#more specifically bob sheldon

[coquettejohnny]

i cant hate anyone in the outsiders ever bc i can sympathize with all of them in some way

#dare i say empathize in some cases #obv i’m aware they all have flaws but i cant rlly bring myself to hate them #the outsiders #mainly about the socs #more specifically bob sheldon #i don’t hate him. never really did #excluding johnnys parents they are monsters #u get the idea

[saydams]

("...humanitarian aid FOR GAZA" is how that headline should end. it got cut off)

February 02, 2024

WASHINGTON–U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism, Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Friday led 21 colleagues in a letter to President Biden urging the administration to encourage Israeli officials to take five specific steps to significantly increase urgently needed humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza.

“The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is dire and the civilian suffering is at an unacceptable and staggering level.  Ninety-three percent of Palestinians in Gaza are facing crisis levels of hunger. Eighty-five percent of the population is displaced. Seventy percent of those killed are women and children,” the senators wrote. “While the scale of the crisis is massive, the humanitarian assistance that is entering Gaza is just a fraction of what is needed to save lives. Since aid operations resumed on October 21, delivery of lifesaving assistance to Gaza continues to be hampered, despite no evidence of Hamas theft or diversion of humanitarian assistance provided via the United Nations or international non-governmental organizations (INGOs).”

In order to significantly increase the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza, the senators recommended the administration work with Israeli officials to take five specific steps (recommended steps under the "keep reading" at the end)

U.S. Senators who wrote letter and/or signed it (arranged by state):

Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)

Tom Carper (D-Del.)

Chris Coons (D-Del.)

Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.)

Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii)

Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)

Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.)

Angus King (I-Maine)

Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)

Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

Ed Markey (D-Mass.)

Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)

Tina Smith (D-Minn.)

Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)

Cory Booker (D-N.J.)

Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.)

Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.)

Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)

Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.)

Jack Reed (D-R.I.)

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)

Tim Kaine (D-Va.)

Peter Welch (D-Vt.)

Patty Murray (D-Wash.)

Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.)

if your senator isn't on this list, call them!

here are the recommended steps referenced above:

Repair and open a third border crossing at Erez to provide additional aid to north Gaza. Planned missions by humanitarian actors to reach north Gaza from the south have repeatedly not been allowed to proceed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) due to cited security concerns, leaving hundreds of thousands living there stranded without enough food, water, and medical supplies and equipment.

Streamline the convoluted inspections process for aid entering via the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings, and issue a pre-approved list of items for entry.

Establish a clear, enforceable deconfliction process inside Gaza to ensure humanitarian organizations can operate safely. Hundreds of health and humanitarian workers have died in Gaza, including humanitarian aid workers who have been killed in areas deemed “safe zones” by the IDF. Israeli authorities should establish a direct line of contact for the humanitarian community to the IDF, as well as hold regular meetings to review incidents and make improvements.

Increase capacity for processing humanitarian aid and restart the import of commercial goods via the border crossing at Kerem Shalom. Before October 7th, hundreds of trucks filled with commercial goods crossed through Kerem Shalom into Gaza every day. The current humanitarian trucking operation can help reduce the suffering, but it cannot substitute for a functioning commercial sector.

Open additional supply routes for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. Every option must be explored to increase the amount of humanitarian and commercial goods going in, including via Jordan, the West Bank, Ashdod, and maritime routes. To the extent feasible, we also encourage you to explore whether U.S. military assets could help support humanitarian deliveries, via maritime or air routes.

“The largest daily amount of humanitarian aid entered Gaza on November 28th, during the seven-day humanitarian pause. Additional and longer humanitarian pauses are needed to enable a surge of assistance to enter Gaza and the safe movement of goods and people within Gaza. A humanitarian pause will also allow people to safely return to their homes in north Gaza. These steps will not solve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but taken together, they will alleviate the suffering for millions of people,” they concluded.

#usa politics #palestine #gaza #humanitarian aid

[cantsayidont]

Bat-Tin-Tin

In the fall of 1954, Rin Tin Tin returned as a TV star in a new ABC series called THE ADVENTURES OF RIN TIN TIN. Of course, it wasn't the original Rinty, who died in 1932, but one of the dogs who played the character was allegedly a descendant of the first Rin Tin Tin. The show, which had a Western setting, proved popular, running for five seasons and 164 episodes.

Toward the end of the first season in 1955, a new supporting character debuted in BATMAN: Ace, The Bat-Hound.

Although signed by Bob Kane, this story was drawn by artist Sheldon Moldoff, who was Kane's ghost for many years. (Kane drew little if any Batman art after the feature's early years, although he had a much more favorable deal with National than Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster did with Superman, so he got more credit and a steady paycheck.) Moldoff later admitted that Ace was modeled on TV's Rin Tin Tin — not that that's a particular surprise to anyone.

This was another case of DC striking while the iron was hot; the TV show debuted in mid-October 1954 and this issue was on newsstands by the end of the following April.

Next, we come to a controversial point that is much-mocked among comics fans: why Ace has a mask. The story explains it this way:

So, the point is not that people might discover the dog's secret identity, but that Bruce Wayne has JUST published a series of prominent newspaper ads with pictures of this specific dog, presumably also calling attention to his distinctive markings. (The forehead markings are emphasized more in dialogue than in the actual art, but that's another matter.) As comic book origins go, this really isn't THAT ridiculous.

Naturally, Bat-Hound proves an invaluable aide to the Caped Crusaders. Movie and TV dogs normally wait for cues from their handlers, but heroic dog characters must be more proactive:

Batman and Robin subsequently discover that Bat-Hound belongs to a man named John Wilker, an engraver, who has mysteriously disappeared, leaving his suburban cottage a shambles. Later, Bat-Hound detects a familiar scent on the scene of a robbery at General Paper Company:

Note that despite the mask, John Wilker immediately recognizes his own dog, whose real name we learn is Ace. Unfortunately, the pooch is swiftly knocked out again.

Fortunately, Bat-Hound is only out for a while. Guessing that he'll come around soon, the captured Batman and Robin contrive a … dubious plan.

Amazingly, this works:

Note that a reporter does in fact recognize Ace from Bruce Wayne's newspaper ad, so at least within the context of the story, Bruce and Dick's concerns were valid. Maybe not the MOST plausible pretense for giving the dog a bat-mask, but an effort was made.

Ace did indeed become Bat-Hound again, appearing next in BATMAN #97 (February 1956). In his early appearances, he was still John Wilker's dog, requiring some plot contrivances to explain how he was able to hang around with Batman and Robin, but this was resolved in BATMAN #125 (August 1959):

Wilker obviously knew that Ace had been Bat-Hound in the incident in which Ace, Batman, and Robin rescued him, but in Ace's interim appearances, Wilker was out of town or out of the country during his Bat-Hound exploits, so I guess he just didn't hear that Bat-Hound had returned, or something? (Continuity is not the strongest suit of these stories; there's some, but it's not what you'd call rigorous.)

Ace continued to appear semi-regularly through 1964, his adventures growing progressively sillier, but when Julius Schwartz took over as editor of BATMAN and DETECTIVE and instituted the "New Look," Ace was one of the various elements discarded from the series without so much as a nod.

Other versions of Ace have popped up since then — Batman ended up adopting another dog he called Ace in the early '90s, and the elderly Bruce Wayne in the pilot of BATMAN BEYOND has a mean guard dog named Ace. Ace appeared in the KRYPTO animated series and made several appearances in the 2009–2011 BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD animated series. Most recently, a version of Ace appeared in the DC LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS animated film, voiced by Kevin Hart; there, he's a shelter dog who befriends Krypto, and ends up gaining super-powers, which the original Ace never had.

There are people who really hate the concept of Bat-Hound, but I can say with assurance that there are far weirder (and far stupider) things in the vast lexicon of old Batman comics.

He's a good dog, Bront.

#comics #rin tin tin #batman #ace the bathound #sheldon moldoff #bill finger #robin

[fiddlepickdouglas]

Viva Las Vegas, Pt. 7 - Memories

Summary: Sunset Curve Alive AU, Willex, was it a memory?, 2.6k

@trevor-wilson-covington is the bestie who makes these lovely edits, we stan supportive friends

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

“Don’t look down ‘cuz we’re still rising up right now...and even if we hit the ground...we’ll still fly, keep dreaming like we’ll live forever but live it like it’s now or never…”

Willie bobbed along as the song played from the tinny radio speaker outside the bodega. Sheldon was curled on his lap, purring contentedly as Willie pet him absentmindedly.

“You gonna take any chamoy candy, amigo?” Escobar asked, peeking his head out the door.

Willie shook his head.

“Not tonight.”

As Escobar disappeared again, Willie kept nodding to the beat of the song. It wasn’t exactly like being at a concert, but he had been happily surprised to hear the local station playing their songs - they’d been repeating them, in fact. By now he’d been able to assign faces to the voices singing different parts, and hearing Alex’s come through in the harmonies and the occasional solo was comforting.

“We ain’t searching for tomorrow…’cuz we got all we need today…”

The lines were strangely fitting. If Willie could’ve chosen how to spend his last day on Earth, he knew he would’ve spent it just like he had yesterday without question. If only that could make the Alex-sized hole hurt a little less than it had today.

“Can we turn it back to my station now?” Escobar called out. “We’ve heard the same songs, like, four times.”

“It’s Alex’s band, though,” Willie contested. The radio was already playing rancheras. As he stood up, Sheldon leapt off of his lap and went to eat more food.

“Que tiene este muchacho, anyway?” Escobar asked. “You knew him for, like, five seconds and he didn’t leave you a number.”

There was no way to properly express in words the feeling he got about Alex. Their interactions weren’t based on words, even when they had spoken.

“You don’t have to get it, Escobar,” he said, grabbing his board and helmet from leaning against the counter. He hadn't let himself hope it would magically last forever, but the memory was worth it. “I’ll see you later.”

“Adios,” the man said, sweeping up the store and singing along to his music. “Una piedra en el camino...me enseño que mi destino...era rodar y rodar…”

Shaking his head and smiling, Willie kicked off into the late night. He’d spent all morning cleaning hotel rooms, and he tried to remember which number had been the one for Alex and his band, but he never figured it out. The rest of the day, he’d run errands for Caleb and let the one memory he had regained play on loop in his mind. There was nothing that specifically indicated that the man in the truck was his dad, but he simply knew it was. They had the same squint when they smiled.

He hadn’t bothered telling Caleb about it. It would’ve been irrelevant, since he’d apparently been in the foster care system for quite some time. Those were some of the important details he’d gotten from him, but Caleb was rather stingy about the rest - he’d said it was so Willie could live unbiased and make himself into whoever he wanted. It didn’t feel that way, though. Eventually Willie had stopped trying to weasel things out of him and accepted that he might never regain his memories. Of course, it was different now that he knew they could return.

The wind in his hair was nice, but lacked something he couldn’t put a finger on. As he came upon a large home, he skated onto the driveway around the back. He was headed past the pool in the backyard toward his shed and was surprised by a sudden voice from the water.

“William, I’ve asked you so many times not to skate around the pool,” Caleb said, wading over from where he had been doing some laps. Slowing to a stop and picking his board up, Willie gave him an apologetic nod, continuing toward the shed.

“Wait,” he heard from behind. Turning, he saw Caleb climb out of the pool and move toward him.

“You’ve been running around all day, so I’m sure you want some rest. I’ve just been worried about where you go when it’s so late. That’s two nights in a row. Is there anything you need to tell me?”

Put on the spot, everything went blank in his mind. What was there to worry about? Did he know about Sheldon? Even if he did, it wasn’t like he was doing anything wrong keeping the cat at the bodega.

“Not anything to tell,” he replied, trying to mask the strange guilt that had arisen. “Just been skating around.”

Caleb looked down at him, and Willie could never tell what was making those gears turn in his head. He knew he was just looking out for him, but sometimes he just wanted not to give some kind of report at the end of the day like he was doing business.

“I just think about what would happen if you were out there and something were to hurt you,” Caleb told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Or someone. Wouldn’t want another accident.”

Willie nodded solemnly. Caleb’s tone was serious, but for the first time he just felt that it was...insincere. His stomach flipped at the thought and he drove it down into the depths of his mind. That was an awful thing to think about the person who literally provided everything for him, especially when he wasn’t blood-related.

“I’m being careful, I promise,” he said, not meeting the man’s eyes.

“I’ll take your word,” Caleb said. He let go of Willie’s shoulder and strolled back toward the pool.

Walking to the shed, Willie shut the door behind him and confusion swept over his whole being. His dad’s face rose to the front of his mind again. If only he knew more about him to compare the two men, then he could understand why he felt so strangely about Caleb. Looking around the shed, he wondered if an answer could be found.

It was big enough for his bed, some shelves and a desk, with a small closet and bathroom. Apparently he had been living in there instead of the house even before his accident. In his first memory of seeing it, it was the bare necessities and nothing else. While Willie still wasn’t much to keep lots of clutter, he had dozens of sketches that he’d put up on the walls to make it feel more at home. It was quiet and thankfully Caleb didn’t bother him too often in there.

Sitting at the desk, he picked up a pencil and opened to a blank page in his sketchbook. Slowly shaping out a face, he tried his best to remember the details as clearly as he could. Willie wanted it to be as close to reality as possible, even though it wasn’t his usual drawing style. That way if his memory slipped, he could have something to keep him steady. So far the best thing about it was the eyes, but it wasn’t hard because all he had to do was check his own face in the mirror every once in a while. The smile was a little more crooked and wrinkly, and it took several attempts, but he was determined to get it right. He knew it was probably a good idea to get some sleep, since he had a full day of work in the morning, but this was more important.

Hours into the drawing, making sure everything was as close as he could get, Willie looked down at the portrait of his dad, steering wheel in hand, happy as could be. It was a really nice image, and if this were the only way he would ever remember him, Willie was glad it was happy. Checking the time, it was a little past three in the morning. He’d probably hate himself later for staying up so late, but it didn’t make him any less proud of his work. Aside from preserving his memory, it had been a great artistic challenge.

Finally climbing into bed, Willie tried to focus on something else. He brought Alex’s eyes to the forefront of his mind and let himself get lost in the soft crashing of the waves again. It had been rhythmic, which was so fitting for Alex. Allowing the rhythm to repeat continuously, he eventually nodded off to sleep.

Sirens blared and red and blue lights surrounded his vision. Willie was lying on the pavement, not moving and fading in and out of lucidity. The pain in his head was overwhelming. For a few moments, he stayed that way, watching the lights flash indefinitely. Slowly, he watched as all the lights and sirens pulled away, and above his face, the front bumper of a car came in view. A man that he couldn’t see clearly appeared, moving backwards, going from the side of the car to kneeling over Willie’s motionless body in a panic.

After a few moments, the man went back to the car in the same backwards fashion, and Willie’s body lifted in the air. His vision tumbled and he made contact with the car a few times, and when his head hit the pain vanished. Strangely, he landed perfectly on his board and it was like watching the city in reverse. Aware this was a dream, he felt so puzzled by the whole thing. This was a part of the city he could’ve sworn he’d never been through before. Willie had his corners that he’d memorized, but Vegas was big enough to confuse him still.

The backwards skating seemed to be endless, until finally he was running back into Caleb’s home. Caleb was yelling, and Willie couldn’t make out what he was saying at all. Then suddenly they were at a social worker’s office, and Willie looked down at a file with his picture on it. He couldn’t make out anything it said, but he simply sat there as Caleb and the social worker blabbed in backwards gibberish.

The scene changed again, and Willie found himself sitting in the shed, crying. He was repeating a name but it made no sense. A deep loneliness filled his entire body and a strange force seemed to try to compress him into as small a space as possible. The tears and the shaking only intensified, ringing loudly in his ears. Everything was miserable, overwhelming, and he just kept crying out into the dark.

Willie opened his eyes and sat up in his bed. Looking around his room, there was too little light to make out any shapes, and after blinking his eyes he found they were wet. Huddling his knees into his chest, he just sat there in his confusion and fear, breathing in and out. Had those been memories? It was so hard to tell, especially since watching everything in reverse had been so trippy. If they had been, he wondered if they were warped in any fashion. Who would have their memories return through a dream in reverse, anway? The frustrating thing about amnesia was that it had very few absolutes and every case was different.

A pit of anger grew in his chest. Willie felt like some higher power was having fun at his expense. The tears that fell were more from quiet fury than pain. Glancing over at his desk, he saw the drawing of his dad smiling back at him again. Unfolding himself and laying down on his side, Willie stared at the picture and let the tears run until either his eyes dried up or he fell asleep again, whichever came first.

Loud banging on his door was what woke him up. Rising groggily from his bed, he opened the door to find Quetzal, one of the girls from the diner.

“You just woke up?” she was saying. “Come on, Willie, Caleb doesn’t know I rushed over here to get you, you better hurry up.”

Sighing wordlessly, Willie pulled on some clothes, followed Quetzal to her car and clambered inside.

“You’ve been off the past couple of days, you okay?”

Willie took in a deep breath and tried to blink himself more awake as they drove to the diner.

“Just in a funk, that’s all,” he breathed. “Thanks for coming to get me, though.”

“Let’s just pray we don’t get caught.”

“We won’t get caught, he’s doing some kind of new deal today. I heard him on the phone a while ago about some record label he was thinking of buying.”

“A record label? How many businesses does the guy own now, like five?”

“I stopped keeping track. Anyway, Dolores is probably managing today.”

“Oh, thank God,” she sighed. “You had me so worried when you didn’t show up on time. I was ready to get fired for leaving during my shift. At least we don’t have to worry about it now.”

Willie didn’t respond. He knew Quetzal was one of those people who would go out on a limb for anyone, but it still surprised him when she did it for him. He never felt deserving. As they parked at the diner and hurried out of the car, he shook his head. It wasn’t always successful but he always hoped it worked like an Etch-A-Sketch, to get rid of the many things cluttering up his brain.

That was it. Enter the kitchen, punch in, grab an apron, and he was in his corner by the dishwasher again. He ignored the eyes of everyone else who clearly wanted to express their upset by his tardiness.  He was there now, right? Heaven forbid. Willie’s mind, of course, only remained cleared from the shaking for a few minutes. As he got into the groove of spraying and moving things into the industrial trays, he tried to remember more details of the dream, but most had been forgotten. All that was left were sirens and lights.

He’d walked back home at the end of his long shift, since he hadn’t taken his board like usual in the morning. That also meant he couldn’t go to the bodega for lunch, and he desperately needed to check on Sheldon. Willie had peeked into the house and called to see if Caleb was home at all. His own voice echoed back followed by silence. Taking that as a confirmation the man was still busy, he gathered his board and helmet and made his way out to the street.

The wind wasn’t its usual soothing sensation against his face. Willie knew he was tired, but was disappointed to feel that the one thing that felt most freeing to him wasn’t doing its job. It should’ve been enough to lose his thoughts to the sound of the low roll from the wheels, only interrupted by the gentle clacks here and there. There was too much noise inside of him. Suddenly, he understood why Alex had chosen to play drums.

Sheldon was already pattering toward him as he came through the doorway. Scooping the cat into his arms, he held him close and stroked his fur in an attempt to find some comfort. When he started purring, Willie made a little sigh of relief.

“Busy day?” Escobar asked as he organized a shelf.

Willie only nodded. Sheldon was rubbing his head against his face, and it did more to soothe him than the wind.

“Sorry I didn’t come for lunch,” he apologized. “I haven’t been doing my part for Sheldon and I owe you.”

“I would like it if you could be around more,’ Escobar said. “But he’s a pretty good cat, so it isn’t too much, amigo.”

Nodding again, Willie finally heard the music playing in the background. Was it…?

“I thought you were tired of their songs,” he commented.

Escobar shrugged.

“Eh, I had an idea you wanted to listen to them. And they’re not all too bad.”

A surprised giggle came from Willie’s throat, and he smiled for probably the first time that day. He went to give Sheldon some food and let his mind replace the red and blue lights with soft green eyes.

#julie and the phantoms #jatp #fanfic #jatp fanfic #willex #alive au #alex mercer #willie #luke patterson #reggie peters #bobby wilson #caleb covington #viva las vegas #memories #fiddlepickdouglas #memory

[thinkveganworld]

Here’s Part One of a series of articles I wrote a while back:  

Goebbels and today’s mass mind control: Part One 

How PR opinion-shapers turn the people against their own interests By Carla Binion (”thinkveganworld.tumblr.com”) 

Today’s right-wing public relations spin has much in common with the propaganda methods of Hitler’s PR man, Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels admired Edward Bernays, a self-proclaimed founder of the public relations industry.  Bernays, a Vienna-born nephew of Sigmund Freud, opened a New York office in 1919.  According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, (“Toxic Sludge is Good for You,” Common Courage Press, 1995) Bernays “pioneered the PR industry’s use of psychology and other social sciences to design its public persuasion campaigns.”

Bernays wrote in “Propaganda,” (New York: 1928, pp. 47-48) “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.”  Bernays referred to this scientific opinion-control as the “engineering of consent." 

In his autobiography, Bernays discusses a dinner at his home in 1933 where, "Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power.  Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen.

 Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my book ‘Crystallizing Public Opinion’ as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany.  This shocked me.  Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign." 

Today, corporations spend millions on public relations campaigns to "crystallize public opinion,” often in an effort to convince the public that harmful things are actually good for us.  Sometimes the companies start by bending the minds of our elected representatives. 

This is the first part of a series.  In part one, we’ll focus on the ways in which corporations and their public relations mind-shapers worked to destroy the Clinton health care plan.  Today forty-four million Americans, about one in five people, have no health coverage, and many people cannot afford needed pharmaceutical drugs.  Most Americans probably wonder why, despite repeatedly broken campaign promises, Congress never does anything to improve the health care system. 

As far back as November 8, 1999, a Newsweek article reported that half or more of eligible heart attack patients are at greater risk because they can’t get needed beta blockers.  The article stated that two-thirds of people surveyed say they are worried that health care is no longer affordable.  Conditions haven’t improved since then.

In 1993, the Clinton administration tried to do something about the high price of prescription drugs, hinting at possible government-imposed price controls.  The pharmaceutical industry then turned to the Beckel Cowan PR firm to oppose the administration’s designs on lowering the cost of prescription drugs – although, of course, the Clinton plan would have benefited the public.  Stauber and Rampton write that Beckel Cowan “created an astroturf [or, fake grassroots] organization called 'Rx Partners’ and began deploying state and local organizers to, in the words of a company brochure, 'generate and secure high-quality personal letters from influential constituents to 35 targeted members of Congress.’" 

At the same time, Beckel Cowan managed a mail and phone campaign "which produced personal letters, telegrams and patch-through calls to the targeted members’ local and Washington, DC, offices.”  The PR firm built a network of supporters in 35 congressional districts and states. Pharmaceutical companies weren’t the only corporations to oppose an improved health care system.

The insurance industry went to work to fight against the Clinton health care plan, recruiting PR-man Robert Hoopes.  According to Stauber and Rampton, the 300,000 member Independent Insurance Agents of America (IIAA) hired Hoopes as their “grassroots coordinator/political education specialist." 

Campaign & Elections magazine reported the IIAA activated "nearly 140,000 insurance agents during the health care debate, becoming what Hoopes describes as a new breed of Washington lobbyists,” wrote Stauber and Rampton.  Hoopes said the lobbyists “have behind them an army of independent insurance agents from each state, and members of Congress understand what a lobbyist can do with the touch of a button to mobilize those people for or against them." 

In Campaign & Elections magazine ("Killing Health Care Reform,” October/November 1994) Thomas Scarlett writes of the insurance companies PR moves, “Through a combination of skillfully targeted media and grassroots lobbying, these groups were able to change more minds than the president could, despite the White House 'bully pulpit.' 

Never before have private interests spent so much money so publicly to defeat an initiative launched by a president.” The Coalition for Health Insurance Choices (CHIC), an insurance company front group, led the attacks on health care reform.  According to Consumer Reports, “The HIAA [Health Insurance Association of America] doesn’t just support the coalition; it created it from scratch.”  Stauber and Rampton write that PR-man Blair G. Childs masterminded the Coalition. 

Describing the fight against health care reform, Childs said in 1993, “The insurance industry was real nervous.  Everybody was talking about health care reform.  It felt like we were looking down the barrel of a gun.”  He added, “We needed cover because we were going to be painted as the bad guy.  You get strength in numbers.  Start with the natural, strongest allies, sit around a table and build up to give your coalition a positive image." 

To battle health care reform, Childs said the coalition brought in "everyone from the homeless Vietnam veterans to some very conservative groups.  It was an amazing array, and they were all doing something.” (Blair Childs speaking at “Shaping Public Opinion: If You Don’t Do It Somebody Else Will,” in Chicago, Dec. 9, 1994.)  

Childs advised industry health reform opponents on selecting names for their fake grassroots coalitions.  He said they should use focus groups and surveys to find “words that resonate very positively.”  (Examples included the words “fairness, balance, choice, coalition and alliance.”) 

His own coalition sponsored the famous “Harry and Louise” television spots.  Those ads used strategic words to convince the public that Clinton’s health care plan was overly complex – a “billion dollar bureaucracy.” Propagandist Rush Limbaugh also fueled the anti-health care debate on his radio show with frequent “calculated rants” aimed at his dittohead audience.  

PR-man Blair Childs said his coalition ran paid ads on Limbaugh’s show to encourage Rush’s listeners to call members of Congress and urge them to kill health care reform. Stauber and Rampton say that congressional staffers often didn’t know the callers were “primed, loaded, aimed and fired at them by radio ads on the Limbaugh show, paid by the insurance industry, with the goal of orchestrating the appearance of overwhelming grassroots opposition to health reform." 

During 1992 and much of 1993, before the propaganda blitz, both Democrats and Republicans were leaning toward a health reform bill according to James Fallows (The Atlantic, January 1995.)  Fallows writes, "Bob Dole said he was eager to work with the administration and appeared at events side by side with Hillary Clinton to endorse universal coverage. Twenty-three Republicans said that universal coverage was a given in a new bill." 

By 1994, the insurance corporations’ PR attacks had changed the political environment.  Stauber and Rampton write that "Republicans who previously had signed on to various components of the Clinton plan backed away.” Even Democratic Party Senate majority leader George Mitchell “announced a scaled-back plan that was almost pure symbolism.  Republicans dismissed it with fierce scorn." 

Although Hitler’s propagandist used mass mind control for more sinister goals, today’s corporate propagandists have the following in common with Goebbels:  They use the same opinion-shaping techniques he did, and they use them for the purpose of turning the people against their own interests.  When large numbers of American citizens suffer or die because they can’t get needed medicine or surgery as a result of corporate propaganda, it becomes obvious that Goebbels and today’s industry PR spin doctors have produced fruit that is similar in kind, though different in degree. 

The public benefits from understanding corporate PR and its character and intentions.  Hitler said, "Only one thing could have broken our movement: if the adversary had understood its principle and from the first day had smashed with extreme brutality the nucleus of our new movement.”  (Speech to Nuremberg Congress, 9/3/33.) 

Corporate America’s movement to undermine affordable prescription drugs, universal health care and other public health and safety interests has to be understood before it can be fought.  Stauber and Rampton say the PR industry resembles the title character in the old Claude Rains movie, “The Invisible Man.”  Rains’ character uses his invisibility to get away with robbery, murder and other crimes.  

The film was made using special-effects techniques such as hidden wires to make ashtrays, guns and other objects appear to float in mid-air, as if they were being moved by the invisible man. “Instead of ashtrays and guns,” write Stauber and Rampton, “The PR industry seeks to manipulate public opinion and government policy.  But it can only manipulate while it remains invisible." 

In part two, we’ll look at specific techniques today’s public relations ploys have in common with Goebbels’ methods, and we’ll examine the corporations’ and think-tanks’ Goebbels-like attacks on environmental protection.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

No matter who wins the 2020 presidential election, they won’t be able to get much done if their party doesn’t also win the Senate. Historically, the presidential election results in a given state have tracked closely with the Senate outcome there, and the two are only coming into closer alignment (in 2016, for example, the presidential and Senate outcome was the same in every state). But partisanship isn’t the only factor in Senate races (yet); a senator’s popularity can still make a difference. That’s why, today, we’re unveiling a metric of a senator’s political standing that takes both partisanship and popularity into account.

With the help of Morning Consult, which polls the approval ratings of U.S. senators every quarter, we’ve created a statistic that I’m playfully calling Popularity Above Replacement Senator (PARS). It’s based on the same premise as my Popularity Above Replacement Governor (PARG) statistic1 — that it’s a good idea to think about politicians’ popularity in the context of their states’ partisanship. PARS, like PARG, is calculated by measuring the distance between a politician’s net approval rating (approval rating minus disapproval rating) in her state and the state’s partisan lean (how much more Republican- or Democratic-leaning it is than the country as a whole).2 Take West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin as an example. According to the latest Morning Consult poll, which covered the first three months of 2019, Manchin had a +5 net approval rating. That may not look like anything special, but it’s actually quite impressive because Manchin is a Democrat in one of the reddest states in the nation (R+30). Accordingly, he leads all senators with a +35 PARS.

Introducing ‘Popularity Above Replacement Senator’ scores

Senators’ net approval ratings for the first three months of 2019 relative to the partisan leans* of their states

Senator State Name Party Net Approval State Partisan Lean PARS WV Joe Manchin D +5 R+30 +35 AL Doug Jones D +6 R+27 +33 MN Amy Klobuchar D +32 D+2 +30 MT Jon Tester D +12 R+18 +30 ME Angus King I +30 D+5 +25 OH Sherrod Brown D +17 R+7 +24 NH Jeanne Shaheen D +21 R+2 +23 AZ Kyrsten Sinema D +12 R+9 +21 VA Mark Warner D +19 EVEN +19 NH Maggie Hassan D +17 R+2 +19 ME Susan Collins R +13 D+5 +18 PA Bob Casey D +15 R+1 +16 MN Tina Smith D +18 D+2 +16 WI Tammy Baldwin D +14 R+1 +15 OR Ron Wyden D +24 D+9 +15 VA Tim Kaine D +13 EVEN +13 SC Tim Scott R +30 R+17 +13 MI Debbie Stabenow D +13 D+1 +12 GA David Perdue R +22 R+12 +10 DE Chris Coons D +23 D+14 +9 OR Jeff Merkley D +18 D+9 +9 MI Gary Peters D +10 D+1 +9 CO Michael Bennet D +10 D+1 +9 NV Jacky Rosen D +7 R+1 +8 NV Catherine Cortez Masto D +7 R+1 +8 LA John Kennedy R +25 R+17 +8 DE Tom Carper D +21 D+14 +7 WA Maria Cantwell D +19 D+12 +7 VT Patrick Leahy D +31 D+24 +7 VT Bernie Sanders I +31 D+24 +7 WA Patty Murray D +18 D+12 +6 GA Johnny Isakson R +18 R+12 +6 CT Chris Murphy D +17 D+11 +6 LA Bill Cassidy R +23 R+17 +6 MD Ben Cardin D +28 D+23 +5 FL Marco Rubio R +10 R+5 +5 WI Ron Johnson R +6 R+1 +5 SC Lindsey Graham R +21 R+17 +4 PA Pat Toomey R +5 R+1 +4 NC Richard Burr R +8 R+5 +3 OH Rob Portman R +10 R+7 +3 MS Roger Wicker R +18 R+15 +3 MD Chris Van Hollen D +25 D+23 +2 NM Tom Udall D +9 D+7 +2 FL Rick Scott R +7 R+5 +2 CO Cory Gardner R 0 D+1 +1 NM Martin Heinrich D +8 D+7 +1 TX John Cornyn R +17 R+17 0 ND John Hoeven R +33 R+33 0 NJ Cory Booker D +13 D+13 0 MA Ed Markey D +29 D+29 0 CT Richard Blumenthal D +10 D+11 -1 NE Ben Sasse R +23 R+24 -1 IL Tammy Duckworth D +11 D+13 -2 SD Mike Rounds R +28 R+31 -3 IA Joni Ernst R +3 R+6 -3 IA Chuck Grassley R +3 R+6 -3 NC Thom Tillis R +2 R+5 -3 AR John Boozman R +21 R+24 -3 RI Jack Reed D +22 D+26 -4 TX Ted Cruz R +13 R+17 -4 IN Todd Young R +14 R+18 -4 MT Steve Daines R +13 R+18 -5 IN Mike Braun R +13 R+18 -5 AR Tom Cotton R +19 R+24 -5 AL Richard Shelby R +21 R+27 -6 SD John Thune R +24 R+31 -7 HI Brian Schatz D +28 D+36 -8 AK Lisa Murkowski R +6 R+15 -9 AK Dan Sullivan R +6 R+15 -9 NY Kirsten Gillibrand D +13 D+22 -9 AZ Martha McSally R 0 R+9 -9 IL Dick Durbin D +3 D+13 -10 NY Chuck Schumer D +12 D+22 -10 UT Mitt Romney R +21 R+31 -10 CA Kamala Harris D +13 D+24 -11 MO Josh Hawley R +7 R+19 -12 NE Deb Fischer R +12 R+24 -12 WV Shelley Moore Capito R +18 R+30 -12 KS Jerry Moran R +10 R+23 -13 UT Mike Lee R +17 R+31 -14 MS Cindy Hyde-Smith R +1 R+15 -14 RI Sheldon Whitehouse D +11 D+26 -15 ID Mike Crapo R +20 R+35 -15 ID Jim Risch R +20 R+35 -15 TN Lamar Alexander R +13 R+28 -15 CA Dianne Feinstein D +8 D+24 -16 MO Roy Blunt R +3 R+19 -16 TN Marsha Blackburn R +10 R+28 -18 WY Mike Enzi R +29 R+47 -18 WY John Barrasso R +29 R+47 -18 OK James Lankford R +15 R+34 -19 MA Elizabeth Warren D +9 D+29 -20 KY Rand Paul R +2 R+23 -21 OK Jim Inhofe R +12 R+34 -22 HI Mazie Hirono D +14 D+36 -22 KS Pat Roberts R 0 R+23 -23 NJ Bob Menendez D -10 D+13 -23 ND Kevin Cramer R +8 R+33 -25 KY Mitch McConnell R -13 R+23 -36

A Democratic senator with a net approval of +2 in an R+7 state has a PARS of +9 (2+7 = 9). If the same state had a Republican senator with the same approval rating, the PARS would be -5 (2-7= -5).

Independent Sens. Angus King and Bernie Sanders are considered Democrats for these calculations.

Shaded rows denote senators whose seats are up in 2020, excluding those senators who are not seeking reelection.

* Partisan lean is the average difference between how a state votes and how the country votes overall, with 2016 presidential election results weighted at 50 percent, 2012 presidential election results weighted at 25 percent and results from elections for the state legislature weighted at 25 percent. The partisan leans in this article were calculated before the 2018 elections; we haven’t calculated FiveThirtyEight partisan leans that incorporate the midterm results yet.

Sources: Morning Consult, media reports

Like we did for PARG, we can use PARS as a tool to assess the 2020 Senate elections — specifically, to give us clues about which of the senators whose seats are up in 2020 might be poised to over- or underperform their party’s presidential ticket.

That conversation starts with Sen. Doug Jones, who comes in at No. 2 in PARS with a score of +33. Jones is a Democratic senator in R+27 Alabama, so he’s fighting an uphill battle. And if he is able to maintain a positive net approval rating (it’s +6 currently), that will be a sign of life for his candidacy.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins is another senator who hopes to overcome the partisan lean of her state (Maine is 5 points more Democratic-leaning than the nation) to win reelection. Her net approval rating in the Morning Consult poll has been on the decline over the past two years, but she still has a solid +13 net approval rating. The question is whether the results in 2020 will be closer to her net approval rating or Maine’s light-blue partisanship; splitting the difference yields a race that leans (or tilts) Republican, which is exactly where major election handicappers have it.

Similarly, if you were to look at state partisanship alone, you might assume that Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mark Warner of Virginia and Tina Smith of Minnesota are electorally vulnerable. But PARS reveals why the handicappers aren’t so sure. They all sit in closely divided states (from R+2 for New Hampshire to D+2 for Minnesota), yes, but they are all also quite popular. Shaheen has a +21 net approval rating, Warner has a +19 net approval rating and Smith has a +18 net approval rating.

Unlike this trio, there are some senators whose electoral fates probably do hinge on the presidential race. Those include Republican Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas. Each has a PARS between +1 and -3, indicating that their net approval rating is in line with their states’ partisan lean. If the Democratic presidential nominee carries their states (admittedly, this will be easier for Colorado than for Texas), the party may get a Senate seat as a bonus.

Finally, the senator who ranks last in PARS is also up for reelection in 2020, and it’s a big name: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell manages just a -13 net approval rating despite inhabiting an R+23 state. It’s not crazy to think he could be vulnerable in 2020. Democrats are reportedly trying to recruit former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, who raised $8.6 million for an unsuccessful 2018 congressional bid, to run against him. But it’s worth remembering that Lucy has held this football in front of Democrats before. In 2014, McConnell also had popularity problems, and Democrats thought they had a top candidate to challenge him in Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. McConnell beat Grimes 56 percent to 41 percent.

Check out all the polls we’ve been collecting ahead of the 2020 elections.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nathaniel Rakich

[brevoorthistoryofcomics]

It was an unimaginable 41 year ago today, on Christmas day of 1976, that I finally got my hands on this much-desired beauty, a gift from Santa Claus. And actually, having asked for it specifically on the Christmas list that my mother would demand that each child write (usually sourced out of the Sears Christmas catalog, with an upper cap of $40.00 total), I wound up finding it among other gifts secreted away in our as-yet-unfinished attic, so I knew that it was coming at last.

To say that it was a treasure trove is underselling the situation. It’s unthinkable today, when so much classic material is readily available, either collected in book for or simply available digitally, but in the mid-1970s there wasn’t any way to read old comic book stories that you were interested in other than to find those old comics, or stumble across those stories being reprinted somewhere. So it was extremely difficult for a nine-year-old to make sense of the history of comics, as I was eager to do. Books like this one were invaluable and loved. Indeed, my original copy of this volume is in pieces, the cover and earliest pages having eventually fallen off--I had the paper cover edition, not the more expensive clothbound one. (I couldn’t for the life of me work out why anybody would spend the larger amount when they could have used that money to buy more comics. I get it now.)

SECRET ORIGINS OF THE SUPER DC HEROES was the follow-up to Crown Books’ successful collections of vintage Superman and Batman stories. But it was really a reaction to Simon & Shuster’s ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS and its profitable follow-ups. Carmine Infantino and DC certainly wanted a piece of that marketplace (even if Carmine would be ousted as DC’s Publisher by the time the final product reached the marketplace in mid-1976). So the book is structured remarkably similarly to ORIGINS, with chapters devoted to ten DC heroes reprinting their origin stories (in most cases, two different ones from over the years) and introductory chapters written by Denny O’Neil outlining the behind-the-scenes story as to how these characters came to be.

Sadly, Denny is many wonderful things, but he’s not Stan Lee, so his secondhand recountings aren’t as engaging or fun to read as Stan’s--they read more like a homework assignment. It’s mostly the editors that Denny speaks to and who comment on the genesis of these heroes, and while they’re appreciative of the gainful employment such characters have provided them, you can’t help but get the feeling that it was all just a job to these guys.

Remarkably, the introduction to the Superman chapter speaks of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, at a time when their byline was still stricken from the rolls at DC--this is notable in that, in that previous Superman collection that Crown had published years earlier, neither man was mentioned by name. Similarly, the Batman chapter talks about Bill Finger as well as Bob Kane--in fact, it mentions Finger’s name first. This was an extraordinary thing in 1976, and something that DC would walk back for at least a few more months on Jerry and Joe’s side, and for decades longer when it came to Finger. Whether this was due to Denny, or a desire to give a true accounting so as to mimic ORIGINS (whose accounting is far more compromised), it almost doesn’t matter.

The book also bridged the gap between the Golden Age and the more modern Silver Age, the Earth-1 and Earth-2 incarnations of the characters. In all but the final two instants, two stories were run featuring each character: their initial Golden Age appearance (or origin, in the case of Batman and Wonder Woman) and then either a more recent retelling or updating of that origin, or the origin or first appearance of the Silver Age incarnation of that hero. So you got Jay Garrick along with Barry Allen, Alan Scott besides Hal Jordan, and Al Pratt as well as Ray Palmer.

So, just walking through the volume a little bit, after some introductions and dedications (Sheldon Mayer!) it gets down to business with Superman, starting with a reprint of the first page of his initial story in ACTION COMICS #1 (which I’d already seen in the FAMOUS 1ST EDITION reprinting) followed by the expanded Origin of Superman from the AMAZING WORLD OF SUPERMAN special edition--this one I’d also previously read, in a SUPERMAN treasury Edition.

This is followed by the origin of Batman from BATMAN #1 (I’d read it) and then the well-regarded 1948 story in which Batman tracks down Joe Chill, the man who had killed his parents. It’s a story that packs a punch. Next came Wonder Woman, whose origin from the first issue of her comic was reproduced (Again, I’d read it in reprint before) followed by a more modern recounting by Robert Kanigher and Don Heck that also built up the mystery of Nubia, Diana’s long-lost sister.

Then came the main event, the reason I had jonesed over this volume for so long: the origin of the Flash. It began with a reprint of the first Jay Garrick story (read it already!) and then reprinted the inaugural Barry Allen story from SHOWCASE #4. And I loved it, boy, every nonsensical second of it. This was followed by the first Green Lantern story, featuring Alan Scott--Scott doesn’t don his costume until the very last panel in this story, which was a bit disappointing--and then the first Hal Jordan tale (in which he does wear his costume, but no mask yet.) The fact that so many of DC’s characters had debuted in anthology titles, and so their stories were shorter than their Marvel competitors made it easier to fit more stories into a single volume.

Then came two Hawkman origins (I’d read the first in the FLASH COMICS #1 Treasury, but not the Silver Age story) and a pair of Green Arrow stories, neither the Emerald Archer’s first appearance but both detailing contradictory origin stories for his costumed identity and mastery of the bow. I naturally concluded that the first must be the Earth-2 Green Arrow, which turned out to be true. The Atom came next, and he never even got a costume in his initial outing as Al Pratt, nor did Ray Palmer in his initial story. Still, these were all fun and inventive.

The final two slots in the book were devoted to DC “acquisitions” that had originated elsewhere. So next came the first Captain Marvel story from WHIZ COMICS #2 (the first issue had been an ashcan--and I’d read this story when #2 was reissued as a FAMOUS 1ST EDITION) and the first Plastic Man yarn from POLICE COMICS #1. This book is a treasured favorite, and I’ve replaced it twice over the years. It was also the start of what became a long Christmas tradition in which I would be given books on comics by my family, friends and relatives. And so it was a merry Christmas indeed.

#Secret Origins of the Super DC Heroes #Superman #Batman #Wonder Woman #Flash #Green Lantern #Hawkman #Green Arrow #Atom #Captain Marvel #Plastic Man #Denny O'Neil #Jerry Siegel #Joe Shuster #Bill Finger #Bob Kane #DC

[eichy815]

Fall Fusion 2021 (CBS)

The Coronavirus pandemic undoubtedly altered the landscape of primetime TV throughout the 2020-21 season.  Studio audiences were universally eliminated, due to safety precautions.  Some series had to have their production delayed altogether.  But with vaccinations ramping up, old slivers of normalcy should incrementally return to our screens across the course of next season.

Tentatively, NBC and Fox are set to unveil their “upfronts” on May 17; and, twenty-four hours later, ABC will follow suit on May 18.  The final reveal of that week will occur on May 19, when CBS introduces its Fall 2021 slate to the world.  The CW will wait until May 25 to hold its “upfronts.”

As always, a host of network programs are considered “on-the-bubble” – meaning their chances of getting renewed or canceled might be about as predictable as a coin-flip.  The shows still waiting to hear if they’ve been renewed include:  Kenan, Young Rock, Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist, Manifest, Debris, Law & Order: Organized Crime, and Good Girls on NBC; American Housewife, The Goldbergs, Mixedish, Call Your Mother, For Life, Station 19, A Million Little Things, Big Sky, Rebel, and The Rookie on ABC; The Unicorn, B Positive, United States of Al, SEAL Team, All Rise, and Clarice on CBS; and Call Me Kat, Bless the Harts, 911, 911: Lone Star, The Resident, and Prodigal Son on Fox.

Although the fall/winter/spring divide will probably be a lot smoother than it was this past season, I wouldn’t be surprised if the networks decide to “chunk” their series into 8-, 9-, or 10-episode strings of uninterrupted airings.  These would be strategically placed as “pods” intermittent between the fall, winter, spring, and summer.

In addition, “time-sharing” different programs within the same slot across the networks’ schedules would be a more efficient way of getting mileage out of successful programming – especially how it would bake in natural “backup programming” to leave fewer gaps in the event of unexpected Coronavirus-related interruptions in production.  At a certain point, hopefully Coronavirus will become so contained that it no longer forces temporary shutdowns of specific productions with any regularity.

(All times are Eastern/Pacific; subtract one hour for the Central/Mountain time zones)

(New shows highlighted in bold)

Featured network for today’s column…

CBS

Sunday

7:00 – 60 Minutes

8:00 – The Equalizer (fall/spring) / Undercover Boss (winter)

9:00 – NCIS: Los Angeles

10:00 – SEAL Team

The Queen Latifah-led reimagination of The Equalizer has performed well in the post-60 Minutes time slot.  I’d say keep NCIS: Los Angeles where it is, and move SEAL Team into the slot being vacated by NCIS: New Orleans.

Monday

8:00 – The Neighborhood

8:30 – Welcome to Georgia (fall) / Wilde Things (winter) / Back-Nine Sitcom (spring)

9:00 – All Rise

10:00 – Bull

The Neighborhood has thrived for the past three seasons, leading off Sunday nights.  Freshman sitcom Welcome to Georgia (headlined by New Girl’s Hannah Simone) should be tried out in the post-Neighborhood time slot. Midseason, the time period could be turned over to Wilde Things – an ensemble multi-cam starring Modern Family’s Julie Bowen.

All Rise and Bull would stay put as a two-hour courtroom drama blog. If Welcome to Georgia doesn’t get a Back-Nine Order, the post-Neighborhood slot could be given to B-Positive, United States of Al, or the new single-cam Ghosts.

Tuesday

8:00 – NCIS

9:00 – NCIS: Hawaii

10:00 – FBI: Most Wanted (fall/spring) / FBI: International (winter)

Nestled between NCIS and FBI: Most Wanted could be NCIS: Hawaii, the green-lit spinoff that seeks to fill the void left behind by the cancellation of NCIS: New Orleans. Midseason, the anticipated spinoff FBI: International should receive a 13-week tryout while FBI: Most Wanted prepares for a spring return.

Wednesday

8:00 – Survivor 41 (fall) / Tough as Nails (winter) / Survivor 42 (spring)

9:00 – FBI

10:00 – CSI: Vegas (fall) / Evil (winter/spring)

Survivor’s forty-first season is currently filming in Fiji.  A new water-carrier to take over the immediate post-Survivor slot would be megahit FBI (original blend).  The much-anticipated revival of CSI: Vegas can close out the night.

Midseason, Tough as Nails can pick up slack in-between the fall and spring cycles of Survivor. Assuming that Evil’s Summer 2021 does well enough to warrant a third season renewal, it could return in January and February in the post-FBI slot.

Thursday

8:00 – Young Sheldon

8:30 – The Unicorn (fall/winter) / Ghosts (spring)

9:00 – Bob Hearts Abishola

9:30 – United States of Al (fall/spring) / B-Positive (winter)

10:00 – Good Sam (fall) / True Lies (winter) / Back-Nine Drama (spring)

Young Sheldon and The Unicorn can remain a pair for the fall, but Bob Hearts Abishola would be a strong contender for moving into Mom’s old time slot.  United States of Al’s sophomore season can be the fourth sitcom to air as part of CBS’s Thursday comedy lineup, with the Sophia Bush-helmed medical drama Good Sam closing out the evening.

By midseason, the small-screen adaptation of True Lies should be ready for a limited winter run. Whether Good Sam receives a Back-Nine pickup would determine whether we see it again in the spring…or another CBS series transplanted in its place.  Also on deck:  a midseason batch of episodes for B-Positive’s sophomore season, a possible Back-Nine order for United States of Al, or the debut of single-cam Ghosts.

Friday

8:00 – Magnum P.I.

9:00 – S.W.A.T.

10:00 – Blue Bloods

With MacGyver canceled, Magnum P.I. will probably be moved up to lead off the night.  S.W.A.T., meanwhile, can be moved into the middle of Friday nights – and, topping off this night of crime drama nostalgia would be the return of Blue Bloods (which is most likely safe for however long Tom Selleck continues to want to do it).

The pandemic has definitely forced networks to get creative with their programming.  The higher turnaround time for production of scripted series may necessitate that programs split up their seasons into “chunks,” essentially “time-sharing” the same slot with other shows that get rotated in at other points during the season. As social-distancing restrictions gradually become more relaxed, unscripted programming with live studio audiences can be slowly integrated back into the studio itineraries.  

Despite the year-plus lockdowns we’ve endured, primetime television has proved to be resilient and resourceful.  There’s no reason to believe that won’t be the case as we head into 2022.

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

2018 Midterm Guide

It is absolutely imperative that the Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress next fall. Two main reasons:

We need to be able to stop the dangerous Republican agenda without Republican help, because they are not dependable. It is not right that people have to mobilize en masse every few weeks so that premature babies aren’t thrown out of critical care.

Democrats need to take back at least one house of Congress to put any meaningful brakes on Trump. Remember, whichever party is in the majority of a house of Congress controls all the committees in that house of Congress, which means they control what bills make it to the floor and what gets publicly investigated. Right now, the Republicans get to decide what there are hearings about and if those hearings are open, which witnesses are called to testify, who and what gets subpoenaed.  If Democrats get one house of Congress, they might not be able to get rid of the Trump regime, but they would be able to bring it to a screeching halt.

This is not going to be easy. Thanks to Republican gerrymandering (drawing district boundaries to their advantage), Democrats could win 54% of the total votes cast for members of Congress and Republicans would still win 47% of the seats. The Senate is similarly imbalanced, mostly because it overrepresents rural states. Voter suppression, which is already a small-d democratic crisis, is likely to be made worse by Pence’s “voter fraud” commission. And all shadiness aside, there are more Republican incumbents and most incumbents win re-election. This is an uphill climb.

After last year it’s tempting to gloss over those obstacles by saying that “anything” can happen – but the bizarre surprises of 2016 broke in the Republicans’ direction for specific reasons that won’t happen for us. Foreign oil barons aren’t going to intervene to help Democrats. The FBI isn’t going to break the rules to stage 11th-hour interventions in favor of the party that wants to curb police abuses of power, especially since they’re no longer led by a weak-willed narcissist who lets himself be led around by the nose by Russian kleptocrats who aren’t going to intervene again anyway. Republicans didn’t just get lucky and draw a good hand last year. Bad people chose to do bad things and were rewarded for it. We have to be aware of those things and commit to fighting them, and part of that is acknowledging that it might not be enough.

Another part of that is understanding how these elections work procedurally, as well as the baseline politics. 

The House of Representatives is pretty straightforward: there’s one member of Congress for every congressional district, and every congressional district has an election every two years. There are 435 seats in the House, which means that you need 218 for a majority. Right now, there are 240 Republicans, 194 Democrats, and 1 vacancy in a red district.*  

The Senate calendar is a little more complicated. There are two senators for every state, resulting in an even 100 senators. Every two years there are elections for 1/3 of Senate seats. Senators then serve a six year term. If a senator leaves before their term is up, then there has to be a special election for the person who will fill the seat for the rest of that term.** 

National parties take the lead on Senate elections. Generally speaking, it’s better for both parties and individual candidates to be the challengers, and that’s kind of good news/bad news. Good news: in midterm elections (elections that, like 2018, happen between presidential elections), the president’s party has historically lost seats. Bad news: it’s harder in years that your party has more seats up for re-election. Twenty-three Democratic senators, plus both of the Independents who caucus with the Democrats, are up for re-election in 2018. Republicans only have to defend eight seats. Several of those Democrats are running in states which went for Trump last year, while only one Republican is running in a Clinton state. 

The Democratic senators whose seats seem safe: Dianne Feinstein (CA), Chris Murphy (CT), Tom Carper (DE), Mazie Hirono (HI), Ben Cardin (MD), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Martin Heinrich (NM), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Tim Kaine (VA), and Maria Cantwell (WA).

Independents Angus King (Maine) and Bernie Sanders (VT) also seem safe.

Democrats who seem at risk are: Ben Nelson (FL), Joe Donnelly (IN), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Claire McCaskill (MO), Jon Tester (MT), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Sherrod Brown (OH), Bob Casey (PA), Joe Manchin (WV), and Tammy Baldwin (WI).

I’m not sure what to say about the New Jersey race. New Jersey is a safe Democratic state. Its current senator, Bob Menendez (D-NJ), is currently on trial for corruption, because New Jersey. That may or may not matter, because, New Jersey. 

Of the Republicans, Roger Wicker (MS), Deb Fischer (NE), Orrin Hatch (UT), and John Barrasso (WY) are almost certainly safe.

Republicans Dean Heller (NV) and Jeff Flake (AZ) are the biggest targets for Democrats to pick up.

There are also two long-shots. Tennessee is a deep red state and Senator Bob Corker would almost certainly win if he were running for re-election, but he has announced he’s retiring. Last but hardly least, Ted Cruz’s term is up. Now. Texas is Texas, and while Democrats narrowed the gap to single digits last year, it’s still a red state. But! Texas Democrats have been making a long, sustained push to mobilize the non-voters that can turn the state blue, and if you’re in Texas you can be a part of it. Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, people fucking hate Ted Cruz. 

A word about primaries: They should only be happening when there is not a Democratic incumbent. In 2018, it is unforgivably irresponsible to primary an incumbent Democrat in federal office. There is no outcome which makes it more likely that we will get into a position to put the brakes on Trump and the dangerous Republican agenda. The biggest thing a candidate running for re-election has going for them is incumbency advantage. In the unusual event that a primary challenger pulls it out, they’re less likely to win the general because they’re not incumbents. Even if the incumbent seems really safe now, every cent that they spend dealing with a primary challenge is money that they don’t have for the general election. So either they just run a general election with fewer resources, which makes their safe seat less safe, or they have to raise that much more money to make up for it. They get that money either by spending even more time schmoozing with donors, or from the state or national funds, which means there’s that much less to go around for races that could go either way.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Electoral politics aren’t the only important way to contribute your time or money, but they are an important way, so here are some places to start:

No matter where you are in the US, you can contribute financially. Swing Left collects donations for the races they think are most winnable. They’re starting with the 24 Republican members of Congress who serve districts that voted for Hillary Clinton. Coincidentally, 24 more votes would be just enough to get Democrats a majority.

If you’re represented by a Democrat who’s up for re-election in 2018, in the House or in the Senate, they can probably use your help now, whether in time or donations. If you’re in a state or district that’s represented by a Republican, contact your state or local Democratic party. You probably won’t have a candidate yet but you can help lay the groundwork so that when you do have a candidate they can hit the ground running.

This post is specifically about congressional midterms, but state offices are really important too. Flippable is an organization working to make state governments more Democratic.

If you’re a progressive millennial who doesn’t feel represented in your local government, Run For Something. 

*There’s a special election in Salt Lake City, Utah coming up this fall.

** There will be one of these special elections in December of 2017, to replace former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who vacated that seat to become Trump’s Attorney General. This is a longshot pickup for Democrats, but it’s really important that we try, not least because the Republican nominee is like the worst of Trump plus the worst of Pence. If you are in Alabama or know people there, please register to vote and encourage your friends to do the same. If you can, please consider contributing to Democratic nominee Doug Jones. 

[atr-programming]

Somatotypes

I was involved in a discussion on Reddit a couple of days ago regarding my reference to Somatotypes in my post titled “The Big Guy… How to Train?”. I was told that the theory had been debunked as junk science years ago and had no relevance to training or diet. This is a long one folks, but bear with me as it turns out this is a topic with some passion behind it.

At ATR, we definitely consider the body type when it comes to training. When the body type gets discussed, it’s easy to throw around the somatotypes and label athletes as being either mesomorphic, ectomorphic, or endomorphic.

There is a large amount of discussion regarding whether or not they have any place in the fitness world. Some say that there are hard and fast relationships between different somatotypes and the way they should be exercising and dieting. Others say that it is junk science that needs to be discarded in its entirety.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Psychological History

Back in the 1940s a guy by the name of William Herbert Sheldon thought that just by looking at a person, he could determine how smart, nice, and aggressive a person was. He said there were three human physiques, while one person might have influences from all three, these body types formed an all-inclusive taxonomy.

1.       Endomorphy was referenced to describe the fatness or the roundness of a person’s physique.

2.       Mesomorphy was referenced to describe how muscular a body was.

3.       Ectomorphy was referenced to describe how lean and slender the person was.

In Mr. Sheldon’s research, he actually believed that these body types were directly linked to three specific personality types. Those were:

1.       Viscerotonia, or a social, complacent, and food loving individual.

2.       Somatotonia, or a physical, aggressive, and tough individual.

3.       Cerebrotonia, or a sensitive, introverted, and intellectual individual.

He basically tried to prove the stereotypes about the jolly fat man, the meat-headed brute, and the lean wise-man. Now I’m sure that we all know that you don’t have to be fat to be social, muscular to be tough, or slender to have an intellect. His own research was considered to be illegitimate, and the idea that body types and psychological temperaments were somehow linked was thrown out.

From Psychology to Athletics

While the physical structure of a person doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about their mind, it can certainly tell you about other parts of their body and how they interact with the world. This led to the development of the Heath-Carter formula and its use in anthropological studies by researchers. The Heath-Carter formula actually took measurements of a person’s body and plugged it into various equations that allowed a researcher to actually assess a person’s endomorphy, mesomorphy, or ectomorphy all on a 7-point scale.

Eventually, professionals in the field of physical education got ahold of the formula and started using it their studies. Most of the studies that were popularized were used to show that athletes built in certain ways were going to be more successful at certain sports. For example, a study performed to see what commonalities were there in the body types of successful tennis players or rowers.

Where It Is Today

What this has turned into in our fitness world is a dispute that is filled with emotion and potentially misunderstanding. While the original theories of Sheldon were debunked, and ridiculous, the images of the endomorph, the mesomorph, and the ectomorph are still in our heads today. Everyone in the industry knows what they are, but there is a wide spectrum of opinion on whether or not anything can be applied from the original taxonomy.

The question is: Which side is correct? Does it belong, or is it all a hoax?

Today if you go to look for research that will definitively tell you the answer to that question, you will find that none exists. There is a lot of research still being done today that analyzes the individual somatotype of elite athletes, likely to be used to seek out potential recruits who bear the physical qualities necessary to be successful at their given sport.

It is difficult to find any information that directly pertains to somatotypes and nutrition, or somatotypes and fitness. Seems strange, especially considering the way that it is either touted as gospel or considered damnable witchcraft by the fitness community.

The Assumptions - Diet

First let’s discuss nutrition. The basic stereotypes surrounding nutrition for the three somatotypes are as follows:

1.       Endomorph – The endomorph has a low carbohydrate tolerance, and as such should be eating more fat, and less carbohydrates in their diet.

2.       Mesomorph – Mesomorphs typically have a reasonable tolerance for both carbohydrates and fats, and should consume a fairly level mix, perhaps slightly weighted towards carbohydrates.

3.       Ectomorph – The ectomorph has a high carbohydrate tolerance, and as such should be eating more carbohydrates and less fats.

The old rule of thumb regarding protein is 1-1.5 grams of protein per pound of your goal weight. While this exact figure is often debated amongst professionals, this figure is one that has been utilized in the bodybuilding and elite athletics domains and is the one that ATR has seen the most success with.

There is a debate regarding the amount of carbohydrates and fats that a person should have in their diet. Some would say that a calorie is a calorie, and that as long as you are maintaining a deficit you will lose weight. Others would say that limiting one of either fats or carbohydrates will help you to shed pounds. While both of these are likely correct in their own way, at ATR we are trying to optimize the results of our athletes, not just see weight loss.

If we look to the Bodybuilding world, preserving muscle and losing fat is the ultimate goal for a large portion of the year. These athletes utilize carbohydrate manipulation to drive their weight loss. Frank Zane would bob in and out of a ketogenic state to cut down his weight. In Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, he describes that an athlete should eat as little carbohydrates as possible without going into a ketogenic state. Literally eating as little carbohydrates as possible without becoming carbohydrate deprived. To cut weight down, they cut carbohydrates down.

According to the most recent data from the US Dept. of Agriculture, the average carbohydrate intake for grown men is ~46-53%, and the average carbohydrate intake for grown women is ~49-53%. The average daily caloric intake is ~2400-2700 for men and ~1850-2000 for grown women. If the average American diet is half full of carbs, when I see a classic endomorph, I think that he’s not efficiently handling that carb-load. When I see a classic ectomorph, I think that he’s handling that carb-load very efficiently. These are generalizations that should not be used in a vacuum to prescribe an exact diet, but they do help to point the athlete in a new direction.

Keep in mind that the evaluation of athletes utilizing somatotypes as a tool is an exercise in futility when that athlete is at an extreme end of the spectrum. When you have someone that is excessively overweight, cutting back on food in general is likely the best advice to be given regardless of whether it’s carbohydrates, protein, or fats. It the athlete looks to be skin covered bones that spent the last 30 days in a desert, any food is likely to improve their overall situation.

The somatotypes give us a general idea of what is going on, not a diagnosis. They should be used as a tool to give preliminary understanding, and to guide follow up questions into a person’s health. To throw them out completely is to ignore common sense and

The Assumption - Training

When evaluating the somatotypes with the Heath-Carter formula, the width of the elbow and knee joints are compared to the girth of the arm and calf. In addition, the mass of the athlete is compared to the height of the athlete. There is no actual analysis of limb lengths, or their relationship to other parts of the body. Despite this, when we think of Endomorphs, we think of wide hips and wide shoulders relative to the height. This is likely because for the height to mass relationship to indicate endomorphy, the person simply has to be wider and shorter than a person to which the relationship would indicate ectomorphy.

As such, when we think endomorph, we think short, stocky, like carrying fat over the top of larger muscle bellies. With these wider bone and joint structures, they have a larger capacity to carry weight in general, both fat and muscle. Larger joints displace more weight, offering them more capacity to handle a load. When you look at a traditional powerlifting physique or a large lineman in football, often times it is very similar to that of the endomorph. Their limbs that form the lever when moving weights are shorter relative to the joints that form the fulcrum. Endomorphs have a leverage advantage when performing many exercises.

When we think ectomorph, we think long, lean, slender, and very little mass at all. The smaller bone structures of these people do not have the capacity to carry as much mass, neither muscle nor fat. With smaller joints, they do not displace weight as well, and as such tend to have less capacity to lift large weights. With long limbs and small joints, where the endomorph would see a leverage advantage, the ectomorph tends to be at a large disadvantage. However, with less mass to deal with, their physiology is not strained as hard when performing aerobic activity as the endomorph’s.

When it comes to athletics, the mesomorph is the golden boy of sorts. Their musculature is built on a bone structure somewhere in between the perfect stereotypical endomorph and the perfect stereotypical ectomorph. These physiques tend to be what you see amongst successful bodybuilders, a lot of wrestlers, and linebackers or full-backs in football.

Can We Use It?

Now back to the debate at hand: should this taxonomy have anything to do with the programming of an athlete?

At ATR, we believe it should to some degree. With leverage being a tool that the classic endomorph has at his disposal, manipulating heavier weights will be less of a problem than that of the classic ectomorph. Hitting a squat with short femurs, short tibias, wide hips, and wide knees, is much more mechanically advantageous than hitting a squat with a lack of those traits. The classic ectomorph is forced to move a load that is heavier relative to his or her lever and typically move that load farther because the lever is longer. If we define work as being force times displacement, the ectomorph is doing more work than the endomorph at the same weight.

Combine that line of thinking with the goals of the average endomorph and the average ectomorph. The endomorph typically wants to lose weight, while the ectomorph usually wants to gain. If the endomorph wants to lose weight, then he must increase his relative workload. The quickest way to do so would be to incorporate more of those levers at the same time using compound exercises. These exercises need to be performed to take advantage of their bone structure’s capacity for muscle, while increasing the density of the work through the simultaneous increase of repetitions and decrease of rest times. The ectomorph however would want to preserve any energy that they have to ensure that it goes towards growth instead of output. They need to perform larger movements similar to the endomorph, however they need to perform their sets with ample rest time and less reps.

The mesomorph has the ability to gain muscle easily while maintaining less fat. The Heath-Carter formula literally defines a mesomorph by analyzing the amount of muscle the individual carries relative to the results of their skin fold measurements. This is the athlete that may want to spend some time on isolated movements in an attempt to round out the overall physique. The endomorphs and ectomorphs that have found a caloric balance at a body mass makeup they are happy with can and should also begin the sculpting process, using isolation movements to bring out what they might deem to be lagging body parts.

Regardless of whether or not you believe that a person can be classified as one of the three somatotypes or not, ignoring the attributes of individuals when programming will limit their potential progress. They may see gains, but they will come more slowly than they could be if you optimized their program based on their unique physical characteristics. Even if you don’t believe someone can be an endomorph, if you try to train an overweight individual with a long drawn out series of isolation movements, they will not see the same progress as the overweight individual who trains in a manner conducive to a classic stereotypical endomorph. The same statement applies for the ectomorph.

Productive Application

In the actual instruction manual produced written by Dr. Lindsay Carter for the application of the Heath-Carter formula, the image used to display the somatotype profile was on a coordinate grid of sorts. There were three points that each individually represented a degree of their respective somatotype. Incorporating the three directions, there were countless possibilities of physiques within the triangle that represented all variants. The point is that there are any number of combinations of the three somatotypes in any given individual. Think of the individual who has a lean and slender figure from the waist up, but carries a lot of fat on thick joints from the waist down. There’s also a classic physique known to all best described as a large belly on pair of stilts.

To find a physique that falls perfectly into any of the three somatotypes is rare, and may even be non-existent, however you can use the principles to guide your programming. Look to the athlete’s body to ask follow-up questions about their diet. Use their structure to determine what exercises will be best for them. To throw out all of these completely and just say training is training and a calorie is a calorie may lead to some results with beginners, but it will not give the intermediate or the advanced optimal results.

#somatotype #endomorph #mesomorph #ectomorph #atr #training #program #nutrition #workout #routine #programs #leverage #biomechanics #mechanics #heavy

[mbtimemes]

The Outsiders Character’s MBTI Types

(my best guesses, feel free to chime in with your opinions)

Ponyboy Curtis: INFP. He radiates high fi, but also has the ability to analyze situations with his ti. Second guess ISFP.

Johnny Cade: ISFJ. He takes to heart specific things that people close to him say (ex. stay gold), which is definitely a si-fe move. Second guess is ESFJ. 

Sodapop Curtis: ESFJ. Wants union in the family more then anything, which is very ESFJ to me. Second guess would be ESFP.

Dallas Winston: ESTJ. He does come off as a strong ESTP at first, but when I thought it more through I decided he is a te dominant. When ((SPOILER)) Johnny died, it seemed to me that he was letting his ne-fi take over. Second guess is either ESTP or ENTJ.

Darrel Curtis: Definitely ESTJ. I debated between ISTJ and ESTJ at first, but I decided on ESTJ, because a ESTJ would be quicker to loose their anger, as Darry did when he slapped Ponyboy.

Steve Randle: ESTJ. Seems very te-si to me. Possibly ISTJ?? I’m not sure about him. 

Two-Bit Mathews: Poster child ENTP. Wit and jokes galore. He may be a ESFP, because his quick reflexes give me a se vibe. But for now I’m going with ENTP.

Cherry Valance: ESFJ. Good girl falling for the bad boy. 

Bob Sheldon: ESTJ?? Seems pretty te-si to me.

#the outsiders #mbti #myers briggs #ponyboy curtis #johnny cade #sodapop curtis #dallas winston #infp #isfp #isfj #esfj #esfp #estj #estp #entj #istj #enfp #infj #intj #istp

[onlymythoughts]

Pro-Israel donors spent over $22m on lobbying and contributions in 2018.

The data examined by the Guardian suggests that the pro-Israel lobby is highly active and spends heavily to influence US policy.

Pro-Israel lobbyists and donors spent more than $22m on lobbying and campaign contributions during the 2018 election cycle.

The same or similar Israel-aligned groups and donors have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent decades, and that money poured into American politics through a variety of channels, according to the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. The CRP uses federal election records to track campaign finance spending and makes its data available on the Open Secrets site.

The Guardian examined campaign finance data after Muslim Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar ignited a controversy with two tweets claiming pro-Israel lobby money influenced American political policy and discourse. The claim led to broad accusations of antisemitism from Democrats and Republicans. Omar later apologized but also stood her ground when it came to highlighting the influence of lobbyists, comparing influential pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) to the the National Rifle Association and the fossil fuel industry. The data examined by the Guardian suggests that the pro-Israel lobby is highly active and spends heavily to influence US policy, though at levels far below those of many big business sectors.“I haven’t observed many other countries that have a comparable level of activity, at least in domestic lobbying data,” said Dan Auble, a senior researcher at CFR. Omar incorrectly suggested Aipac makes campaign contributions to candidates. However, records show it did spend about $3.5m lobbyingduring the 2018 election cycle. In total, pro-Israel lobbying groups spent about $5m in 2018, the highest tally since tracking began in 1998.Aipac spent the most of the lobbying groups, and is known for funding junket trips to Israel for freshman lawmakers and senators, as well as state legislators. Aipac also lobbied against the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 and supported the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the agreement.An Aipac spokesperson did not return requests for comment.Separately, pro-Israeli foreign agents registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which can include lobbyists working on behalf of the Israeli government, companies, political parties and other organizations spent about $46.3m in 2017 and 2018, behind only Japan and South Korea. However, only about $2.1m of that total funded political activity, while $44.2m was dedicated to tourism and other industries.Pro-Israel groups and individuals also contributed just under $15m to USpoliticians’ campaigns during the 2018 cycle, the highest amount since the 1990 cycle. The J Street Pac, a progressive, pro-Israel lobby that advocates for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contributed the most at $4.03m. The nonpartisan NorPAC contributed $1.1m, while the Republican Jewish Coalition contributed about $502,000.J Street senior political adviser Ben Shnider didn’t comment specifically on what the lobby gets in return for its investment, but said the high level of contributions to his lobby indicates support for a “diplomacy first Middle East policy”.“What that demonstrates is that there’s momentum behind a pragmatic, pro-diplomacy, moderate approach to the Middle East, and to the Israel-Palestine issue,” he said.

The pro-Israel lobby’s contributions reach a majority of US politicians. In 2018, it spent money on 269 representatives’ and 57 senators’ campaigns, and gave to Democrats at a two to one ratio. Among the top 2018 recipients were: New Jersey Democrat senator Bob Menendez, $548,507; Republican Texas senator Ted Cruz, $352,894; Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, $230,342; Democratic Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin, $229,896; and Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas, Beto O’Rourke, who received $226,690.Democratic leaders who criticized Omar and demanded an apology also receive a high level of contributions from the pro-Israel lobby. Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on which Omar sits, received $1.07m from the pro-Israel lobby during his career, more than he’s received from any other industry. In a Tuesday statement, he said “… it’s shocking to hear a Member of Congress invoke the anti-Semitic trope of ‘Jewish money.’”Meanwhile, the pro-Israel lobby has contributed $514,000 to Pelosi throughout her career and it’s given $1.02m to Hoyer.It’s also highly likely that there’s far more pro-Israel lobby money flowing into American politics than is tracked. Dark money nonprofits aren’t required to disclose their donors, and Open Secrets doesn’t fully track how mega-donors spend their cash. For example, Sheldon Adelson, the largest overall donor in 2018, gave $250,000 to the Republican Coalition Jewish Victory Fund, but that donation isn’t factored into any of Open Secrets’ other contribution and lobbying tallies.At this spending level, the pro-Israel lobby is far more active than PACs aligned with other nations. The US-Cuba Democracy Pac’s approximately $171,000 in campaign contributions in 2018 was the most among foreign policy Pacs that aren’t aligned with Israel. Still, the pro-Israel lobby spends relatively little compared to other industries – the securities and investment lobby contributed $389m in the 2018 cycle alone while the real estate industry spent $186m.It is that level of spending by industry and corporate donors and lobbyists – and its likely influence on American politics – that is the “overarching, systemic concern” when it comes to campaign finance, and comments like those by Omar, said Brendan Fischer, director of the federal reform program at the Campaign Legal Center.“The US political system is very dependent on money, and in a political system less reliant on money for electoral success, we wouldn’t have to be asking these questions,” he said.

I’d call that vindication, and I’d go further than the congresswoman and call this a swamp..

#USA #Israel #pro-Israel lobby #bought politicians #lobbying #money in politics #ilhan omar

[patrick-swayze]

♥ do not erase text ♥

Become a member of my gang! 

I’ve created this page where fans of The Outsiders (and the 80s) can be linked to a specific person, place, or thing from the movie. This way, it’s easy to find new blogs to talk to or to follow who also like The Outsiders! It’s basically a fancy list of blogs in the fandom.

I’ve been in this fandom for almost 5 years now and I still don’t know very many of you; hopefully this page will help us all connect. 

All you have to do to join my page is:

be an Outsiders/80s themed blog (if it’s a sideblog you can include the url you would like to use when messaging me)

message me via the inbox which thing you’d like to be! Feel free to choose up to three slots so that you don’t accidentally pick something that was already taken!!!

That’s it! I’d still appreciate it if you would like and reblog this post to help spread the word!

Here is the list of things you can be:

Ponyboy Curtis Johnny Cade Dallas Winston Cherry Valance Sodapop Curtis Darry Curtis Steve Randle Two-Bit Mathews Bob Sheldon Randy Adderson Marcia Tim Shepard C. Thomas Howell Ralph Macchio Matt Dillon Rob Lowe Patrick Swayze Tom Cruise Emilio Estevez Diane Lane Leif Garret Darren Dalton The DX Station The Movie House The Drive-In Windrixville Gone With The Wind The Church Buck's Place Buck Merrill Kathy Angela Sylvia Sandy Curly The Curtis House Johnny's Knife Evie Blonde Ponyboy Baloney The DQ Robert Frost The Lot Socs Greasers The Rumble

This is first come, first serve. If you change your url later on, try to inform me so I can edit the page accordingly. I will add more spaces if it fills up.

♥♥♥ I hope that many of you participate in this little project of mine! ♥♥♥ 

#The Outsiders #gang page #family page #the outsiders page #the outsiders fandom #text

[trunewsofficial]

Barr Holds His Own with Senate Democrats

Attorney General William Barr faced nearly six hours of scrutiny at the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee today over his March memo to Congress regarding the Mueller Report, but he stood his ground, showing little sign of being phased by Democrats’ hysterical attacks. At issue was a Washington Post report and the subsequent release of a letter from Special Counsel Robert Mueller in which he claimed the attorney generals memo to the congressional judiciary committees “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the Russia Narrative investigation. That letter states: “I previously sent you a letter dates March 25, 2019, that enclosed the introduction and executive summary for each volume of the Special Counsel’s report marked with redactions to remove any information that potentially could be protected by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e); that concerned declination decisions; or that related to a charged case. We also had marked an additional two sentences for review and have now confirmed that these sentences can be released publicly. “Accordingly, the enclosed documents are in a form that can be released to the public consistent with legal requirements and department policies. I am requesting that you provide these materials to Congress and authorize their public release at this time. “As we stated in our meeting of March 5 and reiterated to the department early in the afternoon of March 24, the introductions and executive summaries of our two-volume report accurately summarize this office’s work and conclusions. The summary letter the department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the department on the morning of March 25. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the department appointed the special counsel: to assure full confidence in the outcome of the investigations. “While we understand that the department is reviewing the full report to determine what is appropriate for public release—a process that our office is working with you to complete—that process need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation. It would also accord with the standard for public release of notifications of Congress cited in your letter.” Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham got the fireworks of the hearing started right off the bat. He read from the text message exchanges of FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and bureau lawyer Lisa Page that clearly showed their bias regarding both the GOP and Democrat presidential nominees in 2016. He then issued his own warning to Democrats: “But when the Mueller report is put to bed—and it soon will be—this committee is going to look long and hard at how this all started. We’re going to look at the FISA warrant process. Did Russia provide Christopher Steele the information about Trump, that turned out to be garbage, that was used to get a warrant on an American citizen, and if so, how did the system fail? Was there a real effort between Papadopoulos and anybody in Russia to use the Clinton emails stolen by the Russians, or is that thought planted in his mind? I don’t know, but we’re going to look.” Democrats, beholden to their new narrative that Barr is merely covering up for crimes committed by the president, pounced on the letter as further evidence that the attorney general has lied to Congress. Therefore, they argue, he should resign. Calmly, and methodically, however, the attorney general made his case and shot down all of the Democrats’ attacks: "On Thursday morning I received — probably it was received at the department Wednesday night or evening, but on Thursday morning I received a letter from Bob, the letter that’s just been put into the record. And I called Bob and said, you know, what’s the issue here? And I asked him if he was suggesting that the March 24th letter was inaccurate. And he said no, but that the press reporting had been inaccurate, and that the press was reading too much into it. And I asked him specifically what his concern was. And he said that his concern focused on his explanation of why he did not reach a conclusion on obstruction. And he wanted more put out on that issue. He argued for putting out summaries of each volume, the executive summaries that had been written by his office. And if not that, then other material that focused on the issue of why he didn’t reach the obstruction question. But he was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report.” The hearing had many other explosive moments. Here is a sampling: • Under questioning by Sen. Chuck Grassley over leaks to the media, the attorney general said the Justice Department has “multiple criminal leak investigations underway.” • Under questioning by Sen. John Cornyn over the Steele dossier, the attorney general was asked if it was a piece of Russian disinformation: "No, I can’t state that with confidence and that is one of the areas that I’m reviewing. I’m concerned about it, and I don’t think it is entirely speculative." • Under questioning by Sen. Mike Lee about the genesis of the Justice Department’s investigation into the Russia Narrative, the attorney general said he’s not sure that the probe began with surveillance of George Papadopoulos, and that he personally wants to get to the truth about how the investigation began: “[O]ne of the things I want to look—there were people, many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant and a FISA warrant—I'd like to find out whether that is in fact true.” • When Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse attempted to cast a negative connotation to the word “spying” used in the attorney general’s earlier testimony describing FISA surveillance on the Trump 2016 campaign, he said: “I think spying is a good English word that in fact doesn’t have synonyms because it is the broadest word incorporating really all forms of covert intelligence collections.” • When Whitehouse attempted to suggest phrase isn’t commonly used within the Justice Department, the attorney general—who has previously worked in the CIA, as well—said, “It’s commonly used by me.” • Without asking any questions, Sen. Mazie Hirono told the attorney general he should resign, claiming he was covering up for the president: “Being Attorney General of the United States is a sacred trust. You have betrayed that trust. America deserves better. You should resign.” • Hirono’s comments and hostile line of question drew a sharp rebuke from Graham, who accused her of smearing the attorney general: “[Y]ou slandered this man, from top to bottom, so if you want more of this, you’re not going to get it. If you want to ask him questions, you can.” Barr also told Graham that he believes Russia and other countries will attempt to meddle in the 2020 presidential election, and that he would support an effort by Congress to work with the Trump administration to “harden our electoral infrastructure.” He added that this was one of the key takeaways from the Mueller Report. (Photo Credit: Office of Sen. Mitt Romney) source https://trunews.com/stream/barr-holds-his-own-with-senate-democrats

#TRUNEWS - Rick Wiles

[longislandweekly-blog]

Angie Schworer talks Broadway’s new musical comedy

Angie (Angie Schworer) teaches Emma (Caitlin Kinnunen) to “give it some zazz.” (Photos by Deen van Meer)

With a glance at the Broadway musical’s name, The Prom appears to be a production about the night from high school everyone remembers, but the show is so much more. Under the guise of comedy, The Prom dives deeper, covering themes of acceptance and the simple idea of standing up for and helping others.

As soon as the curtains unveil and the stage lights come on, Dee Dee Allen (Beth Leavel) and Barry Glickman (Brooks Ashmanskas) appear on stage in glitter and glitz as two stars who receive a poor New York Times review on their latest show, Eleanor!: The Eleanor Roosevelt Story, commanding a room of laughter almost immediately. The review notes that the Broadway celebrities do not understand their characters because they appear to be too self involved, so to fix their image, the two, along with Trent Oliver (Christopher Sieber), who is obsessed with telling everyone he meets about his time at Julliard, and Angie (Angie Schworer), a lifelong chorus girl who quit her job in Chicago after constantly being overlooked for the role of Roxie Hart, set out to show the world they’re not a bunch of narcissists.

“It’s funny; maybe [narcissism] is [on the rise] with social media and Instagram, but I also feel we have hope,” Schworer said of narcissism today, which the production touches on. “The young ensemble are so grateful and respectful and not narcissistic. We have a group here that is not like that. But it’s part of the society now. I think it is. We portray very narcissistic versions of ourselves and a lot of that is in our culture now.”

As the four scroll through Twitter to find a cause to get behind in order to appear less self involved, they come across the story of Emma (Caitlin Kinnunen) from Indiana, whose high school prom was canceled by the PTA because she wanted to bring her girlfriend. The musical comedy follows the actors as they fly to Indiana to rally behind Emma for their own personal gain, but soon the story unfolds and the characters find the cause is worthy of their attention for the injustice, not for the publicity.

“I raised two teenagers, so I know how hard it is at that time to express yourself,” said Schworer of the meaningful messages the show shares. “It’s an awkward time. You don’t have that inner zazz yet. This story is about every high schooler being afraid to be who they are. It’s important to tell a story that any young person should be able to find a place to express who they are, love who they love and be who they want to be. I get on a daily basis young people saying ‘thank you for telling this story, I can feel different and feel safe.’ This show is doing exactly what we wanted it to do.”

Hardcore Broadway fans will love the show for the production’s references to Broadway itself and past and present shows playing in the district. Along with its messages of acceptance, The Prom offers a little something for everyone from romance to a monster truck jam to recorders to quirky dance moves. The performance offers fast and fun songs like “Love Thy Neighbor,” as well as Fosse-style songs like “Zazz” that plays on Chicago’s “All That Jazz.”

“It’s exactly what my middle-aged body can pull off at this moment,” joked Schworer. “It’s like an oozing delicious number to perform. It’s an honor to get to do it and it’s so much fun because it’s exactly what I do, which is vertical with gestures and giving a little hip and sexy.”

Josh Lamon, Beth Leavel, Brooks Ashmankasas, Angie Schworer and the cast of The Prom (Photo by Deen van Meer)

From left: Trent Oliver (Christopher Sieber), Angie (Angie Schworer), Dee Dee Allen (Beth Leavel), Barry Glickman (Brooks Ashmanskas) and Sheldon Saperstein (Josh Lamon) (Photo by Deen van Meer)

Christopher Sieber and the cast of The Prom (Photo by Deen van Meer)

Cast of The Prom (Photo by Deen van Meer)

The cast of characters, with Tony Award-nominees (Ashmanskas and Sieber) and a Tony Award-winner (Leavel), is hysterical and the entire show might be worth it just to see Leavel’s facial expressions throughout the production.

“The four of us have been doing this together for six years, so it’s like playing with friends in a room every day and watching their comic brilliance and learning,” said Schworer, whose part as Angie was made specifically for her and after her. “It’s like six years of a master class.”

The Prom is directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Casey Nicholaw (Mean Girls, The Book of Mormon) and features a book by Tony Award-winner Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) and four-time Tony Award-nominee Chad Beguelin (Aladdin) with music by Tony Award-nominee Matthew Sklar and lyrics by four-time Tony Award-nominee Beguelin.

“This is a dream come true,” said Schworer. “I feel like the luckiest girl in show business. When Casey Nicholaw asks you to do a project, you jump on board.”

The Prom is currently playing at the Longacre Theatre, 220 W 48th St. For more information, visit www.theprommusical.com and for tickets, visit www.telecharge.com or visit the box office.

Long Island Weekly's Christina Claus chats with Angie Schworer of The Prom on Broadway about the fun new musical comedy and how to find your inner 'zazz.' Angie Schworer talks Broadway’s new musical comedy With a glance at the Broadway musical’s name, The Prom…

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Last Thursday in an interview with The New York Times, Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa said, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

The uproar over King’s comments came swiftly, and there have even been calls for his resignation. On Monday, King was booted by GOP leadership from his House committee assignments, and on Tuesday, the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning white nationalism and white supremacy (even though it didn’t rebuke him specifically.)

All of this raises a question (two questions, actually):

King has a long of history of making racist comments and aligning himself with white supremacist causes, so why are congressional Republicans taking action only now?

And are Republicans opening themselves up to criticism for not similarly condemning President Trump’s racist comments?

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): My answer to No. 1 is that typically this kind of action (stripping committee assignments) is related to some kind of scandal (money laundering, sexual harassment) and not just offensive views.

More generally, American politics has not really figured out what we do with racism. (My residence on understatement island is becoming more permanent.)

sarahf: So the fact that King lost his committee tenure because his views were offensive is pretty unusual?

julia_azari: Yes. I don’t have an exhaustive list, but, I mean, Jesse Helms was in Congress less than 20 years ago, and he was known for “racially charged” comments and ran one of the most notorious race-based ads of all time — but I don’t think he faced any formal consequences.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I’m a bit baffled by the timing. There are a few different theories floating around — like King being electorally weaker now than he’s ever been (he even got a primary challenger), or Republicans being in the minority for the first time in a while — but I’m not totally convinced of any of them.

Probably the most convincing point I’ve seen came from Jane Coaston at Vox, who pointed out that King used to be seen as a kingmaker in Iowa politics (especially in presidential primaries) and a way for other Republicans to validate themselves as tough on immigration.

But that may not true anymore. There’s (probably) not going to be a competitive GOP presidential primary in 2020, and Trump has now arguably become the GOP kingmaker on immigration.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): The actual words King used, “white nationalist, “white supremacist” were unusually politically problematic. Trump avoids that kind of language, even as he implies all of the same things. Also, the media started pressing Republicans on this, and that put them in a tough spot.

nrakich: Perry, King made a just-as-bad comment (in my view, anyway) in 2013, when he said that undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children have “got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” But nobody did anything then.

Although it does seem that King was getting himself into hot water more frequently in the 2018 election cycle. And Republicans probably thought doing anything about it before the election was not politically palatable.

julia_azari: There’s a needle being threaded here: People (thinking VERY broadly about the electorate) don’t like overt racism and ugliness, but they also don’t respond well to serious challenges to the racial status quo.

sarahf: So do we think this continues to spiral and that GOP leaders in Congress ask King to resign?

A number of Republicans have begun to call for his resignation, including Sen. Mitt Romney and Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

nrakich: King’s local newspaper also called on him to resign.

julia_azari: They endorsed his opponent, though.

perry: Elected Republicans can call for him to resign all they want, but unless people and entities like Fox News, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Trump turn on King, then I don’t think this dynamic changes.

The next step here is for King to really lean hard into the idea that he is being prosecuted by the “political correctness” police, the media and the progressive left — playing the victim card against the forces of multiculturalism is powerful on the right. I would argue that it helped get Trump elected. I’m not sure King is done, unless he resigns.

sarahf: I have to say I’m a little surprised that “political correctness” hasn’t become a big part of the national conversation yet.

nrakich: Perry, last week, I was also skeptical that King’s political career was in any danger. But now that he’s been stripped of his assignment on the Agriculture Committee, which is a big deal in his district, don’t you think that makes it a lot more likely that his primary opponent (state Sen. Randy Feenstra) could actually win?

perry: I don’t know much about his primary opponent, but in general, I would not want to run as a Republican candidate aligned with the people trying to take down King for being too willing to defend “Western civilization.”

nrakich: That’s very much not the tack Feenstra is taking. He’s a hardcore conservative himself, but he argues King’s controversies have made him ineffective. In an impressive bit of needle-threading, Feenstra says people should vote for him because he’s the one who will advance Trump’s agenda most effectively.

julia_azari: One question, which I don’t know how to answer, is whether some critical number of voters who don’t like political correctness also don’t like white supremacy (lots of people hold conflicting views). It may be that the last couple of years — Charlottesville in 2017, Pittsburgh in October 2018 — have tipped the balance of them toward thinking that the latter (white supremacism) is more dangerous than the former (political correctness).

Given King’s 2018 performance — he won re-election by only a few percentage points — it wouldn’t necessarily have to be a lot of people in his district to make a difference.

perry: Like if King paints his GOP primary opponent as a pawn of the media or elites trying to take him down, that would be smart politics.

One obvious shift: Before the 2018 election, the GOP had to worry about every seat. There was a chance Republicans would wind up with a one-seat majority or even a five-seat majority. If that were the case, I don’t think they would be attacking King in this way.

nrakich: Yeah, good point.

perry: Now that they are in the minority, it’s easier to purge the most controversial members.

sarahf: So you really think some of the timing of this is related to the fact that the comments were made after the election?

perry: Totally.

Nothing to lose now — they might have needed King’s seat before. Now, I think he is likely to lose in the general election in 2020. So Republicans have some incentive to dump him and try to field a better candidate for the general.

julia_azari: Yes, I agree with this assessment.

nrakich: See, I think that reasoning is flawed.

The 2018 midterm election was a historically great year for Democrats … and King still won by 3 points. King probably isn’t in electoral danger in 2020 unless it’s at least as good of a year for Democrats.

That said, I think congressional Republicans might agree with your assessment and that’s why they’re nudging him out.

julia_azari: So did King run ahead or behind people in comparable districts?

I’m guessing behind.

nrakich: Yes, Julia, you’re right. Last month, I did an analysis of 2018’s strongest and weakest incumbents, comparing how each incumbent “should” have performed based on their district’s partisan lean, elasticity and the national popular vote vs. how they actually performed.

King was one of the weaker incumbents; he did 10 points worse than we would have predicted.

Steve King was a weak incumbent

The 10 Senate and House incumbents who underperformed by the most in the 2018 elections*

Incumbent Party State or District Expected Margin† Actual Margin Net Incumbency Advantage Elizabeth Warren D MA D+39 D+24 -15 Chris Collins R NY-27 R+13 R+0 -13 Sheldon Whitehouse D RI D+36 D+23 -12 Mia Love R UT-4 R+12 D+0 -12 David Cicilline D RI-1 D+45 D+34 -11 Bob Menendez D NJ D+22 D+11 -11 Jim Costa D CA-16 D+25 D+15 -10 Duncan Hunter R CA-50 R+14 R+3 -10 Steve King R IA-4 R+13 R+3 -10 Rob Woodall R GA-7 R+10 R+0 -10

*Excluding open-seat elections, elections that did not feature both a Republican and Democratic candidate, jungle primaries, elections with multiple incumbents and elections where the incumbent was an independent.

†Based on the state or district’s partisan lean, its elasticity and the national popular vote.

Source: ABC News

So I suppose you could argue that these recent comments could make him an even worse incumbent, and that would cause him to lose the next time out.

But again … you’d have to assume another D+9 (or similar) national environment in 2020.

And if that happens, Republicans are getting wiped out anyway; King’s seat won’t matter.

sarahf: But is what’s happening with King a blip, as he’s consistently been one of the party’s more controversial members? Or is this more of a watershed moment where the GOP says, “we’re not willing to tolerate views of white supremacism in the party”?

julia_azari: It could be an early watershed moment, Sarah.

perry: I don’t think this is a watershed moment. But Republicans have now created a baseline: We will purge you if you openly say that you support white nationalism and white supremacy.

But it’s unlikely that Trump would ever cross that exact line. He and ex-senior White House adviser Steve Bannon have always said they are for nationalism, not white nationalism. Arguably, actions that align with a white nationalist agenda aren’t as problematic, at least politically, as words in support of white nationalism.

Most people who are wary of America getting less white and less Christian can figure out how to not declare their intentions so openly. For example,saying Mexico is sending rapists to the U.S. is pretty racist, but it’s still different than saying, “I support white supremacy” or “I don’t see a problem with white supremacy.”

sarahf: But I do wonder if the litmus test for what is and isn’t an acceptable comment will change?

julia_azari: These things are very slow to change, and one of the things that I think is challenging for Republicans today vs. Democrats 60 years ago or whatever is that racism has taken on more subtle forms in the current era — predatory lending, problems with the criminal justice system — that are much less obviously egregious than lynching and de jure segregation. (Even though the contemporary issues are very serious, and I’d point out that Democrats also contributed to these problems in past decades; no one gets a pass on this stuff).

perry: So I don’t think the GOP’s litmus tests can change much right now because Trump has been racist in many ways. He hasn’t used the N-word or explicitly identified as a white supremacist, but any broader definition of racist behavior will include Trump.

To put this another way: The gap between Trump and King is fairly narrow.

julia_azari: I sort of disagree with Perry about the possibility for this being a moment, though, as I said, I think it will be slow. Here’s David Broder writing about Jesse Helms’s retirement in 2001.

He makes a point that Helms had every right as an elected senator to hold and fight for his views, before condemning those views and arguing against “sanitizing” Helms’ legacy. For elected Republicans to actually draw a boundary around a set of views is very unusual in the American context. Not only was racism the norm, but we have tended to see legitimacy in the process of being elected, not in the substance of the views.

nrakich: Yeah, I think it’s really splitting hairs to argue that there’s a meaningful difference between Trump’s (and other Republicans‘) thinly veiled racism and King’s more explicit racism. And King’s crossing of some invisible line is clearly not the real reason the GOP has condemned him. The real reason is that King is one of 435 and Trump is president.

If that rumored tape of Trump saying the N-word comes out, are Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney going to call on him to resign?

I doubt it.

perry: I think Romney would call for Trump to resign if he was on tape calling a black person the N-word.

Liz Cheney, no.

I think Nathaniel is basically right: Trump is being excused because he is president.

But my sense is that a lot of Americans think racist means only using the N-word or something very, very explicit, and Trump hasn’t crossed that line yet.

julia_azari: Which is sort of related to what I was saying before: We don’t really have a political tradition of holding people accountable for substance as long as they hold power through a legitimate procedure.

sarahf: What I find so interesting in the backlash against King is that he didn’t make a racially explicit comment that targeted one group of people. Instead, he signaled that he thought an inherent racist ideology was OK, and that was enough to spark outrage.

perry: So there is a new book coming out by Duke professor Ashley Jardina called “White Identity Politics.”

She argues that we tend to think of white identity politics as being largely prejudices against groups like blacks and Latinos. What Trump has tapped into, she argues, is not only that racial resentment but also a kind of pro-white-people politics.

So it’s not totally about being against minorities; it’s also a kind of white pride.

I think King hints at these ideas at times.

When he defends “Western civilization,” I think people are hearing that he might think ideas from Africa or Asia are bad. And, sure, a lot of what King has said seems to look down upon people who are not white. But part of what he is saying is that “white people are good and have great ideas.”

julia_azari: Combined with this idea is the belief among white people that they face racial discrimination (it has become a somewhat widespread view). This seems like a key element of the white identity appeal, that there’s an element of grievance, in addition to a pride in one’s identity or background or whatever.

perry: So I do wonder if people talking about racial issues are at times talking past one another. King is saying that he is pro-white, but that is interpreted as being 100 percent about being anti-black or anti-Latino.

So if conservatives aren’t allowed to say that “Western” or “white” culture is good and that Mexican immigrants and Muslims diminish that culture, that would affect more Republicans than just King. You can hear these kinds of views on Fox News, from Trump and from other influential conservatives. If Republicans start purging those views, the impact will go beyond King.

julia_azari: Making coded racial appeals has been a successful strategy for Republicans and, at times, some Democrats (Democrats have moved left on racial issues, even in the last decade). But maybe we’re getting to the point where it won’t be.

perry: I agree with what Julia said, but I also thought it was true in 2002. Trent Lott resigned under pressure from his Republican leadership post in the Senate over something way, way less controversial than many things Trump has said. (Lott praised Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign, which was centered on pro-segregation views.)

julia_azari: Yeah, I think these things move really slow.

perry: We may not see a steady decline in the acceptance of racist behavior, but something more complicated, with racist comments being more tolerated at some times than others.

nrakich: I think about that Trent Lott controversy all the time!!

If anything, we’ve moved into a place where coded racial appeals are more socially acceptable, not less — at least in the medium term (i.e., since 2002), not the long term (since 1960) or short term (since 2016).

But I do think that openness is causing us to grapple with coded racism as a society. It’s the latest battle in the culture war.

And the liberal side may very well win in the end. But it took emboldened people on the far right to spark the fight in the first place.

julia_azari: If it is a politically costly move for Republicans to cut King loose, then maybe we are seeing actual change. If not, maybe we are seeing the Lott thing all over again. That was pretty cheap as far as political costs go.

perry: I assume this kind of question is always context-dependent. It is easier to replace a congressional leader or a rank-and-file member of Congress than the president. For instance, it’s easier for Democrats to say in 2018 that Bill Clinton should have resigned for inappropriate behavior with an intern than it would have been to say that in 1998, when Clinton was still in office.

sarahf: So maybe we don’t see pressure on Republicans to speak out against Trump until much later.

julia_azari: But maybe it opens space for a 2020 primary challenger?

nrakich: There are also confounding factors, like Trump’s problems in other areas — i.e., the Russia investigation. If special counsel Robert Mueller’s report implicates him in collusion or obstruction of justice and ends up destroying his legacy, it will be easier for future historians and laypeople alike to pile on him for the other stuff.

I would be curious to see how the legacy of a highly effective, scandal-free racist president would go.

Maybe something like Woodrow Wilson‘s, eh, Julia?

julia_azari: He remains a hero in some liberal circles.

I wrote a piece about a year ago about presidential legacy and one of the things I am most sure about is that the mainstream legacy writers — who historically have been mostly white — are very forgiving of racism.

The line most-often employed is something like, “That’s just what people thought at the time.”

Is it easy for me to imagine people saying that about Americans in 2016 or whatever? No. But that’s probably more about my limited imagination than anything else.

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