#when we said 2024 would be our year i didnt think it would be SO good

[panncakes]

not only are we so close to getting gritty mystery gls; we're also getting our first butch/femme gl; blessed be the lesbian gods that said 'no you will not struggle as long as the bls through the same bland of cheesy; you have waited long enough; your feast will have more and more flavor than you know what to do with' 🥹😭

[akaakeis]

hello hello sav <3 how are you doing?

im attempting a yap ask but i dont know how much time i have on my hands so if i need to go i'll just press send and you'll have an awkward cutoff. also, it will probably be mildly ominous lolol

anyways !

i got my period for the first time since like ,, july ? i think ? which is insane the stress has been crazy

also like.. wdym september is almost over WDYM. october, november, december then ??? new year ????? ur birthday ?????????

speaking of which i've been brainstorming ideas for an (online, not money costing) present and it's like. "write something. okay, what. okay, got it. wait no that's cringe nvm." even though it's probably not cringe 😒😒

a pinterest board sounds sillyfunny hmm

okay next topic pretend you didn't read the last part because i am HORRIBLE at hiding surprises like it just makes me so happy when other people are happy and like arghhh #girlproblems

i dreamt up a new smau yesterday and ill dm u about it tmr <- hasn't finished the first one yet, hasnt even STARTED it

OH OH OH I MISS YOU SM theres nothing more to that bit i kept thinking i have to add it in somewhere and also kept forgetting but like yes. um. imy baby ily 🫶

anyways SCHOOL right. today i caught my super awesome studious top grades role model student bunking class with the school's head girl. that was crazy. and i was going to bunk english (bc the teacher SUX see next para.) but i was so surprised at seeing her sneak off school bag n all during break that i accidentally bumped into said english teacher and she smiled and said hru LIKEEE KMS NO.

i spent a good 15 minutes hiding in the bathroom from her tho. okay so lemme describe our uniforms for u. so first we have like an erm. top thingy. google "female kurta" and you'll see like this thing w/ slits at the sides etc etc. it's usually shorter than the ones shown bc. uniform. and then we also have like loose fitting pants, and uhh. imagine a doctor's white coat thingy over all that which buttons up. and then a headscarf. ANYWAYS THIS IS RELEVANT BC. theres a girl in our class, the youngest & she's 15 in october. BUT wtv uh her apron (coat thingy is called that) buttons are loose and they keep opening. so obviously the teacher had to help.

"boys rn think many things they will stare at u and then in the future u will not get married" — mrs j 2024 😻 LIKE GIRL WHAT. and then she fatshamed a girl WHO ISN'T EVEN FAT BTW SHE'S LIKE. HEALTHY. AND HEALTHIER THAN MOST OF US SHE'S PHYSICALLY ACTIVE WORKS OUT AND EATS FRUITS AND STUFF um oops gtg i think.. and oh also she like ,, has hormone stuff but wtf woman. u dont even know proper english anyways gtg TELL ME AB UR HOMECOMING (?) and school is so stressful rn dont get stressed ily sav! <3

um so im gonna bawl my eyes out i was in the middle of typing out my reply AND IT DELETED ITSELF!! this is a cruel, cruel joke! ANYWAY HI LINA!! im doing good, hope you're doing well!!!!! <3

I MISSED YOUR YAP ASKS SM so happy to be receiving this 🙂‍↕️ have an amazing day at school!!

SINCE JULY??? i hate my period but i think i would lose it if i didnt have my period for a month cause i would convince myself i have conceived jesus in my uterus and am going to be a teen mother... SO ITS GOOD YOU GOT IT BUT I HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER PERIODS SUCK SO BAD 💔

god it's so weird that september is ending... SPEAKING OF WHICH I HAVE AN ARTICLE DUE TO MY MAGAZINE ON OCT 1 I FORGOT today im locking in so hard on my school work and job... im also starting babysitting the side hustles are going crazy rn...but the thing is time is passing so funkily?? idk but it feels so slow during the day but before yk it you've been in the cycle for a rly long time and its the end of the month!!! i rmbr asking my friends this week if it still felt like it was the beginning of the month for them and they were like "no...?" LIKE OKAY THEN just slap me in the face and call me a freak at that point goodness 😞 but timeline 4 me we have october + halloween, november + thanksgiving, december + christmas, january + new year + BDAY!!!!, february + valentines day, THEN march + your bday <333 

im gonna act like i didnt see that one! im 45% blind in my right eye and fully blind in my left... matter of fact i cant see much of nothing 🫡

NEW SMAU WEEEEEEE im so excited to hear about it!!!!! ga(c)r is heavily staring at u from the corner of the room BUT SHE CAN WAIT

BRO I MISS YOU SO BADDD ilysm imysm chronically online era come back to us this summer PLEASE 

YES SCHOOL‼️ HELLO NOT THE ACADEMIC WEAPON I WOULD BE SO RATTLED IF I WITNESSED THAT? your teacher freaks me out i think id cry if i bumped into them LIKE I WOULD GENUINELY TWEAK!! especially the smile i can only imagine it looking creepy tbh

15 minutes in the bathroom u are so valid lina 😞 ALSO FEMALE KURTAS ARE SO CUTE THEY LOOK SO COMFY?? YOUR WHOLE UNIFORM SOUNDS SO COMFORTABLE 💔 i remember when i went to priv school i had to wear fitted polos and skorts CAUSE THEY WOULDNT LET GIRLS WEAR PANTS UNLESS IT WAS WINTER THAT WAS RIDICULOUS anyway back on topic that girl is pretty young for your class 🧍‍♀️ what r the age cutoffs like there?? cause usually the youngest ppl in my grade are both late august/early september idk

"boys rn think many things they will stare at u and then in the future u will not get married" GIRLL SHUT UP 😭 whos gonna tell her! FATSHAMED??? there is no way.... THATS ACTUALLY INSANE I BET THAT GIRL IS MORE ACTIVE THAN HER SHE NEEDS TO SHUT UP ⁉️ just messed up to do that in general like keep it to yourself ffs 😞 "u dont even know proper english" CLOCKED HER SO HARD i fear u are correct 

ILL TELL YOU ABOUT HOMECOMING NOW ILL GIVE U THE RUNDOWN OF EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED 🗣️

so like around 2:30 a bunch of my friends met up at one girl's house and we all got dressed and did makeup together!! my friend kaila did my makeup and i also did my friend jaslene's makeup THEN i had to book it and get to a hair appointment i had at a salon to get my hair done for the dance 💔 

after i finished getting my hair done i met with my friends at a restaurant and we all had dinner!! we took some photos outside while we were there and while we were taking photos my foot WAS DEMOLISHED by jaslene's boot heel thing anyway my foot was stepped on and it hurt cause i had open toe heels it was so bad hhhh BUT IM FINE NOW I THINK ‼️‼️

after dinner we all drove to the dance in one car and we were vibing out to baby + hot to go during the drive I COOKED UP THE RAP IN BABY SO HARD im famous amongst my friend group for the rap i always get the mic for that part 🫡 

when we got to the dance it was 7:00 and we just had a bunch of fun until 10:00 😭 hugged literally everyone that i knew i love seeing people at dances cause they always look so gorgeous!!!! lots of jumping around in the crowd and scream-shouting lyrics to songs that played... tons of fun 🙂‍↕️ my voice is practically gone now and my feet hurt since i was jumping around in heels the entire night BUT WE ARE SO CHILL it was really enjoyable!!

i agree school is super stressful rn... ill try not to!! you too <3 take care + have an amazing day at school!! ily lina <3 xx

[rhymaes]

.

the way ive been trauma dumping on this site this past year & each post has felt hopeless but with an air of 'i know it will pass because i have purposefully created an open future where i can surpass my fears, create my own life where i can be me & enjoy what i love, & conquer what [x] did to me' & then it all collapses within two weeks & there genuinely is no hope for it & not in a haha it feels hopeless way but in a no things are happening so far outside my control that the people who Are in control were like. nah your fucked dude. sorry. is like. a different kind of horror helplessness. like okay lets rewind. i dont get into medical grief on here bc then id kms but like. okay. so 2022 i thought [x] was going to die & i told No One ever but also they knew i had [x] who i cared abt & was concerned for & everyone in [x] kept treating me like shit over it SPECIFICALLY & spreading rumors abt me bc i am a lesbian & then 2023 [x] & [x] & [x] all decide, separately, they want to be fun & quirky & try it with the gay girl so they can brag abt it to their bfs (im genuinly not being biphobic like. i mean they are straight women who would. do this. shit like. they said it. and then tried to queer it up when i told them to fuck off with it & they still needed their gay card bestie to fuck their ugly ass men who abuse them??? what the fuck!!!) & still gaslight me for caring abt [x]'s health & then tell me im selfish bc i wont drop everything for them & then try to out me & usher me into my greatest fear. okay. anyway. then 2024:like. u didnt think it could get worse is whats so funny!! like i faced my ed, lack of medication, insane financial struggles, tore myself out of a codependecy she imbeded in me so far that this now is the only time ive actually been Me for two years, & so many interpersonal issues & on-going griefs & then like. 2024 was like so? u know. that thing. the one youve been working for. that u were emotionally banking everything on & then u Did actually achieve it like we have the paperwork over it & u were also using it to prove to yourself that [x] may steal your work but she cant steal everything from u & also this is the only thing u could spend ur life doing without waking up every morning thinking abt how to kill urself? yeah actually you cant have that we changed our minds lol!!! & we didnt know how to tell u :/ so thanks for reaching out! but its not u is the thing like. youre so good bro. its an outside factor & oh yeah no theres like. nothing u can do like. u should drop it man. try next year. its not like u got through this year for that alone & put up with every thing that cut u so deeply bc u knew this would pay off not because u deserve it no but because u actually earned it & worked for it. but bye try again next year. like!! oh!! okay!!! im going to find the sexiest fucking ledge i can actually hahaha!!!

[sweetghosttea]

also bro i feel like this video is gonna be us at some point in the future xD https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p6fj3G_aNu0 12/20/23 7:45 pm

Monday, December 25, 2023

[2:00 AM] Ragtime Cat: merry christmas bro!!!

Monday, January 1, 2024

[12:15 AM] Ragtime Cat: HAPPY NEW YEAR BRO!!!

Thursday, January 4, 2024

[5:26 PM] ✦randi✦: OH GOD BRO STEAM DIDNT SHOW ME ANY OF YOUR MESSAGES OMG HAPPY NEW YEAR!! MERRY cHRISTmas!! ALSO YES THAT WILL BE US OMG I HOPE YOURE DOING OKAY!! A LOT HAS HAPPENED TO ME THESE LAST COUPLE OF MONTHS

[11:07 PM] Ragtime Cat: SHAKES FIST DAMNIT STEAM. DONT DO THIS TO US IS IT GOOD THINGS I HOPE?? TELL ME ALL ABOUT IT BRO THERE'S BEEN A LOT HAPPENING OVER HERE TOO BUT I WANNA HEAR ABOUT YOU FIRST

Friday, January 5, 2024

[12:15 AM] ✦randi✦: I EVEN HAVE IT ON MY PHONE TO TRY AND MAKE SURE I RECIEVE MESSAGES OMG. AND YES AND NO, BUT I WOULD SAY MOSTLY GOOD. THE BIG ONE IS THAT ROMAN AND I BROKE UP IN NOVEMBER. ILL SAVE YOU THE DETAILS, IT WAS PROBABLY AS GOOD OF A BREAKUP AS ONE COULD GO. THINGS JUST DIDNT WORK OUT AND HE DIDNT LOVE ME ANYMORE. THATS THE BIG NEWS. HOWEVER, I HAVE A NEW BOYFRIEND ACTUALLY. HE IS WONDERFUL, HIS NAME IS ADAM. I KNOW IT SEEMS A LITTLE FAST BUT AFTER REFLECTION, IT WASNT MUCH OF A RELATIONSHIP FOR A FEW YEARS. SERIOUSLY, ADAM AND I HAVE DONE MORE FUN DATE THINGS ALREADY. WEVE BEEN DATING SINCE A FEW DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS LOL. BUT DID SOME DATES BEFORE THEN. ANYWAY, AND THEN I GOT A HUGE PROMOTION AT WORK! WELL KINDA. ITS BEEN A MESS A LITTLE. SO I DON'T KNOW IF I TOLD YOU THAT IVE BEEN WORKING AT A GROCERY STORE FOR A LITTLE NOW, ILL BE THERE THREE YEARS IN JULY. BUT I AM ALMOST PROBABLY GONNE BE THE ASSISTANT STORE MANAGER SOON! UNFORTUNATELY THE OTHERONE GOT SUPER SICK AND SHE HAD TO RESIGN, BUT THINGS WERE UP IN THE AIR FOR A WHILE, AND IVE BEEN THE TEMP ASST STORE MANAGER SINCE MID OCT I THINK. ANYWAYS, BUSY BUT EXCITING!WHAT ABOUT YOU BRO?? I HOPE GOOD THINGS TOO!

[2:34 PM] Ragtime Cat: OMG WHY DOESN'T IT WORK THEN C'MON STEAM DO BETTER THAN THAT.OH BRO, I'M SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT YOU AND ROMAN. HOWEVER, I'M ALSO HAPPY TO HEAR ABOUT YOU AND ADAM. CONGRATS ON GETTING A WONDERFUL NEW BOYFRIEND AND I'M SO GLAD THINGS ARE GOING SO WELL BETWEEN YOU TWO. I DON'T THINK YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST AT ALL. IF HE MAKES YOU HAPPY THAN THAT'S WHAT'S IMPORTANT YEAH?THAT'S ALSO AMAZING BRO! CONGRATS ON YOUR PROMOTION AT WORK AS WELL. I HONESTLY CAN'T REMEMBER IF YOU'D TOLD ME BEFORE OR NOT. YOU PROBABLY DID THOUGH. ANYWAY IT'S A SHAME THAT THE OTHER ONE GOT REAL SICK AND HAD TO QUIT. THAT'S NOT SO GOOD. BUT AT LEAST THINGS AREN'T SO UP IN THE AIR ANYMORE RIGHT? NOW YOU KNOW FOR SURE! IT IS BUSY BUT EXCITING!!!I'M ON THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE END OF THINGS ACTUALLY. INSTEAD OF GOOD THINGS HAVE BEEN ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. WE ALMOST LOST ALL THE RENTALS BECAUSE ONE GUY WANTED TO BE A COMPLETE ASSHOLE. I ALMOST ENDED UP HOMELESS BECAUSE MY YOUNGER BROTHER WON'T ADMIT HE HAS ANGER ISSUES AND WENT ON A MASSIVE POWER TRIP FOR ABOUT TWO MONTHS AND TRIED TO KICK ME OUT,OF MY OWN HOUSE TWICE QUOTING THAT I'M USELESS AND WORTHLESS AND EVERYONE IN THE FAMILY HATES ME. I'M STILL HERE THANKFULLY AND HE'S NOT GOTTEN HIS WAY. BUT IT'S REALLY PUT A WEDGE IN NOT ONLY OUR RELATIONSHIP, BUT MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY DAD AS WELL. BECAUSE HE ALSO SAID I'M PRETTY USELESS BECAUSE I DON'T MEET HIS EXPECTATIONS OF ME. WHEN HIS EXPECTATIONS ARE FOR ME TO GET A JOB HE PICKS OUT INSTEAD OF THE ONE I'M DOING THAT I LIKE. SO HE CAN QUIT HIS JOB AND NOT HAVE TO DO ANYTHING BECAUSE I'LL BE TAKING CARE OF HIM. WHICH IS NOT HOW I WAS RAISED TO DO THINGS AND HE KNOWS THAT SO I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT'S SUDDENLY COME FROM. BUT MY AUNT AND UNCLE FROM HIS SIDE OF THE FAMILY ARE REALLY PUSHING FOR ME TO DO THIS TOO CAUSE IT'S "MY RESPONSIBILITY AS THE OLDEST CHILD" WHEN THEIR OWN FUCKING CHILDREN DON'T DO THAT FOR THEM. AND THEY DON'T DO THAT FOR THEIR MOM, WHO I'VE NEVER THOUGHT OF AS A GRANDMA SO I DON'T CALL HER THAT. BUT YEAH LIKE WHAT THE FUCK??ON TOP OF THAT I'VE BEEN LIVING BASICALLY IN OUR DEN FOR THE MONTH AND A HALF BECAUSE THERE'S SOME WEIRD POWER STUFF GOING ON WITH MY ROOM. THE OUTLETS JUST STOPPED WORKING SUDDENLY FOR NO APPARENT REASON. ALL OF OUR TESTERS AND METERS AND STUFF SAY THEY'RE GETTING POWER BUT NOTHING TURNS ON WHEN YOU PLUG IT IN, AND IT'S TOO COLD FOR ME TO BE IN THERE WITHOUT A HEATER. UNFORTUNATELY THAT MEANS I HAVE ABSOLUTELY ZERO PRIVACY ANYMORE AND IT'S REALLY STARTING TO WEAR ON ME. I HATE IT BUT EVERYONE'S DRAGGING THEIR FEET ABOUT DOING SOMETHING TO GET IT FIXED OURSELVES AND I'M NOT MAKING ENOUGH TO HIRE AN ELECTRICIAN. SO IT JUST SUCKS ALL AROUND. ;n; A LOT OF PERSONAL STUFF FROM MY MAMAW AND PAPAW THAT I REALLY CARED ABOUT GOT DESTROYED TOO AND THAT'S HURT ME. I FEEL LIKE ANY TIME WE DO A LIFE UPDATE I'M GOING THROUGH SOMETHING ROUGH ANYMORE. BUT YEAH THAT'S HOW THE PAST LIKE HALF A YEAR HAS BEEN FOR ME.

Saturday, January 6, 2024

[Yesterday, 8:08 PM] ✦randi✦: I KNOW, ITS SO STUPID. I HAVE THE SPECIFIC CHAT APP FOR THIS REASON, BUT NOOO. IT IS OKAY. IT NEEDED TO HAPPEN, AND I REALLY ADORE ADAM. HES A GREAT GUY. HE DOES MAKE ME VERY HAPPY OMG. AND THANK YOU FOR THE CONGRATS ON THE PROMOTION. I AM SO SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT ALL OF THAT FUCKIN SHIT THAT IS GOING ON, HOLY COW BRO. YOU'RE PUTTING UP WITH SO MUCH, DAMN. IM GLAD YOURE STILL THERE, I CANT BELIEVE HE WOULD TRY AND MAKE YOU HOMELESS HOLY SHIT. HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A BIT OF A PROBLEM THOUGH, WHICH IS UNFORTUNATE. BUT HOLY.FUCKING.SHIT I CAN NOT BELIEVE YOUR DAD. YOU DAD?? THE LIKE, ONE GOOD FAMILY MEMBER YOU HAD LEFT. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH HIM. IM SO SO SORRY YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH THAT BRO, D: HAVING NO PRIVACY IS REALLY BAD, I CANT EVEN IMAGINE THAT BRO. I YHOPE IT GETS FIXED SOON OR SOMETHING FOR YOUR SAKE. GOD BRO I REALLY HOPE THINGS TURN AROUND, IM SORRY ITS BEEN SO BAD FOR YOU. YOU DESERVE MUCH BEETER

Sunday, January 7, 2024

[11:05 PM] Ragtime Cat: I KNOW BRO. THAT'S ANOTHER THING I'M TRYING TO GET SORTED OUT IS GETTING A BETTER COMPUTER SO WE CAN HANG OUT AGAIN WHEN YOU'VE GOT TIME! SOMETHING MORE RELIABLE THAN A SECONDHAND ANXIETY TRAP THAT'S JUST GOING TO DIE ON ME AGAIN IF I BREATH ON IT WRONG. BUT I'M HAPPY THAT HE MAKES YOU HAPPY AND THAT THINGS ARE GOING MUCH BETTER WITH HIM. MAYBE I CAN MEET HIM IF I EVER GET THE CHANCE TO COME VISIT? I STILL HAVE THE BOX OF STUFF I MEANT TO SEND YOU IN A PACKAGE. BUT I THINK THAT WAS WHEN THE MESS WITH YOUR BASEMENT STARTED HAPPENING AND I JUST HAVEN'T THOUGHT TO ASK WHERE TO SEND IT TO SINCE THEN. ALSO YOU'RE WELCOME BRO! I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT YOU DESERVE IT AND ARE GOING TO DO GREAT IN THE POSITION. THAT'S HONESTLY ONLY LIKE A THIRD OF IT TOO. EVER SINCE MY MOM DIED I'VE JUST BEEN IN HELL AND DEALING WITH SO MUCH. I'M ALSO SORRY BRO I WAS HALF ASLEEP WHEN I WROTE THAT BECAUSE I HAVEN'T BEEN SLEEPING WELL SO I'M UTTERLY EXHAUSTED MOST OF THE DAY SO I DIDN'T REALIZE UNTIL I LOOKED BACK AND READ IT BUT IT'S NOT MY DAD DAD LIKE THE ONE YOU LOVE SO MUCH THAT DID ALL THAT IT'S MY STEPDAD. THE ONE THAT LIVES WITH ME AND MY BROTHER. I'M REALLY SORRY FOR NOT LIKE CLARIFYING THAT SOONER. ALTHOUGH HONESTLY EVEN COOL DAD'S BEEN KINDA WEIRD LATELY. THE LAST TIME I WAS ACTUALLY AT HIS HOUSE AND HUNG OUT WITH HIM HE WAS JUST DOING A LOT OF GUILT TRIPPING?? ABOUT HOW I DON'T CALL HIM ENOUGH AND HOW WE DIDN'T DO A LOT TOGETHER THIS YEAR AND ALL OF OUR PLANS GOT MESSED UP SOMEHOW WHEN WE COULD. BUT WHENEVER I CALLED HIM AFTER THAT HE DIDN'T WANT TO SEE ME?? HE DIDN'T EVEN WANNA SPEND CHRISTMAS OR NEW YEARS WITH ME?????? I DUNNO WHAT I'VE DONE WRONG TO EVEN MAKE HIM MADE AT ME BUT JFC. I CAN'T TAKE MUCH MORE. BUT ANYWAY YEAH I'M GLAD I'M STILL HERE TOO AND FIGHTING TO KEEP DOING WHAT I LOVE INSTEAD OF WHAT OTHER PEOPLE WANT. AND HAVING NO PRIVACY SUCKS SO MUCH. I HOPE IT GETS FIXED SOON TOO. I KEEP HEARING 'YEAH WE'LL WORK ON IT' 'WE'LL FIX IT HERE IN A DAY OR TWO' BUT EITHER NOTHING HAPPENS OR I DON'T GET A DEFINITIVE ANSWER ON WHAT 'A DAY OR TWO' MEANS. UUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHH. THANK YOU BRO <3 I'M SORRY TO HAVE TO DUMP SO MUCH SHIT ON YOU LIKE THIS WHEN WE SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON YOUR GOOD NEWS ISNTEAD!

1-28-24 [3:00 AM] Ragtime Cat: HOWS BAUDLRS GATE BRO? YOU ENJOYING IT?

2-14-24 (7:30 am)

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY BRO

Monday, February 19, 2024

[Yesterday, 10:23 PM] Miranda(✿◠‿◠): OH SHIT BRO!! HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!! OMG BELATED VALENTIONES DAY ANYWAY I HOPE THINGS ARE GOIN BETTER FOR YOU, AT LEAST A LITTOE BIT

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

[12:06 PM] Ragtime Cat: THANK YOU BRO I'M KINDA STUCK IN PURGATORY RIGHT NOW ACTUALLY. IT'S NOT GETTING ANY WORSE THANKFULLY BUT IT'S NOT IMPROVING ANY EITHER. I'M STILL STRESSING MYSELF INTO MAKING MYSELF SICK AND WORRIED AND A LITTLE SCARED.

Monday, February 26, 2024

[12:01 AM] Ragtime Cat: BRO!!!!!! BRO ARE YOU READY FOR AN UPDATE i HAVE A ROOM AND PRIVACY AND A BED AGAIN!!! SORT OF HALF OF A ROOM TECHNICALLY IT'S NOT MY ROOM BUT WE EMPTIED OUT ONE OF THE STORAGE ROOMS AND STUCK A MATTRESS IN HERE FOR ME AND MY PC SO THAT I CAN HAVE MY OWN SPACE AGAIN UNTIL I DO GET MY ROOM BACK.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

[10:22 AM] Miranda(✿◠‿◠): OH MY GOD BRO!! THAT IS A PRETTY DECENT UPDATE OMG!! IM SO GLAD YOU ARE ABLE TO KIND OF HAVE A ROOM AGAIN! HOPEFULLY THEN THAT MEANS THINGS ARE KIND OF ON THE UP AND UP, IT SURE AS HELL IS A START! OMFG IM SO HAPPY FOR YOU BRO

[10:31 AM] Ragtime Cat: THANK YOU BRO. EVEN IF IT ISN'T MY ROOM I STILL FEEL SO MUCH BETTER. THE SETUPS A LITTLE AWKWARD FOR MY PC WITH THE WAY THE OUTLETS ARE IN THIS ROOM, AND THE DOORS NOT ACTUALLY A DOOR ITS JUST ONE OF THOSE FOLDING SLIDING PANEL THINGS THAT DOESN'T LATCH WHEN YOU TO TRY TO CLOSE IT. BUT ITS STILL SOMETHING RIGHT?! I'M KEEPING ALL OF MY FINGERS AND TOES AND ANYTHING ELSE I CAN THINK OF CROSSED THAT THIS DOES MEAN THINGS ARE LOOKING UP.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

[11:02 AM] Ragtime Cat: BRO I HAVE ANOTHER BIG UPDATE!!!! ONE I COULD SUPER USE YOUR HELP WITH IF YOU WANT. I'VE BEEN ASKED TO BE A DND DM!!! FOR TINY LITTLE POKEMON CAMPGAIN. I'VE GOT A GOOD START TO IT THOUGHT UP ALREADY I THINK BUT I'D LOVE YOUR HELP WITH THE STORY OR JUST SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPORTANT NPCS AND RANDOM SHIT THAT CAN HAPPEN AND STUFF LIKE THAT.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

[Yesterday, 11:08 PM] Miranda: IM GLAD IT FEELS SO MUCH BETTER!! IT IS STILL SOMETHING, AND WE WILL TAKE THAT! I WILL ALSO KEEP EVERYTHING CROSSED THAT I CAN POSSIBLY CROSS TO HELP!! OH BRO! I CAN TRY MAYBE!! IM GONNA BE BUSY FOR A MONTH, CAUSE I HAVE TRAINING FOR MY WORK OUT OF STATE WHERE ILL BE WORKING 6 DAYS A WEEK LMAO. BUT ILL HAVE A LAPTOP, I MAY BE ABLE TO HELP! LAY ON ME WHAT YOUVE GOT ! OMG ITS SO EXCITING THAT YOURE GOING TO DM A LIL POKEMON CAMPAIGN!!

Thursday, March 7, 2024

[10:04 PM] Ragtime Cat: THANKS BRO. FOR KEEPING EVERYTHING CROSSED AND TRYING TO HELP ME. THEY LAST MINUTE DECIDED TO DROP ON ME THAT THIS SATURDAY IS THE ONLY DAY THAT'S GOING TO WORK FOR EVERYONE GETTING TOGETHER. WHICH HAS BEEN FINE AS FAR AS THE SET UP IS CONCERNED. BUT I'M WORRIED THAT EVEN MY BASIC IDEAS FOR A STORY MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTING/FUN. CAUSE I MEAN ITS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SUPER DETAILED ANYWAY I RECKON SINCE IT'S JUST A TEENY TINY SHORT COUPLE HOUR CAMPAIGN RIGHT? BUT I DUNNO. MAYBE I'M JUST GETTING STAGE FRIGHT.

[10:16 PM] Ragtime Cat: MY IDEA IS THAT YOU'RE ON A VERY SMALL ISLAND REGION THAT IS MOSTLY UNINHABITED SAVE FOR ONE BIG CITY, A LITTLE FISHING VILLAGE, WHAT IS BASICALLY A THIEVES DEN, AND A SMALL TRIBAL VILLAGE WAAAAY OFF AWAY FROM EVERYONE ELSE AND CUT OFF FROM THE "CIVILIZED" WORLD PRETTY MUCH. THERE'S NO GYMS OR LEAGUES. AND THERE WASN'T EVEN A POKEMON PROFESSOR UNTIL RECENTLY. WHEN THIS NEW ONE RE-OPENED THE OLD LAB THAT HAD BEEN INACTIVE FOR YEARS. SHE PUT OUT A CALL FOR TRAINERS TO GO RECLAIM THE OLD RESEARCH STATIONS FROM NATURE AND SEE IF THAT'S WHY HER READINGS ARE COMING OUT SO INCONSISTANT AND WEIRD. SHE'LL PROVIDE EVERYTHING THEY NEED FOR THEM BEFORE THEY GO AND PAY THEM PRETTY WELL FOR THE WORK WHEN THEY RETURN. THEY'RE GOING TO MOSTLY DECIDE HOW THEY GO ABOUT IT AND WHAT ROUTES THEY TAKE SO THERE'S GONNA BE POKEMON BATTLES AND TRAINING AND SOME LITTLE EVENTS/BATTLES ALONG THE WAY. BUT AFTER MAYBE ONE STATION I WANT THEM TO SORT OF SNIFF OUT THAT ITS NOT JUST THE STATIONS THEMSELVES BUT THAT SOMETHING IS ALSO VERY WRONG WITH THE WILD POKEMON. THEY'LL MORE FREQUENTLY COME ACROSS SPOTS WHERE POKEMON ARE JUST REALLY SICK OR ACTING UNNATURALLY. AND THE SECOND BIG HOOK AND THE TWIST OF THE STORY IS THAT IT'S BECAUSE THERE'S A BIG BAD RICH GUY THAT SEES THE ENTIRE ISLAND AS AN INVESTMENT AND WANTS TO TURN EVERY OUNCE OF IT INTO A MONEY MAKING TOURIST ATTRACTION. ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. SO HE'S TRYING TO LIKE FORCE THE TRIBE TO LEAVE OR STRONG ARM NATIVES INTO SELLING THEIR LAND TO HIM. AND GETTING RID OF ANYTHING THAT'S "PROBLEMATIC" FOR DEVELOPMENT. LIKE SAY POKEMON THAT AREN'T GOING TO BE USEFUL TO HIM. MY FRIENDS' SORT OF RIVAL IS GONNA BE THE SON OF THIS BIG BAD GUY. WHO EVEN THOUGH HE /IS/ TREATING HIS STAY MORE LIKE A VACATION TO HIS DAD. STILL HAS THAT VERY RICH BOY AIR AND ATTITUDE ABOUT HIM AND THINKS HE CAN GET AWAY WITH DOING AND SAYING ANYTHING HE WANTS AND TREATING PEOPLE ANY WAY HE WANTS CAUSE HIS DAD IS GONNA "OWN THE ISLAND AND EVERYONE IN IT SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL GET USED TO IT. YOU LOSERS BASICALLY WORK FOR ME ALREADY."OH I ALSO FORGOT TO MENTION THAT

IF WE HAVE TIME FOR IT I EVEN HAS A LITTLE SIDE STORY ON STANDBY ABOUT A LEGEND OF THE TRIBE AND HOW THEY BASICALLY WORSHIP LYCANROCS.

[fraener]

9/8/2024

long day of laying down until a flurry of activity with work and coming home and speaking to my loved ones on the phone. dinner bubbling away on the stove and the aching icelike creak of the burner heating and cooling is rhythmic. fighting now to find the good. i spent so much of the day crying in bed unable to move under the weight of knowing the truth about it, that h just cant understand me and doesnt or cant make the effort to do so. i keep feeling like theres just no point in even telling him why im upset because i think if i do hell either feign ignorance or really just not get it. i feel tricked and cheated all the time because of how he likes to play dumb and hide things from me. he just doesnt trust me and so in turn its impossible for me to trust him. although, instead of sending me into the outward insecurity spiral where id be begging for attention and rushing after him, it makes me disgusted and disappointed and hurt and withdrawn. i told him i didnt want to see him today and he stopped responding to my texts. saw his car at the dispensary on my way home and felt my stomach drop just a little, like i didnt like him being so close to my house. im grateful to live somewhere now it would be much more obvious if he came to look in my windows. i think i feel the edge underneath which i could pull and topple it all, and every time i feel that sharp little ledge i choose not to lift. similarly, there doesnt seem any point in ending it, because i have nothing better to do. i lost my faith in the satisfaction of telling people exactly what thyeve done wrong so they have to face the truth of it. or, faith in the satisfaction of ending it. i wonder when passivity becomes cruel and when it is that i should choose to do hard kindnesses. tomorrow i want to be better, today was only getting good towards the end. spouts and lids today at work, next 3 classes ill encourage them to modify their forms and try new things. i have work wednesday and i forgot...its good i wont go to the city after all. starting a new 101 class, teaching them back to back. soon my schedule will be just mondays and tuesdays off, then for a little while i think it may be just mondays off, then sundays and mondays if i am careful. it isnt hard to work at the ceramics studio, often welcome reprieve at the end of my darker days. ive moved and started a new job and somehow nothing has changed. i am feeling so many different griefs right now. tomorrow i hope bg can lift my spirits. for now im tired.

but i think i should say s confessed hes never had any attraction to me. from that point i think i am seeing him truer without hope in the way, or fantasy, or whatever it is. he is so so dear to me. we get closer every day and i am so glad to know him. ive really gotten to a new level or depth with both him and f, it feels beyond any love ive known no matter what the shape of relationship. somehow more intimate than a lover, more patient and understanding than family, more dedicated than a friend. for this i can be grateful, for the continued care of c's garden, my very very strange new life which feels like an odd and unknowable pitstop that i am afraid of but dont need to fear. i talked to kk on the phone today too- briefly, about ceramics, about our students. there is love for me in the world, i have love for it too. its so sad to me that a year ago i wrote that i felt h was far from me and i didnt know how much longer wed be together. so odd weve survived this long in our terrible purgatory state. as i said a year ago, i thought wed be closer by now. c'est la vie.

[beingstalked]

Irony.

Me and Phil went to a wedding reception late July 2024. We purposely decided we would have our backs to Liam & Stacey the whole night. The irony of this little person, because he's not a man, everything hes done, he cannot be called a man because it's cowardly, but the Irony of them both talking so much shit online, and then as soon as they see us in person, not a fucking word. I have no reason to approach them, because as you can see by screenshots i didnt start all this, i didnt make the many, many fake profiles pretending to be so many people, Liam also spending 5 years pretending to be a female. I havent followed his mates on social media like he did to mine, and him creating new accounts when he realised he'd been found out and i blocked him. He started all this but yet he was all mouth over the internet, but not a single word out of either of them in person. I was made aware by one of the people we sat with that he looked over a few times, we did not look or take notice of them once. We had our backs to them, we ignored them and had fun celebrating a friends wedding. Meanwhile I was also made aware whilst my husband got up to dance with his best mates, they stormed off because Phil was having fun with his mates. Something Liam has always said Phil didn't have, apparently to Liam "Phil had no friends because of me" and that night they saw different and they didn't like it so sulked off. Goes to show a stalker thinks they're inferior online but in person they're a coward, because they don't have a screen to hide behind.

(I want to make a disclosure, from around 7pm to 8pm we was outside, spoke to the Groom for abit and then sat facing the outside field, in total there was 4 of us sat outside talking. CCTV on the grounds will confirm this, and then from 8pm to 9.30pm we was sat indoors at a table that, wasn't out first choice, but because the back tables were all full and we didn't want to sit by where the buffet line would be and be in even closer vicinity to the pair, our only option was the front middle table, where we sat with our backs to them and CCTV will confirm from the night we not once looked in their direction, plus we always had someone with us, who will back this up. 9.30pm we left and that was it, 9.20pm Phil, Me & His mate went outside to say Goodbye, but Phil, The groom and his other best mate had a dance together which eventually ended at 9.30pm)

These 2 spent years trying to ruin mine and Phils relationship, Liam called me crazy, well I'd rather be crazy than a cheat like him. They had spent years trying to affect me in any way they possibly could, and what did they see at the reception? Me and Phil still as happy as ever and us laughing and joking with friends, not one bit of me affected by either of them. Liam always had a problem with me and Phil having a laugh and joke together, id rather have a sense of humour than look like two room mates who apparently look like they are miserable and hate each other (I lol'd at this comparison). I'm so proud to say I felt so much confidence when the 2 people who caused and chatted so much shit, couldn't say shit because they wasn't behind a screen where they felt safest. I'm so glad I got to enjoy celebrating a friends wedding and them to having 0 impact on that. This all started because they was blocked, they carried it on because of jealousy and because they was mad they could no longer see what I was posting and I was happily living my life and they hated that. They called me names, made up lies, made fake profiles in my name, they tried their hardest to try and affect me in any way possible, and it all failed. They most likely have more accounts that I haven't found - yet. Liam probably still wants to have that inferior feeling, by stalking someone who he feels threatened by, simply because I'm happy. But seeing them both in person only tells me how cowardly they are, he's probably making his comments on his fake account, that Stacey doesn't know about, once again, to spend his life more interested in what I'm doing. Being enraged because of how happy me and Phil was, how we didn't pay him any attention and how we basically acted like he didn't exist.

Since they started this, whenever I asked them to leave me alone, that was what they classed as me "stalking and harassing them". You block people on Facebook and usually you move on, that's how it works. If they'd have approached me that night, I would've thrown everything at them, I have gained alot of confidence to stick up for myself. If I'd have confronted them they would've just played victim, (don't know how they couldve played victim revealing Liam was a nonce, but theyve never been the smartest when theyve done all this.) They had the problems over the years so I was waiting for them to approach me in person with these problems, they always said online how they would harm me in person and just basically being all mouth, when in reality they both shrivelled up and hid inside their own arseholes. Me and Phil told everyone who knew we was going that we was going to have our backs to them on purpose, how Liam works is any acknowledgement from either of us, that would've fuelled his obsession, just a look or a glance and he would've been like "yes theyve looked at me and seen me". The only stuff I know was through people telling me, because me and Phil set out to basically act like they didn't exist, and it worked. We was enjoying seeing our friends, we loved seeing two people happy and in love on their wedding day. It was only afterwards that people came to us and told us stuff, because they knew our plan. I have showed my phone to the police and they're aware of what accounts I have, none of them being fake, because I simply do not care for making fake profiles to follow them two or any of their friends. Thankfully all fake accounts Liam did make would have an IP attached to, so thanks Liam👍🏻. If I ever see anything online from fake accounts claiming to chat shit about me and wanting to harm me, like he did on the fake accounts of me, is extra funny now because in person, HE IS NOTHING. A coward, the one who spent most of the night probably shitting himself incase I did say anything, and jealous one, walking off when Phil was dancing with his mates. Both of them used their accounts to bad mouth me and Phil, to try and cause problems, backfired. Because going off what I was told, if you didn't know these 2 people, you wouldn't know they was married with how miserable they looked.

I've always been asked what their motives were when I spoke to the police, alot of things were their motive, but they only did this where they could happily hide, I informed the police that neither of them would ever say anything in person because they always gave off a vibe to bitch in safety of not being caught, but in person, they would be the fakest people in the room. They would never tell you to your face they had a problem, instead waiting for it to be just them two and doing and saying whatever to make them feel high and mighty.

I blocked them both and that was it, I wasn't the one making fake profiles, or Liam making his Izzy_m1995 account, pretending to be a female, pretending to be younger than what he was, following my friends, saying his sister was his girlfriend or worse, following and communicating with a 15 year old girl who had my name and hobbies. Or the many other accounts he used to post calling me names and saying he would punch me in public. The attachment was from brief interactions at several social gatherings, I wasn't besties with them, I didn't text them or message them on messenger, I had the briefest conversations with them and then would mainly talk to Phil the rest of the time, heck they didn't even know I had a job when they posted about me not having one, but this was during a pandemic when most people was on furlough, again not the smartest move, you couldn't really have much of a conversation anyway because they was both dull to talk to. The amount of times he's gone onto make claims that he's the victim, that's why I started this tumblr and added dates and context, even posting evidence of him admitting to stalking my accounts for months, after I'd blocked him on Twitter. I've posted enough evidence to prove who the stalker in all of this. The fact that there was a joke between his mates liking the incest parts of GoT and then him tweeting how his sister was his girlfriend, it's creepy. He's posted stuff bad mouthing his partner, when he thought his account wouldn't get found by me, he has to use Viagra (something he also posted about) to get hard for her but has no problem with the hundreds of naked women on Instagram and Twitter. He's done all this damage himself, because he's stupid trying to pretend to be a fake person but also post about his personal life. He's exposed so much private information about himself and his private life with his partner, he's fell silent because everything HE posted, I can use as ammo. But since he's fell silent, he can't say I've made accounts or gone after him, simply because I haven't. I've posted evidence on here and that's it, even then I've not sent him links, he found out I had this through my reddit he stalked, then reported a post to ME trying to get it taken down because it exposed a message I sent telling them to stop their behaviour, but he claimed it was targeted harassment, no it's me exposing everything. If you'd have moved on from the very beginning, you wouldn't be in this situation, I wouldn't know how shit your sex life was or your obsession of wanting to be a female online or the weird thing of wanting to tell people your sister was your girlfriend. You both claimed to be happy, you couldve both carried on with your lives, you two made this a problem, but it was a problem that I was going to stand up to. You thought I was quiet and an easy target and you both couldn't have been more wrong.

If he was to ever go to court, his evidence consists of screenshotting my profiles, when already blocked and me telling him to leave me and Phil alone. Wouldn't surprise me if he's randomly searched for profiles, decided ones me without solid evidence, because that's how stupid he is. He would be questioned how he got screenshots of my profile after he was clearly blocked, and he wouldn't know what to say without revealing he'd looked through fake profiles. The pure stupidity coming from these two, is insane, because you hear of people being this stupid, but to actually see it, it's laughable. Whereas all my evidence is linked clearly to him, but found through me just looking on Reddit and noticing a comment or him interacting with himself on another fake profile. He made it very easy to find this evidence and the little extra with his personal life. His partner even made a photography Instagram account, didn't block me, so it got recommended to me, for her to post evidence outside their front door, and me being around that area to visit Phils parents, I knew immediately where he lived. Him posting about how he bought Sneak Energy, after Phil did, but posting a photo with sensitive documents in the background, revealing where he worked. That's their own stupid choices they made, and even then I only saw these when I was going to block accounts they had already made.

They always claimed they didn't care about us, but why go to this much hassle for 4 years? Why start making fake profiles and following my friends and fake accounts if you didn't care? Because you both did. You couldn't see my posts, you didn't like how happy me and Phil was and that was what fuelled this. You wanted to cause trouble and have an impact, but if anything, the only impact and damage was to your own relationship. I told you Feb 2023 to stop and if you both was as happy as you claimed to be, then you'd move on. From Liams post about lack of sex drive and Stacey's irregular periods it gives away health problems for them, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what he's describing is him having a low sperm count and her having PCOS. That's information you described yourself and it's quite obvious from talking about how her periods were irregular and come and go whenever and how he doesn't have much interest, he's gave away so much Information about the two of them, just by using fake profiles for personal problems. He hasn't thought about any consequences that his posts about their personal issues might have, but all that was there for me to see when he thought I wouldn't find the account. But once again he's put himself in a situation where he's posted too much about personal life. He suffers with mental health because he posted: "Can't sleep 😔. Been finding it very hard to sleep the past few weeks. Too much on my mind 😔" Or "Can't sleep 😔 It's like a tornado is blowing around in my head and everything is spinning. I can't seem to focus on a single thought. 😔" those are things he posted on his Izzy account, showing me that his mental health influenced his motive for all of this. Even making a fake Facebook account called Joanne Nosko. He has done all this himself, he purposely doesn't block me so he can easily see our profiles, and then when we find it, he starts deleting evidence because of the amount of information he's shared on these accounts, unfortunately for him, we've already seen it. This is the stupidity he has, because he doesn't stop to think, he will make a fake profile and then call his partners name the least attractive, he will post about how much he hates gaming with her and how he wants to kill her, and all of this is on there when I come across the account.

It always makes me wonder what will be the point where they stop, because I know so much thanks to what they've posted, I have so much ammo, what will be the point where they finally decide it's time to delete all the fake profiles and try and fix what relationship they have, when will Liam decide to stop looking at random naked women, when will he decide to stop pretending to be a female, what point does he have to reach where he realises he's fucked up so badly, that he just stops. He stops stalking accounts, he stops making fake profiles. Guaranteed I'm not the first or last person he will do this to, but if I ever see anyone else go through this because of them, then I'll happily help them with the ammo I have. He's probably still stalking his exes, because this behaviour was to normal for him, he's had experience doing this, but he's probably never done it to anyone who fights back like I have.

If they'd have got to know me, they would've known I was the type of person to fight to prove who was the liar. In their delusional world all I think about is them, all my accounts are based on them and every account they have, they think I watch. Far from it, I do my tumblr and that's it, and the only reason I have to do this is because they want to play victim in a situation they created. I blocked them and the fake accounts started, they saw my old twitter I basically didn't give a shit and didn't think of them as much as they'd liked. Whatever little attention they was given, which was being told to leave us alone, it fed their obsession, because very early on, I didn't have the ammo that I do now. He stalked my streams, my friends from Twitch and all this while still thinking we had no one, whilst in reality, it was he who had no one. He was blocked, we didn't care, and that bothered him, every so often they would do stuff to get the attention they craved, the last time being me revealing a post where Liam called a girl sexy on Instagram, whilst he was in a relationship with her. Her Izzy Darke account, now just known as ❤️ stayed but her official one, she deleted. She quickly realised that she tried to get my attention and saw the worst possible thing. Funny. Whenever I found a Reddit account, like Mrs Nervous, it was up for months but as soon as I blocked it, deleted. They quickly started to realise that my bite back was more vicious than the thing they did to get my attention or how they would say they was victim, and now look. So tell people you're a victim, lead them to my accounts, because I still have my public posts, with evidence, they will see for themselves. To save yourselves from anymore humiliation you might want to focus on yourselves and try fix the broken relationship you had way before I even blocked you. Leave my family alone, because next time I find an account, I'll make sure you regret ever being found on another fake account, blasting your bullshit. You've fucked around and found out, so when are you going to learn? When you've destroyed your relationship because it's fuelled on treating people this way? When Stacey finds out Liam is still bad mouthing her online? Or moaning about their lack of sex life? When are you two going to wake up and realise over 4 years you've exposed yourselves in more ways than one to me, I know your dirty little secrets, I know everything that you probably didn't want me to know because you are the ones who posted it online. Phil doesn't care or never cared about you, as you could see, he was happy with his friends, you can't control who he's friends with and you can't tell them not to be friends with Phil. Get it through your heads, your stupid, brainless heads, we never cared when we blocked you. We wasn't creating fake profiles, we wasn't following people who knew you, buying stuff because you did, talking to people just because they knew you, playing games that you played, we didn't do any of that, Liam did. I have the evidence, but we didn't. How much more obvious have I gotta make it before you realise? Fuck off back under your bridge, you pair of trolls.

[michellemondares]

Memoir

Ma. Michelle Mae Mondares

12-Bookkeeping

April 14, 2006

I was born in April 14, 2006 and my mother named me Maria Michelle Mae Mondares.

When I was a month old, I got sick and my whole skin turns to red. My mother was just crying while holding me because she couldn’t afford to bring me in the hospital due to lack of money. When my grandfather and grandmother arrived at home they saw my mother crying while holding me, they ask what happened and my mother said that I am sick. They look at me with pity in their eyes and they rushed me to the hospital. The doctor said that, thankfully that I was rushed in hospital or else I would die that time because my body wont hold it. I was so thankful back then because through the years I am still alive and thats because god is good. Later on, at my age of 5 to 7 I really love to play sisira ang bulalak-bubukas ang bubulak it is commonly known in philippine as children play. I used to wear colorful dress when I was a kid and I really like to wear high heels because it makes me feel like an adult. I love playing outside of our house in mandaue city and I have a lot of friends in mandaue city, named deo, grace, maxine, love, jessa, and many more. My favorite food back then was fried chicken and I really love to dip it in the ketchup. One day when my grandmonther sell an ice candy I thought that it was for free because im just a kid back then, I called many kids around our neighborhood and gave it to them one by one. I was scolded and I cried because I was clueless and I just want to have many friends back then, but if I think of it right now its kinda funny. One day my father died due to heart attack and I cried so hard because I couldn’t afford to accept right away and in 2017 we moved to lapu-lapu city, I met new people and new friends. In 2018, I started online business on facebook. I sell clothes online and I have many customers and I earned a lot of money around 7,000pesos and I used that money for my school supplies and other personal stuff. In 2019 I graduated in junior high and in 2022 a typhoon occurred again and it hits very hard in Lapu- Lapu city. The typhone called “bagyong odette” that time I cried for mercy because the typhoon that we didnt expect that the typhoon will be so strong. All humanities in Lapu-Lapu city was affected and we lost electricity, some of people lost homes. Every night we used candles for light and a diy fan, I used to go out at night and just staring at the moon because if the night came the road is dark. We suffered at least 2-3months because of “Bagyong odette” we used to go in a lanueva or unitop to use their generator to charge our phones and flashlights. That time it is hard to use cellphones because there is no signal and there’s no electricity, so what I did I read books, paint and play with my sister and cousins. The typhoon occurred when christmas is coming, during christmas all people didnt celebrate I didnt see fireworks. I realized that in december 25, 2022, 98% of people was sad because they lost homes and cant eat properly. After 2-3 months, the electricity came back and we we’re so happy. We start to get back on our feet and start cleaning in our house and I helped my grandmother to clean our house. I learned many lessons when bagyong odette occured because if bagyong odette didn’t occurred we will always focus on our cellphone and we cannot notice what is in our environment, we will not learn how to have a quality time with our families. Bagyong odette thought me that having quality time with your family is the best part of our lives. Right now im currently studying in Asian Learning center, I joined a choir in the school called “glee club” and I practiced singing and playing piano but sadly I quit in the choir because of some reason. But through that I met my new bandmates but we dont have band name for now, I am happy with them and I enjoy every moment if were together. In 2024 I joined a singing contest in our school called “ALCI Global Idol”, I won 1st placer. Also I met a boy, he is so handsome and smarter than me. He asked me if its okay to court me and I said yes! I felt butterflies in my stomach that I haven't experienced in years. Right now Im living the best.

[ocean-anchored]

Dear future self... February 12, 2024

It's been a seriously busy week & weekend. Let's recap.. Monday last week Danny put charlie down. That was a sad day, I wasn't sure how it was going to hit me, but when I saw Cody's stories, I crumbled and cried a lot of the day. Tuesday went for lunch with Chrystal for our work department christmas party. Then went to Canadian brewhouse with a group to watch the oilers/knights game. Kamber, tyson, shane, amber & naythan, it was a lot of fun. Man i love amber, I shit talked her a lot & Knights won so that was fun, killed their 16 winning streak so she wasn't too pleased of course. Wednesday I went to a little pub with Callum Domke, grade 4 friend because we had matched on bumble & thought it would be funny to catch up after 20+ years. He was the same & it wasn't awkward at all. It was funny, we just talked about life & everything & had a lot of good laughs, it was a nice wholesome night. Thursday I relaxed. Friday I went to Bottlescrew bills with Corey, or we started our night there. We were supposed to play cornhole but they didn't have any games so we had some food & then walked over to Craft. We chatted for hours, we didn't even end up playing a game we just talked constantly which was really nice. I got to know him a lot better & see a much more deeper side to him. He's really smart. His past is interesting, he's a bit more of a party boy than I wished, but he's also turning 35 next month. We went back to his place around midnight probably to play overcooked. I had opened up a lot about my past with him & he did too. I think it connected us a lot deeper & he had said he struggled with depression to. He said he's told me more things than most people know about him which was kind of nice. Overcooked was hilarious, we had so much fun. Honestly he makes me laugh so hard. I felt like I was flirting with him a lot & trying to hint at him. Finally at like 2 or 3am I think i jokingly said he hurt my feelings & he asked how he could make it up to me which is when I got super shy. He obviously knew & kissed me. It was pretty hot if I'm being honest. He's a really good kisser. He said earlier in the night that he loved my smile & my eyes so it was great to know he was attracted to me lol. i ended up staying over but nothing happened, we just cuddled & he was very respectful that I didn't want to do anything further. We cuddled a lot which was nice, & I think we passed out around 5am. I was up way too early & kind of laid & tossed for a bit till 10:30am. I felt like I was intruding a bit & didn't want to over stay my welcome, but he had said he didnt want to get up yet & pulled me in to cuddle him. Which we cuddled & talked till about 12:30. It was honestly just a really sweet wholesome night & morning. He still didn't try to take advantage of me which was great. He made me coffee & we had a relaxing hour before I thought i should go home at like 2pm. I went home & spent time with nova for a while. Then went to Waterhole to meet Drew for dinner. I didn't know what to expect really, I was nervous for sure. I'm not sure if he was nervous too, but our conversation isn't the best & that's why I didn't think it was going to be a long night. The first part was a bit bumpy & I wasn't sure. He's just not good at keeping a conversation going. He's super attractive though & has a good head on his shoulders. Actually to the point of being someone that I've been interested in & looking for. We talked a lot about red flags & what we were looking for in a relationship etc. We hung out till about 8pm ish though so 3 hours, it felt pretty good by the end of it & when we walked outside he said he wanted to see me again & I laughed asking if I checked off some boxes. He texted me later that he did want to go on another date so that was nice to hear.

[crescendeyes]

The start of 2024

I felt as tho my year started off fresh but it didnt come with any worries. I had Bryant by my side championing my burdens while I seek out opportunities that can help me make money in any possible way.

I've thought bout what we went had to go through the past 3 weeks. Happiness, bliss, arguments, betrayals and more. The mix of emotions has drained the both of us and left us wondering if this is what entails for the future of our lives that we are ever so eager to build together.

As we both unravel the heartache he has caused me over and over again, we also deepened our bond together by meeting each other's family in the New Year. Further cementing the future together into existence.

The burning question remained, "Will I ever let it go?"

Finding out that he cheated on his ex with me and another woman, finding out he went out with this other woman while I was at a festival celebrating my birthday. Finding out he felt like we weren't stable and he didn't know what he wanted in the beginning but said the opposite to me during that time. Could I ever forgive him? Could I ever forget his inability to keep it in his pants while convincing others around him to lie to my face?

I am sad, tired and lost but I have to rely on him financially to stay afloat now. That is not to say that I don't truly love and care for him. But that is insane no? It almost feels crazy that I allowed such a man to manipulate me and others around him - and eventhough I hate him for it, I still manage to love him?

Cam once said to me, "You'll get tired of his shit one day". When will that day come? And when that day comes, will it be too late because we have both exchanged the family meetings and such? It's almost flattering that I am the first woman he has brought home to introduce to his family since his ex wife.

It is almost crazy to say the least that he still wants to pursue this eventhough he has found so many ways to sabotage this relationship. I will never forget the day I said I wanted to leave and he didn't let me. It was toxic. It was so mind numbing and hurtful and yet I couldn't bring myself to leave. And I know exactly what he thinks of me - he probably lost his respect for me that day.

I know he loves and cares for me; otherwise why would he be doing all this for me? There is no benefit for him to financially take care of me nor continue to support me but maybe it is temporary because he knows I too wont want to allow myself such tragedy to live on longer than it should.

It is a new year, and I want to move forward.

The burning question remained, "Will I ever let it go?"

I want to for my mental health sake.

But how can I trust again? I see him making efforts and yet in moments of solitude I find myself questioning if I did the right thing by putting myself in the crossfire of his identity crisis. I am lost and I just want to be found.

[metalindex-hu]

„Actually we didn’t use any “old tunes” but created something new from a few old ideas.”

„Actually we didn’t use any “old tunes” but created something new from a few old ideas.” - https://metalindex.hu/2023/12/21/actually-we-didnt-use-any-old-tunes-but-created-something-new-from-a-few-old-ideas/ -

Dark Sky is a band that has been active for circa three decades, what was the spark that gave birth to the band?

We were students and wanted to become rock stars like our idols from AC/DC, the Scorpions and Judas Priest. So my friends and I formed a rock band at our school. That’s how the ball got rolling.

 In the early nineties Dark Sky disbanded. What was the reason?

We had a few line-up changes and then I had to move away for a while because of my studies.

What was the event that brought back the band one year later?

When I returned, the remaining band members got back together. We were all really excited again and full of energy to start the next chapter of the band.

In the years of the pandemic, was it difficult for you to produce new material?

Yes and no, the restrictions gave us a little more time to work on ideas at home, but going into the studio wasn’t allowed in Germany.

What are the main differences between the previous album “Once” and the new one “Signs Of The Time”?

I think the new album is something of a reboot for the band. After the pandemic, I had to put together a completely new DARK SKY line up because all of my friends in the band had gone into musical retirement. This time I’m also working very closely with our producer Markus Teske from Bazement Studio during pre-production. This resulted in new and interesting influences overall, which gave the new album a slightly different sound.

You have released a new album this year, can you tell us a few words?

As I already said, I worked on old and new song ideas with producer Markus Teske in advance. I was also able to get Kissin Dynamite singer Hannes Baun to compose a song, and ex-Kissin Dynamite drummer Andi Schnitzer was involved in the lyrics. And last not least I composed a song together with an old Swedish friend. This input from other musicians was exciting for me and the band. Probably this is one of the reasons that our new album sounds something different than anything DARK SKY has done before.

The sound and the new meets in each of your songs was it difficult composing songs that have “old melodies” with renewed sound?

Actually we didn’t use any “old tunes” but created something new from a few old ideas. For example, if you take an old DARK SKY song from the 80s and process it instrumentally with our current influences, then this alone opens up completely new possibilities for melodies and sounds. Of course it’s not always easy but it’s fun, especially when the result sounds good.

How is your relationship with the younger audience?

Well, if the audience likes melodic metal, then their age is unimportant, ha, ha, ha. But it is clear that the average age at concerts of bands like DARK SKY is well over 20. Fortunately, there are also very young fans who identify with melodic metal.

 In the near future are there any plans for a European Tour to promote your new album?

Unfortunately there are no concrete plans for a tour yet. This is because we would like to play a support tour for a larger act and need the right band and the right offer. But there are already quite concrete plans for some interesting festivals in summer and autumn 2024, which we are already looking forward to.

Do you have a message for the followers of Rattle AD?

Yes, listen to the new album, watch the music videos we made for the new album, write us your comments and of course it would be cool if we met live at one of our concerts

„Valójában nem használtunk „régi dallamokat”, hanem valami újat alkottunk néhány régi ötletből.”

A Dark Sky egy olyan zenekar, amely körülbelül három évtizede aktív, mi volt az a szikra, ami a zenekart életre hívta?

Diákok voltunk, és rocksztárok akartunk lenni, mint a példaképeink, az AC/DC, a Scorpions és a Judas Priest. Ezért a barátaimmal megalakítottunk egy rockzenekart az iskolában. Így indult be a dolog.

A kilencvenes évek elején a Dark Sky feloszlott. Mi volt az oka?

Volt néhány változás a felállásban, aztán egy időre el kellett költöznöm a tanulmányaim miatt.

Mi volt az az esemény, ami egy évvel később visszahozta a zenekart?

Amikor visszatértem, a megmaradt zenekari tagok újra összeálltak. Mindannyian nagyon izgatottak voltunk, tele energiával, hogy elkezdjük a zenekar következő fejezetét.

A járvány éveiben nehéz volt új anyagot készítenetek?

Igen és nem, a megszorítások miatt egy kicsit több időnk volt arra, hogy otthon dolgozzunk az ötleteken, de stúdióba menni nem volt szabad Németországban.

Mik a fő különbségek az előző „Once” és az új „Signs Of The Time” album között?

Azt hiszem, az új album egyfajta újraindulás a zenekar számára. A világjárvány után egy teljesen új DARK SKY felállást kellett összeállítanom, mert az összes barátom a zenekarból visszavonult a zenei életből. Ezúttal is nagyon szorosan együtt dolgozom a producerünkkel, Markus Teskével a Bazement Stúdióból az előgyártás során. Ez összességében új és érdekes hatásokat eredményezett, ami az új albumnak egy kicsit más hangzást is adott.

Idén új albumot adtatok ki, mesélnél pár szót róla?

Mint már mondtam, Markus Teske producerrel már előre dolgoztunk régi és új dalötleteken. A Kissin Dynamite énekesét, Hannes Baunt is sikerült megnyernem egy dal megkomponálására, és az ex-Kissin Dynamite dobos, Andi Schnitzer is részt vett a dalszövegírásban. És nem utolsósorban egy régi svéd barátommal közösen komponáltam egy dalt. Ez a más zenészektől származó hozzájárulás izgalmas volt számomra és a zenekar számára. Valószínűleg ez az egyik oka annak, hogy az új albumunk másképp szól, mint bármi, amit a DARK SKY eddig csinált.

A hangzás és az új tagok/zenészek miatt mennyire volt nehéz olyan dalokat komponálni, amelyekben „régi dallamokat” próbáltatok megújult hangzással?

Valójában nem használtunk „régi dallamokat”, hanem néhány régi ötletből alkottunk valami újat. Ha például veszünk egy régi DARK SKY dalt a 80-as évekből, és hangszeresen feldolgozzuk a jelenlegi hatásainkkal, akkor ez önmagában teljesen új lehetőségeket nyit meg a dallamok és hangzások terén. Persze ez nem mindig könnyű, de szórakoztató, főleg, ha az eredmény jól hangzik.

Milyen a kapcsolatotok a fiatalabb közönséggel?

Nos, ha a közönség szereti a dallamos metált, akkor nem számít a kora, ha, ha, ha. De az egyértelmű, hogy az olyan zenekarok koncertjein, mint a DARK SKY, az átlagéletkor jóval 20 felett van. Szerencsére vannak nagyon fiatal rajongók is, akik azonosulnak a dallamos metállal.

A közeljövőben terveztek-e európai turnét az új albumotok népszerűsítésére?

Sajnos még nincsenek konkrét tervek egy turnéra. Ennek az az oka, hogy szeretnénk egy nagyobb előzenekar előzenekaraként turnézni, és ehhez a megfelelő zenekarra és a megfelelő ajánlatra van szükségünk. De már vannak egészen konkrét tervek néhány érdekes fesztiválra 2024 nyarára és őszére, amiket már nagyon várunk.

Van valami üzeneted a Rattle AD olvasóinak?

Igen! Hallgassátok meg az új albumot, nézzék meg az új albumhoz készült klipjeinket, írjátok meg nekünk a véleményeteket, és persze az is jó lenne, ha élőben találkoznánk valamelyik koncertünkön.

Promoter:

https://www.facebook.com/AngelsPRmusicPromotion/

Dark Sky

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100021212336060&locale=it_IT

https://www.facebook.com/darkskyF.page/?locale=it_IT

https://www.instagram.com/dark_sky_band/

https://www.darkskyband.com/

[patriotsnet]

Why Republicans Are Wrong About Everything

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-republicans-are-wrong-about-everything/

Why Republicans Are Wrong About Everything

Why So Many Republicans Cling To Trump

Saagar Enjeti: Trump, GOP, On Wrong Side Of EVERYTHING Since Coronavirus Began

Ben Shapiro got part of it right. A toxic mix of status anxiety, persecution fears, and echoes of the Civil War helps explain why they follow Trump into the abyss.

On September 17, 1862, over 10,000 Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing in a single day at the Battle of Antietam. Very few of them came from slave-owning families, so why did they agree to give their lives in defense of human bondage?

I was reminded of this question when I noticed that Politico Playbook had recruited conservative celebrity and author Ben Shapiro;to explain why the vast majority of House Republicans voted not to impeach President Trump on Wednesday for sending a murderous mob after them on January 6. Politico was slammed by liberals for opening its best-known section to a conservative whos been charged with being bigoted and intolerant. But Shapiros explanation of the rallying around Trump during his final days wasnt totally off base. He was on to something about how Republicans see the world.

With Trump leaving office within a week, defending his incitement of an insurrection doesnt seem to be in the long-term self-interest of Republican officeholders.;But the Civil War example helps explain why people sometimes do very self-destructive things out of spite or insecurity.

White supremacy was such a consensus view at the time that Lincoln felt compelled to defend it.

Like the rebels at Antietam, no one wants to die for nothing.

Support Nonprofit Journalism

Why Are Republicans So Mean

Let’s state right off-the-bat that conservatives indeed have much to offer. In fact, the very notion of conservatism itself keeps us grounded in tradition and prevents our society from spinning into the chaos of constant flux that would surely result if we were to impetuously pursue every new liberal idea to spring forth from our fertile minds. And conservatives admirably believe in America, established order, family, freedom, and success. This all sounds wonderful.

But when it comes to other people who happen to be different from the establishment, Republicans seem to be downright mean and nasty.

We are constantly reminded of the meanness of Republicans over and over again. One recent example is evident in the xenophobic remarks of the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who recently referred to Mexican and other immigrants as rapists and murderers.

Basic common sense, however, tells us that human beings are not any more or less violent based upon where on a map they happened to have been born. And the evidence in studies bears this out as well by indicating that immigrants are no more likely to be violent than members of the overall population. Makes sense.

But Republicans seem to harbor some sort of a fear of foreigners and an aversion against other kinds of people who are not part of the established in-group. Their view seems to be that these other people are not like us, they pose a threat to us , and thus automatically they should be regarded as enemies.

There Arent Real Forces Within The Gop Leading Change

There is some appetite for change within the GOP. In those 2024 polls, at least a third of Republicans either were supporting a GOP presidential candidate other than Trump or were undecided.;

In YouGov Blues polling, only about 40 percent of Republicans identified themselves as Trump Republicans. A recent survey from Fabrizio, Lee and Associates, a GOP-leaning firm that worked on Trumps presidential campaigns, found that about 40 percent of Republican voters didnt want Trump to continue to be a leader in the party. Those numbers dont necessarily mean that those voters want the GOP to change drastically. But there is a substantial number of Trump-skeptical/ready-to-move-on-from-Trump Republican voters. But that sentiment isnt really showing up in the Republican Partys actions during the last three months basically everything GOP officials in states and in Washington are doing lines up with the Trumpian approach. So what gives?;

related:Why The Recent Violence Against Asian Americans May Solidify Their Support Of Democrats Read more. »

It is hard to see Republicans changing course, even if a meaningful minority of voters in the party wants changes, without some elite institutions and powerful people in the party pushing a new vision. And its hard to see real anti-Trumpism forces emerging in the GOP right now.;

Don’t Miss: Republican Flag Pins

Reality Check : Biden Cant Be Fdr

Theres no question that Biden is swinging for the fences. Beyond the emerging bipartisan infrastructure bill, he has proposed a far-reaching series of programs that would collectively move the United States several steps closer to the kind of social democracy prevalent in most industrialized nations: free community college, big support for childcare and homebound seniors, a sharp increase in Medicaid, more people eligible for Medicare, a reinvigorated labor movement. It is why 100 days into the administration, NPR was asking a commonly heard question: Can Biden Join FDR and LBJ In The Democratic Party’s Pantheon?

But the FDR and LBJ examples show conclusively why visions of a transformational Biden agenda are so hard to turn into reality. In 1933, FDR had won a huge popular and electoral landslide, after which he had a three-to-one Democratic majority in the House and a 59-vote majority in the Senate. Similarly, LBJ in 1964 had won a massive popular and electoral vote landslide, along with a Senate with 69 Democrats and a House with 295. Last November, on the other hand, only 42,000 votes in three key states kept Trump from winning re-election. Democrats losses in the House whittled their margin down to mid-single digits. The Senate is 50-50.

Most Republicans Said That President Obama Should Be Impeached Because Of The 2012 Attack On The Us Consulate In Benghazi

Their own investigations, however, proved them wrong. Every Congressional inquiry, including those by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, concluded that the Obama administration did nothing wrong regarding Benghazi, that there was no stand down order given, and that neither the President nor anyone in his administration lied about it. Each and every Republican investigation has reached this same conclusion, but Republicans continue to exploit this tragedy for political gain.

You May Like: How Long Has Trump Been In Politics

Nominating Mitt Romney For President

Despite the failure to grab the Senate, the GOP was still riding strong anti-Obamacare sentiment and voter frustration over the slow recovery from the Great Recession. Much of this was fueled by the Tea Party movement, which added a rare Republican grassroots element to the GOP.

When you think about it now, all of that made former Mitt Romney an extremely odd choice for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. He embodied the establishment GOP in almost every way. Romney had years as a hedge fund manager at Bain Capital on his resume at a time when most Americans were still blaming Wall Street for the nation’s economic woes. Worst of all, his universal health coverage plan enacted while he was governor of Massachusetts looked eerily like Obamacare. In fact, “Romneycare” was seen as one of the models the crafters of the Affordable Care Act used when they wrote the law. If the GOP wanted to put up a candidate who invigorated its anti-Obamacare and increasingly anti-establishment base, they couldn’t have missed the mark much more than they did with Mitt Romney.

Bidens Bill Is More Popular

We live in the middle of an era of tremendous polarization, yet Joe Bidens American Rescue Plan is shockingly popular. Its one of the most popular, least polarizing pieces of legislation in recent memory. According to a recent Politico/Morning Consultpoll, 76 percent of voters support Bidens plan, including a majority of Republicans.

Its worth noting that most polls show that 70 percent or so of Republicans believe Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Therefore, a large segment of people who think Biden stole the election also supports his COVID and economic recovery plans.

Obamas Recovery Act was never this popular. A January 2009 Gallup poll found that the public favored Obamas plan 52 percent to 38 percent.

These are good numbers but nowhere near the sky-high popularity of the Biden plan. At the time of this poll, Obamas approval rating was hovering around 70 percent. Bidens plan is more popular than he is Bidens job approval is 52.8 per FiveThirtyEight. That disparity is evidence of Bidens COVID plan’s political durability and the dangerous game Republicans are playing by opposing it. People who dont like Biden but like his plan are the exact people who the Republicans need to win over to take back Congress.

Read Also: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Times Republicans Were Wrong

It’s no secret that politicians tend to use exaggerated political rhetoric to get people to vote for them. In recent decades, Republicans have repeatedly made very ominous predictions about the horrors that will result from Democratic policies while painting a rosy picture of what will result from Republican policies. Now we have the luxury of looking back over the years to examine those predictions and policies. Below, you will find twenty-one examples of times Republicans were blatantly wrong.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

Why both Democrats and Republicans are wrong on inflation

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.;;

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

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Reality Check #: The Electoral College And The Senate Are Profoundly Undemocraticand Were Stuck With Them

Because the Constitution set up a state-by-state system for picking presidents, the massive Democratic majorities we now see in California and New York often mislead us about the partys national electoral prospects. In 2016, Hillary Clintons 3-million-vote plurality came entirely from California. In 2020, Bidens 7-million-vote edge came entirely from California and New York. These are largely what election experts call wasted votesDemocratic votes that dont, ultimately, help the Democrat to win. That imbalance explains why Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 and came within a handful of votes in three states from doing the same last November, despite his decisive popular-vote losses.

The response from aggrieved Democrats? Abolish the Electoral College! In practice, theyd need to get two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-fourths of the state legislatures, to ditch the process that gives Republicans their only plausible chance these days to win the White House. Shortly after the 2016 election, Gallup found that Republican support for abolishing the electoral college had dropped to 19 percent. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a state-by-state scheme to effectively abolish the Electoral College without changing the Constitution, hasnt seen support from a single red or purple state.

Surrendering Before The Battle

The midterm elections of 2014 gave the Republicans control of the Senate that they should have won in 2010. But even before the new members took their oaths of office, then-Senate Majority Leader-elect Mitch McConnell promised never to trigger a government shutdown. That effectively took the sharpest arrow out of the GOP’s congressional quiver, and again relieved the greatest pressure the Republicans could have exercised against Obama.

Don’t Miss: Did Donald Trump Say Republicans Are The Dumbest Group Of Voters

Unified Republican Opposition To Obama’s Policies Helped Them Retake Congress In 2010 Here’s Why It May Not Work Again

When the House of Representatives passed President Bidens COVID-relief plan last weekend, every single Republican voted against it. Earlier this week, Senator John Thune, Mitch McConnells deputy, predicted that every Republican Senator would vote against the Biden plan. Thunes reasoning was typically cynical. He said the Republicans wanted to:

make the Democrats own a piece of legislation that I think is going to have long-term adverse consequences.

This was the latest example of Republicans saying the quiet part out loud. Thune is admitting they are making a bet that the Biden plan wont work, and Republicans can reap the political rewards of a sub-standard economy in 2022. This is the same bet the Republicans made in 2009 when they decided to oppose Barack Obamas efforts to address the financial crisis.

Politically, the 2009 bet paid off. The Republicans rode a wave of economic discontent to control of the House and a massive set of wins down-ballot that would impact politics for more than a decade. But just because it worked then doesnt mean it will work now. The Republicans may be making a massive miscalculation by re-fighting the last war.

Republicans Said President Obama Would Raise Taxes Sky High

It never happened. Income taxes for over 95% of Americans remained the same or lower than they were before Obama was elected. The only people whose income taxes increased were those who make more than $400,000 per year, and their taxes rose only 3%. For most Americans, taxes are still lower now than they were under Reagan.

Read Also: Trump Quote In People Magazine 1998

Blowing The Midterm Elections

The 2008 elections gave Barack Obama a clear win in the presidential election and the Democrats a filibuster-proof supermajority in Congress. They proceeded to spend that political capital almost entirely on passing Obamacare in a lengthy process that included a number of unusual compromises with their own party members, like the “Cornhusker Kickback” and controversial legislative tricks like the “deemed as passed” maneuver. All of this took place even as the Affordable Care Act failed to gain majority support in the polls.

That set the stage for a strong Republican advantage going into the 2010 midterm elections. On paper, the GOP did score a resounding victory, picking up 63 seats in the House of Representatives and a net gain of six seats in the Senate.

But Republicans blew a solid chance to retake the Senate. They put up weak candidates in several winnable races. They included Sharon Angle in Nevada, who was seen as too radical and managed to lose to then-incumbent Harry Reid despite his very weak approval ratings in his home state. Arch-abortion opponent Ken Buck won the GOP nomination in Colorado, . The biggest mistake of all was Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. O’Donnell lost after she became infamous for her revelation that she had once experimented with witchcraft.

As a result, the Democrats kept control of the Senate and the Republicans lost a chance to force Obama into what could have been a series of advantageous compromises over the next six years.

The Gop Is A Grave Threat To American Democracy

Unless and until Republicans summon the wit and the will to salvage the party, ruin will follow.

About the author: Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

The hope of many conservative critics of Donald Trump was that soon after his defeat, and especially in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, the Republican Party would snap back into its former shape. The Trump presidency would end up being no more than an ugly parenthesis. The GOP would distance itself from Trump and Trumpism, and become a normal party once again.

But that dream soon died. The Trump presidency might have been the first act in a longer and even darker political drama, in which the Republican Party is becoming more radicalized. How long this will last is an open question; whether it is happening is not.

To better grasp whats happening among 2020 Trump voters, I spoke with Sarah Longwell, a lifelong conservative and political strategist who is now the publisher of The Bulwark, a news and opinion website that is home to anti-Trump conservatives. She is also the founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, now the Republican Accountability Project.

Recommended Reading: Donald Trump People Magazine Article 1998

Prior To Going To War In Iraq Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Optimistically Predicted The Iraq War Might Last Six Days Six Weeks I Doubt Six Months

What’s more, Vice-President Dick Cheney said we would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people after we overthrow Saddam.

They were both horribly wrong. Instead of six weeks or six months, the Iraq war lasted eight long and bloody years costing thousands of American lives. It led to an Iraqi civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites that took hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Many Iraqi militia groups were formed to fight against the U.S. forces that occupied Iraq. Whats more, Al Qaeda, which did not exist in Iraq before the war, used the turmoil in Iraq to establish a new foothold in that country.

The Iraq war was arguably the most tragic foreign policy blunder in US history.

[patriotsnet]

What Do Republicans Like About Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-do-republicans-like-about-trump/

What Do Republicans Like About Trump

How Wyoming Voters Are Reacting To Rep Cheneys Leadership Battle

What should the Republican Party do about Trump?

Many Republicans, including McCarthy, have decided that the path to retake majority control of the House requires embracing Trump, which means either repeating his false assertions that the election was stolen or keeping quiet, neither of which Cheney has been willing to do.

McCarthy has long viewed Trump as important to helping him become the next House speaker and important to helping Republicans win the midterm elections said a House Republican aide who works for neither McCarthy or Cheney.

The aide described the leadership fight as “a s— show” and “something that should never really have happened,” expressing anger over its handling.

“I think it’s dumb when we always try to claim that we’re this big party that we’re pushing out someone who has a slightly different opinion,” the aide said, adding, “It’s just absurd to me.”

Another senior Republican congressional aide argued that Cheney was likely to be removed because she keeps publicly disagreeing with McCarthy, not because of her criticism of Trump.

“As conference chair, was spending more time bashing Republicans than Democrats” at the recent House retreat, the aide said, adding that McCarthy “was literally the only thing keeping her in leadership.”

Many Republicans have lamented that the squabble is distracting from anti-Biden messaging, which is what they say will actually help them in the midterms.

America Should Deport Illegal Immigrants

Republicans believe that illegal immigrants, no matter the reason they are in this country, should be forcibly removed from the U.S. Although illegal immigrants are often motivated to come to the U.S. by companies who hire them, Republicans generally believe that the focus of the law should be on the illegal immigrants and not on the corporations that hire them.

Democrats Think Many Republicans Sincere And Point To Policy

Democrats, however, were somewhat more generous in their answers.;;More than four in ten Democratic voters ; felt that most Republican voters had the countrys best interests at heart . ;And many tried their best to answer from the others perspective. A 45-year-old male voter from Ohio imagined that as a Republican, he was motivated by Republicans harsh stance on immigration; standing up for the 2nd Amendment; promised tax cuts.;;A 30-year-old woman from Colorado felt that Republican votes reflected the desires to stop abortion stop gay marriage from ruining our country and give us our coal jobs back.

Other Democrats felt that their opponents were mostly motivated by the GOPs opposition to Obamacare, lower taxes and to support a party that reduced unemployment.;

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Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

Republicans Cant Understand Democrats

Only one in four Republican voters felt that most or almost all Democratic voters sincerely believed they were;voting in the best interests of the country.;;Rather, many Republicans told us that Democratic voters were brainwashed by the propaganda of the mainstream media, or voting solely in their self-interest to preserve undeserved welfare and food stamp benefits.

We asked every Republican in the sample to do their best to imagine that they were a Democrat and sincerely believed that the Democratic Party was best for the country.;;We asked them to explain their support for the Democratic Party as an actual Democratic voter might.;;For example, a 64-year-old strong Republican man from Illinois surmised that Democrats want to help the poor, save Social Security, and tax the rich.;;;

But most had trouble looking at the world through Democratic eyes. Typical was a a 59-year-old Floridian who wrote I dont want to work and I want cradle to grave assistance. In other words, Mommy!;Indeed, roughly one in six Republican voters answered in the persona of a Democratic voter who is motivated free college, free health care, free welfare, and so on.;;They see Democrats as voting in order to get free stuff without having to work for it was extremely common roughly one in six Republican voters used the word free in the their answers, whereas no real Democratic voters in our sample answered this way.;

Don’t Miss: Have The Democrats Tried To Impeach Every Republican President Since Eisenhower

Emboldened ‘unchanged’ Trump Looks To Re

Across the party as a whole, an NBC News poll released late last month found, a majority of Republicans considered themselves supporters of the GOP, compared to just 44 percent who supported Trump above all, the first time that has been the case since July 2019.

But mild dissatisfaction with Trump isn’t the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes, and they’re buckled in for the long haul. That creates the opening for more traditional Republicans to toy with forming a new party but it’s a slim one.

Liz Cheney Of Wyoming

The most vocal House Republican to vote to impeach Mr. Trump, Ms. Cheney has borne the brunt of the former presidents wrath. Last week, in an attempt to narrow a crowded field, Mr. Trump endorsed Harriet Hageman, a former Republican National Committee member and a 2018 candidate for governor in Wyoming, in the primary against Ms. Cheney.

Former Trump aides have rushed to Ms. Hagemans side to prop up her nascent campaign and persuade other candidates to drop out of the race. Ms. Cheney has remained unwavering in her criticism of Mr. Trump, describing his unwillingness to accept the results of the 2020 election as a threat to democracy and defiantly daring Mr. Trump and his allies to bring it on.

If Harriet wants to cast her lot with those folks, Ms. Cheney told Wyoming reporters this month, I would note that theyre the same people who were involved in misleading millions of Americans about the election in 2020.

Also Check: How Did The Democrats And Republicans Switch

Republicans Almost Won In 2020

To torture this autopsy metaphor even more: Theres a good argument that the party is still very much alive.

Historically, parties have done more self-reflection and been more likely to change course when theyve hit electoral low points. In the 1988 presidential race, Democrats carried only 10 states and Washington, D.C., and that loss was their third consecutive failed bid for the White House. In 2008, Obama won the popular vote by 7 percentage points Republicans didnt even carry Indiana. So of course the parties were ready to rethink things after those defeats.

In contrast, Trump would have won reelection had he done only about 1 percentage point better in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and about 3 points better in Michigan. Republicans would still control the Senate had Republican David Perdue won about 60,000 more votes against Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgias Senate runoff. A slew of court rulings that forced the redrawing of House district lines in less favorable ways to the GOP helped the Democrats win several seats otherwise, Republicans might have won back the House. Add all that up, and 2020 wasnt that far from resulting in a Republican trifecta.;

Also, Republicans did really well in state legislative races and gained ground among Black and Latino voters nationally .

related:What Did CPAC Tell Us About The Future Of The GOP? Read more. »

Trump Slams ‘wayward’ Republicans For Capitol Riot Vote

What Do Republicans Do if Trump Runs in 2024?

US Capitol riots

Former US president Donald Trump blasted “wayward Republicans” after lawmakers made a rare bipartisan push to investigate the Capitol riot.

With the support of 35 Republicans, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted 252-175 to look into the events of 6 January.

Party leaders had urged Republicans to oppose the bill, with Mr Trump labelling it a “Democrat trap”.

The bill appears to lack the Republican support it needs to pass in the Senate.

It seeks to create an independent inquiry modelled on the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The legislation establishes a 10-member body, evenly split between the two main parties, that would make recommendations by the end of the year on how to prevent any repeat of the Capitol invasion.

Trump supporters stormed Congress on 6 January in a failed bid to thwart certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in November’s election.

Wednesday’s vote was seen as a loyalty test to the former president for members of his party.

All 10 of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the days after the Capitol riot for incitement of insurrection were among the 35 who voted for the commission.

In a statement after the vote, Mr Trump hit out at the “wayward” Republican group, saying, “they just can’t help themselves”.

“Sometimes there are consequences to being ineffective and weak,” Mr Trump added.

Don’t Miss: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

A Ponderous Speech Poorly Delivered

In a ponderous, hour-long speech more akin to a State of the Union address than a nomination acceptance, Donald Trump alternated between ticking through his record as president and circling around, like a prize fighter, to launch strikes on his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.

It was a blunderbuss of attacks, of varying levels of validity, in the hope that some will draw blood – on trade, immigration, education, energy and foreign policy. But most of all, Mr Trump sought to paint Mr Biden as in league with the protesters on the streets and the more left-wing members of the Democratic party.

The setting of the speech was majestic – on the grounds of the White House and in view of the Washington monument.

The delivery from a president who thrives more on rousing rallies than rhetorical set-pieces, however, frequently landed with a thud.

How Things Got This Bad

6) The Republican turn against democracy begins with race

Support for authoritarian ideas in America is closely tied to the countrys long-running racial conflicts.

This chart, from a by Vanderbilt professor Larry Bartels, shows a statistical analysis of a survey of Republican voters, analyzing the link between respondents score on a measure of ethnic antagonism and their support for four anti-democratic statements .

The graphic shows a clear finding: The higher a voter scores on the ethnic antagonism scale, the more likely they are tosupport anti-democratic ideas. This held true even when Bartels used regression analyses to compare racial attitudes to other predictors, like support for Trump. The strongest predictor by far of these antidemocratic attitudes is ethnic antagonism, he writes.

For students of American history, this shouldnt be a surprise.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act cemented Democrats as the party of racial equality, causing racially resentful Democrats in the South and elsewhere to defect to the Republican Party. This sorting process, which took place over the next few decades, is the key reason America is so polarized.

7) Partisanship causes Republicans to justify anti-democratic behavior

This chart is a little hard to parse, but it illustrates a crucial finding from one of the best recent papers on anti-democratic sentiment in America: how decades of rising partisanship made an anti-democratic GOP possible.

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

How Americas Political System Creates Space For Republicans To Undermine Democracy

9) Republicans havean unpopular policy agenda

Let Them Eat Tweets

The Republican policy agenda is extremely unpopular. The chart here, taken from Jacob Hacker and Paul Piersons recent book Let Them Eat Tweets, compares the relative popularity of the two major legislative efforts of Trumps first term tax cuts and Obamacare repeal to similar high-priority bills in years past. The contrast is striking: The GOPs modern economic agenda is widely disliked even compared to unpopular bills of the past, a finding consistent with a lot of recent polling data.

Hacker and Pierson argue that this drives Republicans emphasis on culture war and anti-Democratic identity politics. This strategy, which they term plutocratic populism, allows the partys super-wealthy backers to get their tax cuts while the base gets the partisan street fight they crave.

The GOP can do this because Americas political system is profoundly unrepresentative. The coalition it can assemble overwhelmingly white Christian, heavily rural, and increasingly less educated is a shrinking minority that has lost the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential contests. But its voters are ideally positioned to give Republicans advantages in the Electoral College and the Senate, allowing the party to remain viable despite representing significantly fewer voters than the Democrats do.

10) Some of the most consequential Republican attacks on democracy happen at the state level

Republicans Will Defend Their Caesar But New Revelations Show Trumps True Threat

The DoJ has dealt two blows and the 6 January committee is winding up for more. They know democracy is in danger

Sidney Blumenthal: What did Jim Jordan know and when?

On Friday, Donald Trump received two more unwelcome reminders he is no longer president. Much as he and his minions chant Lock her up about Hillary Clinton and other enemies, it is he who remains in legal jeopardy and political limbo.

Trumps allies on Capitol Hill will again be forced to defend the indefensible. That wont be a bother: QAnon is their creed, Trump is their Caesar and Gladiator remains the movie for our time.

But in other ways, the world has changed. The justice department is no longer an extension of Trumps West Wing. The levers of government are no longer at his disposal.

Next year, much as Trump helped deliver both Georgia Senate seats to the Democrats in January, on the eve of the insurrection, his antics may cost Republicans their chance to retake the Senate.

Documents that would probably not have seen the light of day had Trump succeeded in overturning the election are now open to scrutiny, be they contemporaneous accounts of his conversations about that dishonest aim or his tax returns.

Those who claim that the events of 6 January were something other than a failed coup attempt would do well to come up with a better line. Or a different alternate reality.

Prospective witnesses before the House select committee on the events of 6 January ought to start worrying

Don’t Miss: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

Poverty Must Solve Itself

Republicans believe that poor people are usually poor for a reason, be it laziness, choice or whatever. Unless we demand that people pull themselves up by the bootstraps and solve their own problems, people will not be motivated to do things. Therefore, the issue of poverty cannot be solved by the government. Charity should be the choice of individuals.

Opinion: Cmon Republicans Its Time To Do The Right Thing On Health Care

When they went home for the July 4th recess, Republican members of Congress did one of two things: Either they met with constituents and were pummeled with angry questions about their disastrous health-care bill, or they hid out, trying to avoid their constituents so that they wouldnt be pummeled with angry questions about their disastrous health-care bill. Predictably, support for the bill among Republican senators is slipping away, which is not surprising given that this is the most unpopular piece of legislation in the history of polling.

So the time has come for Republicans to cut their losses and do the right thing. It wont be easy, but there are no easy options left for them.

Republicans need to admit to themselves that there is no great victory to be had. There will be political fallout no matter what the 2018 elections are going to be brutal but their choice now is between passing nothing, passing a bill that is so dreadful that it wins them the undying rage of the public, or a compromise that actually helps solve some of the problems they profess to care about.

What Republicans need to do now is drop the idea of repealing the Affordable Care Act and join together with Democrats to fix the problems in the individual market. Its not what they hoped for, but its a lot better than the alternative for everyone.

Also Check: When Did Democrats And Republicans Switch Ideologies

Republicans And Their Declared Positions On Donald Trump

Elected officials’ positions on Donald Trump Federal:Republicans and their declared positions on Donald Trump Republicans supporting Donald Trump Republicans opposing Donald Trump State and local: Republican reactions to 2005 Trump tape

In a typical general election year, elected officials readily line up behind their party’s presidential nominee. In 2012, for example, The Hill reported that only four Republican members of Congress had declined to endorse Mitt Romney by mid-September of that year. “All other House and Senate Republicans” had already endorsed the Republican nominee.

But 2016 was not a typical general election year.

Controversial comments from the GOP’s 2016 nominee, Donald Trump, about women, Muslims, Hispanics, and veterans who were prisoners of war caused some Republican lawmakers to distance themselves from the businessman, while others outright denounced him.

This page tracked the stances of Republican lawmakers on Trump throughout the 2016 presidential election: Did they support him? Did they oppose him? Or were they somewhere in between? The focus of this page is on Republican members of Congress and Republican governors, but we also have included some information on influential Republicans who have served in Republican presidential administrations.

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-like-donald-trump/

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

We Need Somebody Who’ll Finally Get Tough On Foreign Policy

Why Do So Many Republicans Like Donald Trump?

Well, there’s no doubt that Trump talks a tough game when it comes to other countries â he sort of makes it sound like the world will just roll over in front of him, exposing its collective belly for him to scratch. You may remember when he insisted that he’d bring oil prices down by swearing at OPEC leaders back in 2011, when he was teasing a possible 2012 run. Here’s what he told a Las Vegas audience, as detailed by Mother Jones.

We have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you’re not going to raise that f***ing price.

He also had a simple message for China, saying “listen you motherf****rs, we’re going to tax you 25 percent!” This is in keeping with the general level of seriousness he seems to apply to his prognostications â he also insists that if he’s elected, he’ll force the Mexican government to finance a border wall, and that’s still nowhere near the most antagonistic component of his far-right immigration plan.

If you’re the kind of person who wants some more strident red lines in international negotiations, say â to try to secure those ever-elusive “better deals” that some conservatives have been harping on lately â that’s fine, even if we might disagree. But be forewarned: what Trump’s putting out there is little more than presumptuous bombast, so don’t be shocked if that ridiculous wall idea never comes to fruition.

Why Do Trump Voters Believe His Lies It’s Not Because They’re Stupid

The cornerstones of President Trumps campaign were promises to appeal Obamacare and ban Muslims from the US. It took Trump less than 70 days to fail on both promises.

And yet, despite his epic fails, lies and incompetence, Trumps base supports him like theyre spanx and hes Marie Osmond. What explains this loyalty? Science has the answer.

Have a look at this puzzle.

Which drawing best illustrates the correct mechanics and structure of a bicycle?

How you answer will help explain the loyalty of Trump voters. Ill explain in just a bit. But first

What I wanted to know is WTF!?

How can two people look at President Trump and have such polar opposite observations? To find out, I conducted an experiment. I set up a fake account and joined more than 50 pro-Trump Facebook groups. I created a meme that said: What do you like about President Trump, then I shared it.

I got more than a thousand responses in 24 hours and the things people wrote most is that they like Trump because hes not a politician hes a real American not corrupted by Washington, and beholden to no one.

The next most common response was that Trump believes in God.

This was followed in near equal measure by Trump Loves America, he keeps his promises, that hes a good businessman, that he cant be bought, and that he tells the truth.

OK. So, one of them is true! Trump is not a politician. One could go either wayhis love for America.

I got nearly 700 responses.

WATCH NOW:

Opinionthe Gop Needs Women And Centrist Voters Ousting Cheney Only Nets Them Trump Loyalists

More important, experts say, are the shifting demographics of those neighborhoods. “Suburbs are simply far more diverse than they used to be,” a FiveThirtyEight analysis explains. “Suburbs have also become increasingly well-educated, and that may actually better explain why so many suburbs and exurbs are turning blue.” Both communities of color and Americans with higher education tend to vote Democratic combine those factors and you have a recipe for major electoral shifts.

And there’s no indication that shift is reversing. Recent polling from Harvard’s Kennedy School shows Biden dominating the suburbs, where 6 in 10 voters view the president favorably. Biden and Democrats’ lead in suburbs is such an existential threat to the GOP that Georgia Republicans have collapsed into infighting over how suburbs once represented by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich are now reliably Democratic bulwarks.

The Call for American Renewal is also hoping to recapture the support of women who have been fleeing the GOP since Trump’s first campaign. That may be harder than they think, too. Though it’s possible the group could restore some of the ground Trump lost to women, who went nearly 6-in-10 for Biden, Republicans have been losing women voters for years.

Mild dissatisfaction with Trump isnt the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes.

Poll Results Are Fake Unless Theyre Good Trump Says

During his speech at the Dallas convention Sunday night, Trump said he only would have believed the results of CPACs straw poll if they were his favor, Business Insider reported.

Now, if its bad, I just say its fake, the former president told the crowd, reported Insider. If its good, I say thats the most accurate poll, perhaps ever.

In the past, Trump has decried similar things he doesnt like as false, like referring to unfavorable media coverage as fake news.

A Large Share Of Republicans Want Trump To Remain Head Of The Party Cnbc Survey Shows

A CNBC survey conducted in the days before former President Donald Trump‘s impeachment trial finds a large share of Republicans want him to remain head of their party, but a majority of Americans want him out of politics.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey shows 54% of Americans want Trump “to remove himself from politics entirely.” That was the sentiment of 81% of Democrats and 47% of Independents, but only 26% of Republicans.

When it comes to Republicans, 74% want him to stay active in some way, including 48% who want him to remain head of the Republican Party, 11% who want him to start a third party, and 12% who say he should remain active in politics but not as head of any party.

“If we’re talking about Donald Trump’s future, at the moment, the survey shows he still has this strong core support within his own party who really want him to continue to be their leader,” said Jay Campbell, a partner with Hart Research and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

But Micah Roberts, the survey’s Republican pollster, and a partner with Public Opinion Strategies, emphasized the change from when Trump was president. Polls before the election regularly showed Trump with GOP approval ratings around 90%, meaning at least some Republicans have defected from Trump.

Republicans Cant Understand Democrats

Only one in four Republican voters felt that most or almost all Democratic voters sincerely believed they were voting in the best interests of the country.  Rather, many Republicans told us that Democratic voters were brainwashed by the propaganda of the mainstream media, or voting solely in their self-interest to preserve undeserved welfare and food stamp benefits.

We asked every Republican in the sample to do their best to imagine that they were a Democrat and sincerely believed that the Democratic Party was best for the country.  We asked them to explain their support for the Democratic Party as an actual Democratic voter might.  For example, a 64-year-old strong Republican man from Illinois surmised that Democrats want to help the poor, save Social Security, and tax the rich.   

But most had trouble looking at the world through Democratic eyes. Typical was a a 59-year-old Floridian who wrote I dont want to work and I want cradle to grave assistance. In other words, Mommy! Indeed, roughly one in six Republican voters answered in the persona of a Democratic voter who is motivated free college, free health care, free welfare, and so on.  They see Democrats as voting in order to get free stuff without having to work for it was extremely common roughly one in six Republican voters used the word free in the their answers, whereas no real Democratic voters in our sample answered this way. 

Trumps Role As Republican Party Leader Is Becoming Stronger

This weekends CPAC straw poll results showed that Trumps popularity along with DeSantis in the Republican Party has grown in the last six months, according to Forbes.

In February, only 55% of attendees of a similar CPAC event in Orlando, Florida, said they wanted Trump to lead the ticket in 2024, Forbes reported.

If Trump stayed in political retirement, or at least stayed off the presidential primary ballot in 2024, DeSantis lead the poll with 43% attending Republicans choosing him in Februarys hypothetical presidential primary.

Related

Inside the newsroom: Words matter, including the hateful Murder the media

He Appeals To Rural Voters

More than any other group, Americas rural people have been disempowered and abandoned due to the policies pushed by urban elites. Theyve seen their jobs evaporate and their local culture obliterated, only to be replaced by a Walmart and McDonalds in every town. They also realize that most of the media and academia see them as ignorant and backwards and laughable. instead, Trump treats them with respect. If you look at an electoral map of 2016, Clinton won all the urban areas and Trump won all of the rural ones. Thats because he was the first politician in memory who didnt sneer at them.

Hes Nationalist Rather Than Globalist

Why Do People Act Like Black Conservatives Don’t Exist? | NBC News

He realizes that the ex-factory worker in Ohio lost his job because it was sent to Malaysia. He knows that some banker in Brussels is more interested in increasing his stock portfolio than whether doing so will render huge swaths of the American heartland jobless and pill-addicted. He cares more about what a homeowner in Iowa thinks about him than what some sneering cosmopolite at a Parisian cocktail party thinks.

Emboldened ‘unchanged’ Trump Looks To Re

Across the party as a whole, an NBC News poll released late last month found, a majority of Republicans considered themselves supporters of the GOP, compared to just 44 percent who supported Trump above all, the first time that has been the case since July 2019.

But mild dissatisfaction with Trump isn’t the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes, and they’re buckled in for the long haul. That creates the opening for more traditional Republicans to toy with forming a new party but it’s a slim one.

Why Does Donald Trump Still Seem To Hold Sway Over The Republican Party

Why after leading the Republican Party during a period when it lost its majority in the US House of Representatives and the Senate and its power in the White House does former president Donald Trump still seem to hold the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Reagan in his thrall?

For US politics watchers, who on the weekend watched on as 43 Republican senators voted to acquit Trump of an act of reckless incitement played out in front of the cameras, that is the $64,000 question.

Or rather, it’s the 74,222,593-vote question.

That is the record number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump last November more than has been cast for any previous president. Unfortunately for them, an even greater number 81,281,502 voted for his rival, now-President Joe Biden.

As much as anything else, those numbers sum up the quandary Republicans find themselves in.

They have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and only remain competitive because older white voters, who tend to be more likely to support conservative candidates, also tend to vote in greater numbers in a non-compulsory electoral system.

Those same voters are also the most likely to cast a ballot in next year’s house and senate primaries, and the next midterm elections in November 2022 which will again determine who holds power in congress. They are the voters who initially flocked to Donald Trump.

All The Republicans Who Wont Support Trump

Numerous top G.O.P. officials have said publicly or privately that they will not be backing the presidents re-election. Some have even endorsed Joe Biden. Heres a look at where they all stand.

Follow our latest coverage of the Biden vs. Trump 2020 election here.

As November draws nearer, some current and former Republican officials have begun to break ranks with the rest of their party, saying in public and private conversations that they will not support President Trump in his re-election. A number have even said that they will be voting for his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

As Mr. Trumps political standing has slipped, fueled by his failures in handling the coronavirus pandemic and by the economic recession, some Republicans have found it easier to publicly renounce their backing.

Here is a running list of those who have said they will support Mr. Biden in the fall, those who simply wont support Mr. Trump, and those who have hinted they may not back the president.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who announced their opposition to the election of Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican Party nominee and eventual winner of the election, as the President of the United States. It also includes former Republicans who left the party due to their opposition to Trump and as well as Republicans who endorsed a different candidate. It includes Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the nominee. Some of the Republicans on this list threw their support to Trump after he won the presidential election, while many of them continue to oppose Trump. Offices listed are those held at the time of the 2016 election.

Why Do Evangelical Christians Love Trump

To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault.

White evangelical support for Donald Trump has long puzzled observers. To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault. Scholars have commented on his crassness, defined by historian Walter G. Moss as a lack refinement, tact, sensitivity, taste or delicacy. Others have observed how he has broken rules of civil political engagement.

But in my research on evangelical masculinity, I have found that Trumps leadership style aligns closely with a rugged ideal of Christian manhood championed by evangelicals for more than half a century.

As I show in my book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, conservative evangelicals embraced the ideal of a masculine protector in the 1960s and 1970s in order to confront the perceived threats of communism and feminism.

Believing that the feminist rejection of macho masculinity left the nation in peril, conservative white evangelicals promoted a testosterone-fueled vision of Christian manhood. In their view, America needed strong men to defend Christian America on the battlefields of Vietnam and to reassert order on the home front.

Why it Matters

How I Do My Work

The Baffling Continued Support For Donald Trump Explained

Donald Trump has, by almost any measure, been the worst president in U.S. history, or at least within the memory of people living in 2020. But for some reason, he has remained popular with a sizable segment of Americans. While Joe Biden defeated him in the presidential election, 74 million Americans voted for Trump, and a large percentage of Republicans, like Trump himself, are denying that he actually lost the election. So why do Trumps diehard fans stay that way?

Yes, hes made some people happy with his tax cuts and appointments of right-wing judges, and he is beloved by white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, but he has downplayed a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 276,000 Americans and caused an economic crash. One would think his personal style, bullying, and insults would alienate many people. Yet his approval ratings have remained stable at around 40 percent for most of his presidency, and the 40 percent cant all be fringe elements. What could possibly account for the continued unwavering support of Trump loyalists?

I think that there are a number of things at play, crosscurrents, if you will, said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.

Winterhof likewise said she observed a decline in enthusiasm among voters who were counting on Trump for positive change and agreed that Biden was better positioned than Clinton among voters overall.

Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

The history of American third parties doesn’t offer much hope. Last year, Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen garnered just 1.2 percent of the vote in a typical third-party showing. In fact, no third-party candidate has achieved a double-digit popular vote total since Ross Perot in 1992, and data trends indicate that popular support for third parties has been in steady decline since then.

And even if the GOP 2.0 secures a marquee name like former Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah to champion its message, the role would likely be as a political spoiler rather than a serious candidate: Even former President Theodore Roosevelt, at the time one of the most popular figures in American culture, barely surpassed a quarter of the popular vote and garnered just 88 electoral votes in an iconic third-party campaign in 1912. No one on the Call for American Renewal bench commands anything near Roosevelt’s profile and platform.

That hasn’t stopped disaffected Republicans from setting their sights on fence-sitting “Biden Republicans” mostly suburban moderates who broke with Trump but remain aligned with GOP ideas like small government that have gone extinct in the post-Trump GOP. Those voters were largely responsible for Trump’s upset victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016, while Biden returned formerly right-leaning suburbs to the Democratic column to help power his 2020 win.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

Why LGBTQ Republicans Hate The Party’s Platform But Like Donald Trump

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.  

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

He Says He Wants To Make America Great Again

Aided by global finance and a compliant press, Americas middle and working classes have been sold down the river. Nearly all of the manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, and what jobs remain here have seen their wages pushed down due to unrestrained immigration. America, once the shining light of the world, became a country ashamed of itself and that felt obligated to apologize to the rest of the world for being more successful than other countries. Something is deeply wrong when someone feels obligated to apologize for winningafter all, you never see that in sports. Trump wants to return us to a better time when people bragged about being American instead of apologizing for it

What Americans Really Think

Social scientists and psychologists believe that people subscribe to conspiracy theories for the simple reason that these theories often tend to validate their views of the world. Republicans believe all kinds of things about President Obama, and many liberals believe similar theories about President George W. Bush.

“For both liberals and conservatives, for everybody, there’s just this tendency to want to believe things that fit our worldview as we believe it,” said Joanne Miller, a political scientist the University of Minnesota and one of the authors of the new study. “Both liberals and conservatives are subject to that. It’s a human tendency to want to believe what we believe.”

In particular, conspiracy theories offer a simple explanation, with an identifiable villain, for the complicated reality of modern politics. That simplicity is appealing.

Miller and her collaborators — Christina Farhart and Colorado State University’s Kyle Saunders — used data from surveys of Americans who were asked whether they thought statements about politicians and public figures were true.

A few conspiracy theories were on the list. Four were designed to suss out conservative respondents:

that Obama was born outside the United States;

that his health-care reform established “death panels;”

that global warming was a hoax

and that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

There were four more theories for the other side:

Why Do Republicans Continue To Support Trump Despite Years Of Scandal

It was late September last year when a whistleblower complaint revealed that President Trump had tried to force the Ukrainian government to investigate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Within moments the scandal captured headlines. What followed was months of back and forth as Republicans supported the president while the Democrats used their political capital to get him impeached.

But this was not the first time   or the last time  the president was caught in the middle of a scandal. Since the impeachment trial that followed the Ukraine incident, episodes from The New York Times uncovering unsavory details from President Trumps tax returns, to his questionable dismissal of multiple Inspectors General, to his refusal to clearly condemn white supremacists have all sparked widespread media attention and partisan fighting in 2020. 

Although with his polls dropping, some Republicans may finally be distancing themselves from the President, the question has been regularly asked the past four years: why do the Republicans continue to support the President despite these troubling charges being leveled at him? And, what is it that the Democrats stand to gain from repeated allegations?

 In addition to demonstrating how polarization accelerates scandals, the paper also found that: 

Republicans Think Democrats Always Cheat

The Republican strategy has several sources of motivation, but the most important is a widely shared belief that Democrats in large cities i.e., racial minorities engage in systematic vote fraud, election after election. We win because of our ideas, we lose elections because they cheat us, insisted Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News last night. The Bush administration pursued phantasmal vote fraud allegations, firing prosecutors for failing to uncover evidence of the schemes Republicans insisted were happening under their noses. In 2008, even a Republican as civic-minded as John McCain accused ACORN, a voter-registration group, of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

The persistent failure to produce evidence of mass-scale vote fraud has not discouraged Republicans from believing in its existence. The failure to expose it merely proves how well-hidden the conspiracy is. Republicans may despair of their chances of proving Trumps vote-fraud charges in open court, but many of them believe his wild lies reflect a deeper truth.

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-like-donald-trump/

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

We Need Somebody Who’ll Finally Get Tough On Foreign Policy

Why Do So Many Republicans Like Donald Trump?

Well, there’s no doubt that Trump talks a tough game when it comes to other countries â he sort of makes it sound like the world will just roll over in front of him, exposing its collective belly for him to scratch. You may remember when he insisted that he’d bring oil prices down by swearing at OPEC leaders back in 2011, when he was teasing a possible 2012 run. Here’s what he told a Las Vegas audience, as detailed by Mother Jones.

We have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you’re not going to raise that f***ing price.

He also had a simple message for China, saying “listen you motherf****rs, we’re going to tax you 25 percent!” This is in keeping with the general level of seriousness he seems to apply to his prognostications â he also insists that if he’s elected, he’ll force the Mexican government to finance a border wall, and that’s still nowhere near the most antagonistic component of his far-right immigration plan.

If you’re the kind of person who wants some more strident red lines in international negotiations, say â to try to secure those ever-elusive “better deals” that some conservatives have been harping on lately â that’s fine, even if we might disagree. But be forewarned: what Trump’s putting out there is little more than presumptuous bombast, so don’t be shocked if that ridiculous wall idea never comes to fruition.

Why Do Trump Voters Believe His Lies It’s Not Because They’re Stupid

The cornerstones of President Trumps campaign were promises to appeal Obamacare and ban Muslims from the US. It took Trump less than 70 days to fail on both promises.

And yet, despite his epic fails, lies and incompetence, Trumps base supports him like theyre spanx and hes Marie Osmond. What explains this loyalty? Science has the answer.

Have a look at this puzzle.

Which drawing best illustrates the correct mechanics and structure of a bicycle?

How you answer will help explain the loyalty of Trump voters. Ill explain in just a bit. But first

What I wanted to know is WTF!?

How can two people look at President Trump and have such polar opposite observations? To find out, I conducted an experiment. I set up a fake account and joined more than 50 pro-Trump Facebook groups. I created a meme that said: What do you like about President Trump, then I shared it.

I got more than a thousand responses in 24 hours and the things people wrote most is that they like Trump because hes not a politician hes a real American not corrupted by Washington, and beholden to no one.

The next most common response was that Trump believes in God.

This was followed in near equal measure by Trump Loves America, he keeps his promises, that hes a good businessman, that he cant be bought, and that he tells the truth.

OK. So, one of them is true! Trump is not a politician. One could go either wayhis love for America.

I got nearly 700 responses.

WATCH NOW:

Opinionthe Gop Needs Women And Centrist Voters Ousting Cheney Only Nets Them Trump Loyalists

More important, experts say, are the shifting demographics of those neighborhoods. “Suburbs are simply far more diverse than they used to be,” a FiveThirtyEight analysis explains. “Suburbs have also become increasingly well-educated, and that may actually better explain why so many suburbs and exurbs are turning blue.” Both communities of color and Americans with higher education tend to vote Democratic combine those factors and you have a recipe for major electoral shifts.

And there’s no indication that shift is reversing. Recent polling from Harvard’s Kennedy School shows Biden dominating the suburbs, where 6 in 10 voters view the president favorably. Biden and Democrats’ lead in suburbs is such an existential threat to the GOP that Georgia Republicans have collapsed into infighting over how suburbs once represented by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich are now reliably Democratic bulwarks.

The Call for American Renewal is also hoping to recapture the support of women who have been fleeing the GOP since Trump’s first campaign. That may be harder than they think, too. Though it’s possible the group could restore some of the ground Trump lost to women, who went nearly 6-in-10 for Biden, Republicans have been losing women voters for years.

Mild dissatisfaction with Trump isnt the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes.

Poll Results Are Fake Unless Theyre Good Trump Says

During his speech at the Dallas convention Sunday night, Trump said he only would have believed the results of CPACs straw poll if they were his favor, Business Insider reported.

Now, if its bad, I just say its fake, the former president told the crowd, reported Insider. If its good, I say thats the most accurate poll, perhaps ever.

In the past, Trump has decried similar things he doesnt like as false, like referring to unfavorable media coverage as fake news.

A Large Share Of Republicans Want Trump To Remain Head Of The Party Cnbc Survey Shows

A CNBC survey conducted in the days before former President Donald Trump‘s impeachment trial finds a large share of Republicans want him to remain head of their party, but a majority of Americans want him out of politics.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey shows 54% of Americans want Trump “to remove himself from politics entirely.” That was the sentiment of 81% of Democrats and 47% of Independents, but only 26% of Republicans.

When it comes to Republicans, 74% want him to stay active in some way, including 48% who want him to remain head of the Republican Party, 11% who want him to start a third party, and 12% who say he should remain active in politics but not as head of any party.

“If we’re talking about Donald Trump’s future, at the moment, the survey shows he still has this strong core support within his own party who really want him to continue to be their leader,” said Jay Campbell, a partner with Hart Research and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

But Micah Roberts, the survey’s Republican pollster, and a partner with Public Opinion Strategies, emphasized the change from when Trump was president. Polls before the election regularly showed Trump with GOP approval ratings around 90%, meaning at least some Republicans have defected from Trump.

Republicans Cant Understand Democrats

Only one in four Republican voters felt that most or almost all Democratic voters sincerely believed they were voting in the best interests of the country.  Rather, many Republicans told us that Democratic voters were brainwashed by the propaganda of the mainstream media, or voting solely in their self-interest to preserve undeserved welfare and food stamp benefits.

We asked every Republican in the sample to do their best to imagine that they were a Democrat and sincerely believed that the Democratic Party was best for the country.  We asked them to explain their support for the Democratic Party as an actual Democratic voter might.  For example, a 64-year-old strong Republican man from Illinois surmised that Democrats want to help the poor, save Social Security, and tax the rich.   

But most had trouble looking at the world through Democratic eyes. Typical was a a 59-year-old Floridian who wrote I dont want to work and I want cradle to grave assistance. In other words, Mommy! Indeed, roughly one in six Republican voters answered in the persona of a Democratic voter who is motivated free college, free health care, free welfare, and so on.  They see Democrats as voting in order to get free stuff without having to work for it was extremely common roughly one in six Republican voters used the word free in the their answers, whereas no real Democratic voters in our sample answered this way. 

Trumps Role As Republican Party Leader Is Becoming Stronger

This weekends CPAC straw poll results showed that Trumps popularity along with DeSantis in the Republican Party has grown in the last six months, according to Forbes.

In February, only 55% of attendees of a similar CPAC event in Orlando, Florida, said they wanted Trump to lead the ticket in 2024, Forbes reported.

If Trump stayed in political retirement, or at least stayed off the presidential primary ballot in 2024, DeSantis lead the poll with 43% attending Republicans choosing him in Februarys hypothetical presidential primary.

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Inside the newsroom: Words matter, including the hateful Murder the media

He Appeals To Rural Voters

More than any other group, Americas rural people have been disempowered and abandoned due to the policies pushed by urban elites. Theyve seen their jobs evaporate and their local culture obliterated, only to be replaced by a Walmart and McDonalds in every town. They also realize that most of the media and academia see them as ignorant and backwards and laughable. instead, Trump treats them with respect. If you look at an electoral map of 2016, Clinton won all the urban areas and Trump won all of the rural ones. Thats because he was the first politician in memory who didnt sneer at them.

Hes Nationalist Rather Than Globalist

Why Do People Act Like Black Conservatives Don’t Exist? | NBC News

He realizes that the ex-factory worker in Ohio lost his job because it was sent to Malaysia. He knows that some banker in Brussels is more interested in increasing his stock portfolio than whether doing so will render huge swaths of the American heartland jobless and pill-addicted. He cares more about what a homeowner in Iowa thinks about him than what some sneering cosmopolite at a Parisian cocktail party thinks.

Emboldened ‘unchanged’ Trump Looks To Re

Across the party as a whole, an NBC News poll released late last month found, a majority of Republicans considered themselves supporters of the GOP, compared to just 44 percent who supported Trump above all, the first time that has been the case since July 2019.

But mild dissatisfaction with Trump isn’t the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes, and they’re buckled in for the long haul. That creates the opening for more traditional Republicans to toy with forming a new party but it’s a slim one.

Why Does Donald Trump Still Seem To Hold Sway Over The Republican Party

Why after leading the Republican Party during a period when it lost its majority in the US House of Representatives and the Senate and its power in the White House does former president Donald Trump still seem to hold the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Reagan in his thrall?

For US politics watchers, who on the weekend watched on as 43 Republican senators voted to acquit Trump of an act of reckless incitement played out in front of the cameras, that is the $64,000 question.

Or rather, it’s the 74,222,593-vote question.

That is the record number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump last November more than has been cast for any previous president. Unfortunately for them, an even greater number 81,281,502 voted for his rival, now-President Joe Biden.

As much as anything else, those numbers sum up the quandary Republicans find themselves in.

They have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and only remain competitive because older white voters, who tend to be more likely to support conservative candidates, also tend to vote in greater numbers in a non-compulsory electoral system.

Those same voters are also the most likely to cast a ballot in next year’s house and senate primaries, and the next midterm elections in November 2022 which will again determine who holds power in congress. They are the voters who initially flocked to Donald Trump.

All The Republicans Who Wont Support Trump

Numerous top G.O.P. officials have said publicly or privately that they will not be backing the presidents re-election. Some have even endorsed Joe Biden. Heres a look at where they all stand.

Follow our latest coverage of the Biden vs. Trump 2020 election here.

As November draws nearer, some current and former Republican officials have begun to break ranks with the rest of their party, saying in public and private conversations that they will not support President Trump in his re-election. A number have even said that they will be voting for his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

As Mr. Trumps political standing has slipped, fueled by his failures in handling the coronavirus pandemic and by the economic recession, some Republicans have found it easier to publicly renounce their backing.

Here is a running list of those who have said they will support Mr. Biden in the fall, those who simply wont support Mr. Trump, and those who have hinted they may not back the president.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who announced their opposition to the election of Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican Party nominee and eventual winner of the election, as the President of the United States. It also includes former Republicans who left the party due to their opposition to Trump and as well as Republicans who endorsed a different candidate. It includes Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the nominee. Some of the Republicans on this list threw their support to Trump after he won the presidential election, while many of them continue to oppose Trump. Offices listed are those held at the time of the 2016 election.

Why Do Evangelical Christians Love Trump

To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault.

White evangelical support for Donald Trump has long puzzled observers. To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault. Scholars have commented on his crassness, defined by historian Walter G. Moss as a lack refinement, tact, sensitivity, taste or delicacy. Others have observed how he has broken rules of civil political engagement.

But in my research on evangelical masculinity, I have found that Trumps leadership style aligns closely with a rugged ideal of Christian manhood championed by evangelicals for more than half a century.

As I show in my book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, conservative evangelicals embraced the ideal of a masculine protector in the 1960s and 1970s in order to confront the perceived threats of communism and feminism.

Believing that the feminist rejection of macho masculinity left the nation in peril, conservative white evangelicals promoted a testosterone-fueled vision of Christian manhood. In their view, America needed strong men to defend Christian America on the battlefields of Vietnam and to reassert order on the home front.

Why it Matters

How I Do My Work

The Baffling Continued Support For Donald Trump Explained

Donald Trump has, by almost any measure, been the worst president in U.S. history, or at least within the memory of people living in 2020. But for some reason, he has remained popular with a sizable segment of Americans. While Joe Biden defeated him in the presidential election, 74 million Americans voted for Trump, and a large percentage of Republicans, like Trump himself, are denying that he actually lost the election. So why do Trumps diehard fans stay that way?

Yes, hes made some people happy with his tax cuts and appointments of right-wing judges, and he is beloved by white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, but he has downplayed a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 276,000 Americans and caused an economic crash. One would think his personal style, bullying, and insults would alienate many people. Yet his approval ratings have remained stable at around 40 percent for most of his presidency, and the 40 percent cant all be fringe elements. What could possibly account for the continued unwavering support of Trump loyalists?

I think that there are a number of things at play, crosscurrents, if you will, said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.

Winterhof likewise said she observed a decline in enthusiasm among voters who were counting on Trump for positive change and agreed that Biden was better positioned than Clinton among voters overall.

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The history of American third parties doesn’t offer much hope. Last year, Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen garnered just 1.2 percent of the vote in a typical third-party showing. In fact, no third-party candidate has achieved a double-digit popular vote total since Ross Perot in 1992, and data trends indicate that popular support for third parties has been in steady decline since then.

And even if the GOP 2.0 secures a marquee name like former Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah to champion its message, the role would likely be as a political spoiler rather than a serious candidate: Even former President Theodore Roosevelt, at the time one of the most popular figures in American culture, barely surpassed a quarter of the popular vote and garnered just 88 electoral votes in an iconic third-party campaign in 1912. No one on the Call for American Renewal bench commands anything near Roosevelt’s profile and platform.

That hasn’t stopped disaffected Republicans from setting their sights on fence-sitting “Biden Republicans” mostly suburban moderates who broke with Trump but remain aligned with GOP ideas like small government that have gone extinct in the post-Trump GOP. Those voters were largely responsible for Trump’s upset victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016, while Biden returned formerly right-leaning suburbs to the Democratic column to help power his 2020 win.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

Why LGBTQ Republicans Hate The Party’s Platform But Like Donald Trump

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.  

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

He Says He Wants To Make America Great Again

Aided by global finance and a compliant press, Americas middle and working classes have been sold down the river. Nearly all of the manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, and what jobs remain here have seen their wages pushed down due to unrestrained immigration. America, once the shining light of the world, became a country ashamed of itself and that felt obligated to apologize to the rest of the world for being more successful than other countries. Something is deeply wrong when someone feels obligated to apologize for winningafter all, you never see that in sports. Trump wants to return us to a better time when people bragged about being American instead of apologizing for it

What Americans Really Think

Social scientists and psychologists believe that people subscribe to conspiracy theories for the simple reason that these theories often tend to validate their views of the world. Republicans believe all kinds of things about President Obama, and many liberals believe similar theories about President George W. Bush.

“For both liberals and conservatives, for everybody, there’s just this tendency to want to believe things that fit our worldview as we believe it,” said Joanne Miller, a political scientist the University of Minnesota and one of the authors of the new study. “Both liberals and conservatives are subject to that. It’s a human tendency to want to believe what we believe.”

In particular, conspiracy theories offer a simple explanation, with an identifiable villain, for the complicated reality of modern politics. That simplicity is appealing.

Miller and her collaborators — Christina Farhart and Colorado State University’s Kyle Saunders — used data from surveys of Americans who were asked whether they thought statements about politicians and public figures were true.

A few conspiracy theories were on the list. Four were designed to suss out conservative respondents:

that Obama was born outside the United States;

that his health-care reform established “death panels;”

that global warming was a hoax

and that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

There were four more theories for the other side:

Why Do Republicans Continue To Support Trump Despite Years Of Scandal

It was late September last year when a whistleblower complaint revealed that President Trump had tried to force the Ukrainian government to investigate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Within moments the scandal captured headlines. What followed was months of back and forth as Republicans supported the president while the Democrats used their political capital to get him impeached.

But this was not the first time   or the last time  the president was caught in the middle of a scandal. Since the impeachment trial that followed the Ukraine incident, episodes from The New York Times uncovering unsavory details from President Trumps tax returns, to his questionable dismissal of multiple Inspectors General, to his refusal to clearly condemn white supremacists have all sparked widespread media attention and partisan fighting in 2020. 

Although with his polls dropping, some Republicans may finally be distancing themselves from the President, the question has been regularly asked the past four years: why do the Republicans continue to support the President despite these troubling charges being leveled at him? And, what is it that the Democrats stand to gain from repeated allegations?

 In addition to demonstrating how polarization accelerates scandals, the paper also found that: 

Republicans Think Democrats Always Cheat

The Republican strategy has several sources of motivation, but the most important is a widely shared belief that Democrats in large cities i.e., racial minorities engage in systematic vote fraud, election after election. We win because of our ideas, we lose elections because they cheat us, insisted Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News last night. The Bush administration pursued phantasmal vote fraud allegations, firing prosecutors for failing to uncover evidence of the schemes Republicans insisted were happening under their noses. In 2008, even a Republican as civic-minded as John McCain accused ACORN, a voter-registration group, of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

The persistent failure to produce evidence of mass-scale vote fraud has not discouraged Republicans from believing in its existence. The failure to expose it merely proves how well-hidden the conspiracy is. Republicans may despair of their chances of proving Trumps vote-fraud charges in open court, but many of them believe his wild lies reflect a deeper truth.