with someone, but also see them in real-time. It used to be that an internet dating site was a taboo and people just didn’t trust it or the quality of people they might meet. But even so, you run the same risks as if you were to actually meet the person face-to-face. What is the difference? Well, you can’t smell a person through an internet dating site!

This article was written to give free dating tips and dating advice to those who are unfamiliar to internet dating. Or maybe you’ve had a couple bad experiences and are wondering why you are running into “duds”. My dating advice is not aimed particularly at either men or women but looks at both sides. I am not a psychologist or therapists and all dating advice and tips are my personal thoughts found through my internet dating experiences.

So why choose online dating services rather than conventional dating? I’ll list a few benefits:

You’re in the US, you can meet someone from Australia

Find someone in a different state that you would enjoy visiting.

There are Asian dating, Jewish dating, Christian dating, adult dating, senior dating, hiking dating, dog walking dating sites and the list goes on.

Your search criteria can be more detailed, less compromising later.

What hobbies are they into?

What are their turn-offs?

What are their interests

People tend to be more honest through correspondence. You know the true person quicker.

You can still have an online date even if you’re sick.

It’s safe because you’re not in the same physical environment, at least initially.

You don’t need to meet the person until you are totally comfortable. Never meet anybody unless you are 99% comfortable.

The first date or 2nd, 3rd, and 4th should be out in public.

Let someone know where you are going.

Ladies, I highly recommend you bring a friend or double-date!

Do not allow the person to pick you up. Provide your own transportation

Bring defense items – pepper spray, whistle, GPS tracking device. Be careful of bringing weapons that can harm you – knife, gun, clubs…etc

Ladies, even if the date is going well and it’s the 1st date, DO NOT be persuaded to get into a car alone with him. If he is a predator, he’ll get agitated and possibly upset. If this happens, then CONGRATULATIONS you may just save YOUR LIFE and walk away now! A real gentleman will understand your fear and rather spend time with you than miss a party, concert or whatever. Just be sure to let him know prior to the date that you will not leave the initial meeting place with him unless your friend can come along.

Those are just a few reasons and each person will benefit differently based on their character and personality. The precautions would also relate to conventional dating practices and not just internet dates.

So what are some of the drawbacks of internet dating?

Do they smell?

Are they really writing or just cut-and-pasting?

Cameras and lighting can be manipulated to hide certain features (flaws).

The photos in the ads maybe professionally done or retouched and not be a true reflection of the person

As with the benefits, there are other downsides to internet dating that aren’t listed and will vary from person to person.

So who is the best internet dating service? That’s a hard question to answer because there are so many variables and there is no one best service. I say the best dating site is the one you find what you are looking for on. Luckily, most are free to join, although you will get limited functionality and features of the program. But at least you can get an idea of the types or kinds of people who have joined that particular internet dating service. There are more and more online dating services that are specific to certain groups like – people who are in the service, Christian dating, pet lovers dating, and so on. The major dating sites will have these people as well, you’ll just need to sift through the members to find out if someone shares your passions or hobbies. What it boils down to is that the more people to select from, the better your chances of finding a match.

So, does internet dating really work? Yes! It did for me. I live in the US and met my wife who lived in China. We corresponded for 6 months, sent pictures to each other, and finally met when her company came to the US on a business trip. We hit it off and for the next year, she came down to visit and a couple months later I went to China to visit her and meet her parents and family. Keep in mind that it could be expensive to go this route because of airfare and those sort of things. Lastly, she had another business trip scheduled and we got married during that trip.

Marrying someone from another country is not as easy at it seems. There are visa and passport issues, US Immigration forms and regulations, and much more. Most big internet dating sites will have a section to help with immigration issues. Things went fairly smoothly for us and we now have a beautiful 7-month-old son.

Internet dating doesn’t have to be about marriage and it will definitely differ for everyone. Maybe you just want someone to hang out with on the weekends and go to dog shows or a social outing or you want to go white water rafting but your friends aren’t interested. Many people just want to make friends and not really label it as dating, but rather companionship and someone to talk to.

Other people may just want a companion because they are going on a trip to another area and would like a friend or someone to show them around at that destination.

What it boils down to is – What are your needs and wants?

Some free dating tips and dating advice I can offer based on my experience that helped me find the love of my life and also general tips are listed below.

Be honest when you communicate

Speak from the heart, don’t try to be someone you’re not

Sign-up for more than one online dating site

Choose a general “big name” site.

Search Google or Yahoo by typing “dating dogs” or “dating armed forces” or “dating Christian”…etc

Only pay for the sites that you feel there are more than 5 profiles that match what you are looking for, remember most are free to sign up, but you will have limited capability.

Stay away from free online dating sites, you get what you pay for. The more serious a person is, the higher amount of money they will pay to find quality people. That means if someone on a particular dating site has the highest level membership (Gold Member) then they are serious about finding someone. 2nd to the highest level (silver) may be those who are serious but don’t have a lot of money to spend. Anything less is in my opinion “gamers” and just passing time. HOWEVER! In countries or areas that are poor and underdeveloped, they simply can’t afford to pay the membership fee. They are probably using a computer at school, a library, or friends, so you’ll need to be extra patient.

Stay away from ads that don’t have pictures or at least make sure they will send you a picture. Some people don’t want to be seen in fear of their friend’s colleagues or family seeing them on the internet. That’s perfectly understandable, just make sure you get REAL pictures once getting to know the person.

Send and receive many pictures, insist on casual setting pictures and not professionally retouched photos Be patient, if they live in another time zone it can be difficult to call

If they live in another country, get a calling card or use a webcam and microphone.

Since my wife didn’t have a webcam, my phone bill averaged $1200 a month and I didn’t know about calling cards.

Call your phone company and get a plan with better international rates.

There are more options today like VOIP (voice over IP) pc2phone that’s a lot cheaper and the sound quality is much better now also. Ladies, when you do meet, make sure it’s with one or more of your friends even for the first few dates. Safety first and if the guy can’t understand that, then that’s a RED flag!

Ladies, purchase some books on pickup lines, how to seduce a woman and those sort of things. If your correspondence contains many of what you find in a book, then the person may not be sincere. If you’re tired of finding losers, this is your wake-up call to find out why. Men, buy books on how to treat a lady. Buy books on how to seduce a woman, but only use it after you know they want to be seduced by you (later in the relationship). Be Honest! – If you’re serious and want a life-long mate

Be upfront, put EVERYTHING on the table. Too many unexpected surprises will kill the relationship.

Don’t try to be what you think the other person wants. You can’t put on a show forever.

Get a webcam so you can see and hear the real person. Sometimes you get a glimpse of their room. Is it messy? Are there naked people hung up on the wall? It can also be a lot of fun once you are closer and can be more intimate. BE CAREFUL! What you do on camera can be recorded and exposed if things don’t work out.

Make a list of things you absolutely do not like or won’t compromise on. For example, you dislike it when your partner drinks too much, does drugs or things like that. Don’t ask these questions straight out, but have them elaborate when they had a night out with the guys/girls. Just keep a mental note to yourself.

Make a list of the key things you like that make you feel adored and desired.

You like feeling pampered by getting breakfast in bed

You like it when doors are opened for you

You like it when girls pamper you

You like it when girls make you feel special

How does the other person perceive what making someone feel special is?

What is your definition of joy and happiness? Be Honest! I know I keep saying that, but it’s the most important thing!

If you’ve been burned once too many times, do a background check on the person. You can find out if they have been married, divorced, in jail, lawsuits against them, and things of that nature. It costs a little money but can save you years of heartache and disappointment. Some people may feel this is an invasion of privacy or a sign of not trusting the other person. I say it’s a matter of feeling secure and if the other person can’t understand that, then they are hiding something or don’t care about how insecure you may be feeling. Another RED flag! Online dating has evolved to where it’s common place to check on people. Have fun on your date but pay attention to

Do they open doors for you

Do they talk negatively about too many things?

Are their eyes busy wandering rather than focusing on you?

Are there too many lines or quotes from the dating books?

You may want to keep a score card or write down notes immediately after the date. Just make sure you destroy them all when you are exclusively seeing that person. Nobody wants to know they are being compared, but it’s a good way to make sure the person has all the qualities that are truly important to you. To be on the safe side, never ever write down anything relating to sex. The technique can be learned if the person is willing to satisfy you. Talk about it, if they aren’t interested in what turns you on, that’s another RED flag. Let us face it, sex is an important part of a relationship. For some, it isn’t but for the majority, it is. It’s also a two-way street. In order to get, you must give and if you give, you should get. It’s that simple.

Is this person someone you want your family and friends to meet?

And for the last time – BE HONEST!

I hope this article has helped and you feel more secure about online dating. I endorse it 100% and am not afraid to admit that I met my wife on through an internet dating site. It makes me feel good that out of the 200 or so other people that responded to her ad… she picked me 🙂 I firmly believe that internet dating is the most efficient way to start a relationship and meet people.

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baburaja97-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Vin Zite

New Post has been published on https://vinzite.com/internet-dating-tips-and-advice/

Internet Dating Tips and Advice

So why choose online dating services rather than conventional dating? I’ll list a few benefits:

Millions of people from around the world sign up for internet dating services everyday. Also, there are thousands of dating sites coming online every day. So not only can you find a person to match your needs but also a dating service built around your specific need. You’re in the US, you can meet someone from Australia Find someone in a different state that you would enjoy visiting. There are Asian dating, Jewish dating, Christian dating, adult dating, senior dating, hiking dating, dog walking dating sites and the list goes on. Your search criteria can be more detailed, less compromising later. What hobbies are they into? What are their turn-offs? What are their interests People tend to be more honest through correspondence. You know the true person quicker. You can still have an online date even if you’re sick. It’s safe because you’re not in the same physical environment, at least initially. You don’t need to meet the person until you are totally comfortable. Never meet anybody unless you are 99% comfortable.

The first date or 2nd, 3rd, and 4th should be out in public. Let someone know where you are going. Ladies, I highly recommend you bring a friend or double-date! Do not allow the person to pick you up. Provide your own transportation Bring defense items – pepper spray, whistle, GPS tracking device. Be careful of bringing weapons that can harm you – knife, gun, clubs…etc Ladies, even if the date is going well and it’s the 1st date, DO NOT be persuaded to get into a car alone with him. If he is a predator, he’ll get agitated and possibly upset. If this happens, then CONGRATULATIONS you may just save YOUR LIFE and walk away now! A real gentleman will understand your fear and rather spend time with you than miss a party, concert or whatever. Just be sure to let him know prior to the date that you will not leave the initial meeting place with him unless your friend can come along. Those are just a few reasons and each person will benefit differently based on their character and personality. The precautions would also relate to conventional dating practices and not just internet dates. So what are some of the drawbacks of internet dating?

Do they smell? Are they really writing or just cut-and-pasting? Cameras and lighting can be manipulated to hide certain features (flaws). The photos in the ads maybe professionally done or retouched and not be a true reflection of the person As with the benefits, there are other downsides to internet dating that aren’t listed and will vary from person to person. So who is the best internet dating service? That’s a hard question to answer because there are so many variables and there is no one best service. I say the best dating site is the one you find what you are looking for on. Luckily, most are free to join, although you will get limited functionality and features of the program. But at least you can get an idea of the types or kinds of people who have joined that particular internet dating service. There are more and more online dating services that are specific to certain groups like – people who are in the service, Christian dating, pet lovers dating, and so on. The major dating sites will have these people as well, you’ll just need to sift through the members to find out if someone shares your passions or hobbies. What it boils down to is that the more people to select from, the better your chances of finding a match.

Other people may just want a companion because they are going on a trip to another area and would like a friend or someone to show them around at that destination.

What it boils down to is – What are your needs and wants?

Some free dating tips and dating advice I can offer based on my experience that helped me find the love of my life and also general tips are listed below.

Be honest when you communicate Speak from the heart, don’t try to be someone you’re not Sign-up for more than one online dating site Choose a general “big name” site. Search Google or Yahoo by typing “dating dogs” or “dating armed forces” or “dating Christian”…etc Only pay for the sites that you feel there are more than 5 profiles that match what you are looking for, remember most are free to sign up, but you will have limited capability. Stay away from free online dating sites, you get what you pay for. The more serious a person is, the higher amount of money they will pay to find quality people. That means if someone on a particular dating site has the highest level membership (Gold Member) then they are serious about finding someone. 2nd to the highest level (silver) may be those who are serious but don’t have a lot of money to spend. Anything less is in my opinion “gamers” and just passing time. HOWEVER! In countries or areas that are poor and underdeveloped, they simply can’t afford to pay the membership fee. They are probably using a computer at school, a library, or friends, so you’ll need to be extra patient. Stay away from ads that don’t have pictures or at least make sure they will send you a picture. Some people don’t want to be seen in fear of their friend’s colleagues or family seeing them on the internet. That’s perfectly understandable, just make sure you get REAL pictures once getting to know the person. Send and receive many pictures, insist on casual setting pictures and not professionally retouched photos

Be patient, if they live in another time zone it can be difficult to call If they live in another country, get a calling card or use a webcam and microphone. Since my wife didn’t have a webcam, my phone bill averaged $1200 a month and I didn’t know about calling cards. Call your phone company and get a plan with better international rates. There are more options today like VOIP (voice over IP) pc2phone that’s a lot cheaper and the sound quality is much better now also.

Ladies, when you do meet, make sure it’s with one or more of your friends even for the first few dates. Safety first and if the guy can’t understand that, then that’s a RED flag! Ladies, purchase some books on pickup lines, how to seduce a woman and those sort of things. If your correspondence contains many of what you find in a book, then the person may not be sincere. If you’re tired of finding losers, this is your wake-up call to find out why.

Men, buy books on how to treat a lady. Buy books on how to seduce a woman, but only use it after you know they want to be seduced by you (later in the relationship).

Be Honest! – If you’re serious and want a life-long mate Be upfront, put EVERYTHING on the table. Too many unexpected surprises will kill the relationship. Don’t try to be what you think the other person wants. You can’t put on a show forever. Get a webcam so you can see and hear the real person. Sometimes you get a glimpse of their room. Is it messy? Are there naked people hung up on the wall? It can also be a lot of fun once you are closer and can be more intimate. BE CAREFUL! What you do on camera can be recorded and exposed if things don’t work out. Make a list of things you absolutely do not like or won’t compromise on. For example, you dislike it when your partner drinks too much, does drugs or things like that. Don’t ask these questions straight out, but have them elaborate when they had a night out with the guys/girls. Just keep a mental note to yourself. Make a list of the key things you like that make you feel adored and desired. You like feeling pampered by getting breakfast in bed You like it when doors are opened for you You like it when girls pamper you You like it when girls make you feel special How does the other person perceive what making someone feel special is? What is your definition of joy and happiness?

Be Honest! I know I keep saying that, but it’s the most important thing! If you’ve been burned once too many times, do a background check on the person. You can find out if they have been married, divorced, in jail, lawsuits against them, and things of that nature. It costs a little money but can save you years of heartache and disappointment. Some people may feel this is an invasion of privacy or a sign of not trusting the other person. I say it’s a matter of feeling secure and if the other person can’t understand that, then they are hiding something or don’t care about how insecure you may be feeling. Another RED flag! Online dating has evolved to where it’s common place to check on people.

Have fun on your date but pay attention to Do they open doors for you Do they talk negatively about too many things? Are their eyes busy wandering rather than focusing on you? Are there too many lines or quotes from the dating books? You may want to keep a score card or write down notes immediately after the date. Just make sure you destroy them all when you are exclusively seeing that person. Nobody wants to know they are being compared, but it’s a good way to make sure the person has all the qualities that are truly important to you. To be on the safe side, never ever write down anything relating to sex. The technique can be learned if the person is willing to satisfy you. Talk about it, if they aren’t interested in what turns you on, that’s another RED flag. Let us face it, sex is an important part of a relationship. For some, it isn’t but for the majority, it is. It’s also a two-way street. In order to get, you must give and if you give, you should get. It’s that simple. Is this person someone you want your family and friends to meet? And for the last time I hope this article has helped and you feel more secure about online dating. I endorse it 100% and am not afraid to admit that I met my wife on through an internet dating site. It makes me feel good that out of the 200 or so other people that responded to her ad… she picked me. I firmly believe that internet dating is the most efficient way to start a relationship and meet people.

0 notes