#vice post

[egophiliac]

don't think I'm not still obsessing over 7-12

[stjohnstarling]

Official A Companion in Vice valentines: ideal for the special mad scientist (or potential test subject?) in your life!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

It's just guys night talk! Don't worry about it!

(Read Tiger Tiger and shake this man awake so he can finish that thought!)

[reasonsforhope]

Kamala Harris just announced that her vice president will be Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Based on the coverage so far I'm really reassured by this decision.

The Washington Post did an obviously great job of making a prepared article for each option, considering how long an article they had up 7 minutes after the announcement.

((Okay technically it's not an official announcement yet it's "according to three people familiar with the pick, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that is not yet public." But listen. I am 99% sure this is a weather balloon. (Meaning: a deliberate leak to gauge reaction.) Because the sheer weakness or incompetence on the part of the Harris campaign that it would take for three people to all confirm that within a few hours hours of each other and the planned announcement it is massive.))

-via The Washington Post, August 6, 2024

Honestly this decision, from everything I've read and can tell, looks like it's brilliant politics.

Important Context: The vice president(ial candidates)'s job in an election is not to be similar to the president. The vice president's job on the ballot is very, very much specifically to be different from the president. Why? So they can cover each others' weaknesses. Especially regionally.

(Sidenote: I feel a bit ridiculous saying this. But genuinely if you want to get a stronger understanding of how US elections really work. Go watch seasons 6 and 7 of The West Wing. Genuinely, a lot of politicians have said - especially back in its day - that that was the most accurate depiction of an election they'd ever seen. Also specifically features an entire arc about a contested Democratic primary convention, so also very good if you're interested in understanding weird nominating convention shenanigans.)

From the article:

"Harris’s choice for a running mate was among the most closely watched decisions of her fledgling campaign, as she sought to bolster the ticket’s prospects for victory in November and rapidly find someone who could be a governing partner. In picking Walz, she has selected a seasoned politician with executive governing experience and signaled the importance of Midwestern battleground states such as Wisconsin and Michigan.

Walz’s foray into politics came later in life: He spent more than two decades as a public school teacher and football coach, and as a member of the Army National Guard, before running for Congress in his 40s. In 2006, he defeated a Republican to win Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District--a rural, conservative area--and won reelection five times before leaving Congress to run for governor.

Walz was first elected governor in 2018 and handily won reelection in 2022. Though little-known outside his state, Walz emerged publicly as one of the earliest names mentioned as a possible running mate for Harris, and in the ensuing days he made the rounds on television as an outspoken surrogate for the vice president...

“These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away, they want to be in your exam room. … They are bad on foreign policy, they are bad on the environment, they certainly have no health care plan, and they keep talking about the middle-class,” Walz told MSNBC in July. “As I said, a robber baron real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are? They don’t know who we are.”

Walz also has faced criticism from Republicans that his policies as governor were too liberal, including legalizing recreational marijuana for adults, protecting abortion rights, expanding LGBTQ protections, implementing tuition-free college for low-income Minnesotans and providing free breakfast and lunch for schoolchildren in the state.

But many of those initiatives are broadly popular. Walz also signed an executive order removing the college-degree requirement for 75 percent of Minnesota’s state jobs, a move that garnered bipartisan support and that several other states have also adopted.

“What a monster. Kids are eating and having full bellies, so they can go learn, and women are making their own health-care decisions,” Walz said sarcastically in a July 28 interview with CNN when questioned whether such policies would be fodder for conservative attacks, later adding: “If that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the [liberal] label.”

Walz also spoke at a kickoff event in St. Paul for a Democratic canvassing effort, casting Trump as a “bully.”

“Don’t lift these guys up like they’re some kind of heroes. Everybody in this room knows--I know it as a teacher--a bully has no self-confidence. A bully has no strength. They have nothing,” Walz said at the event, sporting a camouflage hunting hat and T-shirt.

Walz has explained that he felt some Democrats’ practice of calling Trump an existential threat to democracy was giving him too much credit, which prompted his decision to denounce the GOP nominee instead as being “weird.”

“I do believe all those things are a real possibility, but it gives him way too much power," Walz said on CNN’s “State of the Union” regarding the Democrats’ rhetoric. “Listen to the guy. He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter, shocking sharks, and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind.”

If Walz is elected vice president, under state law, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D) would assume the governorship for the rest of his term. Minnesota Senate president Bobby Joe Champion, a Democrat, would become lieutenant governor."

-via The Washington Post, August 6, 2024

--

This guy. Sounds like. fucking Moderate swing-state/rural/Midwestern/southern/"heartland"/working class white voter catnip. He sounds like he's also a very smart politician and strong campaigner. And he's apparently genuinely a good guy with a good record, too.

He sounds like he's going to do a really good job of appealing to voters in several of the big deal swing states without being from any of them specifically. Which means it doesn't feel like pandering to one of the states involved (and thereby spurning the others), which is also great.

(Also he was the one who started "weird" @ conservatives and I think we should take that seriously as a very good political instinct/move. Judging in large part by how it has so clearly hit an actual nerve with conservatives like so little else. Also hugely relevant: that post going around about how part of why conservatives are so upset about "weird" is because in the Midwest, "weird" specifically also implies anti-social or harmful behavior.)

Officially feeling more optimistic about Trump not winning in November

[ghostellie]

FYI, Vance used illegal guns coming through the border as a defense argument for why school shootings occur so frequently in the USA, however statistics show the majority of gun violence here is committed with legally obtained guns.

[antlersish]

Men who lost their reflections

[megneato]

"Wherever there is you, I will be there too." -Silhouettes by Of Monsters and Men

[toyboy-molloy]

I don't know how they'd do it but imagine hearing lbf starting off with 'I am the devil's minion...' and have eric bogosian finish with 'and he grants my every wish' over like a present day/1970s scene transition bro I'd fucking die

[tampire]

A villainous bitch? Me? (insp)

[slutpoppers]

Digimon Adventure 02 Hurricane Touchdown (2001)

vs Cherubimon

[multiverse-of-multifandoms]

I want to fly with you on dragonback, see the great wonders across the Narrow Sea and eat only cake.

Alicent Hightower & Rhaenyra Targaryen in House of the Dragon 'The Heirs Of The Dragon' | 1.01

[egophiliac]

you know what i really want to see happen in gavv? lakia turning back into his true monster form to try and scare sachika to see if she's really unafraid of him, only for her to be enthralled and amazed instead, confusing him

honestly, same. let her have her wicked adorable way with him.

Umashou 🤝 Hanty 🤝 Lakian = guys who learn very quickly that life with Sachika is just Like This and it's better not to try and stop her.

(you will succumb)

[toxicityriot]

"I heard people

are shipping us..." “TO WHERE?"

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dungeon Meshi: The RPG

[ditzybat]

I see a lot in fanon of Jason being Tim’s fav robin - and I’m guilty of enjoying it and posting content in that same vein - but honestly we need to sit down and think critically for a second… Tim’s favorite robin is definitely Dick - after all he did sorta bring start everything for Tim as he is a pillar in his orgin story. But like we all write the Jason and Tim brother relationship all sweet and reconciliation (which, in current canon is sorta true, if apprehensive) when in reality Tim actively makes fun of Jason during titans tower when he’s getting his shit handed to him, would call him a flop to his face, and probably barely tolerated his Robin in comparison to Dick’s out of respect for the name. And Jason is just the definition of Cain instinct mixed in with imposter syndrome, and really doesn’t gaf all too much about Tim besides baseline animosity shown in the beginning of their relationship (as it seems that we’ve all collectively decided to stop recognizing any comic after 2010 apparently- which… is fair to be honest 😭) - BUT ANYWAY I just thought it was very silly haha to find that we’ve all somehow interpreted their relationship one way when it’s really written a completely different way, I just love the extravagant game of telephone we all play when making fandom content/spaces.

[dughckit]

RAGGHH I rip through my shirt and fall to the fucking ground OH MY GOD MY HAND HURTS!!!!! But i did it Might add more who knows I probably will Anyways please enjoy these shitty little sketched stain glass windowssss