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littlxpxtal · 2 months

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Little Dove | Chapter 5

Last chapter I got a little sloppy cus I'm horrible at ending things meep

It was the 3rd day of your 5 day trip away with Coriolanus. His attitude and demeanor had done a complete 180, reminding you of the charm and affection he has shown you in school. It was refreshing to have your lover return to such a familiar state, one that you had been yearning to regain.

Not only was this trip a break for you, but for Coriolanus as well. He the hardest working person you knew, but he was also extremely hard on himself. This came along with his desire to be the best, it always came with a cost. You knew going into the games would heighten both of your anxieties, but you were glad to experience this moment of peace with him.

Dressed in a soft pink maxi dress, Coryo wore an outfit of all white. he squeezed you hand as you looked out the window at a new spot you hasn’t been to yet. Multiple acres of grass with a few large trees spotted around. As the car pulled up closer to a tree, you could look across to see a small beach.

“This is a perfect spot for our picnic!”

He grinned and grabbed the basket and cooler from the trunk of the car

“I thought so too.”

After finishing up the meal you had prepared together, you laid your head on his lap, as his was against the shady tree, running his fingers through your hair.

“Tell me more about your expectations of this presidential campaign Coryo.”

He sighed and brushed his fingers along your neck.

“We really don’t have to talk about that now, it can wait until we get back.”

You push your lips out to a pout.

“when we get back and talk about it, it’s real. If we talk about it here. it’s like it’s a figment of our imagination”

He frowned.

“It’s very real to me though, Y/N.”

You sat up, placing your hands on his chest.

“Of course it is baby. I just mean, less pressure, no judgement or arguing. just ideas with no limits” He smiled down at you and then looked back out into the field. There was a few moments of silence before he opened his mouth again.

“I want everyone to know my name, not because they knew my father but because they knew me. And I want it to be more than just because of the 10th Hunger Games, or working with Dr. Gaul as assistant game maker. I want to make a legacy of my own. I need to beat my fathers. I’m willing to do anything.”

“and you think I can help you achieve that?” you asked. He frowns again.

“Didn’t you just say the limit does not exist here?”

You laugh at his quip. “Okay okay. If i’m being honest I think you’re going to have to get a little bit nicer.”

He stared at you with no emotion and you laugh out.

“Okay fine i’m done with jokes. I’m going to work my hardest to help you get there my love. I like to think you already have a name for yourself from your time on congress alone, let alone what you were doing in your late teenage years. This won’t be a terribly easy feat, but there’s no doubt it my mind we’re going to win. “ a moment of silence passed between the two of you.

“Are you scared?” you ask him.

He brushes the tip of your nose with his finger and avoids eye contact.

You lean in closer and lightly kiss his lips.

His eyes flicker towards yours. For the first time ever you see tears well in his eyes and feel him tremble under your hands.

“I’m fucking terrified.” he finally gets out. a single tears drops from his right eye and you flick it away.

Your lips form a smile, not because he was in pain and sad, you hated that part. But at the fact that he had finally opened up about something, and was looking to you for comfort.

“I don’t think you’re going to lose Coryo. Maybe we need to do some exposure therapy, get you used to not getting what you want. I can start,”

He lets out a laugh. “You always give me what I want.”

It was your turn to frown now.

“We can talk about strategy when we get home. For now let’s go explore that beach”

He starts to stand and places his hand out to assist you. You slide you shoes off and brush your dress back down over your legs,

Although Coryo had only let one tear slip from his eyes, his face still contorted with worry. You reached up to meet his face, cupping his cheeks between your hands, staring him intently in his eyes.

“Coryo,” you start. He reaches up to your wrists and leans in to kiss you.

“I’ll be alright Dove, c’mon”

You both slowly walk from the grass down to the small beach as the sun slowly descended across the water.

You release your hand from his and walk over to the water.

“It’s so quiet” you murmur.

Coryo comes to join you, wrapping his arms around you from behind, pressing a sweet kiss against your cheek. “Can we stay here forever?”

He chuckles lightly and brushes your hair over your shoulder so he can press a kiss upon your neck.

“I’ve lived in the great outdoors before. It’s not all that great after a while.” he grunts, trying to pull you from the water.

“But can we at least come back here to visit sometimes?” you plea, not turning around to follow him.

“We can come back anytime you’d like dove.” he assures. You can tell his voice is now farther, finally turning to see that hes moving farther down the beach. His head is down and he seems to be stuck in thought.

“Coryo, are you arlight?” you ask. You were hoping he wasn’t still shook up about the conversation you two shared moments before.

“Yea I’m just-” he stops before started to walk further away.

You ran to catch up to him, twisting his arm around and pressing his chest against yours. You could feel his heart beating rapidly and his face showed anxiety.

“Hey, hey is there anything I can do to help, whats going on?” You were beginning to get worried. You had never seen him so disheveld like this. You were afraid that you couldn’t be much help, and opened your mouth to offer another solution before he grabbed your face and started desperately kissing you. You immediately return the desire, wrapping your arms around his neck as he cradled your waist.

After many moments of sharing a passionate kiss, he released you, still holding you close and embracing you into a hug. Your eyes opened for the first time since his lips were on yours and you noticed that the sun began to turn the colors of the sky pink and purple.

“I love you more than I’ve loved anyone before, y/n” he states. You freeze slightly at this abrupt declaration from Coriolanus’s mouth.

You pull back from the hug and look up to him, your mouth slightly parted, unsure if you should respond or if he had more to say.

“You amaze me by your intelligence, patience and ability to problem solve. I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re so astute, desicive and observant. I admire your resourcefulness and how adaptable you are in any situation.”

Your lips form a smile lips and you reach your hands back up to his neck. Before you can respond he continues,

“Since the moment I met you, I knew you would be a challenge. But I have come to learn that you're something I cant conquer or compete with. You’re someone I want by my side, always.”

He lowers to the ground, on one knee. You gasp, at the scene of Coriolanus. Him proposing was something you hadn’t thought of happening for a while, figuring he would wait until he was president and checked off all of his boxes before indulging in something so customary.

“Coryo,” you whispered, running your fingers through his hair as the wind blew your dress in the soft breeze. The sun was now at the edge of the water, creeping lower and lower.

“Y/N, will you please do me the honor of being my wife, for now and forever?”

“Yes, Coryo,” you exclaimed. He placed the beautiful ring upon your finger and stood, picking you up with a swift movement, kissing your face as he spun you around.

“Was this apart of your plan?” you asked through giggles as he kept spinning you round.

“Yes,” he said sheepishly before placing you down.

“I was nervous as hell.” he grumbled, picking up the box he placed down.

“I was worried I upset you or something,” he shook his head and connected his lips with yours again. A few moments passed before he removed his mouth from yours.

“No darling, never.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Returning back to the cabin, you go up the stairs to change into one of your PJ sets, while Coryo put away the things from your picnic. You step back down the stairs to see the living room area is lit up by candlelight, a record playing, the fire place on and a bottle of red wine with two wine glasses sat out. He brushes past you, with a soft kiss on your lips.

“Get cozy dove, ‘m gonna go change.”

You walk over to the island and pour wine into both of the glasses. You walk over to the conversation couch and sprawl out on the cushions, downing the first glass you poured yourself, admiring the exquisite ring that fit perfectly on your finger.

You hear Coryo’s footsteps padding down the stairs, and your breathe hitches as he comes down with an unbuttoned top shirt and a loose pair of pajama pants.

You can’t help but eye every part of his body, feeling a burning sensation form in your stomach, and a lump beginning to form in your throat, unable to greet him before he plops onto the cushion next to you.

“You arlight love?” he asks softly, brushing your hair behind your ear.

“Yea, sorry. Just can’t believe your going to be my husband.” he smirks and grabs his glass of wine off of the coffee table.

“Imagine how I feel. Having the most stunning and magnetic woman in all of Panem”

Your stomach filled with butterflies as he showered you with compliments. He must’ve studied a dictionary to come up with such stunning describing words for you, words youve never heard him use before. You knew he was an educated man and had an eloquent vocabulary, but he was really impressing you with his descriptions tonight.

He moves over closer, taking a large gulp of his wine before place it down and moving your legs across his, resting his hands on your thighs.

“Whatcha thinking about my love?” he asks.

You finally gain the courage to speak, “Kiss me, Coriolanus.”

He obeys immediately, pressing his lips into your open mouth, sliding his tongue inside, tasting the sweet wine you both drank. He grabs the glass from your hands and sets it on the table without breaking the kiss and moves one of your legs to the other side of his waist. He pulls you ontop of him, running his hands roughly through your hair as you groan at his harshness, allowing his tongue to move deeper inside your mouth. Your hands trail up and down his abdomen, softly moaning into his mouth as he squeezes your hips and begins to move them back and forward.

He finally removes himself from making a mess of your mouth, wiping his salvia that has dripped down your chin. He grins and reaches over to grab both of your wine glasses, He clinks his against yours

“To us.” he states.

“To us” you whisper before finishing the rest of the glass. He smirks and leans over to the table, holding onto your figure as he grabs the bottle and begins to pour more into both of your glasses.

“Trying to get me drunk Snow?” you question seductively, biting your bottom lip as he tops off the rest of the bottle into his own glass.

He reaches back to place the bottle down, lets his hand release from your back and lifts up your chin.

“I’m just trying to celebrate” he nonchalantly retorts.

You take a sip of the glass and adjust your placement on his lap to move further back and admire his torso.

“Can’t believe I get to marry the hottest guy in Panem” you say, half joking, half serious.

He rolls his eyes.

“My you have a way with words.” he takes a sip from his glass and trails his eyes down your body.

“Take your top off.” he directs.

Before you can form a snarky response, he grabs your glass from your hands. You find yourself mindlessly pulling your top off to reveal your bare chest. You feel his bulge harden beneath you immediately.

“That’s my girl” he rumbles before forcing both glasses into your hands and moves his hands to cup your boobs. You wince at the cold pressure of his rough hands fondling your tits. He mouth moves to kiss your sternum and you sit, helpless on his lap as he attacks your chest with kisses and bites.

A moan escapes your lips and you decide to take another drink of your wine.

“Finish it.” he commands, before placing his lips around your right nipple. He looks up at you, and your bring the glass back up to your lips, maintaining eye contact as one of his hands reach to your back letting you lean back. Tipping your head back to finish, he finally releases his lips and smiles.

“Are you gonna be this good for me all night?” he asks, trailing kisses up to your neck, using his hand to straighten your body back up.

“Yes baby” you murmur, feeling the effects of the three glasses you’ve had.

“I’ll have to take a bathroom break before we go any further.” you giggle, feeling a blush creep around your face as the words slip out. He lets out a deep chuckle into your neck before placing a last kiss.

“Go on then.”

You stand up and he gives your ass a tap before you tip toe to the bathroom, stumbling around a bit, officially feeling drunk.

You return to see him with both glasses on the table, empty, and two glasses of water on the table as well. He is laying on his back, arms behind his head, eyes closed.

“Hi baby”

“Hi dove” he responds, peeking one eye open.

You lay ontop of him, head on his chest, feeling the rise and fall of every breath.

“What king of wedding shall we have?” you ask.

He removes his hands from behind his head to hold you.

“What did you have in mind?”

You smile sweetly and begin to ponder. Weddings always seemed large and extravagant, you couldn’t imagine what they would be like if they were presidential.

“Grand”

He laughs and pulls you up closer on his chest so your face reaches his.

“I have a grand idea.” he smirks.

He lifts your body off of his and he pulls himself onto the ground, kneeling before you again

“Coryo what,”

“Shhh” he mumbles into your thighs as he begins to press wet kisses up and down, slowly pulling down your pants. As they plop to the floor, you immediately become self conscious, fully naked standing before your fully clothed lover.

His hands begging to spread your legs and you begin to protest as he interrupts you

“Why dont you ride my face and tell me everything you want at your grand wedding, misses Snow?”

You look down at him, hazy and love drunk. he sits down, back against the couch, leaning his head on the cushion, moving your legs on his sides, pushing you forward to straddle him. Deciding tonight wasn’t a night to disobey, you place your cunt upon his face. He moves himself down to get comfortable and begins licking up and down your folds. You let out a soft cry, reaching forward to grab the back of the couch.

Grinding against his face, you babble out sultry moans, looking down every now and then at your fiances face between your legs. You wish there was a mirror to catch a glimpse of this erotic sight, sitting on his face, using the couch as a chair while he sits open legged on the ground, palming himself through his pants.

He grunts into your pussy, before pulling away and roughly grabs your ass cheeks,

“I told you to tell me what you want at our wedding misses Snow.” he growls before feverishly sucking on your clit.

You yelp out and clench your body, trying to focus on coherent thoughts.

“I- I want large chandeliers hanging everywhere. And, and I want white roses everywhere”

You let an exasperated moan out before beginning again.

“Matchbooks with our names printed on them, and my bridesmaids will wear beautiful rose gold satin dresses. Deep red and gold accents will be everywhere, and” you stifle out a moan, close to reaching your climax. Your thighs begin the tremble as he flicks his tongue over your bud repeatedly.

“All of Panem will be in attendance, and there will be a grandddd dancefloor” you roll out before collapsing from holding yourself up.

“I’ll wear a beautiful lace gown, probably no veil” you sigh before whimpering as he sticks two fingers into your hole.

“Sounds like an extravagant wedding” he whispers into your thigh, peppering it with kisses as he pumps his fingers in and out of you.

“Mhmm” you reply, nodding off into subspace.

“Come back baby” he coos, bringing a hand up and around to your chest, pushing you up straight.

“Coryo ‘m gonna cum”

He smirks and begins to pump his fingers fast, curling them, making you gasp for air.

“Fuck fuck fuck” you breathe out, leaning forward over to grasp the back of the couch. His mouth attaches to your clit again, moving in slow circles as you come undon on his fingers.

He removes them and you crawl further on the couch. Coriolanus begins to stand, placing his fingers in his mouth, his eyes rolling to the back of his head as he tastes your juices.

You whine in response, head feeling light, core throbbing and legs weak.

He pulls off his open shirt, tossing it to the side of the couch. His pants soon follow, his cock twitching up and slapping his torso.

You bite your bottom lip, whimpering at the sight.

He moves his body to hover above yours, using his knees to spread your legs.

“Tell me what you what, my little dove” he whispers into your ear.

“Make me yours Coryo,” he dips his head to meet your lips, tugging at your bottom lip, begging for admission inside. You oblige, and he circles his tongue around your lips, you taste yourself on his mouth resulting in a moan escaping from both of you.

He reaches down to grab his cock, lining it up with your entrace before slowing pumping in and out.

“Please Coryo, I need all of you” you squeal, hands grasping on both of his arms. Frustrated at his teasing you pout and squirm beneath him.

“You said you would be a good girl for me baby. Be patient”

“Im done being patient Coryo, fuck me damnit” you demand. He eyebrow quirks up before he bucks his full length inside, making you scream out.

“Gave you what you wanted Dove, hmm? Couldnt wait for me to stretch out your tight cunt, now you have to face the consequences.” he growls into your ear before pushing himself up, hands on your chest as he thrusts in and out of you. Crying out, a tear slips from your eye at the rough penetration. He wipes the tear with his index and squeezes your cheeks together with one hand.

“You begged for it baby.” he states, you’re unable to retreat back with a response since only gasps and moans can escape your lips.

His eyes roll back with pleasure, using the back of the couch to keep himself steady, his other hand grabbing your left hand, interlocking fingers. He brings the hand closer, admiring the rock he placed on your finger earlier in the night.

“Do you like your ring pretty girl?” he coos, keeping his thrusts repetitive and steady.

“Ye-yes I love it” you squeak out before returning to your babbles.

Your glossy eyes admire the sweat glistening from his chest as he grinded into your cunt. He kissed the diamond ring on your hand before moving it above your head, leaning his face against yours.

He thrusts were starting to get sloppy as he came close to his high.

“I can’t wait to fuck you forever” he chuckles.

He brings his other hand away from the couch and skims the side of your body, leaving goosebumps. You squeeze your eyes shut, trembling at touch. His fingertips land on your clit, slowly rubbing circles.

“Look at me baby” he pleads.

You eyes flash open and you see a devilish grin placed upon his face.

“Were gonna cum at the same time okay baby?” he instructs. You nod your head up and down, already feeling a knot building up from the pressure of his cock hitting your cervix and the stimulation he was adding to your clit.

“O-okay, ‘m already close Coryo” you groan out as he quickens his speed.

“Me too baby” he shuts his eyes closed for a few moments, leaning his head back.

You feel his cock throb and pulsate within you, giving you a sign he was near the edge. The mere thought let you come undone for the second time that night. As your body begins to shudder, he collapses on top of you, mumbling a string of profanities into your neck as he finishes.

He lays ontop of you, breathing heavy, pressing soft kisses into your neck.

“I love you y/n” he murmurs.

“I love you too Coryo” you respond sweetly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sitting in the back of the car, hand interlocked with Coriolanus, your head leans against the window, admirning the cabin you would remember forever. A sense of uneasiness forms in the pit of your stomach as the driver pulls off, Reminding you of the responsibilities and reality you two were able to leave behind for the week.

Coryo brings your hand up to his lips, giving it a soft kiss before squeezing it tightly and setting it back down on the seat.

“Lets go take on the world, dove”

“Snow lands on top.”

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grumpycakes · 7 months

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Cause @the-indoor-kites TIPPED ME ABOUT IT???? (Still reeling thank you) it's time for

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE VOTE 2, DISASTER BOOGALOO

SO WHAT HAS HAPPENED???

A lot, but a culmination of McCarthy not going extreme enough for the far right, while also not offering anything to the democrats (actually sometimes promising small ass things and then REFUSING WHEN IT COMES TO IT) has made McCarthy super unpopular w everyone.

AND THEN the govt needed the budget made/approved (an unfortunately YEARLY THING). Far Rights want horrendous shit in there, republicans don't want anything helpful that the Dems want. The classics. But in the face of a shutdown, McCarthy RIGHTLY chooses to avoid it by working w the Dems to pass a few weeks pass to work on their shit to get it figured out.

This makes the far right (Gaetz being the one to do it all either alone or as the point person) lose their shit.

And remember how he had to agree to weird ass rules to get the Far Rights to vote for him? Well one of those stupid rules was, instead of needing a group of people to agree to trigger a vote on if they want to oust the speaker. THEY ONLY NEED ONE PERSON. GAETZ.

So Gaetz calls for a vote on keeping McCarthy. Enough Rebups refuse to vote for him that unless Dems vote for him to save his ass he's toast.

Thing is McCarthy has been badmouthing the Dems to the press and blaming THEM for the budget not happening. So tho the Dems are like LOLL FUCK YOU THEN BRO. AND N O N E OF THEM VOTE TO SAVE McCARTHY. N O N E

So McCarthy is out. His bestie is PISSED and slams the gavel super hard and dismisses them.

We have no speaker, congress doesn't function if we don't have a speaker. (though some are floating the idea that they allow the interim speaker have powers to allow them to pass the budget lol aaaaa)

Repubs gotta pick a nominee for speaker. (Dems are still more than happy to back Hakeem Jeffries). Repubs have two dudes that are most likely. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan

Scalise

Got shot in that one baseball shooting back in 2017

Has been the Repub WHIP (the assistant leader to the party leader)

Would not say that the election wasn't stolen

WINS THE NOMINATION TO BE VOTED ON FOR SPEAKER

REMOVES HIMSELF AS A CANDIDATE FOR THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE???????

Jordan

Was the Ohio Wrestling Coach when their Team Doctor (Strauss) abused players (Denies knowing anything, is not believed)

wanted to be speaker after Paul Ryan was ousted (but dems won the house and his dreams were THWARTED)

Wanted to be minority leader, McCarthy won instead

actually floated himself as an option when McCarthy lost the first 3 votes earlier in the year

May have been asking for a pardon after jan 6

So like neither of these dudes are great, but I would have assumed the Whip would be the next speaker... and then he stepped away????

They could have voted last week, but declined w some republicans saying that Jordan didn’t have the votes. so they were taking the weekend to get ppl on board.

BRINGING US TO TUSEDAY 10/17/2023 around like noon.

Stefanik is in an aggressively pink skirt suit (probably not the right term) and gives a basic ass speech for Jim Jordan. Kinda a WE GOTTA GET IT TOGETHER SO VOTE FOR OUR IDIOT sentiment. Pro Israel cause they’re hoping that makes republicans care (loll please)

Jim Aguilar comes up, nice to see u again sir. Also gives a basic ass speech but Dems. They chant w him on a repeated line. Like okay but weird. Nominates Jeffries.

No other nominations.

NOTABLE VOTES

(literally no promises on spelling)

Bacon - McCarthy

Billorakis - MIA/doesn’t vote when recalled

Boebert - toes the line w Jordan

Buck - MIA/Emmer on recall

Chavez DeReemer - McCarthy (rumbling from the crowd)

Connolly - says something but votes Jeffries crowd gives reaction

DeEspazito - Zelden (who the fuck is that)

Diaz-Ballart - Scalise (Republicans you have one job……)

Ellsey - García (bunch of murmuring and again WHO THE FUCK)

Gonzales (Tony) - Scalise (well Jordan’s for sure lost)

Granger - Scalise

James - MIA/votes for John Cole in the recall (????)

The respective parties clap w their nominees vote for themselves. It is dumb and wasting time (but the republicans don’t sound as enthusiastic as the dems rofl)

Joyce - MIA/votes Jordan on recall

Kelly of PA - Scalise

Kiggins of VA - McCarthy (my dudes, he’s not getting re-elected…)

LaLota - Zelden (oh fun, he has more than one supporter)

LaMaufa - MIA/McCarthy on recall

Lawler - McCarthy

Lee of NV - vote for Jeffries but gets laughter???

McCarthy - Jordan (gets applauded. Hope that stings u fart)

Pelosi gets applause for her Jeffries vote

Rutherford - Scalise

Scalise - gets “Good Boy” claps for voting Jordan

Scott (Austin) - gets applause for voting Jordan?

Simpson - Scalise

Spartz - MIA/votes for Massey (loll you can hear a reporter go Massey??? When it’s called)

VanOrden - gets one dingus clapping for him for voting Jordan?

Womack - Scalise (y’all a mess)

432 Present • 217 votes to win

200 votes Jordan

212 votes Jeffries (dems erupt in cheers, interim speaker looks annoyed lol)

6 McCarthy (sad my dudes)

3 Lee Zelden

7 Scalise (ha ha even Scalise beat you McCarthy)

1 Garcia

1 Tom Emmer

1 Tom Cole

1 Tom Massey

(Damn the toms)

No majority, no speaker has been chosen.

Interim speaker is REAL LOUD w that damn gavel. Immediately calls recess, feed cuts out.

They go into recess for like 2 hours.

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

- Rep Huizenga talks to reporters says he’s leaving cause they need to take more time to get more idiots on board.

- Spokesperson said 2nd vote to come at 6pm (it did not lmao)

- Jordan apparently asked to meet w Scalise to get more ppl on board. SCALISE APPARENTLY DECLINED

- Rep Buck said Jordan will lose more votes if he tries again. This could deflate the republicans in wanting to vote for him if he’s not a winning candidate

- 9 Republicans would have to vote present to allow Jeffries to win (which he would, since Jordan didn’t get over 200) but it would be against their interest and political suicide.

- republicans who don’t like Jordan were pushing for a second vote that night to further embarrass Jordan

Vote 2 next! >

#October 17 2023 #speaker of the house vote #is politics #speaker of the house vote recap #yes I’m taking notes for todays

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qqueenofhades · 1 year

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Ignoring his inflammatory rhetoric, do you think Bernie's *POLICIES* are actually that extreme? I've read them over and, if he had a softer approach, they seem like they'd be sound policies to me

The problem with Bernie is that it's hard to know, in actual practice/reality, what his policies are. Yes, on paper, everyone knows what they are, and it's not a week if he's not writing yet another op-ed in the Guardian about Workers' Rights or Climate Justice or whatever. But like.... what good does that do anyone? Everyone who reads the Guardian probably agrees with those things already, and that includes me -- I read it, I financially support it, etc., but it's not where I come for policy actions or where I want to see US senators spending all their time. (Like, Bernie, aren't there other people you could be talking to, who could actually do something about this?) It's the definition of preaching to the choir, where he's regurgitating a boilerplate piece of progressive ideology but not actually doing anything about it or attempting to reach an audience who doesn't already agree with him. (Plus the Guardian, unfortunately, is always also willing to let his ex-campaign manager, David Sirota, bash the Democrats for something, but never mind that.)

Likewise, Bernie's actual voting record in the Senate isn't always a match with the things for which he has (very loudly) advocated, and he's a multi-millionaire old white man from Vermont (one of the whitest states in the Union) who has often seemed interested in preaching socialism for everyone else but resisting any scrutiny or participation in that for himself. He has gotten a lot of mileage and built a disproportionately influential political career out of championing so-called leftist progressivism/socialism, but as I keep saying about him, he never seems to do anything about it. "Tax billionaires" or "save the planet" are extremely broad-brush statements that everyone in the liberal camp can mostly agree on. And no, I wouldn't say those positions are particularly extreme; they're pretty much mainstream Democratic ideology at this point. Indeed, I think Bernie gets unwarranted traction out of positioning himself as the "radical" alternative to the Democrats, when most of the things he says are now basically part of the party platform and have been adopted or explored in some shape or form. Just because they can't actually be implemented at the moment, whether due to legislative roadblocks or otherwise, doesn't mean that they're not moving in that direction.

Likewise, Bernie's favorite hobbyhorse of Medicare for All is often used by his fans to irrationally bash the Democrats, as if we don't have universal healthcare -> quod erat demonstrandum, Democrats Are Neoliberal Shills. I've written many posts about the state of the healthcare debate in America and how passing even a much-watered-down Affordable Care Act cost Obama control of Congress for pretty much the rest of his presidency. So if Bernie and co. want to offer a roadmap for how to pass another major healthcare reform/overhaul that goes even further than the ACA -- trust me, everyone's listening and wants to know how to do that. That is neither extreme nor particularly, at least among Democrats, controversial in the way it was in 2009, when we still had Blue Dog Democrats in red states like Nebraska and South Dakota. But a) we have the united fascist bloc of Republicans who would object and obstruct it on principle, and b) we DON'T have enough Democrats to just pass it by fiat and have that be the end, because that's not the way things have worked in the history of anything.

So basically: if progressives want to endlessly harp on the Democrats for not magically pulling Medicare for All out of a hat, they're welcome to do that if, and only if, they can produce a credible policy/platform/program of action to actually get it passed that the Democrats could be following and aren't (and "they don't care enough about this and could fix it if they wanted!" is not that). That way, they could actually show that the reform is empirically possible and the Democrats are not carrying it out. But flatly ignoring all the political realities and blaming them for not producing a miracle in an extremely adverse legislative and political climate does not count as good-faith engagement and isn't directed toward any constructive end. It's just performative gesturing to show that they are Better Than The Establishment, something something something, and Bernie is usually one of the chief offenders in this regard, despite actually being part of the Establishment for decades.

I will give Bernie credit for two things: he has voted for all the major Democratic legislative packages with the relative minimum of selfish hostage-taking/sabotaging such as that carried out constantly by Manchin and Sinema, and he quickly shut down any talk of running (yet fucking again) in 2024, in order to support Biden's re-election bid. But as far as policies go, he's still not shown me that he either has a concrete plan to carry them out, that he knows what they are aside from broad-brush, vague and general talking points, or that he will put in the work to get them achieved, so yeah.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

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kerie-prince · 3 years

Text

We’re Worlds Apart (1)

Draco Malfoy x American No-Maj/Muggle fem!reader

Post-Battle of Hogwarts

warnings: language

series m.list | general m.list

summary: Draco Malfoy is a pureblood wizard. Magic runs through his veins and has been since his birth. You're a Wiccan No-Maj; a non-magical being with ordinary blood through your veins, but practices what you call magick. And this very practice upsets your neighbor.

(gif cred)

"They want... me?"

Draco Malfoy sat across his supervisor in his office at St. Mungos. His eyes widened at the offer he was given.

"Well Mr. Malfoy, you've certainly shown us around here that you do well at your job. If I must say so myself, I believe you're ready for the job," his boss has explained. Draco had recently finished his Fellowship and became a remarkable Healer. So much so that the Santa Marie Hospital for Maj Persons in Buffalo, New York contacted his supervisor to offer him a position as Head Healer. It was an incredible opportunity, one that a person could only dream of.

Draco sat still in his chair, shocked that of all Healers from his department, Santa Marie wanted him. After the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco was determined to change the views people had of him. He was no longer the prejudice prat that he was at school. Draco Lucius Malfoy is now a matured, capable young man. He worked hard and was proud that he did everything on his own. No help from daddy dearest, no pressure of the Malfoy name. It was all him.

"I would love to take this job. When would I start?"

Draco finished filing his paperwork at the Ministry of Magic that was to be sent to the Magical Congress of the United States containing his work permit and all the necessary identification. Walking around London, he grew excited about it. It was a feeling he hadn't felt since he got his letter for Hogwarts.

The next thing he has left to do was to find housing. There was an office located in Diagon Alley that specialized in international real estate. Draco walked into the brightly lit office. Much to his surprise, Daphne Greengrass stood at the reception desk.

"Well, well. Long time no see, Malfoy," she said with a smile on her lips. He was quite relieved to see a familiar face. "Good to see you too, Daph. I'm checking in to see Ms. Moreau. I'm moving to America soon." Daphne was both shocked and impressed that Draco would be making such a big move. They chatted momentarily about the reason for him moving and she congratulated him. Soon enough, the real estate agent walked out and called Draco into her office.

She sat at her desk and gestured for him to take the seat opposite her. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Malfoy."

"The feeling is mutual, Ms. Moreau," Draco had slightly bowed his head.

"Please, call me Gwen," she smiled as she reached to shake his hand, "I see from your paperwork that you're moving to America, correct?" he nodded his head in response. "Fantastic! Now, looking at the locations for Buffalo, we have quite a bit of selections from houses to flats. Of course, in America they're called 'apartments'. With your budget, you would be able to get this nice house that is just a 10 minute drive to the Apparition office to Santa Marie's." She showed Draco pictures of the house. It was quaint. An all white, one story house that had three bedrooms, a lifted porch, small kitchen, two bathrooms, trimmed green grass in front and a dark stained wooden fence that went around the house. Draco nearly fell in love with it. Its contrast to the Malfoy Manor was warm and inviting.

Gwen had shown him pictures of the other places she had gathered for him, but none of them peeked his interest as the first house did. It was quite silly as he thought about it. Most likely, he would be working long hours at the hospital to even be able to appreciate the home. It made more sense to get an apartment as he would most likely just use the space to sleep and eat. But the house was begging for him to live there. After about an hour long session, Draco made his final decision on the small house.

"Excellent choice, I had hoped you'd love it. Now, before I contact the sellers about your offer, I must let you know this before you sign anything," Draco shifted in his seat. Of course there had to be a catch. A house this perfect needed one thing to go wrong. Was it busted windows? A terrible neighborhood? Shitty pipelines? He nodded for her to continue.

"This is an integrated neighborhood. Both muggles and wizards live around and you might not know which are which for a while." Muggles. He sat in silence, staring down at the photos of the house. Did he really want a muggle neighbor? No, you're past this Draco thought. The old Draco wouldn't even give the place a second thought. But he wasn't him anymore. "I don't care. I'll take it."

—

You woke up in the morning, stretching your arms and legs out of the thick blanket. It was currently 8:47 am, your alarm clock beside you still had 13 minutes to alert you to wake up. Deciding to just get a head start on the day, you walked into the your bathroom and started your shower. The water was at the hottest you took and you went about your daily routine. You said your repeated incantations in the shower as you lathered yourself with soap:

Water, water, wash away. Water, water, cleanse today.

Walking out your shower, you grabbed your towel and recited the next spell as you dried yourself:

By the earth in the soap,

by the air in the steam,

by the fire that heats the water,

by the water that cleanses,

I am cleansed, clean, and ready for the day.

When you were 12 years old, you used to watch your grandmother perform Wicca in her bedroom. Your mother didn't particularly join in on the belief, but also didn't oppose to you starting alongside your grandmother when you turned 18. Now, you were almost 26 and still kept on the same practices.

On the contrary to people's interpretation or views of witchcraft, you called yourself a White Witch; someone who performs good magick upon selfless reasons. You never hexed anyone nor wished any ill fate. The Laws of Nature was surely watching at all times and if you did, expect to get the same fate but in threefold. Not that you even had any reason to do such things, anyways.

After getting ready, you grabbed your bag, keys — which held a protection charm — and went on your way to work. Your cat sat in her tower located in your living room and she watched you walk out. Getting into your car, you noticed movement next door. A big, moving truck was parked and a crew of movers carried furniture into the house. Finally, someone new you thought.

Feeling nosy, you sat patiently to figure out who it was moving next door. Was it a family? An elderly couple? Maybe newlyweds. Right when you were about to pull out of your driveway, a handsome blond stepped out of the house guiding the movers where things were going to be placed. You couldn't hear his voice, but could tell from the distance that it had to be attractive.

He looked around the street and caught you starting from your car. You hesitantly raised your hand to wave at him but was cut off by a man walking up to him with a clipboard gesturing where to sign. You looked at the time on your watch and nearly panicked at how the time passed, leaving you with only 15 minutes to get to work. Hauling ass, your car let a screech out as your foot punched the gas pedal. You'll be able to introduce yourself later, Y/N.

—

A few days passed and Draco was headed for the Apparition office to his new workplace. He had leased a new car to drive there. According to the Magical Congress, wizards and witches that lived in integrated neighborhoods must check in at Apparition offices to not raise suspicions from No-Maj. Seemed quite silly at first, but it really wasn't that big of a deal. He remembers the first time he went to Diagon Alley with his father through the Leaky Cauldron, finding it hidden with a wall that required taps against it. Behind it, a magical alley hidden from muggles.

He pulled into the office building lot with ease. It was clean on the outside and had a sign on top that only read MCA Co,. At the front door, there was a pin pad with numbers on it that kept it locked. Draco pulled the paper from his pocket and dialed the number. The door made a clicking noise which signaled that it was unlocked.

In the front was a young man sat at a reception desk typing away onto a computer. It was a strange sight for Draco as he's never seen one before. He walked up to the desk and waited for the person to acknowledge him.

"Hello, sir. Welcome to the Magical Congress' Apparition Office. May I see your ID pass, please?"!the accent was unfamiliar to Draco, but he nonetheless reached for the pass clipped to his trousers and gave it to the receptionist. He scanned the pass, handed it back to Draco and raised up from his chair to guide Draco to the door which had a direct line to the hospital. "Have a good day, sir!" were his last words before he went back to his desk.

Draco looked at the address once more before appariting into Santa Marie's. Here goes nothing.

—

It was a long day at the office. Setting up appointments with new clients, greeting all the new people he'd be working with, and a surprise welcome party to end it. Everyone he met had different variations of American accents. Some from Chicago, some from California, and some from the native state of New York.

A man by the name of Ian Parker helped Draco navigate around the building. Draco was quite relieved to hear that Ian had lived close by, just two blocks and a turn away. They had lunch together and talked about just simple things about each other. It felt nice to meet somebody and they not know who you are and things you've done in the past.

Once he got home, the first thing Draco did was start to run the shower, gathering his sleepwear as the water heated up. Not meaning to, Draco noticed how his bedroom window had perfect view of yours. To him, it was extremely odd.

You had faux vines that curled around your four-poster bed, a couple of plants that hung against the wall and posters of movies that Draco knows for a fact he's never seen in his life. You walked into your room and went up to a small drawer and dug through it. After a few seconds, you grabbed out some incense sticks, lit them and stood them on the stand that laid on your dresser. Afterwards, you sat on the floor with your legs crossed and started taking deep breaths.

Draco caught himself staring for too long and was about to head into the shower until he saw movement from the corner of his eye. There you sat, but this time, you held items in your hands. One held what Draco thought to be just some colorful rocks. The other hand held a bundle of herbs on fire at the tips. Your lips moved and it had Draco curious. Your hand with the herbs moved in a specific pattern, creating smoke around you. Once you finished, you set the rocks and herbs down at a table and left the room. That was odd. Draco thought. He passed it off and went on about his night.

—

"It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. And trust me when I say that Hogwarts has its fair shares of odd moments," Draco sat in the break room with Ian and two other people, Ashley and Blaine. They laughed at the description Draco had of you and settled after Ian began his explanation.

"It seems that your No-Maj neighbor is considered a Wiccan." What in Merlin's name is that?

"Pardon? What's do you mean?"

"It's what they call witchcraft," Ashley added, "it became a popular thing after the Salem Witch Trials. Of course, there's no real magic to it like what we can do, but they nonetheless believe it works."

Draco couldn't believe what he was hearing. Muggles are trying to be witches? This was probably the last thing he ever thought he would hear. Inside, a familiar feeling had ignited. A feeling he had, or he supposed still had, for a certain species. He didn't like it but to find out that what he is had become a fantasy to be was upsetting. He was born into this life, not them. Not you.

—

It had been a really nice day at work. People had been kind and you sold out of a new oil you made. As you entered your home, your cat ran up to your legs and purred against you. You smile down at her and made your way to prepare your dinners.

She nibbled away at her bowl and you watched in content.

Outside, you heard a car pulling in. It's probably him. You peaked out the window in the living room and your guess was correct. He stepped out of a black car and walked to his door. You tried catching his attention by waving your arms about, hoping he glanced your way. When he did, you waved excitedly to him.

He stared at you with a straight face, no hint of any feeling. It was odd, people usually like you and wave back but this guy was just looking at you. Not doing anything. You looked around to see if there was something behind you, only to look back and see that he was gone. Ooo...kay?

You grabbed your sweater and decided to introduce yourself to your new neighbor. It had been almost a week and it seemed that he still hadn't acquainted himself to anyone on the street. The cool, spring breeze sent a pleasant chill down your spine as you walked on the sidewalk.

Once you stepped in front his door, you knocked three times. No answer. Three more times. No answer. The lights that were on had turned off and curtains had been shut in almost a blink of an eye. He had made it clear that he was not in a mood to talk to anyone. It slightly hurt your feelings, but you told yourself to not dwell on it. He's just tired from work. Just then, an idea popped in your mind as you headed back home.

—

"Stupid fucking muggle clock," Draco cursed as he was running around his bedroom getting dressed. He overslept by an hour and had 10 minutes to be in the Apparition office to go to work. Damn American laws.

He grabbed an apple, not his usual sour green one but a sweet red one this time, grabbed his bag and ran for the front door. Something taped to the door caught his attention and he halted his movements. It seemed to have been a note someone left. He unfolded the paper and read it to himself;

Hello! My name's Y/N and I wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood! I hope we can become good friends~ if there's anything you need or if you'd ever like to get acquainted over coffee, please feel free to knock on my door! It'd be nice to get to know you :)

At the bottom of the note was a small drawing of a witches pointed hat and Draco immediately knew who left the note. Almost on instinct, the note caught on fire in his hands and the ashes fell to the ground. He dusted his hand off and went to work. As if we would ever become friends.

—

next chp

taglist: @beiahadid @malfoy-styles-wife @fivenightslaughter

#draco malfoy #draco malfoy imagine #draco malfoy au #draco malfoy angst #draco malfoy fluff #draco malfoy smut #draco malfoy x female reader #draco malfoy x you #draco x y/n #draco x you

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reading-writing-revolution · 3 years

Text

Heather Cox Richardson

October 4, 2021 (Monday)

“hello literally everyone,” the official account of Twitter tweeted this afternoon, after Facebook and its affiliated platforms Instagram and WhatsApp went dark at about 11:40 this morning. The Facebook outage lasted for more than six hours and appears to have been caused by an internal error. But the void caused by the absence of the internet giant illustrated its power at a time when the use of that power has come under scrutiny.

In mid-September, the Wall Street Journal began to publish a series of investigative stories based on documents provided by a whistle-blower.

The “Facebook Files” explore how the company has “whitelisted” high-profile users, exempting them from the rules that put limits on ordinary users. Another article reveals that researchers showed Facebook executives evidence that Instagram damages teenage girls by pushing an ideal body image and that they flagged the increasing use of the site by drug smugglers, human traffickers, and other criminals; their discoveries went unaddressed.

Concerned about declining engagement with their material, Facebook allegedly privileged polarizing material that engaged people by preying on their emotions. It appeared to have encouraged the extremism that led to the January 6 insurrection, lowering restrictions against disinformation quickly after the 2020 election.

Last night, on CBS’s 60 Minutes, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen revealed herself to be the source of the documents. She is concerned, she says, that Facebook consistently looks to maximize profits even if it means ignoring disinformation. Her lawyers have filed at least eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees companies and financial markets. Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said it was “ludicrous” to blame Facebook for the events of January 6. Chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg have not commented.

Lawmakers have repeatedly asked Facebook to produce documents for their scrutiny and to testify about the social media platform’s public safeguards. Tomorrow, Haugen will testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security about the effects of social media on teenagers. Her lawyer, Andrew Bakaj, told Cat Zakrzewski and Cristiano Lima of the Washington Post that Haugen’s information is important because “Big Tech is at an inflection point…. It touches every aspect of our lives—whether it’s individuals personally or democratic institutions globally. With such far-reaching consequences, transparency is critical to oversight, and lawful whistleblowing is a critical component of oversight and holding companies accountable.”

Amidst the outrage over the Facebook revelations, technology reporter Kevin Roose at the New York Times suggested that the company’s aggressive attempts to court engagement reveal weakness, rather than strength, as younger users have fled to TikTok and other sites and Facebook has become the domain of older Americans. He notes that Facebook’s researchers foresee a drop of 45% in daily use in the next two years, suggesting that the company is desperate either to retain users or to create new ones.

While the technology Facebook represents is new, the concerns it raises echo public discussion of late nineteenth century industrialization, which was also the product of new technologies. At stake then was whether the concentration of economic power in a few hands would destroy our democracy by giving some rich men far more power than the other men in the country. How could the nation both preserve the right of individuals to build industries and preserve the concept of the common good in the face of technology that permitted unprecedented accumulations of wealth?

While money is certainly at stake in the issue of Facebook’s power today, the more pressing issue for our country is whether social media giants will destroy our democracy through their ability to spread disinformation that sows division and turns us against one another.

When we began to grapple with the excesses of industrialism, lots of people thought the whole system needed to be taken apart—by violence if necessary—while others hoped to save the benefits the technology brought without letting it destroy the country. Americans eventually solved the problems that industrialization raised for democracy by reining in the Wild West mentality of the early industrialists, protecting the basic rights of workers, and regulating business practices.

The leaked Facebook documents suggest there are places where the disinformation at Facebook could be reined in as the overreaches of industrialization were. When Zuckerberg tried to promote coronavirus vaccines on the site, anti-vaxxers undermined his efforts. But one document showed that “out of nearly 150,000 posters in Facebook Groups disabled for Covid misinformation, 5% were producing half of all posts, and around 1,400 users were responsible for inviting half the groups’ new members.” Researchers concluded: “We found, like many problems at FB, this is a head-heavy problem with a relatively few number of actors creating a large percentage of the content and growth.”

“I don’t hate Facebook,” Haugen wrote in a final message to her colleagues at the company. “I love Facebook. I want to save it.”

While most Americans were busy watching Facebook crash—the falling stock took between $5 billion and $7 billion of Zuckerberg’s net worth—drama in Washington, D.C., was an even bigger deal.

Los Angeles Times reporter Sarah D. Wire noted that the rioters who broke into the Capitol on January 6 ran more than 100 feet past 15 reinforced windows, “making a beeline” to four windows that had been left unreinforced in a renovation of the building between 2017 and 2019. They found the four windows, located in a recessed part of the building, Wire wrote, “by sheer luck, real-time trial and error, or advance knowledge by rioters.”

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will likely look into this oddity.

The committee has begun to take testimony from cooperative witnesses. Observers expect fireworks on Thursday when former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, longtime Trump aide Dan Scavino, Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and Trump appointee Kash Patel must hand over documents. Trump has vowed to fight the release of any information to the committee. Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) says the committee will make criminal referrals for anyone ignoring a subpoena.

Finally, today, the debt ceiling fight got even hotter. While Congress passed a continuing resolution to fund the government through December 3, the issue of the debt ceiling, which stops the government from borrowing money Congress has already spent, remains unresolved. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the government will be unable to pay its obligations after October 18, and warns that a default, which has never before happened, would be catastrophic.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) insists the Democrats must raise the debt ceiling themselves, although the Republicans raised it three times under former president Trump and added $7.8 trillion to the debt, which now stands at $28 trillion. But when Democrats tried to pass a measure to raise the ceiling, Republicans filibustered it. As Greg Sargent points out in the Washington Post, McConnell is trying to force the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling through reconciliation, which cannot be filibustered. Since they get only one chance to pass such a bill this year, this would force them to dump their infrastructure bill.

McConnell is holding the nation hostage to keep the Democrats from passing a very popular bill, and today, Biden called him on it. McConnell complained that congressional Democrats were “sleepwalking toward significant and avoidable danger,” prompting Biden to demand that Republicans “stop playing Russian roulette with the U.S. economy.... Not only are Republicans refusing to do their job, but threatening to use their power to prevent us from doing our job—saving the economy from a catastrophic event—I think, quite frankly, is hypocritical, dangerous and disgraceful. Their obstruction and irresponsibility knows absolutely no bounds.”

When asked if he could guarantee we would not default on our debts, Biden said, “No, I can’t…. That’s up to Mitch McConnell.” If McConnell doesn’t blink and the Republicans continue to filibuster Democrats’ attempts to save the economy, there will be enormous pressure on the Democrats to break the filibuster.

Meanwhile, every day this drags on, Congress does not pass the Freedom to Vote Act.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

Link

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 4, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

In mid-September, the Wall Street Journal began to publish a series of investigative stories based on documents provided by a whistle-blower.

“I don’t hate Facebook,” Haugen wrote in a final message to her colleagues at the company. “I love Facebook. I want to save it.”

While most Americans were busy watching Facebook crash—the falling stock took between $5 billion and $7 billion of Zuckerberg’s net worth—drama in Washington, D.C., was an even bigger deal.

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol will likely look into this oddity.

Meanwhile, every day this drags on, Congress does not pass the Freedom to Vote Act.

—

Notes:

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2021/10/protecting%20kids%20online:%20testimony%20from%20a%20facebook%20whistleblower

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/03/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-revealed/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039

https://apnews.com/article/facebook-whatsapp-instagram-outage-8b9d3862ed957029e545182a595fdce1

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower-facebook-frances-haugen.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-says-she-wants-to-fix-the-company-not-harm-it-11633304122

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/04/facebook-instagram-down-outage/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-files.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-vaccinated-11631880296

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-10-04/jan-6-rioters-exploited-little-known-capitol-weak-spots-a-handful-of-unreinforced-windows

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/01/bennie-thompson-jan-6-panel-subpoena-514940

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/04/jan-6-panel-trump-collision-514979

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/10/04/biden-schumer-debt-ceiling/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#quotes #political #facebook #social media #debt ceiling #political hardball #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American

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thiscitychickk · 3 years

Note

Heyy sis this ya fav from AO3 😂🤣! Okay, I feel like this a safe space so I don't feel bad in saying you opened up a can of worms with this latest chapter lmfao. This chapter was great, including the content all considering and the conversations/discussions that happened after the reading. That said, why did you actually include this topic in the story? Also, is there a way I can type without a limit lmfao cause I have more to say and I am not about type 3-4 asks 😂 I cannot.

**SPOILER ALERT: Ch19 Come Let Us Adore Him**

Hey sis🙂 I won’t shy away from any criticism, especially when it’s valid frustration and triggering content for people.

Why did I include this plotline in the story? I think it goes back to what I’ve said all along. I want this story to be an accurate depiction of American politics as well as what it’s like to work in them. More than the inaccurate fanfics I’ve read, ther are also tons of stories and books that feature star crossed Republican Democrat love stories that gloss over any bit of ideological differences and go from point A to deep in love without actually hitting on difficulties.

That said, slavery is part and parcel of our nation’s history. It’s awful. It is poorly taught in schools. Ramifications of slavery are very much being felt by our neighbors today - and also being denied by many people in power in Washington, DC and across the nation.

Republicans count on voters to not understand how it has created so many injustices, social and economic, and capitalize on it in the way they create their platforms, message, and campaign. In order for Lucius to be this right-wingy presidential candidate, that’s who he is.

Are there other avenues that I could’ve taken for their wealth? Sure, but the pervasive inequality caused by slavery, then sharecropping and convict leasing and Jim Crow, the New Deal, on and on. It all stems from slavery, and this is not the last that we will see of the fallout from the article as well as the general awfulness of some of what Lucius believes.

I also would ask that people remember that this is a Harry Potter AU - the premise of the Death Eaters, one could say, is blood supremacy. The equivalent of which is racism in the United States. I warred within myself over whether this was too tough of a topic to take on in fiction, but isn’t that the point? To grapple with the difficulty in our world and try and make sense of it?

Unfortunately, with this fic, the sense that is made of this topic is that there is none. Especially for ‘white liberal allies.’ Hot take? Allyship is usually just performative. White people are hard-pressed to give up their stake in success, money, status, prestige without a fight, even if they say they will.

And Hermione? She’s 22. People have posted comments that are very angry with her - and some with me, saying that I write like a white liberal.

Which... I am. But I am also writing Hermione like any just out of college liberal who comes to Washington. She’s idealistic. She thinks she can change the world. She thinks she’s going to be doing good.

Nothing really happens in Washington - legislation that overhauls the systems as we know it - be it incarceration, health care, infrastructure, paid parental leave, child care, education... Those things hardly EVER get dealt with outside of a piecemeal approach.

Draco has had a lifetime to realize that, and he’s dating someone who is young enough to still be rocked by every wave in Washington. He knows that she’ll eventually find herself in the same place of subdued shoulder shrugging that he is in.

***** This is the BIG thing that I want to get through with this story, especially with this chapter *****

Extreme partisan politics do not get legislation passed - her job is not to be an activist, her job is to support a member of congress’ legislative agenda. It took me about a year to realize that. It’s well known in Washington that almost everyone moves to the center of the political spectrum once they have worked on the Hill long enough. Liberals become more pragmatic and conservatives become more centrist. It’s just the way of the world when it comes to getting legislation passed.

I know that people are going to be mad at me for making this a central piece of the story - but I have promised to keep it realistic, and this is how it is in my experience working on the Hill.

Draco isn’t going to have a liberal revolution - Hermione isn’t going to become a Lucius fan girl and vote for him in the primary or maybe even the general, if he becomes the GOP candidate (spoiler alert?). They’re two imperfect people who avert their eyes from shitty things because it’s easier not to fight or get upset sometimes.

But personally, should Hermione dump Draco over the fact that his father is unwilling to condemn slavery unequivocally? Maybe. She hasn’t yet, clearly.

This is a 22-year-old who has comfort and love and attention for the first time in years. She’s still figuring out what it means to care about politics and work in them and see no progressive bills make it to the president’s desk for signing. It’s rough to go through.

Could she do more? Yeah, but yelling at Draco is just going to have him say ‘this isn’t going to work.’ And that’s not what she wants at this point.

I guess the point that I come to with people’s anger over how she acts is what do you want out of this story? And I wish you could hear me ask, because it’s genuine curiosity, not annoyance or anger that people don’t like where I’ve taken things or where they believe it’ll go.

Do you want Draco to switch his party affiliation?

Do you want Hermione to dump him?

Do you want Draco to quit politics and move somewhere remote with Hermione and be miserable?

There are only a few ways this story could end up, with the two columns being ‘together’ and ‘not together.’ I totally totally get that people are annoyed, but that’s what comes from a realistic story of two very different people coming together. Everyone carries a different load in every relationship they’re in, and clearly Hermione has the heavier one in many aspects here.

Hopefully this clears a little up and can at least make you feel better about what you’re reading. Like I said, I get that this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

Some people are continuing to say that their relationship is predatory, and that’s the only thing I find fault with. Hermione has continually consented throughout this story. Is there a power imbalance in their jobs? Certainly, but she doesn’t work for Draco. Draco doesn’t pay her salary, they don’t have anything to worry about ethically at this point in the professional realm. Personally? There is so much consent here. So much slow-walking to start their relationship up. She can leave at any time. She’s not being gaslit, hell, it would be easier for Draco and his whole family if she left him. She’s not being forced to do anything.

If you made it this far, you’re awesome. Thank you for your honesty, my friend, and I hope you have a great day!

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bi-naesala · 3 years

Text

A young Naesala whistles as he wanders through the halls of Phoenicis castle, taking advantage of the fact that he’s the youngest and therefore less important member of the Kilvas’ convoy to explore the place. It hasn’t been much time since the two countries split, and thus he’s never been here.

Technically he’s supposed to still be with the others, but he had grown bored with discussing politics – what does he care? It’s not like he’ll ever need any diplomatic skill – and decided to sneak out. If someone catches him he can always lie and say he got lost looking for a bathroom.

With his hands behind his back and the bold step, he’s the image of carelessness, but it’s all a front: in truth, Naesala is preoccupied. “Of what?” one may ask. Well, the answer is simple: this isn’t just a diplomatic meeting, but soon a new convoy of ravens and hawks will fly to Serenes and, in a show of goodwill towards their heron siblings, they will all sing together inside the forest.

Singing has never been Naesala’s strong suit; he wouldn’t say he’s completely bad at it, but he is no heron. How is he supposed to show up there and ridicule himself like this?

The truth is, he wasn’t even supposed to come.

He heard that there was a convoy leaving for Serenes and he invited himself along the ride; he wasn’t going to pass up a chance to meet with Reyson and Leanne, even if it meant to partake in some boring political congress or whatever they were going to do.

It was only once they were almost at Phoenicis that Nealuchi noticed him and informed him of what he had just gotten himself into, much to his shock.

It was too late to get back, however, so Naesala had resigned himself to the fact that, once they got to Serenes, he was going to sneak out again; he refused to undergo something so incredibly humiliating.

He just wanted to see his friends!

His thoughts are interrupted by the sound of someone singing, or at least, attempting to, and even that seems too much of a compliment.

“Damn! I’ll never get this right!”

Naesala believes he recognizes that particular voice. Uh, he must’ve wandered off to the castle’s private quarters, because the voice that comes from behind the closed door on his left really sounds like Tibarn.

Thinking about it, he hasn’t met him yet; it would make sense if he’s been holed up in his room all this time.

However, Naesala is and will never pass up a chance to bother him, but first he needs to make sure of his actual identity. He presses himself against the door and he listens attentively; there are no doubts: it really is Tibarn, and he’s singing in ancient language what Naesala supposes is the song that they are supposed to perform in Serenes. He’s even surer of his identity when he hears a series of curse words after a moment in which his voice cracks; he really isn’t a good singer at all.

Time to make his entrance.

He clears his throat, knocking on the door.

“Your presence is urgently required, your princeliness,” he says pretending to be a guard, and the squeak that comes out of Tibarn is almost enough to make him laugh and blow his cover, though it doesn’t take the other long to realize that no guard ever would call him “his princeliness”.

There’s an unimpressed expression on his face when he opens the door.

“Naesala. I wasn’t expecting you here.”

“Surprise! I decided to invite myself to this glorious event.”

At that, Tibarn can’t help but to snicker.

“Does that mean you’re going to be singing too? Do you want to kill the herons or what?”

It’s during times like this that Naesala remembers how young Tibarn still his. Even though he’s hit his growth spurt faster than any other birds his age – and Naesala will never forgive him for that – he’s still a dumbass who laughs at stupid things.

One could argue that the same can be said for Naesala himself but he likes to believe that he carries himself better than that.

“I’m surely a better singer than you! The way you were trying to hit that high note was pathetic. If the herons hear you I’m sure they will--”

Tibarn grabs him by an arm and pulls him inside, closing the door behind him with a quick movement.

“Will you shut up?! I don’t need everyone in the vicinity to know about this!” he says, looking outright embarrassed, and Naesala can’t help a chuckle.

“Even if they don’t know now, they will soon. What’s the point in hiding it?”

Tibarn grumbles something he doesn’t quite catch and looks away, a clear sign that victory is his.

“Still, I have to concede that this is stupid,” Naesala says then, walking to Tibarn’s way too big bed and sitting on it like this was actually his room, “Hawks and ravens singing? That’s ridiculous.”

At that, Tibarn sighs of relief.

“I know! It’s humiliating!” he agrees, joining Naesala on his bed, and the raven nods.

“I understand the sentiment behind it, but I still think it’s useless: why should we offer something like singing when it’s never been part of our lives?”, he asks, letting himself fall on the mattress with his back, eyes up to the ceiling, “Now flying… that would be better.”

“Flying?”

“Yes, flying,” Naesala shrugs, “Everyone flies, whether it’s for sport, to play, to go somewhere…” he shakes his head, “Anyway, it would be better than singing.”

“Too bad we don’t get to do our own thing,” Tibarn mutters, but Naesala is smirking when he looks down, “What?”

“We could…”

Tibarn recognizes that voice, is the voice Naesala uses when he’s up to something shady.

“We could sneak out.”

Usually, Tibarn would never do something so cowardly… but his pride as a hawk in on the line. Besides, with a troublemaker as experienced as Naesala, he doubts they’ll get caught.

“Well, I suppose with you it’ll be harder than I anticipated.” Naesala continues then, “You are big and noisy after all…”

He gets a pillow thrown to his face before he can even finish the sentence.

The journey from Phoenicis to Serenes is uneventful and extremely boring, as Naesala and Tibarn are flying separately with their own countrymen – they’ll be less suspicious if they do so.

Still, Naesala hopes Tibarn will be able to keep with the charade, because if they get caught it certainly wouldn’t be pleasant.

He’ll have to wait and see.

He spots him once they land; he’s looking around probably in search of him. When their eyes meet, he winks.

The herons’ welcome is as warm as always, and everyone feels right at home. There is no time for dwelling however, as preparations are made: they all regroup at the center of the forest, ready to sing together in harmony.

It’s then that Naesala manages to slip away and, after finding Tibarn, snatches him away by an arm. Soon the two begin to run away together, laughing at their – even if small – adventure.

Soon, however, they stop.

They can hear the chants being sung and… it’s not that bad. They expected a cacophony of sounds, but this actually works pretty well. There’s also a hint of magic in the air, meaning that the herons are taking part of the ceremony as well; maybe that’s the reason it sounds so well.

A beat.

Naesala and Tibarn look at each other and they smile. They don’t have to be able to read minds to understand what the other is thinking.

It takes them just a moment to transform, taking flight high up in the sky. They can see the forest underneath them, and they can still hear the echo of voices resonating within.

They twirl in circles, lowering themselves and then rising up again, their wings that brush against each other. Their special tribute to the forest, a dance born from the desire to be happy and carefree.

At the sight of white feathers, they understand soon that they’re not alone anymore. Others have witnessed their dance, and they want to partake in it.

It’s a cluster of hawks, ravens and herons, all making circles around each other, joining in the chants with their cries.

With such an audience, it doesn’t take long for Naesala to start to show off his skills, which, to be fair, are quite impressive – nobody can match his speed. This doesn’t mean of course that Tibarn will let himself be outdone like this, and neither will the other falcons and ravens present, and soon this dance becomes something more akin of a competition to see who can pull off the most risky maneuver. It’s a true spectacle, something that beorcs can never hope to achieve, an event that will always be remembered by the tribes.

Serenes has never been so alive.

#naesala #tibarn #fe #tellius #fire emblem #fe9 #fe10 #this was supposed to be a zine piece #but then the zine never happened #so here's the fic i wrote for it #my fics #mine

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amour-de-tous · 4 years

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Finally, the update on my health

TW: lots and lots and lots of talk about health, and bad health, in particular, below. So I know I never really updated everyone on What Was (is) Going On With My Health. It’s been a huge mess, and I run out of spoons every day just trying to eat meals at the right times to take my meds. Shortest version possible (believe it or not): at the end of May last year, 2019, pretty much all my joints and extremities swelled up unbelievably. Like I couldn’t put my feet on the floor because they were so swollen it felt like the skin would split open. I had to sit in a chair all day with my feet elevated on a stool and pillows just to keep them from continuing to swell, and I had to sleep with pillows under my feet to keep them from swelling more during the night. I say “sleep” loosely, because I was getting about an hour to two hours of very interrupted sleep every night. The swelling was so bad that just to leave my chair where my feet were elevated, and go sit at the table to eat meals, my feet would swell so bad it was hard for me to walk from the table back to my chair. Then my hands started going numb and tingly, but not in a “my hands are asleep” kind of way, but more an “this is excruciatingly painful but I still can’t feel my hands” kind of way. I couldn’t close my hands into a fist, and I couldn’t open my hands either, they were frozen in a sort of half curled position. There were several weeks where I couldn’t hold a fork or spoon to feed myself. There were months upon months were I couldn’t brush or wash my hair by myself. I spent months with my hands/wrists/feet/ankles packed in ice every 20 minutes to try to control the swelling. I also had this awful brain fog situation where I couldn’t focus on anything. Even if I had been able to hold a book, tablet, or phone (which I couldn’t, because my hands were so bad), I couldn’t read because I had absolutely zero concentration or focus or comprehension. Even watching TV was almost impossible because I would zone out and come back to awareness and so much time had passed I’d have no idea what was going on. I literally spent three or four months just sitting in that chair in pain, staring at the ceiling, crying on and off. So, so much more below the cut.

I could barely attend my niece and nephews baptism. We were there for as long as it took for the actual service to happen, and while I tried to stay for the meal and gifts and such, I was in such excruciating pain--and using a cane to even be able to walk--that we had to leave early. My niece’s 4th birthday was a few weeks later, in late June, and again I was there with a cane and in excruciating pain. I’m my niece’s favourite person and having to tell her Auntie couldn’t get down and play with her, or hold her, was terrible. By the end of June, my PCP had run enough tests to be outside his area of knowledge and referred me out to a rheumatologist. The earliest the one I wanted to see could see me was January. This was the first week of July. So I looked around for whoever could see me first and chose them. The soonest someone could see me was, unfortunately, on my birthday last year, July 15th. So I spent my birthday seeing the rheumatologist, being diagnosed with carpal tunnel, tendinitis, and what he suspected was rheumatoid arthritis. Once I left his office, I spent my birthday getting bloodwork (8 vials, yikes, which continued monthly for the remainder of 2019), and then getting fitted for a set of wrist braces that I would have to sleep in for maybe the rest of my life, and wear during the day when the pain was so bad. The rheumatologist literally said to me “well, none of your labwork confirms this and we don’t really know, but we’re gonna treat you as if you had rheumatoid arthritis”. Although he kept running tests to try to confirm the RA, he didn’t look anywhere else to try and figure out what I actually have. So they started me on medication(s), and referred me to occupational therapy and physical therapy. I was so bad when I started going that my PT consisted of sitting in a chair and (trying) to flex my ankles in different directions, and then a lymph massage to try to reduce swelling. My occupational therapy, when I started, consisted of trying to pick up pieces of sponges and put them in a cup. I was so bad that was actually almost impossible for me. They also referred me out to have a nerve conduction test, where they stuck needles all through my arms and electrified them. It was the worst thing ever, let me tell you. Then I got referred to a hand surgeon (who is lovely, actually) for surgery. He decided to hold off on surgery and see if steroid shots would help (they did, to an extent, and I am so grateful for that). Fast forwards through months and months of testing and bloodwork and physical and occupational therapies and medications, and the swelling had reduced enough that I could stand up or walk to the bathroom or eat dinner without swelling up so bad anymore. Being at PT and OT still meant I came home and had to pack my feet and wrists in ice and elevate to take care of the extra swelling, but it was better. Not good, not right, but better. Fast forward more, still, and it’s December. At that point I could stand long enough to help cook dinner, or even run an errand or two before I was in too much pain and had to sit and elevate again. In mid-March they released me from PT and OT. Not because I was better--I still couldn’t (and can’t, now) bend my wrists at all--but because the prescription had run out. I’d basically used all the allotted amount I had. This ended up being alright in the long run, since aside from one trip to the lab for bloodwork, I haven’t left my house since my last day of OT on March 13th, due to Covid. Turns out having an auto-immune disease and being on immunosuppresants makes you REAL high risk for Covid, and I’m just not playing that game. At the beginning of April, I finally got to see the rheumatologist I WANTED to see all along (via video visit! Didn’t even have to leave my house and be exposed!). She’s awesome and is really set on finding an ACTUAL diagnosis for me and not just saying “we don’t know”. Had 9 vials taken from me in her first round of bloodwork, and then she said it looked like it could be Lupus and did more tests. She’s now pretty certain I DON’T have Lupus OR rheumatoid arthritis. I had an appointment with her at the very end of July (video, again), and it turns out she thinks I have something called sarcoidosis. This is going to require a CT scan, for my lungs and heart, to see if the disease is in them. Evidently with this particular auto-immune disease, your body overreacts and encapsulates what it thinks are dangerous foreign bodies (but really are just part of your own immune system) and creates “granulomas” around them. Basically think of an oyster creating a pearl around an invading body, except in this case instead of pearls, I have lumps of stuff that hurts me. Horrifying to know I have to walk into a hospital at this point in time, of my own free will. Like I said before, aside from one set of bloodwork, I haven’t been exposed or been out where I could be exposed at ALL. All that goes out the window once I walk into a hospital for a CT scan. :\ After the CT scan, depending on the results, there’s other tests I’ll need. Chest x-rays, EKGs, pulmonary function tests, lung biopsies (YIKES) and others. She seems fairly confident that this is the correct diagnosis for me, but wants confirmation and also to see progression of disease. At any rate, she’ll be changing my medication. Which sucks for so many reasons, not the least of which is I just picked up 360 tablets of it that I now won’t be taking. :| Also the fact that now I get to try a new medication and do the “am I having side effects or am I just anxious” song and dance. She’s also talking about needing to put me on steroids which I am REALLY unhappy about. I suppose it’s better to go on steroids than to die, but I’m still really unhappy about it. In other, related news, I’ve developed hypercalcemia. Which means there’s too much calcium in my blood, which can cause a HOST of other problems. So I’ve been put on a no-dairy, low calcium diet. Do you know how many items have calcium in them? Almost everything, that’s what. Also, they fortify all the non-dairy “milk” products with calcium. They all have as much or MORE calcium than dairy milk. It’s been a NIGHTMARE, to the point where I’m actually afraid of food now. I’m obsessively reading labels and doing research online. “How much calcium is in 81 grams of kiwi, after all?”. Nightmare. Dairy was my #1 love and foodgroup, and having to suddenly figure out all new things to eat and ways to cook while simultaneously being in pain and *exhausted* 24/7 because auto-immune is not. fun. at. all. It’s already all my energy every day to help make, eat, and clean up a meal. I literally have to sit in my chair after a meal with my feet elevated to recover. Now having to spend all this energy on a whole new diet plan is a nightmare. Basically this whole thing has been a MESS. It’s been 15 months, I’ve been being treated for the wrong disease for 14 months, the news I’m getting now is worse than the news that flattened my emotional response all those months ago, I still can’t function, and I can’t work. Oh, yeah. I haven’t played an instrument since May 2019. My whole life revolved around my music, and now I can’t even play to make myself feel better, because my hands don’t work. I’ve also been out of work since then, too: my last concert was April 2019. I haven’t made any money since. But I have had co-pays out the wazoo! Which reminds me that they raised the price on two of my meds, because of course they did. Thanks, congress. This has been really, really hard. My anxiety has skyrocketed through this, and my depression isn’t doing much better. Although physically I’m not as bad as I was, I’m nowhere near normal, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to my normal again, either. The best I’m hoping for at this point is to be able to eat calcium again someday, to not have my organs eaten up by this disease, and to continue existing. It’s been exhausting. It really, really has. That’s not to mention the added stress and anxiety over Covid, and the fact that neither mom nor I can even go to a grocery store because of my high-risk status. We’re averaging getting groceries about once a month right now. It’s super fun now because I have to read the label on EVERYTHING but Aldi doesn’t post their nutrition labels online and!!! That means I have to either guess or not get things! Great! All this to say that I miss being on tumblr. I miss all my friends here. I miss talking to you all and being able to laugh with you and geek out. Things have been really hard for me (and there are multitudes I haven’t included in here; even if my hands would allow that much typing, I’d probably hit a character limit. Just: I miss you all. I love you. I’ve been a wreck, but I think of you all often. <3

#health stuff #diagnosis #health talk #medication talk #eating talk #uhhhh what else #needles talk #blood talk #disability talk #I'M A MESS Y'ALL #i love you and miss you #ponderings and musings #asa health stuff

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dr-archeville · 3 years

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INDY Daily: It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Give People $2,000

Everything you need to know this morning

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It’s Wednesday, December 30.

Hey y’all,

The days between Christmas and New Years are always a little lazy for most people. There are leftovers to eat, days off in the extremely near future, and with the pandemic collapsing many folks’ dividing lines between work time and home time, it’s pretty easy to just operate at half-speed. For me, that means I’m relaxing when I’m not doing this newsletter, so I’m really more at half-time this week rather than half-speed, because the news certainly isn’t kinda-sorta taking the week off.

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The INDY Daily is made possible by the INDY Press Club, which is helping us keep fearless, independent local journalism viable in the Triangle.

I Want $2,000

Not from y’all, obviously. (Although if you’d like to support the INDY, please sign up for the INDY Press Club). But I would definitely like the government to give me $2,000, and for a brief window this week, it seemed like that was going to happen.

Over the weekend, Donald Trump claimed that he signed the newest economic stimulus bill, which contains direct payments to Americans for up to $600, on the condition that Congress would consider raising those direct payments to $2,000 as well as beef up the bill’s $300 increase in unemployment benefits. He also claimed that because he signed the bill, Congress would look into voter fraud and do something about how your conservative uncle is convinced that Twitter is hiding Rudy Giuliani’s Twitter posts from him.

Because it was Donald Trump saying these things, I assumed that he was just making this stuff up for the hell of it, but then on Monday, Democrats and a few dozen Republicans in the House of Representatives actually passed legislation following through on increasing direct payments.

Then yesterday, Mitch McConnell, the undead Senate Majority Leader from Kentucky, blocked a vote on the $2,000 checks by deploying some underhanded procedural trick. Bernie Sanders, who is Bernie Sanders, attempted to do some sort of procedural trick of his own in order to force the vote, but because Mitch McConnell has access to the Dark Side of the Force, McConnell’s procedural trick won out over Bernie’s. (For now.)

It’s likely that McConnell didn’t let things get to a vote in the Senate because the $2,000 checks measure would have passed. Though the Democrats only have 48 seats in the Senate, enough Republican Senators — including Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh Hawley of Mississippi, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — also supported the idea of raising stimulus payments that McConnell, who does not supported the increased payments, would have been unable to marshal enough Republican votes to stop it.

McConnell’s gambit, essentially, is this: He doesn’t want to see everyone get $2,000, and so he’s saying that the Senate needs to bundle the checks with a repeal of an internet freedom measure and an investigation into 2020’s nonexistent voter fraud epidemic. Which is, of course, a way for him to make the direct payments bill so toxic that no one would vote for it.

In an interview yesterday with CNN, Bernie Sanders articulated what seems to be the Democrats’ position, as well as the position that should be the baseline for all rational people. "As somebody who disagrees with Trump on everything, I gotta say he’s right on the need for this $2,000 check, and I hope the Republican leadership listens to him," he said, continuing, "Do you think that all over America, people are saying, ‘My God, we have to repeal Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunication Act! My God, that is a major national priority!’? Nobody even knows what that is! And the other thing, about voter fraud — Trump keeps saying he won the election. Nobody in their right mind believes that. He lost the election. We can separate those issues."

This entire affair, to me, reveals how uneasy the alliance between Donald Trump and the traditional G.O.P. always has been. While both parties have been united by a shared sense of grievance and a sincere love of making Democrats mad, Trump’s instincts have always trended in a more populist direction than the old guard. This isn’t because Trump is secretly a social Democrat or anything, it’s more because he represents a sense among some conservative thinkers that a great way of defining a nationalistic "us" vs. a non-American "them" is to give "us" free stuff while depriving "them" of it.

I’m not saying that Trump is up on the latest in conservative intellectual thought or anything — it doesn’t exactly take a genius to realize that "let’s give free money" is a popular political position, especially in a recession — but this is a stance among the G.O.P. that politicians such as Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio are explicitly trying to cultivate. If America’s two-party system weren’t so deeply entrenched, this wing of the G.O.P. might break off and form its own party, but instead, these guys will just end up fighting the Tea Party, old-school conservatives, and libertarian-leaning Republicans for control of the party for the next few years.

Meanwhile, McConnell going against Trump can also be seen as a test of Trump’s control over the Republican Party once he’s out of power. Unlike pretty much every other Republican, Donald Trump has a base of people who truly love him, and despite his loss to Joe Biden, the 74 million-ish votes that Trump earned in 2020 helped push lots and lots of Republicans over the finish line — including, to a degree, Thom Tillis in North Carolina.

For now, it seems, Trump still has plenty of power to trap Republican politicians in his tractor beam: Georgia Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both of whom are on the ballot in tomorrow’s special election in the state, both sided with Trump on increasing payments. Will their support for the measure help their chances with Trump supporters tomorrow, or will it lose them votes among the state’s voters for whom fiscal conservatism is paramount?

The answer, of course, is that we’ll find out soon, and also that getting a free $2,000 is exactly $1,400 better than getting a free $600. If only the Republicans who supported giving everyone that $2,000 wanted to do so for the right reasons.

Statewide COVID-19 by the numbers: Tuesday, December 29

3,563 New lab-confirmed new cases (524,279 total; seven-day average trending down)

18,846 Completed tests (6.8 million total; most recent positive rate was 13.5 percent)

3,377 Current hospitalizations reported (seven-day average trending up; 6,574 total deaths)

63,571 Total vaccinated (First dose only; state data updated Tuesdays)

Quick Hits

Learn how Chapel Hill plans to protect renters now that Gov. Cooper’s eviction moratorium has been extended. [Chapelboro]

If your North Carolina license plate is more than seven years old, you’re going to be getting a new one the next time you register your car. [WRAL]

The new, scary variation of the coronavirus has shown up in Colorado. [Axios]

Everything is horrible right now, but at least Professor Mohamed Noor, the dean of natural sciences at Duke University, has realized his dream of becoming a science consultant on Star Trek: Discovery. I loved Star Trek when I was a kid, and knowing that someone from the Triangle is helping make it scientifically realistic makes me want to check the new series out. [Durham Herald-Sun]

Today’s weather: Cloudy and humid all day, with chances of rain increasing into the evening. High of 48, low of 41.

Song of the day: "New York Groove" by Ace Frehley When the members of the band KISS made the insane decision to put out four solo albums simultaneously in 1978, no one expected that the best of the bunch would be from guitarist Ace Frehley, whose record included this Hello cover that, by my calculations, is the most fun song ever made.

— Drew Millard — Send me an email | Find me on Twitter

If you’d like to advertise your business to the Daily's 33,000-plus subscribers, please contact John Hurld at [email protected].

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#news #NC #The INDY #Stimulus Checks #Stimulus Cheques #Mitch McConnell #Trump Administration

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letmetellyouaboutmyfeels · 4 years

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Okay, if it's too much, don't answer that's fine. I'm not American and I've read so many different things about the political stuff that's going down over there, some saying Biden is the same as Trump, some say he's even better than Bernie. I got not clue how to sort that Joe Biden guy, sooo... Could you help us non Americans out a little? So far it's just looking like everyone is standing around a dumpster fire, shouting stuff that's not really comprehensible

Jesus Christ this was something to wake up to this morning. I’m gonna be honest, it’s not my job to educate you or anyone else on this matter, you’re all adults (supposedly, I’m doubtful about a lot of you) and Google exists. But I also understand that it can be intimidating to dive into the wide world of the internet and it feels easier to ask someone you trust or feel that you know, so I’ll do my best to be concise and explain.

Everyone is standing around a dumpster fire shouting stuff that’s not comprehensible because people, my darling, are idiots.

“No, Mads, people aren’t idiots!” A person is not an idiot. But people are. Put us in a group and we’ll happily self destruct in the most spectacular fashion possible.

Biden is nowhere near the same as Trump, people just live in an echo chamber and refuse to look at the facts. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how awful Trump is. It baffles me that people are saying Biden, who happily supported Barack Obama and played second fiddle to him for eight years, is the same as the man who’s putting children in cages.

Here is a breakdown of Biden’s policy plans should he be elected. Very different from Trump’s, as you can see. To quote this post here:

“It's important to be critical of political figures, especially during a primary election. Joe Biden has been in politics for a very long time, and his record is by no means spotless. There's lots to criticize, politically and personally. But having Biden in the big chair instead of Trump changes the entire game.

Look at it this way: if Joe Biden wins, a democratic Congress gets a clear path to passing real, lasting progressive laws. If Joe Biden wins, Ruth Bader Ginsburg gets to retire, and be replaced by a young firebrand who will make Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh's lives a living hell for the next 40 years. If Joe Biden wins, all of the horrible executive orders Trump has enacted are gone, on day one: family seperation, abortion bans in VA hospitals, EPA funding gutted, global warming denial in NOAA, removal of LGBT+ protections, all GONE in January 2021. If Joe Biden wins, all the Trump shills in the government disappear: I'm talking about new people in the CPB, the Justice Department, the FTC, and everything other federal agency. With Biden instead of Trump, we're going to be fighting for Medicare for All vs. Obamacare, instead of Keeping Obamacare vs. Stripping Away Any Kind of Federal Insurance. We're going to be fighting for the Green New Deal vs. Having a Functional EPA, instead of Gutting The EPA or Having No EPA At All. The fight is way different, and we get to pull the conversation further left - where it belongs.

This election is just as much about getting rid of the Republican stench in the Oval Office as it is electing a particular person. So yeah, be critical of Joe Biden, but please don't lose sight of what President Joe Biden would actually look like versus President Trump.”

People seem to be forgetting that when you vote for president, you are, supposedly, not voting for One Supreme Leader Who Makes All The Decisions Ever. Putting Biden in the Oval Office is more about putting in a man who will pass the laws that a liberal, democratic Congress will put in front of him. A man who will actually listen to his advisors. It’s about putting in someone who won’t appoint a bunch of judges that will screw over everyone for the next, oh, three decades.

I don’t want Biden in office. I wanted Elizabeth Warren, for fuck’s sake. Whose policies were the same as Bernie’s, by the way, for all you bros out there who say you aren’t sexist. The last thing I want is another old white man, for the love of whatever you worship. But the idea that someone who supported and worked under someone like Obama is somehow the same as a Neo-fascist egomaniac is... ridiculous. It’s truly ridiculous. Not that Obama was perfect, far from it, but under his presidency we were making progress on things and my God, I wasn’t scared for the lives of just about everyone I know.

As for Biden versus Sanders, the argument that Biden is better stems from the fact that while Sanders has helped move the party left with his presidential campaigns and he makes pretty speeches, he hasn’t actually done anything in all his time serving as an elected public official. If you actually go and look at his track record, he hasn’t passed many laws or helped enact a whole lot of others. Everyone’s making a big deal about how he “saved millions of lives” with his big speech but actually, sorry kids, politics are not Hollywood and you don’t save the day by making a speech and miraculously everyone votes on something. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and Schumer actually talked to people, convinced them on it, and got the votes that secured the unemployment bill being passed, and that’s what saved lives, not someone yelling (no matter how passionate or eloquent their yelling is).

It’s great to yell about how the system is corrupt etc but you have to actually follow those words with actions, and Sanders, historically, is not good about compromising, working with others, reaching out to others, being on a team. And that’s exactly what you need to be able to do in politics to get anything done. There’s an episode of Leverage called “The Gimme a K Job,” where Sophie spends the entire time running back and forth between politicians getting them to compromise and quid pro quo for one another so she can get them to vote on a law. I recommend watching it. The situation is played for laughs, but it’s also brutally honest. You cannot get anything done in politics (or in a lot of things in life) if you aren’t willing to work together and bargain and give some to get some, and Sanders isn’t, and that’s not good.

Now, Sanders has done a lot in his presidential campaign to move the Dem party left and he’s really stirred up younger voters, and those are both good things. If you look at Biden’s policies in the post I linked, you’ll see a lot of them are more liberal than most people expected, and that’s probably because Biden and his team saw everyone supporting Sanders’ policies and went, “oh, okay, this is what the people want.” Which already shows that Biden is willing to listen to the people more than Trump and his party are.

And then there’s the more personal side of things. Sanders really left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth because some of his supporters were so extreme in their support of him, to the point of acting like he’s the only person who could possibly save us, when honestly that’s not how democracy (or socialism, frankly) works. The whole idea is that all of us, working together as a movement, are what makes change. The people all standing up together and demanding that lawmakers do this, that, and the other thing. Sanders extremists, known as “Bernie Bros,” acting like Sanders is their One True Savior has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. In my experience, people don’t like being shouted at and told they’re idiots. And in my experience, one single person isn’t going to save you. And nobody’s perfect so furthermore acting like someone is perfect is only going to annoy everyone else around you and set you up for disappointment down the line.

There are a lot of people out there feeling attacked by Sanders supporters, and so frankly, they’re glad to see the back of him and throw support behind Biden, because they’re just sick of dealing with his extremist followers.

If you want to tear the system down completely then gold star to you, but the fact is otherwise you have to work within the system to change it. And I don’t see any of these people yelling on the internet actually doing the work to organize a revolution. It’s fun to yell about your opinions, it helps you feel better, it helps you feel powerful and heard. But the real work is done in volunteering, in protesting, in running for local offices, in doing research and then voting for your mayor, your governor, your senator, your state representative. Those people, as the COVID-19 epidemic is proving, actually often have more direct power to help or harm you than the President does.

People have more power than they think, but they’re just refusing to use it, and they’re refusing to think critically and to do research on the policies of candidates. I’ve seen people calling Biden a “serial rapist,” for crying out loud, which, whether he assaulted a woman or not, is not true. That’s like if I killed one person and suddenly everyone was calling me a mass murderer. People like to exaggerate, to bloviate, and to think in black and white. It’s disappointing, but true.

One final thought, for both you and actual Americans: look at how non-Americans are viewing the United States election. We are not the center of the universe (although we like to pretend we are) but we do have a huge impact on the global stage, and other countries are begging us to elect someone other than Trump. You want to claim we’re not the stereotype of the selfish, self-centered American? Than put your money where your mouth is and look at the non-Americans who are asking us to please, please, please elect someone else. Do it for them, if nothing else. The world is bigger than just us.

Biden isn’t perfect. One could argue one way or another on the Sanders v. Biden debate. It really depends on your personal opinion. But when it comes to Trump v. Biden, it really shouldn’t be rocket science. One of them has allowed racism, sexism, and xenophobia to thrive. He’s literally responsible for thousands of deaths (and counting) through his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s backed us out of the planet-saving environmental agreement that everyone else agreed to. He’s enabled corrupt, selfish politicians to have their way. He would appoint judges that will strike down everything from refugees to abortion rights. He’s destroyed our international relations, nearly started a war, and I actually don’t think he knows how to read.

And his name’s Trump.

That’s the difference.

#mads answers things #politics #this is the one and only time I am explaining this #all other questions will simply get a link to this post #yokoo-chan98

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hufflepirate · 4 years

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Why I Cried About the New Dixie Chicks Song

Ok, alright, so I’m having Extremely An Emotion about the return of the Dixie Chicks, and I know a lot of folks on here are either too young to remember the blacklisting or weren’t in the country scene at the time, so here’s the whole story the way it felt to a 12-year-old girl who loved them.

You should love and support them!! This story is why!! The vague recaps of the situation in articles about the new release don’t cut it!

*********

So. Let’s start at the beginning (for me). It’s 1998. I’m 8 years old. My parents aren’t really into Christian radio, but we’re also Good Southern Baptists, so obviously the only radio we really listen to is classic rock/oldies and especially country. You can’t trust those pop music stars these days. Or, God forbid, rappers. They don’t make music the way they used to. (Yeah. I know. But I’m just telling it like it was.)

I hear “There’s Your Trouble.” The singer’s boyfriend is constantly comparing her to his ex and she is Calling Him Out and I have never thought about such a thing before because I am 8, but I am deeply certain that any woman deserves to be loved by somebody who sees her for her. This is important to me. I don’t understand why.

It’s still 1998. I have recently moved west and I am still only learning to process the new geography. I am a child. I do not yet feel the full impact of “Wide Open Spaces” the way I will come to as an adult. And yet... already the idea that part of freedom is having “room to make a big mistake” matters to me. Instinctively, I know that one day, this will be a thing I need, even if I don’t right now. I am right.

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We don’t get the album. That’s fine. They’re on the radio a lot. They top the charts multiple times. They win grammys. They sell more cds than all other country groups combined. They are, if you read writeups of them, “not yet political,” but there’s something about the idea that a girl can not only want but need space and independence, need it as a necessary part of growing up, that is setting the stage for what they will become, at least from the perspective of someone who grew up hearing ‘feminist’ used as a dirty word for women who have been brainwashed by... someone?? into having a victim complex. (Again... just telling it like it was.)

The next year, I am 9. They drop Fly. I am never the same.

The first single to hit the radio is “Ready to Run.” It is bouncy and happy. The singer is not getting married, because she does not want to get married. She knows what she wants and she won’t be pinned down by expectations. I am Living, and the feelings I did not yet have about “Wide Open Spaces” are Here In Full because it is hard to imagine being a grownup for the first time, but it is easy to imagine taking off to be yourself instead of doing what everyone else wants and it makes me feel alive.

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“Cowboy Take Me Away” is deeply romantic and makes my little 9-year-old heart swell with feeling. It will be years before I realize that is because she is living her life and talking about what she wants and he is just... there. She is doing what she wants and he holds her when they sleep and smiles at her in the daytime and that is all we know. It is the peak of romance, and I, too, want to walk and not run, skip and not fall. I too want to grow something wild and unruly and that thing I want to grow is me.

My parents buy the album.

“Goodbye Earl” is released as a single and starts getting played on the radio. I grab the CD out of the basket we keep them in and it lives in my CD player until my mother begins to worry about the degree to which I am obsessed with this song about murder. I do not have the words to explain that the appeal is not the murder, it is the solidarity. I am being bullied very hard in school. I have only one friend, and she is often mean to me. It will be many years before I understand the true extent of the truth they are dropping in this song, but the details are chilling and honest and disturbing and when Maryanne flies in from Atlanta on a red-eye midnight flight, I feel something I cannot put into words.

It has been 21 years and I still do not have the words to explain “Goodbye Earl.”

Trigger warnings for domestic abuse and I guess also for poisoning domestic abusers and like, murder is bad or whatever.

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The album is a masterpiece. It is an experience. I am 9 years old and I do not want to fall in love, because I am 9 years old, and I am learning right now that if a boy falls in love with me when I clearly do not want to date him, that is his own damned problem, and I am singing at the top of my lungs to tell the world that I don’t want to fall in love but if I do, then screw them, I will drag everyone else down with me.

There are limits to how many vids I can drop in here, so I was just gonna drop in the ones that were important to “Hey, you should love them!!” but I can’t resist dropping this one in. This one was never a single but also like... y’all. Do you know how many times in my life I needed songs that told me it was ok to not be in love/pursuing love/dating people? And I’m not even aro/ace? Anyway, this one sounds so sad but feels so good. An indulgent vid choice, but this is my post, so??

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Also the album had some bops. These will probably not convince you to like them if you don’t like the country sound/genre, because the Dixie Chicks sound was always very country, but I dug the sound of 90s country then and I dig it now, so here you go.

Some Days You Gotta Dance

Sin Wagon (Fun fact about this one, which is like........ aggressively country I can’t even. It was not a single but it did get enough radio play to chart anyway.)

And then. The end. (For then.)

It’s 2002. They drop a new album in August. I am 12 and their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” has me all up in my feels on the radio. In December, they drop “Travelin’ Soldier,” a cover of a shmaltzy song about an 18-year-old soldier who dies in Vietnam after writing letters back and forth with a high school aged waitress who loves him. It’s sad. It features a couple young enough to be relatable to a 12-year-old. I am not so foolish, at 12, that I don’t realize even though they say Vietnam, I’m supposed to be thinking about the fact that we’re at war in Afghanistan and they’re talking in the news about how we might go to war with Iraq and Congress had passed a resolution saying we could.

Here’s the thing that sometimes gets lost in things about what happened next. This song was popular. It’s anti-war, but it’s not particularly toothy. The actual text of the song is just that a young soldier goes to war, a girl he met right before he left gets his letters and is faithfully his girlfriend because... soldiers?? and then he dies and she’s sad. It’s not supportive of war, but you have to be pretty far out there not to agree with a premise like “We should be sad when soldiers die,” or “There is/should be someone who cares about every individual soldier even if other people just see them as one of a list of names/a statistic.” The song charted. The album sold well and won awards. And I missed all of it, because it takes a while for things to trickle down to a 12-year-old whose friends, at that point, listen almost exclusively to showtunes.

On March 10, lead singer Natalie Maines told a London audience, “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”

Country music listeners lost their shit. Some people didn’t, of course, but a lot of people did. They called radio stations. They dramatically and publicly destroyed or threw away their CDs. People in the industry got involved, many of them in abusive ways, but I didn’t know much about that. All I knew was that one day they were ubiquitous, and the next, they were completely banned from the radio.

My local country station, or at least, the one my family listened to, was owned by Cumulus Media, who instituted a 30-day ban on the group’s music at all of their country stations (though not their general top-40 ones, apparently? I did a google this morning.) Other large media corporations mostly let their individual stations decide, though Cox Media also did a general ban. Lots of stations banned them individually, some for much longer than 30 days.

My parents didn’t make me stop listening to my beloved Fly. But the clampdown was, at least where I lived, intense and immediate. It felt like all of a sudden, they were gone. Dead in the water.

It fundamentally did not make sense to me. My parents shrugged it off with a similar attitude to President Bush, whose response had been, “The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say,” but also, “They shouldn’t have their feelings hurt just because some people don’t want to buy their records when they speak out.” This was all, to me, baffling. Sure, people could decide they didn’t want to listen to them anymore, but why did they get to decide for everyone else that we couldn’t? Why did they get to ban their music?

I was 12, soon to be 13, and this whole thing was, to me, the antithesis of what freedom of speech was meant to be. I believed in freedom of speech. I believed it applied to everyone. I believed that even though, in my confused, hurting, terrified, post-9/11 12-year-old mind, I liked the President and thought we should go to war, no one should be stopped from saying we shouldn’t. I believed freedom of speech was a moral imperative, a principle for interacting with other people and respecting them even if you disagreed. I believed it meant protecting people you disagreed with, because otherwise who would protect you when the disagreeing one was you?

It was utterly baffling to me that one comment - one comment that she apologized for, because she said she’d phrased it too harshly - could so utterly shut me off from something I loved. I assumed, when she apologized, that even though she said she still didn’t believe in the war, that things would soon go back to normal. They didn’t. I turned 13 a few months later, and the Dixie Chicks were still not on the radio in my town.

By the time they put out their next album in 2006, I was running with a crowd that listened to CCM and classic rock and never country, and when I listened to country at home, the radio still wasn’t playing them, not necessarily formally, but certainly in practice. I heard that Natalie Maines had come out and said she wasn’t sorry about what she said, after all, and I didn’t like that she’d said she didn’t think the President deserved her respect, but I didn’t even realize she’d said it in the context of new music.

The 2006 album, Taking the Long Way, was a commercial success. Their song about the event “Not Ready To Be Nice” also did very well....... but not on country radio. I was still listening to country radio at the time, not exclusively, but enough that when I looked up songs that had topped the charts, I recognized more of them than I didn’t, by title alone.

I never heard the Dixie Chicks’s new album on the radio.

Here’s what my local station didn’t play. What they were too scared to play, maybe, or maybe what they didn’t want me to hear:

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So, yeah.

That happened.

Badass.

But it happened without me, because the radio station was instead still playing “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” a song about women’s butts that a bunch of men wrote in a club in an hour while, presumably, staring at women’s butts. A song that sparked slogans on t-shirts in a little t-shirt shop my friends and I visited that year on a school trip. A song the middle-aged man who worked there (and with whom we were alone) referenced when he leered aggressively at my 16-year-old friend and made suggestive comments to our whole group (4 teenage girls) that made us run out of the building and race back toward the fast food places nearby where we hoped to find some of our teachers.

Country music was never the same for me after the Dixie Chick blacklisting. I knew it didn’t believe in freedom, even as it bandied the word about aggressively. I knew that it relied on everybody saying the same things and believing the same things, and it didn’t have room for me not to agree, and that was not then and is not now any kind of freedom. As the years went on, there were more and more Honky Tonk Badonkadonks, and I was less and less willing to give men a pass for being sexist and disgusting and entitled.

I miss country music, in the sense that I miss the Dixie Chicks, and I miss women like Jo Dee Messina and Sara Evans who were singing similar stuff at the time and might still be but aren’t on the radio because they’re over 40 and not also white men. I miss the way county music women made me feel in the 90s. I miss women who called out the men who’d done them wrong, who stated their own value and self-sufficiency, who sang about independence and made me believe in it. But more than anything, I miss believing in them. Some of that is of course still happening. But as much as I love Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves, I can’t ever get back there. Not really.

The thing is, I believed the Dixie Chicks when they told me I could have the space to make mistakes. I believed them that women could and would stick together. I believed them that I could be single and happy about it, that I could say no to men I didn’t love, even if they loved me, that if I wanted to fall in love, I could find somebody who would love me without ever tying my wings. And I believed I could be and do those things and still fit into the culture of country music.

I still believe the rest of it. But I’ll probably never believe that last part again.

Anyway tl;dr you should love them because they tried to be themselves and tell the truth and because they tried to buck the system, and you should love them because they never backed down, even when the system pushed back so hard that, from where I sat as an impressionable preteen, dependent on my parents and the radio, it completely destroyed them.

#dixie chicks #long post #music #country music #holy SHIT long post #but hopefully worth it??#if you're like ok wow so they got blacklisted in the 2000s and haven't put out music in 14 years that's wild #this is hopefully helpful #but also it helped me process my Many Feelings over which I Did Cry this morning so #worth it regardless

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giftofshewbread · 3 years

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Cry Out to God

By Daymond Duck Published on: April 18, 2021

On Apr. 7, 2021, Jean Worland posted an article titled “America just died a little…”

It was written by an unknown writer, and I want to pass on some of what the writer said.

It looks like the Deep State is controlling everything in Washington (Congress, the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Dept, the Pentagon, the Military) plus Silicon Valley, the social media, cable news, and more.

The Clintons have never been prosecuted for destroying e-mails, phones, servers, etc. (add to that pedophilia, and more).

Obama, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Rice, and others have never been prosecuted for spying on Trump, falsely accusing Trump officials, etc.

Soros is never prosecuted for funneling money to groups that riot, loot, destroy property, etc.

Durham’s report on the Russian Collusion myth has never come out.

I will add that:

Dianne Feinstein was on the Senate Intelligence Committee (and even chaired it for a few years) while employing a Chinese Communist as her office manager and driver, and her husband was getting wealthy trading with China, and nothing was done about it.

Eric Swalwell was on the House Intelligence Committee with access to all of America’s intelligence when it was discovered that he had slept with a Chinese spy that helped get him elected. Nancy Pelosi (whose husband also got rich trading with China) refused to remove him, and even reappointed him, and nothing has been done about it.

There is plenty of evidence of election fraud, but the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, refused to hear most of it (and now the Shadow government wants to pack the court so they can get away with everything they have done in the past and everything they plan to do in the future).

Biden says “no Amendment (to the U.S. Constitution) is absolute,” signaling the Shadow Government’s plans to destroy freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and disarm America so they can do what they want, and no one can resist them.

Things are not hopeless because persecution causes God’s people to cry out to God, and when enough do that, He rescues them.

Here are several reasons why I believe the global situation will worsen, cause more of God’s people to cry out, and soon result in Christians being caught up (Raptured).

One, concerning the days of Noah (wickedness): on Apr. 9, 2021, it was reported that experts have confirmed that the abandoned laptop computer at a Delaware repair shop belonged to Hunter Biden, and there is no evidence that the information on it is not true or that it is “Russian disinformation.”

Tony Bobulinksi has verified the accuracy of e-mails on the computer, the work order that was signed when the laptop was left at the repair shop contains Hunter Biden’s signature, and Hunter now acknowledges that “it could be his.”

The laptop contains evidence that Hunter and his dad (Pres. Joe Biden) potentially betrayed America, and Hunter was a sex abuser and drug addict.

Despite this strong evidence, it looks like Hunter and Joe are going to get away with their crimes.

Two, on Apr. 4, 2021, Pope Francis sent a letter to the spring meeting of two globalist groups, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Francis called for a new system of global government, a new system of social order (a godless world religion), everyone on earth to be vaccinated for Covid, and wealth redistribution (a new economic system; The Great Reset) so poorer countries can help pay for programs to fight “climate change.”

Francis’ call to restructure the world mentioned “the common good” (the way he often refers to world government) several times; it totally ignored Jesus, and mentioned God only one time.

These three global systems (world government system, world religious system, and world economic system) will be established, and the role of God and Jesus will be ignored while they are setting it up.

It is incredible that the leader of a religious organization that is located in a city on seven hills is playing an important role in this.

Three, in Jan. 2021, the state of California passed a law requiring officials to jail prisoners according to their gender identity.

On Apr. 6, 2021, it was reported that 261 prisoners that were jailed as men have said they are women, requiring them to be transferred to women’s cells.

Some officials believe some prisoners could be lying about their gender in order to be jailed with women, and this will increase sexual violence and pregnancies in prisons that house women.

Connecticut and Massachusetts have passed similar laws.

Four, the Biden administration is pushing the Green New Deal, and some of those behind it want U.S. citizens to eat less meat.

This passage of Scripture has come to my mind, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth” (I Tim. 4:1-3).

Five, concerning the Mark of the Beast: on Apr. 11, 2021, the Soufriere Volcano on the Caribbean Island of Saint Vincent was erupting and approaching a possible danger level.

Officials decided to use cruise ships to evacuate the island, but they would only allow those that have been vaccinated to board the ships.

Unvaccinated people that wanted to be vaccinated immediately could be, but they would still not be allowed to board the ships because their vaccination could cause them to have side effects.

Six, many that follow current events have seen reports that Covid is mutating, and there could soon be a need for vaccinated citizens to be vaccinated with new vaccines.

We have also seen calls for “vaccine passports” and other ways to track and identify those that have been vaccinated.

On Apr. 5, 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the U.S. will not require citizens to use vaccine passports, but he believes the private sector (businesses, schools, etc.) will require proof of vaccination if citizens want to use them (buy and sell, get an education, have a bank account, seek medical care, etc.).

Moreover, it was recently reported that one of Biden’s senior advisors said the Biden administration is already providing guidance to the private sector on this issue.

We don’t know how long it will take, but there is good reason to believe that new vaccines and tracking systems could eventually lead to the Mark of the Beast.

Seven, on Apr. 7, 2021, it was reported that former Vice Pres. and Chief Scientist for Allergy and Respiratory Research at Pfizer, Dr. Mike Yeadon, said governments, media and big tech are lying to the public about Covid.

Yeadon said they are planning to produce billions of vaccines for Covid “variants,” and regulatory officials are planning to approve those vaccines without testing them to see if they are safe for the public.

This former Pfizer executive added that he cannot think of any reason to vaccinate potentially billions of people with untested vaccines they don’t need unless it is being done to reduce the population of the earth.

On Apr. 10, 2021, a study of 400 people in South Africa found that more vaccinated people are getting the new strain of Covid than unvaccinated people.

On Apr. 12, 2021, it was reported that official government documents in the U.K. show that the next round of Covid deaths may be higher among people that have already been vaccinated than among people that haven’t been vaccinated because Covid will spread faster among careless, over-confident vaccinated people than among more careful, unvaccinated people.

On Apr. 13, 2021, the CDC recommended a pause in vaccinations with the Johnson and Johnson (J & J) vaccine while they investigate reports of unusual blood clots in six women between the ages of 18-48 (J & J denied that the clots were linked to its vaccine).

Eight, many readers are asking me for advice on whether they should be vaccinated or not, and I am not qualified to answer that question.

A reader sent the link below to me, and those that are considering a vaccination might want to watch this video before they make up their mind.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/01/bill-sardi/horrific-latent-deaths-predicted-among-the-elderly-by-genetics-professor-after-immunization-with-rna-vaccines/

The video is less than 5 minutes long, but please pay attention.

When the video ends, keep watching, and a second video will start that contains the opinions of many doctors and experts (28 min. and 34 sec.), and what they say sounds extremely important.

Finally, if you want to go to heaven, you must be born again (John 3:3). God loves you, and if you have not done so, sincerely admit that you are a sinner; believe that Jesus is the virgin-born, sinless Son of God who died for the sins of the world, was buried, and raised from the dead; ask Him to forgive your sins, cleanse you, come into your heart and be your Saviour; then tell someone that you have done this.

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monkytown · 4 years

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The movie ‘Irresistible’

Hi’.

I have to rant a bit about the movie and I’ll use that little lone corner of the internet to do that. Hopefully disturbing noone in the process.

For those who didn’t get the movie’s point, the US electoral system is insane. It is in eternal campaign mode and spends ~$5-6 billions dollars every two years just to promote a brand. People like Greg, from Dawn Somewhere, conclude from there that politicians are corrupt and disconnected.

But.

Try and put yourself in that consultant’s feet, but you want to help that town. What do you do?

I’m not talking about thanking Evan or remembering is name if it is his name, as the filthy viewer I am I quickly wrote him off as background prop. I’m not talking about being a good tourist and asking if the kitchen is still open and stuff. I am talking about how you would be the hero, not the villain, in that story.

What would it take to help that town?

The movie’s answer is to spend the election money on the town itself. A point Billy Bob from Mudpot hammers to the donors at the EvilRich mansion. So, how much money do you have? Around $1 million dollars. Which the movie tells you is a bit above the town’s target. Just spend that on the town and you get the shiny and green happy ending, job done.

Well, no.

All you have done is put a bandaid on a town that will still die. It was on life support with that military base (if I paid enough attention) and the private market ain’t gonna miraculously replace it. As, again, Billy Bob said, it ain’t coming back. You effectively gave charity to maintain it in an eternal state of poverty, good job. Be proud. Also, you have ten thousands other Mudpot needing that charity and that’s already above the ~$6 billions spent at the federal level. And then! You still have a whole other bunch of issues to solve. Pricetag for fixing the infrastructure? Above $1 trillion. To everyone’s shock, charity falls short.

So why would you, as the glorious hero even bother to go to Mudpot convince Billy Bob to challenge the beloved mayor? ‘Cause a mayor is powerless, the budget remains the same and poor people are trapped in poverty. Even if your Billy Bob wins, it will only let the other party say “see? see? You elected that brand and you are not better off, but now gay frogs are in your kitchens!” You are effectively shooting yourself in the foot here.

The reason is the ‘50 States strategy’.

That is the current democratic strategy, to compete everywhere possible. And it is a game of attrition as both parties, no matter what people think, have limited amounts of money. It is about outspending the opposite side where it counts. So what you are actually trying to do in Mudpot with your Billy Bob, by getting him elected, is get those same people to also vote for your brand upwards and therefore win Wisconsin, and other States, and have your brand in power. Why? Because without that condition filled you won’t be able to enact the $1 trillion infrastructure plan desperately needed (and insufficient by itself) to save Mudpot and its ten thousands other peers. And you are seeking to achieve that either by having Billy Bob win or by having the other party waste money in this irrelevant race so that you can win elsewhere. It’s math.

Now why can’t you simply elect Billy Bob and then work with the other party to get that $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed?

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THIS PAST DECADE?!

And we go back to hyperpartisanship and what I call the ‘rush to the extremes’. You have problems and the status quo can’t solve them (some would say the status quo is causing them). So people move to more radical options. And more radical. And more radical. And “suddenly” you have Trump.

Understand that this hyperpartisanship isn’t something top-bottom. It hasn’t been evil corporations and corrupt politicians conspiring to brainwash 40% of the population. No. It has been far more bottom-up. Democrats were winning elections until they defended civil rights and suddenly they couldn’t get votes in the south / countryside anymore. So they started representing those who would vote for them: cities and such. Meanwhile republicans were losing elections until they realized the countryside was up for grab. So they started representing those guys and the 538 has a lovely article on that. Sure, you have Fox News and MSNBC and whatnot, and think tanks making talking points for people to use and all that. But. The Tea Party came from the base. Trump certainly came from the base. And all the pushes towards progressivism among democrats definitely came from the base. Parties move according to who is willing to vote for them.

The hyperpartisanship that has been gridlocking Congress isn’t coming from representatives. Those representatives are perfectly representing the will of their voters. Voters are intently gridlocking everything by trying to brute-force it.

And why are they? Because the status quo resulted from compromises across parties. You can’t rant about the status quo and ask for compromise in the same breath, it is nonsensical.

So.

Back to Billy Bob from Mudpot and his need for $700k to fix whatever ruin is left in his pit of poverty. What do you do?

You, as the republican/democratic hero, need him to forget gay frogs and vote your brand so you can break the gridlock and unilaterally pass your agenda. It might require a Constitutional Assembly, you don’t know and you don’t care ‘cause you have no alternative. You need to save that town. You need several bills passed at the federal level to save ten thousands Mudpot.

You will tell ten thousands Billy Bob to run in the hope to get the majority needed, not just on paper but in practice, to save Mudpot. And if you fail, what can you, as the hero, do for the town? Nothing. You can come back, say you failed, and that you can only retry two years from now. Because gay frogs. There you go. You, as the hero, are the villain, and everyone hates you for being so corrupt and disconnected.

Why do I feel the need to rant about it?

Because everyone knows the problem but noone can come up with solutions (because gay frogs) and so it’s easier to just scapegoat the leaders, say they are corrupt and disconnected when, even if they were innocent and in-touch, they would be just as powerless, and forced to act exactly the same way because otherwise Mudpot dies.

And yes, politicians profit from it. What would you do in their place, when you’re powerless and about to lose your job, other than give up? And yes, corporations profit from it. What would you do in their place, when you are told to make money at all cost or die? And yes, no matter what Jon Stewart says, even the poor would want to profit from it, that’s your Moira from Radio Skyline.

What is most frustrating however is that I am Swiss. I experience direct democracy. And while you might not like the result, direct democracy avoids such gridlocks. Brexit? Initiative, bam, done, a decade of decay spared. A wall? Initiative, bam, turns out the majority of the US isn’t racist after all. Trade war? Initiative, bam, now Joe Biden is forced to suicide the country to get an elusive deal. M4A? Initiative, bam, still not happening because Switzerland tried four times and it’s the middle of Europe and we still said no.

Politicians and corporations didn’t create this insane US electoral / political system. They sure adapted to it, but they had to adapt, because eventually it is just a collective suicide over gay frogs.

And neither you nor Billy Bob from Mudpot, with his $4.5mn scam, ain’t gonna change that.

#Irresistible #politics #Jon Stewart #gay frogs

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 16, 2021 Heather Cox Richardson Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), whom the Republican House conference dumped as chair last week after she refused to kowtow to former president Trump, said some interesting things to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this morning. She reiterated that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has information about conversations with Trump surrounding the events of January 6 and should be subpoenaed if he will not talk about those things voluntarily (and, by implication, under oath).

Cheney is bringing back into the media cycle a number of things we heard between the election and January 6, but she has said that McCarthy should be subpoenaed enough times that it’s hard to believe she is talking generally.

On ABC’s This Week, Cheney also repeated the information she gave last week: that Republicans were afraid to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial because they were frightened for their lives. You may recall that the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) said something similar in his closing remarks in January 2020 at Trump’s first impeachment trial, and Republicans claimed to be outraged. Senator James Lankford (R-OK) told reporters: “That’s insulting and demeaning to everyone to say that we somehow live in fear and that the president has threatened all of us.”

And yet, sixteen months later, here we are.

Cheney is not the only Republican who is turning on the former president and his loyalists. Last night, Trump posted a statement claiming that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona”—where the bizarre “audit” is underway—“has been DELETED!” The statement goes on to make sweeping claims about “this unbelievable Election crime,” and so on.

But, in real time, the Republican recorder of Maricopa County wrote on Twitter in response to Trump’s statement: “Wow. this is unhinged,” Stephen Richer wrote. “I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now.” He went on: “We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country. This is as readily falsifiable as 2+2=5. If we don’t call this out….”

And Maricopa County did call it out. In a remarkable Twitter thread, the Maricopa County official account destroyed the effort by the private company Cyber Ninjas to recount the 2020 votes in that county. “The 2020 elections were run w/ integrity, the results certified by the county & state were accurate, & the 2 independent audits conducted by the County are the true final word on the subject,” the account said. “We know auditing. The Senate Cyber Ninja audit is not a real audit.” The account went on to list all the many ways in which this audit is simply a propaganda effort to shore up the Big Lie that the election was stolen.

This weekend we also learned that Joel Greenberg, the former tax collector for Seminole County, Florida, will plead guilty to six charges in federal court tomorrow. Greenberg is the man Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, a Trump loyalist, used to call his “wingman,” and Greenberg has worked his way down from the 33 original charges against him by promising to cooperate with prosecutors, presumably to offer information about people above him in the food chain, possibly including Gaetz. On Friday, media reported that witnesses could place Gaetz at a party with Greenberg, as well as lots of cocaine and sex workers, one of whom ended up with a “no-show” government job.

Gaetz has compared the accusations that he has been “falsely accused of exchanging money for naughty favors” with congressional earmarks.

I’m afraid I have no idea what point Gaetz is trying to make, but I’m flagging all three of these stories because they illustrate an important point: that a one-party state is bad even for the party that holds a monopoly and that, together, these stories reveal that the Republican Party is nearing the end of its dominant run in our democracy.

One of the key functions of a strong opposition party in a functioning democracy is oversight. Human nature being what it is, there are going to be bad eggs in every organization, including governments. It is in everyone’s best interest to expose the Joel Greenbergs of a party long before they hit 33 federal indictments and threaten to torpedo a highly visible lawmaker. But by marginalizing the Democrats through voter suppression, gerrymandering, and media attacks, the Republicans undermined that oversight and grew some terribly outsized scandals.

Manipulating the system to gain power without oversight, a party can close ranks even to the point that its members are afraid to speak out. The contrast between the fury unleashed when Schiff said lawmakers were afraid for their lives and Cheney’s acknowledgement of that fear illustrates what a closed circuit the Republican Party became under Trump. It could be, of course, that their fear is entirely new, but it seems more likely that they rejected the oversight that would have helped them throw off Trump before it got to the point that party members were afraid to speak out for fear of their own safety.

This sort of political domination might seem like a great victory, but it is actually suicidal in the long run. The party becomes so extreme that it finally alienates even its own members, like the Maricopa elections officials or Representative Cheney. They turn on the party leadership. And if they join with the party’s opposition, they can empower the regime’s opponents, enabling them to restore voting rights, end gerrymandering, and make the playing field level again. This restoration of fairness swings the pendulum away from the dominant party pretty dramatically.

The fear that the American people will end the Republican Party’s dominance, of course, explains why Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has declared that his primary goal in this Congress is to make sure the Democrats cannot pass the For the People Act to make voting easier, end partisan gerrymandering, and end the influence of big money in politics. McConnell and the Republicans want to protect Trump’s corporate tax cuts, and to do that, it is imperative that they regain control of Congress. And for that, they need the tools they have developed over the past generation, tools the For the People Act would take away.

It’s a Catch-22. To win, the Republicans need to hamstring the opposition. But as they did that over the last generation, they undercut the oversight that would have kept the party healthy. Now the Republican Party runs the risk of alienating voters it desperately needs as it faces a scandal of sex and drugs, a profoundly troubled election “audit,” accusations that party members are afraid to speak out because they fear for their lives, and suggestions from the former third-ranking official in the House Republican conference that the first official in the conference should be subpoenaed.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political #The Big Lie #January 6 2021 #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP #accountability #Maricopa

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xbarrjallenx · 5 years

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Say Something

Pairing: Theseus Scamander x Reader

Summary: (Y/N) and Theseus did their best to make their relationship work, but what would happen when insults and insecurities started knocking down everything they built in the past years?

Word count: 1.974

Posted: 22nd of January 2019

A/N: Wow, it has been awhile since I posted an imagine! I am currently having a great writer’s block, so please hype me up and leave some feedbacks below. I would appreciate it a lot!

Also, this imagine is sitting in my drafts for weeks and I just realised that I was really into angst last month, wasn’t I? Don’t worry, I have more fluffy Newt in drafts and I’ll post them soon! I hope you all enjoy this!

- G. x

“Hmm!” You hummed in frustration for the umpteenth time of the day while you struggled on finishing a paper work that your boss, also known as your boyfriend, assigned you few weeks ago.

The paper you were working on was a very important project for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but the task was passed to the Head Auror’s office because of the terrible news that shocked the whole British Ministry of Magic three months ago: Gellert Grindelwald was freed by a former employee of the Magical Congress of the United States of America!

“Are you stressing yourself for that paper work again, (Y/N)?” Theseus – the head Auror, your boss and your boyfriend – asked you in a discourteous tone as his attention drifted from his paper work to your exhausted figure across his office desk.

“I am.” You honestly answered, exasperated gaze suddenly turning into a tremendously appalling death glare, which he nonchalantly caught.

“I told you, days ago, to leave that work to Leta, she has more experience than you when it comes to those complicated papers.” He heartlessly reminded as he chose to not pay attention to your frustration, complimenting the Department of Magical Law Enforcement assistant while he apathetically insulted your abilities. “She’s can surely finish it in just a day or two!”

Saying that your boyfriend offended you out loud was extremely useless. His words hurt you and everyone would notice that by the expression written on your face. He underestimated you and your skills once again, an action that made your heart ache exaggeratedly.

“Oh, stop looking at me like that, (Y/N)!” He sassily verbalised, vexation filling his mind. “We both know that I am just saying the truth. Leta is more qualified than you are! Every Auror knows that, but they never had the guts to divulge it to you because you are my significant other. They have always hesitated on doing it because of me, of their fear of getting fired!”

His words echoed through the walls of your pounding head. The stress, the frustration and your insecurities were hitting you, leaving your brain no time to think and to calm yourself down. Your chest was feeling tight and heavy, making you clench your jaws as your heart was filled with hatred and abomination.

“I would love to have her as my assistant, but Travers is luckier than me, apparently!” He kept on blabbering, not caring for your emotions now.

He wasn’t aware that he was being harsh on you because of the blasé tone in his voice. He kept on going: talking nonsense and uncaringly insulting you, preferring Leta over you – his assistant, his best friend and his companion for years.

“So, please, stop trying so hard on finishing that paper. You want to prove me something? That’s not the case, (Y/N), because you are just wasting a huge amount of time!” He carelessly spat his venomous words against your vulnerable self.

It wasn’t the first time he would criticise you, it wasn’t the first time you would feel unloved, it wasn’t the first time you would endure the pain that he was causing you. He started praising Leta weeks ago and he never cared about your feelings when he would do so, but, this was the last time, it was your last straw. You couldn’t keep on hearing his insults, his criticism anymore. You were tired, tired of his words, tired of his ungratefulness, tired of him.

“Are you done spitting senselessness, Theseus?” You fiercely asked as you rapidly stood up from your chair, slightly kicking it to give you some space. “Because, you know, I am so done with you!”

You declared, letting him know that you had enough on tolerating his awful words and behaviour. You would have understood if he were just your boss, your head Auror, but he was your boyfriend too. He should be a little more encouraging and caring, just like your first years together, not harsh and daunting.

“What do you mean you are done with me?” A frown appeared on his face, matching the angry expression on yours.

He hurt you and his words broke you. You tried so hard to give Theseus everything, mostly just to make him happy, to live his life at its fullest. You believed in him, you took care of him and you supported him whenever he would reach for the stars. You caught him when he would fall from the sky, you cradled him when he would cry and, the most important of them all, you loved him with all of your heart.

He wasn’t a bad boyfriend at first. On the contrary! He was actually protective, gentle and sweet. You built your relationship so strong that no earthquakes ever succeeded on destroying you and separating you apart.

“I’m tired, Theseus! Leta here and Leta there, Leta everywhere, might as well have her as your real assistant!” You scandalously shouted, making your emotions explode. You couldn’t do it anymore. “I swallowed my pride for so long, Theseus. I did that just for you. Merlin knows that I did, because you are the only one that I love, but this is too much!”

Theseus. He was your better half, one of the two creators of your once-so-marvellous relationship, yet he was also the one succeeding on breaking your world apart, not a storm, not an earthquake, not even a hurricane.

“What are you talking about, for Merlin’s sake!? Are you okay?” He stood up, shouting back furiously as he stopped you. You ignited his anger issues, you did and you knew that the worse was about to come. “If you are making a scene in my office: don’t! We’re talking about it at home.”

“Home?” You sarcastically scoffed, tears starting to prick your burning eyes. “There is no such place for us anymore.”

He changed. The only man that you have ever loved changed and you couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe he fell out of love, maybe he got tired of you, maybe he had his eyes on someone else too.

“(Y/N), don’t take my words personally, Merlin’s beard! I was just stating a fact, accept it.” He yelled again, inviting your hot and salty tears to stream down your face.

“I am resigning, Mr. Scamander,” You courageously stated as you crumpled the paper that you were working on for so long because of his hostility. “as your assistant and as your partner.”

“What?” His grew wide in shock, heart almost dropping on the floor. “No, you can’t do that, (Y/N)!”

His tone was rather desperate and alarmed, confusion wrapped his fuzzy mind. He knew that he was about to lose you, but little did you both know you already lost each other weeks ago. The reasons? Insecurities and inappreciativeness. “Do you still love me? Do you still need me?” You changed the topic, calming down as you knocked the walls that you built around your heart.

“What does it have to do with this now?” He raised an eyebrow, still furious eyes straight into your bloodshot ones.

“Just answer me.” Your voice cracked because of the pang in your chest and your muffled sobs were quickly heard in the now-quiet room.

The tall man just looked at you while his curiosity killed him, anger leaving his system. He couldn’t decipher your emotions, neither could understand why you were crying over some simple things.

“Theseus, say something!” You desperately insisted, voice raising once again. He was dumbfounded and silent, thinking about his actions: was he still the man that you loved before? “Please.”

He opened his mouth as though he was about to answer you, but he quickly shut it as he failed to express his words and his feelings.

“I understand now.” You weakly nodded as you threw the crumpled paper work on his messy desk. “I’m sorry for doing this, Mr. Scamander!”

You were about to go out of the room, but his warm, but trembling hand stopped you from doing so. “(Y/N), love.”

“Don’t!” You silently muttered, drawing your hand from Theseus’ grip. “I had enough.”

Theseus shook his head continuously. He realised it. He realised what he has been doing to the love of his life in the past few weeks and he felt unbearable and severe sting in his chest, heart shattering instantly. “I’m sorry, (Y/N)!”

Strong and muscular arms were quickly wrapped around your fragile body and you felt his pain, his regret and his fear of losing you, but it was too late.

“I’m sorry, Theseus.” A sharp pang was felt in your chest as you removed his arms from your body. He broke you and, although he still wanted you, it was obvious to you that his heart already belonged to someone else. “I am quitting.”

“(Y/N),” You harshly bit your lower lip as you prevented yourself from sobbing tumultuously, tears still burning your cheeks. “please don’t leave.”

“Forgive me.” You started walking away from the man that you once loved, opening the wooden door with a flick of the wand. “I love you, Theseus, but…”

“But?” He looked like an abandoned puppy in the middle of his noiseless office, but this was what he deserved, nonetheless he never expected this to happen.

You just shook your head with a broken smile in response, tears continuously spilling as you walked out of the your once shared-office, walked out of his now-miserable life.

You were damaged and injured, but this was the best for you, perhaps even for the both of you. Theseus has changed, he wasn’t that loving and caring man that conquered your heart anymore. He was nothing, but a mean-spirited monster that ruthlessly stole your heart, so he could abuse it whenever he wanted to and throw it whenever he would find someone new.

Your tears kept on flowing as you leant against the wooden door of the office, loud sobs being choked and terrible pain being held back.

“(Y/N)?” A curious cinnamon-haired figure stood in front of you as he gently pulled you into his welcoming arms. The younger Scamander. He wasn’t an absolute hugger, but you were his only exception. “Why are you crying?”

“Newt.” You desperately called him as you buried your tear-stained face in the crook of his neck, carelessly wetting his soft skin while he pitifully caressed your head.

You were suddenly thankful that he had a scheduled meeting with Theseus’ team during that very specific day. At least, someone cradled you in their arms, making you feel the love that your significant other has failed on giving you.

Newt has always been that sweet and thoughtful brother, classmate and friend. He was your safe haven, before Theseus became your boyfriend. He was your anchor and you were his ship, but his older brother was a great captain and you never needed it again.

You abandoned him in the past, but you were thankful that he was the one who offered you comfort and a shoulder to cry on in the times you needed someone the most. He was an angel, your guardian angel.

“Please don’t cry, sweetheart. I can’t stand seeing you cry!” He lovingly hushed you, trying to calm you down as you started sobbing badly against his neck. It seemed like you were out of breath, but you still had lots of tears to pour.

“He’s not the same person I fell in love with, Newt.” You shut your weary eyes as your ex-boyfriend’s younger brother amiably accommodated you in his arms. “He has changed.”

“It sounds like you are giving up on him.” He pointed out, embracing you even tighter in attempt of mending the broken and shattered fragments of your heart.

You exaggeratedly sniffled, leaving your friend’s comfortable neck to consider his bluish-green orbs. “It’s because I already did, Newt.”

#theseus scamander x reader #theseus scamander angst #theseus scamander imagines #theseus scamander #callum turner x reader #callum turner #newt scamander x reader #newt scamander fluff #eddie redmayne x reader #eddie redmayne imagines #eddie redmayne #callum turner imagines #fantastic beasts imagine #fantastic beasts x reader #fantastic beasts and where to find them #crimes of grindlewald imagines #crimes of grindelwald #xbarrjallenx #masterlist

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