#to california for transgendered reasons and they couldn’t come with

[thmollusk]

okayyyy im gonna vent in the tags because 😁👍 yeah

#tape.text #this is my only place my partner doesn’t follow me on so that’s why it’s going here #i don’t need anyone to respond or say anything i’ll probably even delete this later i just need to vent #anyways. meow #my partner and i have been best friends for almost four years and have been dating for almost two #we lived together for over a year and the only reason we don’t anymore is because i needed to move back home #to california for transgendered reasons and they couldn’t come with #and they just made it very clear they don’t want marriage or kids. like ever #and i. 😁 really really want marriage and kids #idk we’ve talked about being married and having kids and how we’d raise them so i always figured one day we’d really do it #and now. it wont happen at all and im just trying to wrap my head around everything #someone give me the balls to sit down and have a serious talk with them about both of our futures #i know i cant force them to want kids or marriage #i don’t WANT to force them to #it just sucks that we want very different things and idk how to have a genuine serious talk with anyone #we’ve been planning moving in together again soon and really starting a life together #feelin. bad!

[briamichellewrites]

29

Brad knew exactly how to get Bria started in the industry, as he had gone through it himself. He used his camera to get a professional-looking headshot of her. She didn’t have a resume since she didn’t have any acting or singing experience. He talked to Helena Bonham Carter and David Fincher. They both thought she had what it took to be successful. It was going to be a lot of hard work and disappointments. She wasn’t always going to get what she wanted.

There were going to be a lot of kids who wanted the same thing she did. She just had to keep trying because one day, she would be the one to get the job the other kids wanted. He did still want her to remain a child and not be overwhelmed. She would only be twelve years old once and he didn’t want her to grow up too fast.

She could repeat dialogue from memory from her favorite movies, while also being able to imitate people and their mannerisms. Specifically, George Clooney. It made him remember that children were like sponges. They were always watching and listening to everything they said or did. She was in the stage where children her age were very interested in morals. They pushed boundaries to develop their independence but they still needed their parents for support.

It was a tough age to be in. They were too old for some things but too young for others. She was a great kid. He sometimes had to remind himself of that. Before he knew it, she would be asking to borrow the car and going on dates. He wasn’t ready for that. But, she couldn’t stay a child forever. She would have to eventually grow up and become a woman.

“Over here, we have Miss Bria Pitt. She is from Los Angeles, California, and enjoys laying on her stomach and watching the insects on the ground. On weekends, she enjoys sleeping in and being lazy. Her favorite singer is the Backstreet Boys. Give it up for Miss Bria Pitt!”

He laughed. She was being her usual goofy self while playing in her room at home. Her pediatrician told him that there was nothing wrong with playing pretend at her age. It just meant she had a big imagination and was very creative. And she was! That was the reason why he wanted her to get an agent. She needed a place to channel her energy and creativity.

Even though playing pretend was different than acting. Nobody was telling her what to do when she was playing pretend. She didn’t have to memorize a script or practice a scene over and over until it was perfect before shooting. Maybe one day, she would turn her creativity into writing scripts or directing. At the moment, she was on stage at a beauty pageant. Instead of showing off evening wear, she was bouncing around.

They were having George over for dinner. It would be a perfect time for her to show off her impersonation of him. He would get a kick out of it! Uncle George Clooney. That was what she called him. George was the oldest, he was in the middle and Matt Damon was the youngest brother. According to her, anyway. They called him ‘The Kid’. Where is that kid?

That was the question they asked whenever he was mentioned. He was here, there, and everywhere. The last time they heard from him, he was in Italy with his ex-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law making a movie. Since it was the late nineties and long-distance calls were expensive, they had to wait until he was back home to see him. He took to Bria as an older brother or an uncle by playing with her in her room and being interested in whatever she had to tell him.

George was amused by her. She was something else entirely. He had never met a child like her and likely never would again. Brad was doing a great job of raising her by himself. He was currently teaching her about the LGBT community. They talked about what it meant to be gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender. He also taught her about pronouns.

“I was born a boy, so I identify myself as he/him. You were born a girl, so you would identify yourself as she/her.”

“George is a boy. He’s coming to my house.”

“Exactly. Bria is my daughter. She is a girl. What about a man who is attracted to another man? What does he identify as?”

“Gay. Unless he’s a woman then she’s a lesbian.”

“You are picking this up fast. Good job. What about a man or a woman who is attracted to both genders?”

“Bisexual.”

That was correct! If she came to him and told him she was attracted to girls or she wanted to change her gender, he would support her one hundred percent. She wanted to be both a girl and a boy. He didn’t know if that was possible. Maybe in the future. If she wanted to identify as a boy, that was okay. Or she could continue being a girl and do things that were considered boyish. She didn’t know. That was okay. She didn’t have to decide that at that moment.

The LGBT community was broader than a simple explanation but he didn’t want to confuse or overwhelm her with information. She would learn more as she got older. If she wanted to wear boy’s clothes for a while, she could do that. He would take her somewhere and buy clothes from the boy’s department. She could go back and forth between being a girl and being a boy.

She had a successful audition with the talent agent and was signed! Brad was overjoyed for her! She sang You’ve Got a Way by Shania Twain and recited the dialogue from Aladdin while acting out the scene. The agent thought she was adorable and talented. What did she want to do for a career? She wanted to do acting, singing, and dancing. They could look into those for her. Maybe Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel. She liked the sound of that!

George congratulated her! He always knew she had talent! She nodded, making them laugh. During dinner, they let her have some of their wine. She thought it had a strong taste and she didn’t know if she liked it. That was fine. Maybe she would like it more when she was older. Once she finished what little was left in her glass, she got up and walked to the kitchen.

Brad was going to take her to Target the next afternoon to pick out some new clothes. She was growing like a weed! They were going to check the junior’s department, along with the boys. She was already five feet tall and was still growing. At most, she would likely grow five or six more inches. He was five feet, eleven inches but she was slowly catching up to him. She wasn’t too concerned about her height. It helped her when she needed to get something down from a high shelf.

George thought the boy's clothes would fit her better than the girl's because of her height. They might have to go into the women’s department. When was she supposed to stop growing? Her pediatrician told them she would stop growing when she was around fifteen. That was in three years. He wished them luck. Brad thanked him sarcastically.

@zoeykaytesmom @feelingsofaithless @alina-dixon @fiickle-nia @boricuacherry-blog

[jamiethetrans]

Old Habits Die Hard - Ch 1

Rita Calhoun x Transgender FTM Reader

AN: Same as the others, simply a repost.

But those who are new and haven’t read the story yet, I need to warn you (if you haven’t read the under title) that the reader in this story is a transgender reader who has changed their gender from female to male.

If this is not something you enjoy reading or isn’t fond of, I recommend you don’t read this story.

There will also be both F/M intercourse and M/M intercourse. (trying to sound professional instead of simply saying sex) though the M/M is very mild and not very long. There will of course be warnings in the author’s note before the chapter begins.

You’re warned

Good reading!

“I don’t know what to do Rafael… Carisi has left us to take your position and Kat is–“

“Out of control?”, Barba said interrupting her and Olivia gave him a look, her hands on her hips. The man could see how tense she was and sighed looking down.

“Liv… You’ll find a way. I know it”

Olivia sighed and looked out of the window. “What does your new boss say?”, Barba asked and she turned to him.

“Well he’s looking. Trying to find anyone really”

Barba nodded and thought is thoughts through and suddenly came to thought, Olivia immediately noticing. “What?”

“I might have someone in mind”

Olivia raised an eyebrow and Barba smiled as he stood from his seat. “I’ll call you”, he said and walked out of the office. Olivia stood back left with a frown and saw Amanda coming in as Barba left.

“What’s going on? Why’s he in such a rush?”

“He thinks he might have someone who can work here”, Olivia answered as she sat down by her desk and put on her glasses. Amanda sighed nodding.

“Oh. Still haven’t found anyone?”

Olivia shook her head and Amanda nodded in understanding. The older woman noticed the file in her detective’s hands and nodded towards it. “Is that the Henderson file?”

“Uh yeah. I found out he has a record. Assault and larceny. It says here that he was arrested three years ago for assault on one of his female coworkers from his previous job at the corner cafe down in midtown”

“Wait the corner cafe? The same where Briana worked?”

Amanda gave her a look. “You think it could be her?”

“I mean it’s possible. Does it say who the coworker was?” Amanda looked in the file and shook her head as Olivia stood from her seat and walked over to her. “Hhmm No”

Olivia sighed looking up and Amanda kept reading. “Although…”, she said and Olivia looked at her. “What?”

“It says the crew had heard them yelling pretty loud about some money issues. Says they yelled about the coworker owing money to Henderson”

The two women’s eyes met and they both knew what the other thought. “It’s her”

————————————————

You took a deep breath as you walked over to the weights and counted to three in your head before lifting it up. You felt your muscles tense and you held it for as long as you could, feeling yourself getting into even more shape. Your muscles getting bigger and stronger.

After a minute of holding it, you put it down with a bang and you took a deep breath. You heard the small sound of someone clapping over your music and turned to see a person you haven’t seen in a very long time, standing by the entrance to the gym.

A smirk creeped on your face and you put the weights back on their place before taking your water bottle, walking over to the person.

“Rafael Barba”

“Y/L/N”

You walked closer and noticed how much he has changed. “Nice beard. How long has that taken over that pretty mouth of yours?”

Barba rolled his eyes and looked around in the gym. He noticed you were the only one. Not that it was a mystery as to why. It was just past 2 am. “You haven’t changed”

“Neither have you”, you said right after and your eyes met. You smirked and walked over to your bag, putting your bottle inside. “May I ask why you’ve come here and interrupted me and my training in the middle of the night?”

“You still work down at homicide?”, he asked and you turned to him, meeting his eyes. You put down the bag and walked towards him, making him walk backwards. He felt his back hitting a large pole and his heart almost jumped out of his chest.

You came up close and stood almost chest to chest, just inches from touching each other. You were almost a head taller than him. “Who’s asking?”

————————————————

“I’m sure we can figure something out” Olivia didn’t believe a word. But Fin had always supported her and it meant so much to her.

“How? I mean I haven’t heard anything from Barba and none of the other SVU precincts have the people for it. Everybody is short handed. Especially in this line of work”

Fin sighed and looked out of the window from Olivia’s office and looked at Rollins and Tamin. “I’m not so sure about Barba though”, he said and Olivia furrowed her eyebrows. She looked out of the window and saw Barba and you walking towards the office. Fin turned to his boss with a frown. “Who’s that?”

“I don’t know”

Barba knocked and opened the door. “Hey, who’s this?”, Olivia asked and Barba turned to you for a moment meeting your smirking face. “She doesn’t know?”

Olivia’s face met Fin’s and she raised an eyebrow. “Know what?”

You turned to her and held out your hand. “Y/N Y/L/N. Homicide. Rafael told me you needed people here” Olivia took the offered hand and smiled. “Yeah”

“Well it’s your lucky day then. I so happen to have written my resignation letter yesterday evening”, you explained and Olivia and Fin furrowed their eyebrows. And it didn’t go unnoticed by you. “And then Rafael told me about you needing people. How could I say no?” Olivia turned to Barba and the man smiled back at her. He knew she liked the idea.

“What do you think they’re talking about?”, Rollins asked as she sat by her desk and looked at Tamin. The other woman looked over at the office and noticed both Barba and you standing by the entrance.

“Hhhmm. Don’t know. Haven’t seen the guy before”

“You think he could be a new detective?” Kat scoffed. “New? Look at his body. I doubt there’s anything new about him when it comes to detective work”

Rollins frowned for a moment before the door to the office opened once more and all four people came out. “I’ll see you later”, Barba said turning to you and you watched him as he left the squad room.

“Alright everybody. This is Y/N Y/L/N. He’s our newest member of the squad so take him in and show him around”, Olivia introduced you and you turned to the two female detectives and gave them a charming smile.

“Hey guys. Nice meeting you”

“Y/N is from homicide but wanted something more and here he is”

They both greeted you and Olivia gave you a desk next to Tamin. “So. Homicide huh?”

————————————————

You walked into your apartment and immediately noticed the amount of letters laying on the floor. You sighed and picked them up, going through them as you walked further inside.

“Money, money, work”, you mumbled to yourself, putting the third to the side. “More money, money, money, work again” You put the last one to the side as well before putting the last of the letters in a pile of its own.

There was suddenly a knock on your door and you frowned and turned around. You had barely made it through your apartment and you already had visitors. You walked over to the door and opened it. “Captain”

Olivia gave you a smile, a nod in the process. “Y/L/N. Mind if I come in?” You shook your head and stepped aside.

She looked around as she walked in, a smile forming on her face. “It’s a nice place you got”, she commented and you met her eyes and nodding.

“Yeah… thanks” She walked over to the couch and sat down. You watched her from your kitchen as you stood by your island and she met your eyes. “How did you know where I live?”, you couldn’t stop yourself from asking and she chuckled.

“Barba told me” You chuckled looking down.

“‘Course he did”

“But there’s a reason I came here Y/N” You looked up meeting her eye and she looked down and her fingers for a moment before looking back up. “SVU is a vulnerable place. It’s different from homicide”

You looked down at your fingers, playing with the small golden ring on your finger. “I know Barba recommended you. And I believe he did for a reason”

You looked back up and met her eyes. She stood from her seat and walked over to you, standing on the other side of the island. “I read through your resume. I’m impressed. Graduated at the top of your class. The youngest person to ever finish the academy and become a detective”

You gave her a soft smile and she gave you one back. “Truly I just wanted to know if you’re ready for what’s SVU has in store. Like I said, it’s not like homicide or narcotics”

You stared into her eyes and she could see the determination in your eyes. “I’m ready”

She nodded and gave you a smile. “Good”

————————————————

“Docket ending 175438 the people versus Johnny Booth, how does the defendant plead?”

“Not guilty your honor”, the attorney answered and the judge turned to the A.D.A.

“People on bail?”

“We request remand your honor. The defendant is at high flight risk as he was taken at the JFK airport about to fly to California”, Barba answered and the defense attorney rolled her eyes.

“Mr. Booth was simply on his way to visit his daughter who’s in college in California.

“And that happened to be around the time he’s accused of rape?”

“Save it for the trial counselors. Bail?”

Barba sighed and looked down at his papers. “We request $50.000”

The judge looked at the defense attorney and she sighed nodding. “Well it’s settled then. Mr. Booth you will be remanded till someone can come and bail you out”

Barba sighed as the gavel hit the sound block and he turned to his old high school friend and gave her a nod. “You wanna come back to the office and talk deals?”

“In your dreams Rafael. We both know that’s a way too high bail”, she said and Barba frowned at her. “Then why not suggest a lower one?”

“I don’t have the time”, she said and walked out of the court room. Barba sighed and met Olivia’s eyes as she stood in the doorway.

“She sounded harsher than usual”, Olivia commented and Barba chuckled rolling his eyes as they walked out of the court room. “She’s just stressed. So how is Y/N with the others?”

“He’s doing good. Him and Kat are like best friends by now”, she said and Rafael chuckled. “And it’s only been like a week. I can’t even imagine how they will be when we’ve reached a month”

“Oh I don’t think you want to know”, Rafael mumbled to himself but Olivia heard it perfectly.

“What do you mean?”

He turned and met her eye and cleared his their. “Well he isn’t–“

“Hey”, a voice said and they both turned to see Rollins walking towards them.

“Hey”

“How did it go?”, the blonde asked and Barba gave her nod before continuing walking.

“$50.000 on bail”

“Good. Tamin and Y/L/N are with a victim. We got a call while you were in arraignment”

“Well let’s get back to the precinct and see what they’ve found out so far”, Olivia said nodding and the others nodded and followed her out of the court house.

They reached the precinct and immediately walked into Olivia’s office and watched you and Tamin take the girl’s statement.

“Alright Carol. With your statement and the rape kit, we have enough to take him to trial”, Kat said once she had finished taking her statement. You nodded in confirmation as you stood behind her, your arms crossed.

“Wow what?”

“What’s wrong?”, you asked and Carol gave you a terrified look.

“I-I don’t wanna press charges. I-I just…”, she trailed off and Kat sighed looking down.

“Carol–“

“If he finds out I did this, he’ll kill me”

You sighed and looked away while Kat leaned back in her seat. You walked out of the room and met Olivia, Barba and Rollins in Olivia’s office.

“She’s scared. There has to be a way to take him to trial without her taking the stand”, Olivia said turning to Barba and the man sighed.

“She’s the most credible witness that you got. Find me another victim or convince her”, he said and turned to you. He gave you a look before leaving the office.

You sighed and turned to look at the girl through the window. Kat and Rollins both noticed the look between you and Barba and furrowed their eyebrows, looking at each other.

“Alright Tamin, Rollins. Find out if this guy has other girls in his life”

They both nodded and left the office. Olivia turned to look at you. She noticed how you looked at the victim. How soft your eyes were as you watched the girl looking down at her fingers. “You okay?”

You turned to her and froze for a moment before clearing your throat. “Yeah. I’ll uh. I’ll go and see if I can find anything on the rape kit.

Olivia nodded and watched you leave the office before sitting back down by her desk.

#old habits die hard #rita calhoun x reader #rita calhoun #rafael barba #reader insert #reader #transgender reader

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/local/dc-hate-prosecutions-drop/

D.C. hate crimes: Inside a record year of hatred in the nation’s capital - Washington Post

“Of the 178 suspected hate crimes in 2017, police closed 54 cases involving adults by arrest. Prosecutors charged two cases as hate crimes, and both were later dropped as part of plea deals.”- (Via Washington Post)

ABOUT THIS SERIES

As hate crimes soar across the country, The Post examines those who commit acts of hatred, those who are targets of attacks, and those who investigate and prosecute them.

Hate crime reports

have soared in

D.C. Prosecutions

have plummeted.

Ashly Taylor was shot for being a lesbian. Then she watched as the hatred that fueled the attack was ignored in court.

By Michael E. Miller and Steven Rich  | Published Aug. 21, 2019 | Washington Post | Posted by 21, 2019 12:34 PM ET |

The hatred that day couldn't have been clearer to Ashly Taylor.

She had endured it ever since coming out as a teenager, when strangers said lewd things to her for holding another girl’s hand and one of her own relatives called her a “dyke.” Yet the 27-year-old had never encountered a problem on the construction sites she’d worked since high school, where she was just another laborer in baggy clothes and a hard hat, until a chilly February afternoon in 2018.

She had been sitting in the back of a pickup truck in Southeast Washington during a break from digging a ditch when a new hire sauntered up and began harassing her for being a lesbian.

“Why you dress like you’re a boy?” demanded Enjoli Gaffney, a felon who had been released from prison seven months earlier. Then he launched into a lurid tirade that ended, according to court records, with him vowing to have sex with her and ordering her to climb out of the truck so he could kiss her.

When Taylor got out to confront him, court documents show, Gaffney pulled a small silver and black pistol from his waistband and pointed it at her chest.

Then he pulled the trigger.

Hate crimes are surging across the country, with racist slurs scrawled on schools and houses of worship, assaults on gay and transgender people, and white gunmen targeting Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue and Latinos at an El Paso Walmart.

In Washington, the number of attacks investigated by police as bias-motivated reached an all-time high of 204 last year. The District had the highest per capita hate-crime rate of any major city in the country, according to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino.

[D.C. hate crimes: Inside a record year of hatred in the nation’s capital]

Yet hate-crime prosecutions in the nation’s capital have plummeted, even as the number of people arrested on those charges — including Taylor’s attacker — has soared, The Washington Post found.

Last year, police made arrests in a record 59 hate-crime cases involving adults. But the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which handles most criminal cases in the capital, prosecuted only three as hate crimes, and one was quickly dropped.

Of the 178 suspected hate crimes in 2017, police closed 54 cases involving adults by arrest. Prosecutors charged two cases as hate crimes, and both were later dropped as part of plea deals.

The Post’s months-long analysis of more than 200,000 D.C. police and court records found that hate-crime prosecutions and convictions are at their lowest point in at least a decade.

Jessie K. Liu, the U.S. attorney for the District, took office two years ago promising local activists that “as a woman of color,” she took hate crimes very seriously. Liu declined multiple requests for an interview to explain why prosecutions have fallen so low. Instead, she released a statement Tuesday defending her record, saying “we provide every potential case with a hate crimes enhancement with the careful attention and commitment it deserves.”

At a community meeting last month, she acknowledged the growing gap between hate-crime arrests and prosecutions in the District, without revealing just how large it has grown.

“The fact that there are more reported hate-bias crimes has definitely not gone unnoticed in our office,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of conversations about it in recent weeks, thinking about how we can revamp our efforts and resources to address it.”

She said she had recently added a second hate-crimes coordinator to ensure cases were prosecuted appropriately.

Activists, legal experts and prosecutors, including two of Liu’s predecessors, said they were troubled by The Post’s findings.

“Wow,” said Ronald C. Machen Jr., who served as U.S. attorney for five years under President Barack Obama, when told of the numbers. “We were really aggressive on these cases. Hate crimes really tear at the fabric of our democracy.”

But Machen also noted it can be difficult to prove that a crime was committed because of hatred. And prosecutors worry, he said, that bringing hate-crime charges can make cases harder to win.

Others said prosecutorial caution isn’t a new phenomenon and cannot explain the drop.

“This is a red flag,” said David Friedman, the Anti-Defamation League’s vice president of law enforcement and community security, who helped create the District’s hate-crime law 30 years ago. “When you have that high of a number of referrals, and you do not have hate-crime prosecutions, you have to be concerned about the statement that makes.”

Ruby Corado, a prominent Washington advocate for LGBTQ rights, and other activists argue that what’s happening reflects the priorities of President Trump, who appointed Liu and has rolled back rights and protections for minorities, especially the LGBTQ community.

The District is the only place in the country where local crimes are prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office, whose leader is appointed by the president. The setup makes it hard to hold prosecutors accountable, especially in a city where Trump won just 4 percent of the vote, advocates said.

“There is a disconnect between the people who experience these hate crimes and the people who are in charge of prosecuting them,” Corado said. That has created what she called a “culture of impunity,” in which bigots are emboldened and victims are left feeling “disposable.”

For Ashly Taylor, a bullet to the chest was just the beginning of her ordeal. She would survive the Feb. 2, 2018, shooting, only to watch as the evident hatred that left a scar above her heart was ignored in court.

As hate crime reports have climbed in Washington, D.C., federal prosecutors have brought hate crime charges in fewer

he drop in hate-crime prosecutions in the nation's capital stands in stark contrast to other cities. In Los Angeles, Seattle and the Brooklyn borough of New York City, hate-crime prosecutions have risen along with hate-crime arrests.

In San Diego County, Calif., for example, when police doubled the number of hate-crime cases referred to the district attorney’s office to 51 last year, hate-crime prosecutions rose even more sharply to 30.

Leonard Trinh, a deputy district attorney in San Diego County who specializes in bigotry-fueled crimes, said his office recently hired a second person to help him keep pace with the increasing number of hate-crime arrests.

“If the evidence is there, we should be charging” cases as hate crimes, said Trinh, whose Vietnamese family was the victim of a hate crime when he was growing up in Washington state.

D.C.’s numbers seem “really low,” he said, especially given that its statute protects more groups than California’s hate-crime law.

Mike Hogan, a hate-crimes prosecutor in King County, Wash., which includes Seattle, echoed that assessment.

“If you have a whole bunch of referrals with identified suspects, and you aren’t filing a lot of cases, you’d have to look closely to see if you were following best practices,” said Hogan, who helped persuade the state to amend its hate-crime law in the 1980s after he and a friend were targeted for being gay.

In Washington, D.C., the gap between hate crime reports and hate crime charges stands out among other large cities.

The District’s Bias-Related Crime Act was enacted in 1989 at a time when fear over the AIDS epidemic had led to violent assaults on gay people. The D.C. Council passed the law after three teenagers attacked a gay man with baseball bats near Rock Creek Park.

The act allows judges to enhance sentences by up to 50 percent for crimes committed based on a victim’s race, religion, age, ethnicity or national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or political affiliation, among other categories. (Homelessness would be added in 2009.)

But for a long time, the law was not enforced. In 1994, D.C. police reported only two hate crimes.

“We were getting calls from people who believed they were victims of hate crimes,” recalled Friedman, the ADL’s Washington regional director at the time. “But when they tried reporting it” to the Metropolitan Police Department, “MPD was blowing them off.”

In 1998, the department created a Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit to foster communication between police and the gay community. Reports of suspected hate crimes started to rise, then skyrocketed after Trump’s election.

The District is now one of the nation’s most active police departments in identifying potential hate crimes, and experts say dedicated policing is probably part of the reason the city’s numbers are so high. When officers detect bias while investigating an incident, they are required to call in a supervisor and, in the case of a crime, a detective. A notification is sent to the Special Liaison Branch, whose ranks include gay, transgender and minority officers. Each month, a six-member committee reviews suspected hate crimes, and the department keeps a list of confirmed cases on its website. (The Post sometimes classified the type of suspected hate crime differently than police, and counted the incidents by the year in which they occurred.)

“We are way ahead of the curve,” said Lt. Brett Parson, commander of the Special Liaison Branch, which includes the now-renamed Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Liaison Unit.

Nearly half the District’s suspected hate crimes in 2018 targeted people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Ashly Taylor was one of them.

When she was shot, she fellbackward against the pickup truck’s trailer. As blood began to soak through her sports bra, Taylor said, she wondered whether she was going to die.

But then, to her own surprise as much as her attacker’s, she got up. As Taylor grabbed a two-by-four to defend herself, co-workers wrestled the gun out of Gaffney’s hands.

“He was trying to shoot me [again] in the head,” she recalled.

After Gaffney ran away, Taylor managed to drive herself to a hospital, where doctors found that the bullet had torn through five layers of clothing, pierced her chest, bounced off her ribs and then sliced sideways across her skin. She was treated and released. Then she got back in her car and drove to a police station.

“The complainant walked into the Fifth District Station and reported that she had been shot in the chest by her coworker,” Gaffney’s arrest warrant begins.

The shooting happened in broad daylight along a busy avenue, but the only public mention was a brief online statement by police that they were “investigating this offense as being motivated by hate or bias.”

It would be the last time those words were used in her case.

Taylor lay in bed as her girlfriend tended to her gunshot wound, which had become infected.

But the injury festered in other ways. Even after the pain subsided, she could no longer sleep on her chest. In fact, she could hardly sleep at all. She woke up at the slightest touch, sweating from nightmares of Gaffney smiling and squeezing the trigger.

A therapist diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder, but her insurance wouldn’t cover psychiatric care, Taylor said. She began drinking more, staying inside the couple’s apartment in Hyattsville, Md., and refusing to return to her construction job.

“She didn’t want to be around anyone,” recalled her girlfriend, Briana Phillips. “She didn’t want to go outside.”

When Gaffney was arrested after 14 days, the couple hoped court proceedings would help close the wound.

Taylor was encouraged by her first meeting with Liu’s office, in which the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the case, Melissa Price, told her prosecutors planned to charge Gaffney with a hate crime, she recalled.

But when she met with Price about a month later, the message was very different.

“She said she had to drop the hate crime and give him a plea” deal, Taylor recalled.

Price did not respond to requests for comment. In her statement, Liu said she could not comment on specific cases.

The decision to drop the hate-crime charge enraged Taylor. Her father had served 10 years in prison for shooting someone, she said, so she expected Gaffney to get at least that much time for what she considered an attempted murder fueled by bigotry.

Gaffney has a long criminal record. He pleaded guilty to four felony drug-distribution charges in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Then, in 2015, a police officer caught him with a loaded .38 revolver, its serial number scratched out. He pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 30 months but released in less than 22, on June 13, 2017.

On May 9, 2018, Gaffney pleaded guilty once more — to assault with a dangerous weapon for the attack on Taylor. As part of the deal, she learned, he would serve 36 months in prison.

Taylor was so angry that she stormed out of the courtroom.

“I felt like it was bull crap,” she said. “The plea was bull crap. The whole system is bull crap.”

Over the past two years, an increasing number of victims of suspected hate crimes in the District have watched in frustration as their alleged attackers were arrested but never charged with a hate crime — or never charged at all.

The U.S. attorney’s office filed hate-crime charges in just four of the 113 bias-motivated cases it received from police for 2017 and 2018.

By contrast, prosecutors filed hate-crime charges in 44 of the roughly 100 cases they received from police between 2012 and 2015. They also filed hate-crime charges in seven additional cases that police did not flag as bias-motivated.

The steep drop-off in hate-crime prosecutions in 2017 did not happen solely under Liu. By the time she took office that September, roughly one-third of the year’s bias-motivated cases had already been resolved without hate-crime charges by her predecessor, Channing D. Phillips.

Phillips, an Obama appointee who charged five cases from 2016 as hate crimes, said his office made decisions on a case-by-case basis and there was no policy shift or pressure to back off hate-crime prosecutions after Trump’s inauguration.

Days before leaving office, Phillips filed hate-crime charges in a case police had not flagged as bias-motivated, in which security guards and supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attacked protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington on May 16, 2017.

The hate-crime charges were dropped against two supporters, both U.S. citizens, in exchange for pleading guilty to assault, but 15 Turkish security guards and two Canadian Erdogan supporters left the country before they could face trial.

The one case from 2017 that Liu charged as a hate crime was an assault on a Palestinian American teacher outside the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. But the hate-crime charge against Yosef Steynovitz, a member of the militant Jewish Defense League, was dropped in exchange for his pleading guilty to three misdemeanors. He received a suspended sentence.

Liu’s office charged three incidents from 2018 as hate crimes. One case, in which a man allegedly called two women “dykes” before attacking them on the street, was dropped after three months because prosecutors were “not ready to proceed with this matter,” according to court records.

The two others attracted significant media attention. In one, a white cyclist called a black motorist the n-word before attacking him with a bicycle lock in Georgetown. In June, a jury convicted him of two felony assault charges but deadlocked on the hate-crime enhancement. In the other case, which is ongoing, a black man is accused of shouting racist threats at a Hispanic elementary school crossing guard in Chevy Chase.

Machen and Phillips were reluctant to criticize Liu without looking at the cases in detail.

“Charging a case as a hate crime can be a little tricky,” Phillips said. “You are increasing your burden of proof. Not only do you have to prove the underlying offense, such as an assault, but you have to prove that it was committed because of a bias.”

Sometimes, even racial epithets are not enough to prove a racist motive, Machen said. And prosecutors are duty-bound to bring only charges they believe they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

In the District, juries normally vote once on a crime and then again on a hate enhancement. Nonetheless, the difficulty of proving hate was a motivation can endanger an entire case, Machen and Phillips said.

“You lose credibility if you bring a charge and you can’t prove it,” Machen said. “It does affect your overall credibility and can affect you on other parts of the case.”

Those fears appeared to play a role in a high-profile hate-crime trial earlier this year.

In February, two men went on trial in the fatal shooting of Deeniquia “Dee Dee” Dodds, a transgender woman who was killed during a 2016 armed robbery. But in the middle of the trial, Liu’s office reversed course, asking the judge to dismiss the hate-crime enhancement against one defendant. The judge then threw out the enhancement against the other man, too. The jury wound up acquitting the men of many charges and deadlocking on the murder charge, leading to a mistrial.

Prosecutors say they will retry the case next year, but not as a hate crime.

An analysis of a decade of hate-crime cases calls into question prosecutors’ fears of jeopardizing cases with hate-crime enhancements. The Post found six cases from 2008 to 2017 in which juries considered a hate crime and failed to convict on any charge. In 16 other cases during the same period, juries either convicted the defendants of hate crimes or rejected the hate-crime enhancement but convicted on other charges.

Cases charged as hate crimes also are more likely to result in a conviction. More than 70 percent of the hate-crime prosecutions during that decade ended in some kind of conviction, and 41 percent ended in hate-crime convictions.

By contrast, prosecutors secured convictions in 29 percent of the suspected-bias cases they decided not to charge as hate crimes in 2017, the most recent year for which outcomes are available.

Of the 42 hate-crime convictions since 2008, however, only four resulted in defendants serving additional jail time, The Post found.

Phillips offered two possible reasons. Many misdemeanor hate crimes are committed by first-time offenders, he said, and judges are often reluctant to hand out stiff sentences to people with no previous criminal record. And in serious felony cases, he said, defendants already face steep sentences without hate enhancements.

Frederick M. Lawrence, an expert on hate crimes and a lecturer at Georgetown University Law School, said those numbers suggest the District should change its law to limit judges’ discretion in applying sentencing enhancements.

“If you get the conviction and then the judge doesn’t enhance the sentence, that is very problematic,” he said. “It is extremely important that law enforcement be seen as unequivocally on the side of identifying these crimes for what they are, prosecuting them for what they are and sentencing them for what they are.”

Corado, the LGBTQ rights advocate, agreed. Otherwise, she said, “it gives perpetrators a green light.”

Other activists lament that since Liu took office, meetings of the District’s Hate-Bias Task Force, which includes police, prosecutors and advocacy group leaders, have become less frequent and no longer include statistics or details on hate-crime prosecutions.

“It has been a source of frustration,” said Stephania Mahdi of the D.C. Anti-Violence Project.

Liu acknowledged as much at a meeting of the task force on July 24.

“We have not been as systematic as we could be about keeping data,” she said. “So we’re going to do that, and I’m pledging to you now that I’m going to review those at least once a month so I have a better understanding of what’s going on and how we’re handling these cases.”

In addition to adding the second hate-crimes coordinator, she said, she was considering asking the D.C. Council to simplify jury instructions for hate crimes, which her office blamed for several recent setbacks.

The meeting was the first Liu had attended in almost two years, activists said.

“I’m pledging to be a lot more engaged,” she said.

On a Tuesday morning in March, Enjoli Gaffney walked into D.C. Superior Court accompanied by a federal marshal and the soft rustle of metal chains. An orange jumpsuit hung loosely on his lanky frame as he craned his neck to look at the audience.

Ashly Taylor’s girlfriend, Briana Phillips, sat on the end of a bench near the back. But Taylor was missing.

After she stormed out of the courtroom over the plea agreement, the U.S. attorney’s office had assigned another prosecutor to the case who had tried to rescind the deal, Taylor said. She hoped Gaffney would be charged with a hate crime after all.

But 10 months later, he was back in court to be sentenced under the same agreement. She was too disgusted to attend.

“I’m lucky to be alive,” she said. “I think to myself, ‘What if I died? Then what would y’all charge him with?’ ”

In the courtroom, it fell to Phillips to recount the shooting’s toll. Taylor had become angry, guarded and paranoid, she told Judge Milton C. Lee.

“She is not the same person as before,” Phillips said wearily. “That’s something I have to live with every day.”

In her own statement, written by hand and filed in court a day earlier, Taylor had left no doubt about how she felt.

“I think it is ridiculous and unfair that you can get a simple three years for almost taking someone’s life, just because I’m a proud lesbian woman,” she had written to Gaffney. “And your insecure, biased ways did not give you the right to target me.”

She has not returned to construction and the outdoor physical labor she enjoyed. She’d become too afraid that someone would attack her again.

Instead, she was sitting in front of a computer in a warehouse office when her phone rang after the sentencing.

The hearing was a “waste of time,” her girlfriend told her. The word “hate” hadn’t even come up.

Jennifer Jenkins and Peter Hermann contributed to this report.

#us politics #u.s. news #u.s. department of justice #u.s. government #politics and government #republican politics #u.s. politics #hate groups #hate speech #hate crimes #lgbtq community #lgbtpride #lgbt #lgbtq

[fluidityandgiggles]

Sleep Is For The Weak - Chapter 3

Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Last Chapter

Notes (I guess): This chapter was a nightmare to write but I’m just so happy I finished it. It also touches some subjects that will come up again in the future, for the sake of letting everyone process the events. I’ve experienced grief and it’s going to take a long time before this particular subject could be discussed again. See yourselves warned.

Again, credit to @broadwaytheanimatedseries for screaming at me to write this, and to @whatwashernameagain for Keep Him Safe, and also a tiny tiny lil bit to @anony-phangirl and @asleepybisexual for their general support and for being such great sports about me annoying them with my ideas… (oops).

(I’m trying to find a way to write my notes, so bear with me until I find a way that will stick. This will do for now.)

(KHS) Tag List (sort of): @em-be-lievable, @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2, @adoratato, @supremestoverlord, @royallyanxious, @madly-handsome, @hanramz-the-fander, @the-incedible-sulk, @poisonedapples, @virge-of-a-breakdown, @winglessnymph, @princeanxious, @smokeyrutilequartz, @im-bad-at-life (if any of you could tag the rest, please do! I’m improving my memory from day to day, but… yeah…)

Tag list: @bunny222, @ab-artist, @secretlyanxiouspersona, @your-username-is-unavailable, @virgilcrofters

Trigger warning: period appropriate transphobia (the early 00s were not exactly trans-friendly). This chapter also includes discussion of two rather tragic (in my opinion) real-life events, and very few mentions of food.

—————

"Today, we're going to do things a bit differently."

Saturday, October 12th, 2002

"Raise your hand if the idea of coming out, even if you're already out, terrifies the living hell out of you."

Almost all hands flew up.

"Raise your hand if you understand the dangers of staying closeted too."

Pretty much everyone took their hands down. Only very few stayed.

"Last week," India said after a long breath, "we lost… the community lost one of our own. We… we lost someone to hate crime." She lowered her hand. Remy was almost in pain, seeing her try to talk about it. She called him last night, asking him if it's not going to be too much for him (and if so, she has another thing planned). "Gwen Araujo was seventeen when she died because she was outed as transgender in a party."

"Wasn't this released, like, two days ago?"

"Yes, and that's why I want to talk to you about this. Just… excuse me. I wrote it all down… it’s kind of a tough subject..."

It took India a minute to settle her voice, and another couple seconds to fumble with some papers. "I'll bet you all remember where you were when the World Trade Center fell in September eleventh last year." The room fell into silence. "I'll also bet none of you remember where you were on new year's eve in 1993."

Remy knew exactly where this was going.

"It could be because you were nine years old, which is the case for some of us, or you were already in bed by ten. I know my parents insisted that I'd go to bed by ten that night for a couple reasons. But on December thirty-first, 1993, we lost another member of the community. His story was turned into an Oscar-winning movie, but l can assure you none of you remember where you were when Brandon Teena was murdered for being born a girl."

The chatter was back. Remy could isolate some of the comments. Not most, just some. And it hurt. The ones he managed to isolate were not good, but one was much louder than the other.

"Can you really compare the murder of thousands to the death of just one person?"

"No I can't. But what you fail to realize here is that I'm not comparing anything here. I'm just trying to bring up a subject—"

"And you're using the tragedy of others to—"

"I lost family in September eleventh. I'm well aware of the tragedy. I'm also aware of the fact that transgender people are killed at ridiculous rates and this is something we should discuss!"

The silence after that was incredibly unbearable. India was close to tears, and Remy… as much as he wanted to go hug her, he couldn't.

It was that painful.

"Today's topic was supposed to be discrimination and hate," Remy heard someone shouting into the air - one of the juniors probably. "We do this conversation every year. Please listen to what the poor girl has to say. She's only volunteering to do this, on top of—"

"That's okay, Chris. I don't need an advocate."

It was going to be a long meeting, and Remy was not looking forward to it.

—

"I'm sorry I didn't speak today."

"You did alright. Sometimes doing nothing is a good thing."

India was incredibly frustrated when they finally got to Kirkland House. Remy insisted on going with her, to make sure that nothing else happened. She called him a gentleman for doing that.

It was sweet of her.

She ranted a bit about a guy who lived on the same floor as her (Jared Kushner or something) who was a dick to her and tried flirting with her girlfriend all the time, she told him that she applied to get a master's degree in forensics at Georgetown after graduation, and then they reached Kirkland House.

"You can get back to Harvard Yard from here, right?"

"Of course. Who do you think I am?"

India kissed his cheek and waved goodbye, and went into Kirkland House. And then Remy was alone. Well, not entirely, he still had to go back to Weld Hall and call his dad, but…

He was alone.

The yard wasn't as crowded as it was earlier and the weather was cooling down considerably, the leaves were changing… Harvard Yard was a beautiful place in the fall, Remy learned quickly enough.

He had very little time to process his thoughts when he was almost tackled to the ground by a tiny blonde kid almost running in the direction of the exit. Aka, the main road.

"How is it that when we're outside of class we keep running into each other in the weirdest ways?"

"That's less weird than how my grandparents met," Emile said, breathless.

"Not what I said, babe."

"No, really! My grandpa was coming back to Amsterdam from London just as my grandma was on her way to London straight out of Auschwitz, and—"

"Can we keep this story for another time?"

"...sure." Emile gave Remy a half-smile. "So… I kinda have to go to Party City. I need to stock up for Halloween."

"Didn't you go there two weeks ago?"

"Yes, but they didn't have this one thing I really needed, and I kinda forgot a couple other things, so they told me they'd call when they got that thing they didn't have, so I'm going to pick it up!" He was… incredibly jumpy today. It was rather endearing. "You wanna come? We can go get pizza."

"What thing are you missing, exactly?"

"A wig! I'm gonna be Kim Possible."

He was so excited… Remy started feeling bad for being this confused.

"...what?"

"Kim Possible! Don't you— you know what, it's okay if you don't know. It only came out in June anyway." The half-smile turned into a full, bright one. He was adorable. "So, you wanna come with me?"

...well, he had nothing better to do for now.

"Sure, sunshine. But I need to get my wallet and phone first."

"Yay! Anyway, so Kim Possible is this show, it's on the Disney Channel but trust me it's not that bad… "

—

Emile was growing on Remy more and more each day. And… he may have started getting interested in Kim Possible after going out for pizza with him. The never ending energy was growing on him in a way. It was impossible not to like his enthusiasm, and…

Yeah, he was starting to grow on Remy.

"So, now, lucky that I'm vegetarian, right?" Emile said as he took his third slice of pizza. "So at least I have some sort of excuse, at least according to my aunt, but we just keep having to explain to them what kosher means and—"

"Are we still talking about your sister, Emile?"

"What?"

"We were talking about your sister and then you started talking about… well…"

"Oh! Yeah, sorry!"

"Please stop apologizing. You're not doing anything wrong."

"Right. Umm… so… Doctor Gilliam suggested I might want to get evaluated at the psych clinic sometime soon," Emile mumbled, straightening his glasses. Slightly more closed off. Making Remy feel real guilty. "I don't… I don't know why, but he said I might want to."

"And you're just gonna take him up on that?"

"Yeah? No? I don't know. I'm only sixteen, honestly, I'm gonna have to talk to my parents about this."

Sixteen?!

"Yeah, I thought I told you!"

...shit. He spoke out loud. Shit.

"I'll be seventeen in December. But… never mind. Do you think I should listen to him? About the evaluation?"

"I have, like… no idea."

The way back to Cambridge was full of even more chatter about everything and nothing, and Remy couldn't put in a word. Not that it mattered anyway. Emile was interesting.

Remy gave his input whenever he could, but he would much rather listen to Emile talk. He had an adorable voice

—

"You didn't call me last week, kiddo. Found yourself a guy?"

"Dad, please…"

"Do you think you're going to take her up on that offer?"

"Dad, daddy, papa, David, any normal person when answering the phone would ask how are you doing. Not if you hooked up with a guy or if you're going to babysit your sisters who you've never met just because your bitch of a woman who birthed you asked you to."

"When have we ever done anything normal, Remy?"

"Well… true. But no, I'm not going to take her up on that offer. I don't really care, to be honest."

"They're your sisters."

"And so is India but you don't see me trying to—"

"You haven't told me much about her, kid."

"Well… she's not doing okay lately. Did you see the news? About that girl in California?"

"Edward Araujo?"

"Gwen."

"Right. Sorry. It's just… the news."

"It's okay. But… India is losing it over this case. And honestly… I get her. It's terrifying to see someone of your kin just…"

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. But really, did you hook up with anyone?"

"Nah. Dad, I'm eighteen. I'm not you."

"Hey, your mom got pregnant with you because of this one time when we were seniors when she had an empty house this one week in December and threw away my condoms when I tried to—"

"Dad, that's disgusting and please don't bring this up ever again."

"Got it. But anyway?"

"...there's a guy in my major, his name is Emile—"

"You gonna ask him out?"

"Dad, no! He's sixteen."

"And he's a psychology major?!"

"I asked myself the same question. But yes. He is."

"Well, I mean… he's within the appropriate age range for you. I guess."

"...what is it about I don't want a relationship at this stage of my life didn't you hear?"

"You're eighteen, Remy! One day you're gonna find someone and—"

"That's the thing. I'm eighteen. I have many more years ahead of me."

"Okay. Whatever you say. Any other boys I should know about? Girls, too, if you're into them now?"

"Just… this one guy. His name is Chris, he's a bit older… I don't know. Should I really be talking to you about this? You're my dad!"

"Am I not allowed to be interested in my son's love life anymore?"

"You weren't this interested in it when I was in high school."

A long sigh. "Remy…"

"I know you're worried, Dad. Believe me, I do. But I'm doing just fine! Rashida has dance parties every Wednesday for some reason so we bond over that, Lucy is basically just my map to going everywhere, we haven't hung out that much, Sammy is being a cutie all the time and Katherine is obsessed with everything. She really likes Emile's bunny for some reason and keeps talking about how her niece and nephew would absolutely love it. Her niece is two years old! I just…"

"Sounds to me like you're making friends."

"Well… yesterday I went with Emile to Party City. I don't know what I'm doing for Halloween this year, but…"

"What was that you just said?"

"If all goes right, I'll be Jack Skellington. But I don't have a backup."

"What would you need a backup for? You'll do great!"

"So, how's your girlfriend?"

"Eh, I don't know. Elaine isn't… that… you know."

"I'm sure she's absolutely lovely."

"Yeah, so was I. Can't wait for you to meet her."

"Can't wait either."

"...are you sure you don't want to babysit Linda's girls?"

"Dad!"

"Just asking!"

#kylo cant write #sanders sides #remy/sleep #emile picani #keep him safe #sleep is for the weak #the remy centric prequel #tw: period appropriate transphobia #tw: food mention #tw: mentions of (real life) murder

[robertreich]

A YEAR WITHOUT A PRESIDENT

It seems like forever, but it was just one year ago that Donald Trump was elected president. So what have we learned about the presidency and who is running the country? 

1. The first big thing we’ve learned is that Trump is not really the president of the United States -- because he’s not governing.

A president who’s governing doesn’t blast his Attorney General for doing his duty and recusing himself from an FBI investigation of the president.

A president who’s governing doesn’t leave the top echelons of departments and agencies empty for almost a year.

He doesn’t publicly tell his Secretary of State he’s wasting time trying to open relations with North Korea. Any president with the slightest interest in governing would already know and approve of what his Secretary of State was doing.

He doesn’t fire half his key White House staff in the first nine months, creating utter chaos.

A president who is governing works with his cabinet and staff to develop policy. He doesn’t just tweet new public policy out of the blue -- for example, that transgender people can't serve in the military. His Secretary of Defense is likely to have some thoughts on the matter -- and if not consulted might decide to ignore the tweet.

He doesn’t just decide to withdraw from the Paris Accord without any reason or analysis.

A president who is governing works with Congress. He doesn’t just punt to Congress hard decisions – as he did with DACA, the Iran nuclear deal, insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and details of his tax plan.

He doesn’t tell a crowd of supporters that he’s ended the Clean Power Plan -- “Did you see what I did to that? Boom, gone” -- when any such repeal requires a legal process, and must then withstand court challenges.

Instead of governing, Donald Trump has been insulting, throwing tantrums, and getting even:

Equating white supremacists with people who protest against them. Questioning the patriotism of NFL players who are peacefully protesting police violence and racism.

Making nasty remarks about journalists, about his predecessor as president, his political opponent in the last election, national heroes like Congressman John Lewis and Senator John McCain, even the mayor of San Juan Puerto Rico.

Or he’s busy lying and then covering up the lies. Claiming he would have won the popular vote if millions hadn’t voted fraudulently for his opponent -- without a shred of evidence to support his claim, and then setting up a fraudulent commission to find the evidence.

Or firing the head of the FBI who wouldn’t promise to be more loyal to him than to the American public.

A president's job is to govern. Trump doesn’t know how to govern, or apparently doesn’t care. So, logically, he’s not President.

2. The second thing we've learned is that Trump's influence is waning.  

Since he lost the popular vote, his approval ratings have dropped even further. One year in, Trump is the least popular president in history with only 37 percent of Americans behind him.

Most Republicans still approve of him, but that may not be for long.

He couldn’t get his pick elected to a Senate primary in Alabama, a state bulging with Trump voters.

Republican senators refused to go along with his repeal of the Affordable Care Act. And they’re taking increased interest in Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Business leaders deserted him over his remarks over Charlottesville. They vacated his business advisory councils.

NFL owners have turned on him over his remarks about players. Tom Brady, who once called Trump “a good friend,” now calls him “divisive” and “wrong.”

There's no question he's violated the Constitution. There are at least three grounds for impeachment -- his violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution by raking in money from foreign governments, his obstruction of justice by firing the head of the FBI, and his failure to faithfully execute the law by not implementing the Affordable Care Act. And a fourth if he or his aides colluded with Russia in the 2016 election.

But both houses of Congress would have to vote for his removal, which won't happen unless Democrats win control in 2018 or Republicans in Congress decide Trump is a political liability.

3. The third big thing we’ve learned is where the governing of the country is actually occurring.

Much is being done by lobbyists for big business, who now swarm over the Trump administration like honey bees over a hedgerow of hollyhocks.

But the real leadership of America is coming from outside the Trump administration.

Leadership on the environment is now coming from California -- whose rules every automaker and many other corporations have to meet in order to sell in a state that’s home to one out of eight Americans.

Leadership on civil rights is coming from the federal courts, which have struck down three different versions of Trump’s travel ban, told states their voter ID laws are unconstitutional, and pushed police departments to stop profiling and harassing minorities.

Leadership on the economy is coming from the Federal Reserve Board, whose decisions on interest rates are more important than ever now that the country lacks a fiscal policy guided by the White House.

Most of the rest of leadership in America is now coming from the grassroots -- from people all over the country who are determined to reclaim our democracy and make the economy work for the many rather than the few.

They stopped Congress from repealing the Affordable Care Act.

They’re fighting Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s plan to spend taxpayer money on for-profit schools and colleges that cheat their students.

They're fighting EPA director Scott Pruitt’s crusade against climate science.

And Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s attempts to tear down the wall between church and state.

They’re fighting against the biggest tax cut for the wealthy in American history -- that will be paid for by draconian cuts in services and dangerous levels of federal debt.

They’re fighting against the bigotry, racism, and xenophobia that Trump has unleashed.

And they’re fighting for a Congress that, starting with next year’s midterm elections, will reverse everything Trump is doing to America.

But their most important effort -- your effort, our effort -- is not just resisting Trump. It’s laying the groundwork for a new politics in America, a new era of decency and social justice, a reassertion of the common good.

Millions are already mobilizing and organizing. It’s the one good thing that’s happened since Election Day last year -- the silver lining on the dark Trump cloud.

If you’re not yet part of it, join up.

#video #videos

[berniesrevolution]

One consistent theme of American politics over the last generation has been the increasingly strong ideological discipline of the Republican Party. What that has meant in policy terms is fairly clear: tax cuts for the rich, cuts to social insurance programs, deregulation, free trade, union-busting, and a belligerent foreign policy.

The rise of President Trump, of course, seemed like it might upset things. He ran as an erstwhile economic populist, promising to protect Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security; enact soak-the-rich tax increases; and tear up free-trade deals that had harmed the (white, he none too subtly implied) working class. But his actual administration, stacked as it is with right-wing hardliners, has simply underlined the dominance of conservative ideology. The only significant policy passed during his administration has been a traditional tax cut for the rich, plus a lot of deregulation carried out at the executive level.

So what about the Democrats?

Certainly before 2008, one couldn't say they had a starkly different set of policy ideas. Up through about the early 1970s, it had been a fairly straightforward working-class party, but after a generation of reform, under Bill Clinton it stood for a muddle of capitalism worship leavened with means-tested welfare programs. At bottom, it was a left-inflected version of the same neoliberalism that comprises Republican Party doctrine.

But the 2008 financial crisis called that ideology into question. It turns out that Clinton's welfare reform grossly harmed the poorest Americans, his neoliberal trade agreements dealt a sharp blow to the national manufacturing base, and his financial deregulation set the stage for global economic catastrophe. Though Barack Obama basically held the line on Clintonian orthodoxy, when he was gone from political competition in 2016, previously marginal left-wingers like Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison, who had been carrying the old New Deal torch for decades, suddenly rocketed to the front rank of politics.

Has the party as a whole changed its thinking on these questions, though? To get one initial look, I interviewed multiple Democratic congressional candidates. I reached out to dozens, attempting to get a decently wide range of perspectives and regions. Ultimately, eight candidates agreed to be interviewed, and while the sampling method is clearly less than scientific, it provides an interesting sort of ersatz focus group containing a decent mix of left-wingers and centrists. Not being quite sure what I was going to find, I asked fairly basic questions about economic, social, and foreign policy, focusing on broad disputes between the economic populist-dovish wing of the party and the neoliberal-war hawk wing.

My major conclusion is this: The Democratic Party has developed a strong consensus on social justice issues like gay marriage, transgender rights, and police brutality. On foreign policy, it seems somewhere in the middle — not exactly favoring imperialist wars of aggression, but not terribly interested in a new paradigm either. But the party as such makes virtually no attempt to put forward a consistent party line on economic issues. On political economy, what up-and-coming Democrats believe and say depends largely on forces outside the party, and the candidates who are the clearest thinkers are the ones who have done their own reading and research.

This lack of ideological spade work is setting the party up for disaster down the road.

I interviewed Jess King (candidate for Pennsylvania's 11th District), Richard Ojeda (West Virginia's 3rd), Gil Cisneros (California's 39th), Shireen Ghorbani (Utah's 2nd), Mike Levin (California's 49th), Diane Mitsch Bush (Colorado's 3rd), Dan Canon (Indiana's 9th, who lost his primary after the interview), and Randy Bryce (Wisconsin's 1st, where he is gunning to fill Paul Ryan's seat after Ryan retires). I attempted to contact several senatorial candidates, as well as the DCCC itself, but none agreed to talk.

First, a bit of necessary background. The greatest political-economic risk for Democrats is the possibility that the next Democratic president will have to clean up after another financial crisis. During the Great Recession, the Obama administration moved heaven and Earth to save the financial system (including looking the other way while Wall Street committed a world-historical crime spree), but the party only managed milquetoast half-measures to save the rest of the economy. The economic stimulus of 2009 — passed in a panic after Obama was inaugurated — prevented a full-blown depression, but did not restore full employment.

As 2010 progressed, it became increasingly obvious that the stimulus had been a severe undershoot. But Democrats did not pass another. The reason was ideological. The Keynesian idea that the government should spend until full employment was reached — as it did during the New Deal and the Second World War, thus fixing the Great Depression — took tentative hold in 2009, but soon afterwards the forces of neoliberalism regrouped and began loudly flipping out about deficits. Most Democrats had a vague at best understanding of the logic of stimulus, and quickly gave in.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #the week #democrats #democratic party #financial crisis #economic inequality #progressive #progressive movement

[sunshine-omega-pack]

Chapter 1: What is in a Dynamic?

Alpha, Beta, Omega. Alpha Beta Omega. AlphaBetaOmega. Society is made up of these 3 dynamics, they are what makes society run. Alphas to lead, are assertive, and make the decisions in positions of authority. Betas to keep the balance, most are found working in law enforcement and social services, they are the buffer zone between Alphas and Omegas. Omegas. Omegas, rare and exquisite, make up ¼ of the population. They are perceived as delicate things; they carry the next generation in their wombs, they take care of the home. This is what’s taught in schools, outdated teachings reinforced in the minds of the youth to bring them to synchronicity and conformity. Dynamic stereotypes are all over the place, certainly in everyday life and especially when it comes to mating. 

All Omegas must have a mate prearranged by a parent or have selected a mate by the time they are of age and must be abstinent for their theoretical future mate. Betas, though the buffer zone, are encouraged to find mates that are Betas as well to keep the mating pool open for Alphas and procreation of more Omegas. Another “encouragement” is for Omegas to take one mate and one mate only, polyamorous relationships that are centered around an Omega are often frowned upon and discriminated against harshly. However, its perfectly fine for an Alpha, an Alpha may take more than one Omega mate as to secure their family’s line and satisfy their needs. A societal double standard that was justified by “keeping Omegas in their place.”

Shae Lopez was never exactly the type to follow the leader or buy into any of the crap that teachers and public officials were trying to drill into his mind. Shae is an Omega, living in a conservative town in California of all places, it was not exactly the best place for Shae’s situation. But Shae could not help who he had fallen in love with; Juliana Yuen (Alpha) and Damien Matthews (Beta). Their relationship was pretty “uncommon”, strictly speaking, within the confines of society. Not extremely rare nowadays but still not accepted fully by conservatives and older folk. People still believe in Alpha/Omega and Beta/Beta bonds as the only valid unions in terms of mating. Though even Alpha/Alpha, Alpha/Beta, and Beta/Omega were less stigmatized than a polyamorous Alpha/Beta/Omega (varied or in that order) and/or Omega/Omega relationships.

The majority in their small town disapproved of the three of them living together in a domestic setting.

And what was worse than the disapproval were the looks that Shae got from the people in his city; the unveiled lust, disgust, and pure hatred sent his way after presenting. There was young Alphas who couldn’t take a hint and would try to talk him up, Shae was not impressed. He would try to excuse himself as quickly as possible, he told them he had mates but most were undeterred. Shae has had some pretty close calls.

There were disapproving, judgy Beta and Omega care providers and fellow classmates who thought he was just being selfish. Omega groups would go out of their way to exclude him some of the time because they didn’t want to be seen associating with him. It was bad enough that most of them knew he was transgender, which he already got a lot of cheek for, but it didn’t help that he’s also an unmated Omega to top it all off. That's right. Despite having two mates that he loved with all of his heart, he was not claimed by either of them. He is an unmated Omega, just past the age where he would’ve been expected to be mated officially and have pupped by now, but neither was true for Shae. Though not for lack of trying.

He had been in a committed relationship with Damien and Juliana throughout high school, most of the time it was on the down low. They three of them had met through detention. Shae had talked back to a health teacher who was preaching about abstinence to a group of fourteen year olds, which is what had landed him in detention. Juliana had snuck alcohol onto the campus but was quickly apprehended by school security, she had a charming smile and spoke with charisma which is how she wormed her way out of suspension. And finally Damien was brought in last for doodling on the desk in front of him, which they all agreed was a stupid reason for detention. But it had brought them altogether, making fun of the teachers and forming a close friendship that evolved into a relationship. Juliana had requested that it stay between the three of them because it was so stigmatized, especially in high school where cliques tend to meddle in everyone’s business.  

Eventually they were forced to come out when Shae had his first heat mid junior year and absolutely refused to go home unless he was allowed to bring both of his mates with him. It had been a uphill battle as Shae had stood there with slick stained pants and sweat beaded on his forehead, arguing with the stupid principal. It was Shae’s guardian who had to call to give permission that finally allowed their escape to the nearest emergency heat room. The rest of the week they had what seemed like a never ending amount of heat sex and the two of them had taken care of Shae’s immediate needs but hadn't claimed him (causing an absence of the biological bond that Shae’s inner omega desired). Typically in their city Omegas are claimed the first heat around to avoid conflicts with others and to show the authenticity of a relationship.

Juliana and Damien had told Shae that it was because they didn't want to claim him without consent, which was reasonable answer. He had only just presented as an Omega and they hadn't talked about what to do in that situation beforehand. They were very unprepared for a situation like this in the first place. Honestly they had all thought that Shae was going to present as a Beta like Damien had because they were more common. Omegas were just so rare, so one would assume that when presenting they would present as an Alpha or a Beta but Omega rarely crossed their minds unless there were specific obvious traits a person had. Shae felt rushed to be mated as an Omega, lots of people were bound to notice him and try to take advantage. It would be all better if he was claimed by someone he loved rather than a stranger that he didn’t know.

They soon had a long discussion about what direction they wanted their relationship to go in and Shae had told them that he wouldn't want to be mated to anyone but them. Juliana and Damien were quick to agree that they only saw Shae as their omega. Three months flew by and the seasons changed around them. Shae went to heat again during the winter months. Shae had begun nesting instincts this time around, with not a lot to work with, but he made do with his blankets, pillows, and a couple shirts of his partners’ and possessions of legal guardian. At the end of the heat week through all the blurry memories and strong scents, Shae still found himself as unclaimed. No bites on either side of his neck, on where his scent glands would be, but plenty of marks other places. This time when he questioned them they had neutral looks on their faces. Juliana and Damien didn't want to give in to their “biological urges” and wanted to keep it at the pace they were going. They still would help Shae with his heats and loved him but they weren't ready to claim him. Shae understood their discomfort, and didn’t push about it for the next couple heats, but that didn’t make it any less disheartening that his lovers were uncomfortable with claiming him.

Shae was confused at the attitude of both of them, his omega was restless, obsessing over what might be wrong with him. He really didn’t think that it was his partners’ faults that they weren’t ready to claim him. So Shae thought that it must be something that he was doing that didn’t welcome their bites, so he tried to figure out with all his might what it could be that he was doing wrong. Shae, who had been already a bit of a curvy and pudgy, opted to lose weight because he was worried that might have been the issue, but it wasn't. They didn’t take notice to the alarming loss in body fat, the two didn’t even really bat an eye. 

So he thought it could be because of his personality, which was typically strong-willed and independent. But he wouldn't feel comfortable if he had to change that even if Juliana ordered him to be the meek omega people wanted him to be. He had even ditched the omega classes he was enrolled in because they would just teach him how to be obedient and how to make his alpha happy. But he didn't have an alpha technically because Juliana hadn’t claimed him yet. Shae was starting to feel a little desperate, he didn’t really know what he could do. 

Though because of Juliana and Damien hadn’t claimed him it left Shae the most vulnerable of them all.  The inability or refusal to claim your omega partner after their first or second heat was perceived as weakness to other Alphas. Everyday walking to school or home there would be hungry eyes following him, waiting for the moment to strike. To the eyes of the Alphas in town, Shae was free game to mount and claim because his lovers had failed to do so. He told Juliana and Damien about his worries but they had dismissed them as foolish because nothing like that in their city had ever been reported. Juliana and Damien just started scenting him extra to assuage his fear of being attacked by another alpha. And it worked for a while, having the scents of the ones he loved around him gave him the confidence not to notice and it semi-repelled stranger Alphas. And so Shae had been trying to be content with that for the time being until the moment came where he would bare claim bites of his own.

#alpha/beta/omega #Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics #A/B/O verse #aboverse #a/b/o dynamics #alpha #beta #omega #polyamory #polyamourous #writing #my works #omegaverse au #omegaverse #shae lopez #my ocs #im polyamorous btw #polyamory is not abusive #juliana and damien are based on two partners i had #this is more of a self projection #i usually advocate for polyamory positivity #this was vent story i wrote I thought i should post at least

[rivalsofnycupdates]

“Ambition is putting a ladder against the sky.”

■ ABOUT. ■

name: Avery Harding age: thirty occupation: paramedic gender: transgender-female sexuality: homosexual

■ HISTORY. ■

When asked about Avery Harding almost everyone who comes in contact with her, would agree that she’s a confident paramedic, who has very little patience or fear of bullshit. These are the qualities that have made a place for her in her pro dominantly male firehouse. She stands on her own in a way not many others could. As a thirty year old, her looks now aren’t what match the very few childhood photos she has. Born in Las Vegas, with a loving yet troubled mother. Aidan Harding and his mother Judith lived in studio apartment with extremely close corners, due to their monthly income being unemployment cheques from the government. The majority of Avery’s memories from her childhood contained the odd and often disgusting meals her mother would feed her, the various amount of men that would enter and leave their front door and by far the worst part was not knowing whether her mother would be alive or not since unfortunately, even the love for her mother’s love for her child didn’t trump her love for drugs and alcohol. 

Since her mother would use any penny she could towards any altering substance, the pair would shared everything. They shared clothes, bathroom necessities, food, anything that entered the house was shared between them. They even shared a bed and as mentioned. Avery’s mother often brought suitors home, so whenever her mother had an overnight guest, Avery would go to sleep earlier than usual never really understanding why. Avery has a vague yet predominant memory of waking up on the floor to the rocking of the bed frame against the wall. As a six-year-old, she wasn’t knowledgable of the inappropriate actions her drunk mother had taken, though something never felt right about it. Amongst all the fear and discomfort, there were fond memories shared between mother and child. Those memories were mostly shared when the head of household was sober. The pair would play dress up in her clothes, play loud music and dance around the living room. It was days like those that often gave Avery hope. Though she was often disappointed. Her mother was an addict through and through, as a young child, she witnessed her mother in all stages an addict would go through. She would be clean for four days, usually no more than that, before her mother’s attitude would take shape of the devil. One memory she will never forget is her mother throwing a bottle of vodka that hit her in the ribs and left a huge blue and purple bruise. 

When Avery turned seven years old she was taken away from her mother, by social services. It wasn’t until she was a teenager she realized the life she’d been living with her mother wasn’t normal. Kids her age didn’t share beds with their mothers, and they had their own sized clothes. Avery was in and out of orphanages until she was adopted at 10, from a family in California. Avery wasn’t like most adoptive kids who were trouble makers or unstable. When she was adopted she was cautious at first, though after an appropriate amount of time she was grateful for her adoptive parents and she began to live like a normal kid. Life with her adoptive family couldn’t have been more perfect. It took her a while to actually start focusing on herself. She’d spent so much of her life worrying and taking care of her mother. The young child didn’t know how to take care of themselve. As a teenage boy, most would assume he’d want to party, or get to know the girls in the neighbourhood. Though that wasn’t Avery’s interests at the time. Avery wanted to get to know the boys in the neighbourhood. She wanted to be friends with the girls and date the boys. California was known to be incredibly inclusive and her adoptive family wasn’t any different. The more she was able to explore and learn about herself, she was coming to the realization that she no longer wanted to be referred to as Aidan Harding. She no longer wanted to be known as “that guy over there”. She wanted to wear dresses and make up and not get strange looks. Of course in the state of California the looks wouldn’t be as odd or often, though it was more than that. She wanted to be Avery Harding.

 Though as this realization became more concrete a weird sense of fear took over as he thought of transitioning felt so right, though she wasn’t sure if she was ready for the potential look of disappointment or disgust on her parents face when she announced that she was transgender. An imaginative memory that luckily never needed to surface since her adoptive parents were unconditionally loving, accepting incredibly supportive of her new identity. Now at thirty years old she decided to move to New York City still living in California and was very close to her adoptive parents, the parents she truly loved and cared for. She went to college, and pursued her interest in science and her want to help people. She didn’t have the financials to go to medical school, though the idea of it didn’t pull at her as much as she thought it would. She did have an interest in sciences and did love helping others. It’s how she was able to manage her expectations and gain the proper education to be a paramedic. A job she couldn’t be happier in to this day.

■ WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON? ■

Since living in New York City, you often hear and read stories about the dangers and attacks relating to the Royals. Though you learn pretty quickly what area’s of the city you should avoid. Unfortunately, as a paramedic, she doesn’t always have the luxury of avoiding the Royals and other smaller gangs due to the fact that she’s the person that often comes to their rescue. Since being a paramedic, she’s definitely seen her fair share of crime and has been involved in a few dangerous situations, though very few of those situations have ever been with Royals members themselves. She’s always condemned them as a whole for that exact reason.

■ KEEP THIS AWAY FROM YOUR ENEMIES ■

Throughout her life and her career, she has found not only one but two incredible families. Her adoptive parents and the family at the firehouse where her ambulance is stationed. Somehow, those two families are the hardest people to tell anything to. Especially with the serious concerns of a tumour growing in her. Since finding out, she’s been able to tell random hookups, bartenders, anyone she wasn’t close to, yet the people who she knew would be there for her the most, are those she can’t seem to admit to telling.

■ RELATIONSHIPS. ■

■ Nicholas Garcia: Her first day of work at the fire station, was the first day she met her roommate and her best friend. Nicholas has been the brother she never had. She was probably way too open with him about everything, and they’ve been through some awkward situations with their partners or hookups. Though they’ve always been there for each other no matter how awkward it is.    

■ Crystal Reeves: Avery often sees Crystal at the local bar that’s usually opened to Cops and Firefighters. They don’t see each other often, though when they do, a lot of laughs are usually included.

■ Emmaline Otterly: Being a paramedic, she often saw Emmaline when she worked in Emergency. Avery trusts her and is the person to inform her of her tumours. Since then she’s one of the few people who knew of her tumours.

■ CONNECTIONS. ■

■  Peter Darden > Co-worker

■  Emilie Nolan > Friend

■  Leslie Cartwell > Friend from the orphanage

Avery Harding is an OPEN character and is portrayed by Amiyah Scott who’s FC is NOT-NEGOTIABLE.

#new rpg #bio rpg #gang rpg #crime rpg #semi appless rp #all #open #averyharding #non negotiable fc #amiyah scott fc #civilian #fem #openf

[chameleon-cryptid]

♻️ Rhyan

Rhyan from another universe (it’s going to be ours) or timeline (two time lines here).  Warnings for homophobia, implied drug use, and implied skankery: 

(whoops, this turned out really long and I didn’t proof read it. OH WELL)

_______________

“Oh look.Here he comes. The fag with his flute. I bet you like playing the skin flute too.”

“You know you’re going to hell, Rhyan. God hates fags!”

What did these jerks know about hell. For Rhyan, he was in it already. The halls of his highschool were lined with demons who seemed content on making this his own living hell. There wasn’t a day that went by where he wasn’t taunted, beat, or otherwise humiliated and ridiculed for who he was. He ignored it most of the time, but for some reason, it got to him today. He took off, running, trying to get to the place where he knew he was safe. Where he wasn’t a fag or a fairy. Where he was respected. 

He only stopped when he got to the musical instrument storage room in the music wing. The tears were already there though as he stormed in to the room, full of other students. Concerned voices reached out to him, but he wasn’t hearing them properly. 

“Rhyan? Are you okay?”

“Are those guys fucking with you again?”

“I’m going to go tell Mr. Aston. Those guys should be expelled.”

In the back of his mind, he heard that and shook his head, wiping away tears. “No...no I’m fine.”

He was always fine. Never reported it. He didn’t want to be trouble. His father would argue that kids bully each other and that his youngest son should man up, maybe throw a punch out if someone was bothering him. Rhyan theorised that if his father had been a classmate of his, he’d be one of the ones bullying him. It hurt. Suddenly, though, his vision was full of blonde hair and blue eyes.

“Fuck those guys, Rhyan. Or rather don’t. You’re way too good-looking for them. Want me to shove my snare right up their asshole?” 

Rhyan blushed. Mike was section leader of the percussion section, president of the marching band, and generally just a wonderful person. He was liked by everyone, attractive, smart. Rhyan had a bit of a crush on him, but then ...so did Mike’s girlfriend.

“No..I’m fine, Mike. Really I am.”

“Well...seriously though, fuck those guys. You’re the best musician in this school, best singer. What have those shits ever done. Like...their biggest accomplishment is probably kissing their cousins behind the shed at the family reunion. Fucking backwards, inbred hicks. Forget about them. You’ll have the last laugh someday when you’re famous.” The blonde teenager grinned, patting Rhyan’s forearm a bit harder than Rhyan would’ve liked but he realised the guy didn’t know his own strength.

Rhyan hoped MIke was right. Maybe one day. If he practised really hard. 

*********

Rhyan lounged in his hotel suite on a couch, eyes closed, shirtless, slightly drunk, amidst the chatter and noise of groupies and fans, makeup artists, roadies, PAs, lackeys, and techies. He’d just finished another sold out show and was still basking in the glow of the applause. He was vaguely aware that someone beautiful had slithered up beside him and was leaning provocatively toward him. Opening his eyes, his vision is met with a gorgeous young man, dark hair, pale eyes, tanned skin. Rhyan couldn’t help but smirk.

“Well, hello there.” He says to the unfamiliar face. Ah, the joy of groupies.

He was just about to get to know this particular person a little better when one of the members of security walked up. “Sorry, Mr. Charm. Coupla guys out here say they know you from marching band and highschool. Asked if they could come say hello.”

Rhyan reluctantly extracted his tongue from the groupie’s mouth and leaned back sighing. He was quiet for a moment, a little peeved at being interrupted. But if they were friends from marching band, he should see them. After all, they were his only comfort growing up. He nods finally. 

“Okay, show them in.” he said and turned back to look at the man beside him for a brief moment while the security guard went off to fetch the guys. “I’ll talk to you again in a couple minutes. You know, I always stay in this hotel when I tour here. The bathrooms have incredibly large tubs.”

The groupie grinned. He got the hint, standing and heading off toward the bathroom, throwing a coy look over his shoulder. Rhyan grinned watching him but then got distracted by the sight of his backup guitarist accidentally dumping a bunch of cocaine on the floor. 

“For fuck’s sake, Joe, if you can’t even manage to get the coke up your nose, maybe it’s time to call it a night.” He complained, though he was ignored except for being flipped off. He laughed a little bit as security showed up with his supposed former friends.

Rhyan froze. These weren’t friends from marching band. They were his bullies. The guys who made his four years of highschool a living hell. He stared up at these men, and suddenly he was fifteen again, running through the halls, crying his eyes out.

“Rhyan...hey. Do you...do you remember us? We went to highschool together.” One of them said.

“We really love your latest album. I mean, everyone knew in highschool you were gonna be big. Didn’t you win Most Musical for our graduating class?”

“Oh yeah, he didn’t didn’t he? Remember you sang the national anthem for the football games. You remember us, right. Chad and Tim. God, this is a fucking awesome party.” The first prattled on.

Rhyan was motionless, staring at the two as they tried to get Rhyan to acknowledge that he knew them. He dug his fingernails into his knees and clenched his jaw. How dare they. How dare they come and encroach on his territory. Those guys who used to make a big deal about even sitting in a seat he used for fear of ‘getting AIDS from the homo’. Rhyan was livid. But he was a performer. So he smiled. 

“Of course I remember you two. What sort of business are you in now?” He asked congenially.

“Oh, Chad here works in construction. Excavator operator and I got a job Benton Foundary.” Tim said. 

Rhyan nodded. “You guys married? Got any kids.”

Chad nods, smiling sheepishly. “Two kids. Not married anymore, but...well, single life eh!” he says gesturing around to the party.

Rhyan laughed a little. “Ah, yeah, it’s a good life.”

Tim nods enthusiastically eyeing a groupie in a lewdly appraising manner. “Yeah, single life.” He was wearing a wedding ring. 

Rhyan gave them a bit of a Look. Sure Rhyan was promiscuous, but he was at least honest about it. 

“It really is a good life. A great life.” Rhyan continued. “My life, it is fucking fantastic.” His voice was raising a bit, carrying through the room as more and more people at the party listened. People always listened to him. You didn’t get to be lead singer of an incredibly successful rock band if people didn’t want to listen to you.

“Amazing, life. I’ve got three houses, you know? One in California, one in London, and one down in the Caribbean. I’ve got ten cars. Though cars have never really been my thing. I like the motorbikes better. My accountant keeps telling me to stop buying them..but...” he shrugs, standing. “my willpower for something sporty and fast is non-existent...”

“I’ve stayed in the fanciest hotels, eaten at the best restaurants, and gone to the most exclusive clubs on earth. Met celebrities, royalty, politicians. And at one point...” He steps forward then, gesturing with his hands as the two men watch him frowning, only now realising that Rhyan’s making a point. “...at one point, I looked around at my lavish lifestyle and said...what am I doing with myself. All this wealth and I’m not giving back. So I started donating to charities. Lending my name, my voice, my image to charities that help combat bullying toward gay, lesbian, transgender teenagers. To find them support. Did you buy my album? Attend any of my shows? Some of those proceeds went toward that charity. So thanks guys. Not only did you inspire my charitable work, but you contributed to it, too.” he was nearly shouting now.

The room was a bit quiet then. Most of the partiers had no clue what was going on and why Rhyan was ranting at them. But from the back of the suite, a voice rang out. 

“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!” The percussionist from Rhyan’s band cried out. In a moment, Mike was at Rhyan’s side, pointing at the two men. “Fuck those guys, Rhyan! They made your life fucking hell in highschool. Fuck them.”

Chad recognised the man, eyes widening. “Mike. Hey..come on buddy. We were kids. Boys will be boys, eh?”

MIke threw out a punch. A hard one. Right at Chad’s face. The man crumpled to the ground holding his nose. Rhyan’s eyes widenend and he covered his mouth with his hand, shocked at the splatter of blood that came out of the punch. 

“Miserable fucks” Mike said as Chad cradled his face and Tim just looked shocked. “Get these assholes out of here.” Mike said to the security guard who radioed for assistance before dragging the two out. 

Rhyan was still stunned as Mike shook out his bruised hand, frowning a bit and muttering something about suing if he’s broken it over that asshole’s nose.

“Mike..they’re gonna go to the press. You’ll get arrested for assault!” he said in a panicked voice.

“Please, battery at the most.” He gave a horned symbol with his fingers ironically. “Rock star life, yeah?” He said then ambled back across the room to his wife who was most definitely looking a little unimpressed muttering about how security could have taken care of the guys. 

Rhyan took a deep breath. He was definitely glad he wasn’t completely sober, otherwise he might’ve been freaking out now, on the phone to his publicist, making sure she could fix it. 

“Rhyan, are you coming? I ..met a friend on the way to the bathroom and we thought you were coming to join us.” The dark haired groupie from earlier called out from the bathroom door while a blonde one poked his head out too. “Look, I know you’re a rockstar and all and used to people doing whatever you say, but we’re gonna start without you if you don’t hurry up.” The blonde said with a challenging little smirk. Fiesty. Rhyan liked it. 

Rhyan smiled a little. “Sorry fellas.” he said and made his way over to bathroom, but not before looking over to Mike who was looked like he was being berated by his wife. He caught his best friend’s eyes and smiled his thanks to him. Mike in return nodded then gave the horned finger symbol again, mouthing ‘rock star life’ back at him. 

Rhyan grinned and chuckled. He loved his life, and in the end, Mike was right. He had had the last laugh.

[laqueerstorian-blog]

A Space of Privilege at T* Camp

By Eve Moreno

 Who has survived sexual assault? Eyes shifted left and right and silence lingered in the room as folks walked into the center. My breath shortened as I placed one foot in front of the other. My chest tightened and my vulnerability began to rise. Who deals with addiction? Again, my heart raced as I placed myself in the center of the room. Anxiety and validation filled me as other folks revealed themselves the first night at T* camp.  

Who is transgender? The room’s energy rose when almost everyone attending camp walked into the center of the Main Lodge at Pilgrim Pines campgrounds. This camp is a safe space for transgender youth to come together and share their struggles, trauma and empower one another with our personal stories.

Southern California T* Camp is an inter-campus transgender retreat hosted by the University of Riverside at Pilgrim Pines campgrounds in San Bernardino. I was very excited to represent Los Angeles City College alongside Javi Sebastian at this three-day inter-campus retreat composed mostly of schools from the University of California and Cal State system.

Waking up the next morning to a cabin full of trans people was a very unique feeling. I identify with the gender-neutral pronouns: they, them, and theirs. My identity felt so respected by the community at T* camp. Often times at LACC I don’t see the same respect and compassion from my Cisgender peers. Cisgender means that you identify with the gender you were assigned to at birth. Transgender means that you do not identify with the gender you were assigned to at birth.

Being at T* camp with other folks who identified with the same pronouns as myself filled me with immense validation. It empowered me to see that more non-binary transgender people existed, and these identities were working to make their campuses an inclusive space for transgender people all across the spectrum. Spaces like T* camp are hard to come by in our society because transgender people are seen as less then or are identities are seen as an illness.

The first workshop I attended focused on the experiences of trans feminine campers. Although I felt comfortable in the space, I couldn’t help but feel isolated due to my non-binary identity. I identify as a non-binary trans person, meaning that I don’t identify as a man or a women because my expression does not align within the gender binary. The workshop allowed us to share our experiences as trans feminine people, and also brought a spotlight to differences in sex and gender.

 Sex and gender are two different constructs that have been forced onto us by colonization. Sex is based on the biological factors that make up our bodies. Gender is a forced ideology that comes with societal expectations due to our sex. Gender is a spectrum and looks different to each and every one of us. Connecting male and female to pronouns is inherently problematic because of the fluidity of the gender spectrum transgender people encompass. The translation to this: Saying exclusively, “I identify with female/ male pronouns”, puts other trans people in an exclusionary position. It is important to separate sex and gender when navigating spaces with trans people.

Campers were pre-selected into groups referred to as home groups, and were told to name our groups and I suggested because we all are radiant to be called, the Gems. Besides the facilitator, the student facilitator and myself, everyone in the Gems was white and or from middle class narratives. I tried to settle into my group with an open heart and mind despite these socioeconomic differences. The discussion in our group was about our chosen name and why is our name important to us.

 I chose the name Eve because of the history it has being associated with the first women in existence. In our society the identities of women and femmes are objectified, ostracized, and constantly fight to prove their humanity in this misogynistic culture. My identity is a clap back to the patriarchy,I hope to someday create an organization called “The Age of Eve”, where transgender people and femmes are empowered through multimedia knowledge as a form of self-care and activism.

  After breaking from our home groups I attended a dance workshop at the main lodge led by Riy, a black non-binary trans person who majors in dance studies at UCLA. Riy taught us how to cabbage patch, nay nay and shared with us the violence that women and femmes experience when growing up in dance studios. After the age of 12 women are taught to dance in ways that cater to the gaze of men, supporting the institutionalization of objectification that women and femmes experience.

The breakout that followed was a people of color (POC) workshop where the POC who attended the camp could come together and center our intersectional identities away from the white folks attending T* camp. The empty fireplace allowing excess ventilation made the room cold and damp. The room was packed with eager faces and whispers of revolution. We talked about navigating our identities in school and the ways we are misgendered at the institutions we attend back home. We came to the conclusion that we cannot allow educators to misgender, and disrespect our trans identities.  Our tuition is the reason why the institution can operate. Students give the educators the ability to work, sustain a space for their careers and it is imperative for these educators to hold themselves accountable for creating a safe space for transgender students.

 We also discussed the anti-blackness that plagues our communities, however, a dialogue addressing the problem facing our communities of color wasn’t talked about. What was talked about was that it was too difficult addressing anti-blackness when individuals were dealing with their own cultural identities being trans, and didn’t have the strength or capability to address any other problems at home.I felt a rush of anger race inside of me. T these racist ideologies didn’t resonate well with me. Although as POC we cannot be racist, we can definitely perpetuate anti-blackness. Ways that this happens is using the “n” word as non-black POC, as well as allowing our communities to express racist ideologies. Communities of color fail to see that black people exist within all cultures and that without the liberation of black communities, we cannot experience collective liberation.

The walk back to the dining hall to meet my home group was cold, dreadful, but I had to keep it together. The lights at Pilgrim pines began to flicker on and off as darkness settled in around me. It was so cold that I could see the warmth of my breath, and I figured it was just the anger I felt inside of me becoming physical right before me. I felt ostracized being back in the Gems after the POC breakout.I live my truth every second i breathe, every second I exist is an act of resistance and I strongly believe that I’m my ancestor’s wildest dream. The facilitators asked what was our favorite thing about us I responded: “My favorite thing about me is that I am a trans, queer brown and poor person surviving in a society that works against my existence! I made it clear to the Gems that my experiences navigating the world were far different than their own.

Paddles, whips, floggers, clamps and ropes were spread across a table as I walked into the last break out of the night. The facilitator Cadence has been involved in the Kink scene Los Angeles offers for over a decade. Cadence educated us on the three “C’s” of Kink culture: Consent, communicate and care. The most important part of Kink culture is being safe and consenting to everything happening during playtime. My favorite toy from the workshop was a paddle that a heart in the middle.  Cadence explained to us that kink culture is much more than just toys and inflicting pain for pleasure, but understanding what your playmate wants, consenting to the play and taking care of each other after the session. The most dangerous part of kink culture is us. The neuron-chemical reaction that happens during playtime takes us on a journey that must be taken with caution.

The final day of T* camp went by so fast. I explored the campground with my new friends and we came across the field of dreams. The organizers of the camp asked us to work on a writing piece called, “A Letter to myself”, for our future selves to read. I laid in the Field of Dreams at Pilgrim Pines and wrote affirmations and empowering words, “I am light, I am magic and I am power. I am loved and appreciated by my community. Although my recently passed grandmother is not here with me physically, she is watching over me and my chosen family. Never give up Eve”. The Field of Dreams is a lush greenery area that is surrounded by all kinds of plant life.

 The final group activity was at the main lodge of Pilgrim Pines. It was an exercise where we formed a circle and had our backs turned from each other. One at a time, each home group went into the middle of the circle and tapped the back of someone that resonated with the statement said by the facilitator. Something that resonated with me was when the T* camp staff went into the middle of the circle, and was told to tap the back of someone that made their camp experience memorable, and who will be a good leader this upcoming year. I felt so much warmth and love run through my body as hands tap my shoulder over and over again. My eyes welled with tears and my heart rushed to the vibrations in my body created by the taps of my fellow campers.  

 I knew that my experience at T* camp would be unforgettable because I made an impact on so many people. It was like I wasn’t leaving T* camp that afternoon because T* camp was leaving with me. I was taking all the siblings I made at camp back to my community here in Los Angeles. The people I met at camp were real, they were real because I didn’t have to be anything but myself around them. They saw me for me, for my non-binary transgender and queer identity. I look forward to coming back with the resiliency and magic I had the privilege to experience at T* camp, and pass on the leadership next year as a student facilitator.

#tcamp #tcamp2017 #queerstorian #queerstory #transgender #leadership #qtpocwriters #tqpocwriters

[pjstafford]

A Moody Blog

This blog was requested by a fan back in March but it took me a while to think about what I wanted to write about Hank Moody.  This week-end my life has taken on some twists and turns which makes me think of the crazy scenarios in Moody’s life.  So it seems appropriate to write this.  Unlike my other blogs about the work of Duchovny, it takes a little bit of strange, a couple of beers, a shot of Tullamore Dew in me to feel like I might brave the complex and challenging task of writing about Californication.  Tonight is the night for me to write about Moody.  

As I write this Warren Zevon is playing.  I have to disclose up front that as I was working on the final version of my (yet to be published) novel “Blue Dreams” I agonized as it got close to finish over what tradition I would establish for finishing a novel.  I assume there will be many more finished novels before my life is over and I wanted to really think about the tradition.   I  love Moody’s Whiskey, Weed and Warren.  Alas, I am not in a legalized marijuana state.  So for me it was Cabernet, Cigar and Clapton.  I am a person who love the rituals of food and drink.  Moody doesn’t seem to me to be a character who appreciates tradition or rituals, so the fact that what he holds Holy is the ritual of his completion of a written project - which, of course, has to be alliterative, touches the writer in me.  If I love Moody it is mostly as a fellow writer with the fantasy of a writer’s life that is so extreme that I will never experience it.  I was saddened by reading “ A Crazy Little Thing Called Love”.    The Moody writing in my dreams is a combination of Bukowski,  Hunter S. Thompson and, since there has to be a bit of the feminine perspective in Moody’s writing, some Erica Jong.    Until I knew of Moody I never thought of a ritual for ending a novel. Now I kind of feel my ritual is locked in stone.  Cabernet, Cigar and Clapton.  How does that change my writing from if it was Whiskey, Weed and Warren?  Anyway, tonight as I write about Moody I have two of the three going for me - Whiskey and Warren!   Most importantly, though, I have the strange going on and if you love Moody, you love the strange.  

Watching “Californication”  requires you to have all the brain synapses firing at once.  You have to have your intellectual, creative, crass, lustful and romantic brain functions happening at the same time.  Also, you need a strong sense of smell.  Watching Californication is a little like attending a posh LA nightclub, followed by a walk down the most foul Long Beach alley, finding yourself watching an episode of Father’s Knows Best and waking up in Malibu not sure if the beach scene you’re waking up to in the morning, hung -over, is reality or a movie scene.   Its a long Hard Day’s Night to try and examine.  

It took me a while to warm up to it. As i have said in previous blogs,  until 2015 I had never seen David Duchovny in anything but “the X-Files”. In completing a watch to prepare for season ten,  interviews led me to discover my favorite Duchovny- the writer and song composer.   However, in season nine of the X-file I missed Duchovny and watched the “Californication” pilot but did not make it through the whole way.    Luckily I watched “Aquarius” - I am so lustful of Hodiak- and then watched every movie I could find; eventually finding myself back to “Californication.”  I had assumed that “Californication” was a a sex pornography comedy for men with no merit in plot.  I was wrong.  

I decided, after some time in examining Duchovny’s oeuvre, that the X-Files is actually the side step in Duchovny’s career.  It happens that Mulder made him an international sex symbol and is my favorite of his roles, but it does not fit into the progression of his work prior to the X-Files in the way that Californication does. Duchovny’s first named part was as a man unable to resist women in “New Year’s Day.”  The scene where Duchovny and Jaglom discusses “Billy’s” motives and Billy says he wants to pay back women who are nice to him with a kiss, with sex and its confusing when the conversation should stop and the kissing begins, could be a much younger Hank Moody.  He then appears as a swinger with multiple sex partners in “The Rapture” .  Kalifornia, Julia has two lovers and Red Shoes Diaries follow.  All of those movies also demonstrates that Duchovny would have no fear of being naked on film.  Even the role of the transgender Denise Bryson on “Twin Peaks” or the role as himself on the Larry Sanders show demonstrate that he is not afraid to confront sexual norms.  It makes perfect sense that he would be Hank Moody.  

It is a testament to his acting that Mulder and Moody are so different and, yet, I cannot imagine anybody else in these roles.  Duchovny is a comedic genius with perfect timing and great instincts about when to play over the top and when to play subtle.  There are so many reasons to love Californication, but people who have read my blogs know that I love the yin and yang, the lightness and dark, the sweetness around the pain. It should come as no surprise, then, that if I have to choose my three favorite things about Californication, it is all the contradictions.  

1.  Californication stretches my ability to suspend my disbelief, but is in many ways the most realistic portrayal of humanity I have ever seen.  

2.  Hank Moody is the most sexy in the scenes with  less clear nudity or sexual depravity.  

3.  Californication is an intellectual show with crass humor.  The reason it is so funny is because of the combination of the two which lends itself well to the upside down quality of the chaos.  

1.  California stretches my ability to suspend my disbelief, but is in many ways the most realistic portrayal of humanity i have ever seen.  

In much the same way that I didn’t realize Mulder was supposed to be an attractive man when I first watched the X-Files, I have difficulty thinking of Moody as all that sexy.  They both have the advantage of looking like David Duchovny (more of that later), but Moody is a man often drunk/ stoned, unhappy with his life, self-indulgent man child, who is chronically unemployed with writer’s block and always getting fired from Hollywood jobs due to being an ass, he dresses sloppily and, while he drives a jag, he doesn’t keep it clean or well maintained.  Also, he is a writer - not an A list celebrity or rock star, a fucking, boring writer.  So, the fact that women not only can’t resist him, but often are seducing him as he valiantly and half-sincerely  tries to resist them is incredulous to me and I really had a hard time dealing with it.  However, Moody finds something special about every woman that he cannot resist  and he wants to be the one that makes sure each woman know how special she is for that unique quality they alone possess.  Well, that’s extremely erotic and sensual.  It takes him from being a misogynist to a character very respectful and caring of women- the way he treats the hooker, for instance, or coming to the defense of women time and time again.  Also the fact that he is a truth teller; always telling his own truth,  that is very charming.  

As the seasons progress Moody is in some ways the most calm of the people in his circle.  So many of the scenarios seem ridiculous and absurd.  Rick Springfield portrayal of pure egotism and selfishness.  Rob Lowe discussions of taking a man in his mouth.  Bates alcoholism and his sexual exploits.  Those three guest stars stand out the most to me.  Absolutely over the top absurd !

Then there is the masturbating agent and cokie smurf.  Charlie and Marcie are my favorite couple.  They love each other through it all in a way that seems more real than the ethereal and fairy tale way that Hank and Karen love each other.  While they are immoral, depraved and the upside down version of Fred and Ethel, the fact is couples get bored with their sex lives, they find adventures in other places, they fall into addiction and they have career failures and sometimes do outrageous things to keep financially afloat.  So as impractical as the scenarios are, they seem real in the most natural of ways.  

The reason we laugh at these impossible scenarios (such as Hank accidentally going down on the wrong women) is that we know that they are absurd, but we recognize the characters and qualities in ourselves.  Every single damn one of us is a fuck up in some way. This is the truth of humanity.  We are all wonderful creatures who all have some routine and persistent way of fucking it all up.  

The character who most demonstrates this is Karen.  Supposedly she is the normal one, placed on a pedestal, but the genius of Tom Kapinos writing is that she is the most fucked up of any of them.  Certainly more than Moody and all because she is not a truth teller.  She marries two other men during the course of the show while never not loving Hank.  She gives Hank back his ring because he might have (turns out he didn’t) impregnate a woman she set him up with when they were apart.  She knew he had sex with her when she accepted the ring, but suddenly the pregnancy meant they couldn’t be together and she never apologizes or admits to any of her part in keeping them apart.  Hank and her both have illusions of who she is which is not consistent with her actions.  Yet, Karen is never over the top unbelievable.  The fact is that when you really consider it she is far more fucked up than any of the foursome -Moody, Runkle or Marcy-makes the show more contemplative about the human condition than in the first casual viewing.

2. Hank Moody is the most sexy in the scenes with less nudity or sexual depravity.  

Does anyone really think that the threesome scene with Hank, Charlie and the “squirter” is erotic?  It is sad and funny simultaneously, but there is no eroticism in it.  The Hank and Karen in bed scenes are beautiful but less exhibitionist than most of the scenes with Hank and other women.  When Hank cares about a woman - say Faith - he is intensely attractive and sexy, but when he is having sex for fuck’s sake, he is not.  The women might be sexy and beautiful - often at least a decade younger than Moody (which is a different blog to write), but Hank is not sexy to me in those scenes in the least.  

In fact Moody is the sexiest in the two relationships where sexuality is not a part.  The scenes where he plays a father with his innocent and confused daughter are the most beautiful of all.  I watched a scene today of Hank trying to explain to Becca why he had sex with three women on campus and his pain at her pain is so beautiful.  By the way, watch that final scene from Season 3 episode 8 and then watch the Duchovny/ Jaglom scene from New Year’s Day and tell me the rationale for why the two characters are unable to resist seducing multiple women are not eerily similar.  

The other great relationship is that between Hank and Charlie.  I often find Hank at his sexiest in those scenes because he is sincere, funny, and full of love and the voice of reason.  

Now, I said I would talk about the fact that Moody has the advantage of looking like Duchovny.  The stills of Moody are among the most beautiful things in the world.  They are essentially still pictures of Duchovny naked or mostly naked.  OMG!  His ass is so beautiful I once wrote a poem comparing it to an apple (I think I would like a bite).  His arms and abs are those of a triathlon athlete.  The man can pose nicely in a pair of black briefs and even manages to pull off a kimono.  My favorite shot is the shot when he is on top of the television chef pouring chocolate sauce on her.  A still of that scene brings all kinds of sexual fantasies to my mind (TMI?).  I start every episode thinking to myself I am going to concentrate on...., but, as a credit to Duchovny’s acting, I become so drawn into the story, the humor, the facial expressions and body language that I forget that i am looking at Duchovny’s ass.  Case in point is the hilarious dialog in the chocolate sauce scene.  It simply is not as erotic as the still, because the character of Moody, or the depravity of that moment etc. distracts from the beautiful nudity.  However, the scene where the same cook is thrown out of the car and Moody insists on waiting with her for her husband to pick her up and he tells her not to allow herself to be ordered off the television like chinese take-out, Moody is sexy in that scene; a man I could see myself falling in love with it.  

If we are all of us fucked up, the fact that Moody makes no excuses for being fucked up and tells the truth makes him the most adorable fuck ups of us all.  He owns his faults and the part of him that cares about his daughter, her mother, his best friends and women in general is beautiful.  

3.   Californication is an intellectual show with crass humor.  The reason it is so funny is because of the combination of the two which lends itself well to the upside down quality of the chaos.  

One of the things in common with all of Duchovny’s television characters is that Moody is a well read, erudite, witty and intellectual man.  Love listening to the man talk in the same way I love a long monologue from Mulder.  Tom Kapinos writes intellectually.  I like the fact that each season is a separate and distinct “arc” but the story always returns to the “old fashion love story” ,to quote Duchovny, of Hank and Karen,  I like that season two harks back to “The Great Gatsby”.  It is a show splattered with great literary and musical references.  It is a show which sarcastically asks why women don’t have pubic hair anymore and asks for people to be less shallow in how they interact with one another.  Yet it is also a show where Moody defecates on a car and where fart, masturbation and stinky finger jokes abound.  I am not usually a low brow humor type of gal, but I do believe that without this lower brow humor, Californication might seem pretentious and a little full of itself.  So in the end, even for a snob like me, the jokes such as the mangina, Rick Springfield’s name being said in its entirety every time, the falsetto mother fucker, and a man eating a chocolate bar out of a woman’s most intimate part make me laugh.  

I am glad that I gave Californication not only a second but a third chance.  Moody is my third favorite Duchovny’s character behind Mulder and Hodiak, but that is probably because I tend to be drawn more to serious drama than to light comedy.  As a self-proclaimed foremost authority on David Duchovny I can say that Moody is a role for which Duchovny’s early work prepared him and that his comedic ability is truly genius.  I hope he does more comedy- romantic comedy.  Would love to see him in a remake of the Philadelphia story but I am not sure which of the two male characters he would be better in playing.  The writing of Tom Kapinos and the great acting of the rest of the ensemble:  Evan Handler, Pam Adlon, Natasha McElhone, Madeline Martin are amazing.  

I hope a movie is made.  i would love to see a movie made with the plot that the Broadway production of “A Crazy Little Thing Called Love” finally is made.  Hope it occurs soon!  

[kittyfish-theblogxneedition-blog]

The Nebraskans and Etc.

I’m Doing These In The Order I Met Them.. Besides My Sister heh. 

Everyone on this list I came in contact with on kik/skype/oovoo/actually texted .. except Logan who I never talked to but found who he really is on IG.

The only purpose of this is to show how extensive some people are and to see if people feel the same way I do .. because I spent 2 years with these people Spring 2014 to Spring 2016 and I have yet to hear a reply or an explanation for anything.  

(concerning Kolby - I use the different names that he/she was going by at the different times of events .. so it may be a tad confusing) 

Chloe - 13 in 2014, but gives the impression she’s the same age as everyone else. Is now gender fluid and last I heard goes by the name Chris. The possible catfisher and mastermind of all of this. Actual person-real name not given. 

Stepsister - 14 in 2014. Stopped talking to me in late 2014 because I can’t keep friends and am insecure af. And stopped talking to everyone else in late 2015 because of something Connor does. Unaware I made this blog, unaware these people aren’t real? Idk. 

Ricardo - Ex-Boyfriend of Kolby/Hope/Rebecca/Larissa/Alex/Connor. Moved to the US from Mexico at age 6 with his parents. Possibly moved to California sometime in the past year? Ex-Boyfriend of Adrian. Ex-Boyfriend of Uriah. Ex-Boyfriend of Shane? I think. I started not being able to keep up. 

Kolby - This one’s fun. Kolby was Kolby. And then I did a facebook search and found out Kolby was NOT Kolby. And Kolby became Hope afraid to reveal that she was transgender m2f. And then Hope changed her name to Rebecca. And then Larissa. And then Alex. And then Alex wanted to be a boy again. So we learned that Alex was really Connor. From the UK, moved to the US in January 2014 because he was expelled from school and in all sorts of trouble because of reasons never said. Mute from car crash? I don’t know. We skyped, but Connor would never video chat and the few times the mic was left on and they (they were gender fluid at this point) would cough and it was deep so I know it wasn’t Chloe. Committed suicide August 2015. (the real Kolby who I found on facebook is alive and well and I messaged him, and he doesn’t know any of these people. Real name not used)  

Shane - Ex-fling/boyfriend of Ricardo. IDK. Ex-boyfriend of Uriah. Ex of Shane. I’m confused at this point trying to remember their shit. Stopped talking because he didn’t like me much for something I said to Uriah (??) and also couldn’t remember his kik password 

Uriah - This one’s hard to write honestly and that’s so pathetic haha. Ex-boyfriend of Shane, Ricardo, Connor, and me. Idk can you even count an online/LDR with someone you fell in love with over the course of a year and a half and you never saw more than five pictures of and they refused to skype you or call you or give you their number or talk to you or anything? (see.. pathetic) we had similar childhoods and he’s the first person I told I’m bisexual and a lot of other stuff .. I’m so gullible. Triplet brother of Adrian and Edward. Uncle of Atticus and possibly Aidan. 

James - Hope’s best friend from the UK .. part of the reason she was expelled so she doesn’t talk to him anymore .. tries to be forgiven but eventually doesn’t care and stops talking to us. 

Jess - Hope’s friend from the UK .. she’s also part of the reason Hope was expelled. Stops talking to us because James does. 

Shea - Uriah’s first boyfriend who he lives with because his mom left. Rich snobby and kind of controlling. Blackmails Uriah for sex for a few months. Sleeps with Connor and pisses off the whole country or something. 

Derek - A transgender f2m from Germany whose family moved to Nebraska in the summer of 2014. Big buff football player, dates Hope while her and Ricardo are broken up. Connor gets Derek pregnant, has a daughter named Helena, Spring 2015. 

Noah - Alex’s friend from the UK .. comes on one day and then leaves a few hours later because he has to take his son to see his mum? Never comes back. Never spoken of again. 

Sky - fling of Connor. Ex of Logan. Transgender m2f. Lives in Iowa and met the Nebraskans at the mall? Fight with Connor and stopped talking to us November 2015. 

Mason - Sky’s best friend. Thought Connor (as Hope) was his girlfriend mistakenly at the mall? Stopped talking to us a few weeks before Sky. (I actually did find this person online but their info doesn’t match Mason’s and while they did not message me back, Logan did and they claim not to know anything of Connor and etc. - real name not used) 

Logan - Mason’s best friend. Ex of Sky. Never actually spoke to him but when I went through Chloe’s IG followers I found him and he doesn’t live in Iowa, he lives in Nebraska and goes to her school. Messaged him on IG and he doesn’t know anything about any of this and was extremely weirded out by the use of his pictures and by me messaging him. I felt kind of weird asking but when you waste 2 years on people and they might not even exist, you kind of want to know things. Ya know? (real name not used .. he might just have an actual heart attack or sue me or something)

Kristen - Connor’s adopted sister .. her girlfriend committed suicide around the same time as Connor .. but Logan says nobody in their town had committed suicide recently with their names or ages or anything. Kristen stopped talking to me in January of 2015 because she wasn’t supposed to be talking to me anymore? 

Seth - Adopted brother of Alex. Dated Shane before he cheated on him. Stopped talking to us when Shane cheated and they broke up. 

Adrian - Brother of Uriah. Ex-boyfriend of Alex and Ricardo (yes at the same time). Last contact with anyone was March 2016 and it was Adrian I told I did’t think any of them were real and then they stopped talking to me completely. Father of Atticus met Adrian because he got himself shipped off to boarding school in CA where Alex and Uriah already were? How these people got sent to a boarding school in CA at the same time is beyond me!  

Olympia - Adrian’s ex girlfriend and Jeremy’s best friend.

Edward - Triplet brother of Uriah and Adrian. Has a fling with Connor before he dies.

Jeremy - Adrian’s jerk boyfriend. Rich snob. Takes advantage of Adrian. Sound familiar? Hmm.. 

Oliver - Jeremy’s stepbrother/best friend .. attempted fling with Uriah. When I ran Oliver’s pictures through a reverse image search .. someone came up who wasn’t Oliver! I found who he really is! He doesn’t know these people or anything about this (real name not used) 

#catfish #kittyfish #kittyfishtheblogxne

[smokeybrand]

Casting Call

I wanted to address this casting of Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano. Personally, i think it’s inspired casting. Seriously she’d be my first choice, acting wise. Dawson has grown leaps and bounds in her craft plus, she has a real passion for the lore. We all know Dawson is a total nerd but she adores Ahsoka as a character. That much passion for the role, coupled with the inspired direction and vision of Favreau, give me confidence that she’d be great in the part. The only actress i’d say would be a better fit would be Laura Harrier. She looks like Tano even before the makeup but her build might be slightly too large, i think. That, and the only thing i have to judge her acting ability on is Homecoming where her role was mitigated to a glorified cameo. Still, i can see why cats would want her over Dawson based on aesthetics. The other reason? Not so much.

Rosario Dawson is a transphobe? Really? Come, on man. I actually looked into that case a little bit and it kind of sounds like it’s a cashgrab by the complainant. I mean, the bulk of their case is discrimination but, after reading over the complaint, it skews more toward “hostile work environment” because they was misgendered on site or whatever. Being called your old gender is not the same as being called a faggot or freak but fine. I get that. Cats feel some kind of way about stuff. The thing is, though, f*cking quit. If it’s that bad, quit and leave. Why stay someplace where you feel uncomfortable or perceive yourself to be hated for being you?  I mean, this person openly admits that the Dawson family has known them for twenty years as whatever they were before. You show up at their door post-transition, sight unseen for years, and expect them not to have something to say about it? That’s jarring and takes time to accept. People have to adjust to such a drastic change. They have to learn how to live around your choice. Popping up and just expecting everyone to okey-doke such a drastic alteration to their perception of you is a little ridiculous to me. That acceptance sh*t goes both ways, you know? But, okay, they’re calling you your old name and referring to you as your old gender. Sh*t hurts your feelings, i get it. What i don’t get is how the f*ck you’re suing Rosario over that sh*t, even though she wasn’t doing it. How is she responsible for the actions of other people in her family? How are you mad she told you to suck it up and act like an adult? You’re fifty-years-old, man!

The other parto f her case is even more dubious to me. Apparently, Dawson and a relative went to the apartment they provided this person for free, because this transgender individual refused to leave. I assume it’s been several months of complaints and derision at this point so a clean break between parties would be best for everyone. This transgender person swore they had no place to go and that they couldn’t get back to New York, even though they freely admitted to having a support system out there and half a year’s worth of wages, plus a stipend from Dawson, herself. They were living rent-free in an apartment provided by Dawson and were only responsible for personal bills like food yet, didn’t have enough for a return ticket home? How? Full time wages for a carpenter in California, they moved out here to help with some of Rosario’s home renovations, is about $57,000 a year. Half that is $28,500 dollars. You made 28 grand, before taxes, and couldn’t get home? Really? You had no choice but to squat in a residence that was not yours, for what i imagine is several months, with damn near 30 racks in the bank? Seriously? You want to scream “hate-crime” when they physically drag your disgruntled ass out of their house after months of futile back and forth? Really?

I don’t think Rosario Dawson is a transphobe. I think she doesn’t suffer assholes and this cat sounds like an asshole. They’re not suing Dawson for hostile work environment, they’re suing for discrimination. You’re fifty-year-old, transgender, lesbian, who has known this family for decades. Dawson flew you out, hired you full-time at a comparable rate to others in your field, and gave you a rent-free place to stay. That alone gives you thousands of dollars a month in savings. I imagine all of this misgendering and sh*t was either them ribbing you or legitimate mistake because of the decades long relationship they had with you, as another f*cking person. As far as that assault? You were squatting in their property. I don’t agree with them getting physical with you, if they actually did, but, at the same time, you were effectively stealing from them by not leaving. It wasn’t like you couldn’t afford to go, you had at least three months worth of wages, probably closer to six. Bare minimum, you have 10 bands, fluid! You really saying you can’t make it back home with a minimum of $10,000 in your pocket and this expansive support system waiting on you? You have no choice but to slander Rosario in Out magazine, the most bias press available? This smells of bullsh*t to me.

I’m not a member of the LBGTQ community. I don’t consider myself an ally. I consider myself a reasonable, intelligent, person. I find it stupid to hate a someone for something that doesn’t have anything to do with me. If you’re gay, that’s your business. If you’re trans, that’s your business. If you’re Batman, that’s you’re business, Bruce. I don’t care nor do i need to. That’ a personal journey, a personal truth. If you want to share it with me, cool. If not, that’s cool too. That’s why, when i read this complaint, it looks suspect. Rosario Dawson doesn’t even come up until the end where the assault occurred and, even then, she was described as “holding her down” while Dawson’s aunt or somebody, fought with this transgender person. That sounds like there was an altercation and Dawson was trying to get between the two, probably so this exact situation wouldn’t occur, and that’s if she even physically intervened at all. I mean, Rosario Dawson is not only famous, rich, dating a Senator who is a staunch supporter of trans rights, but she, herself, identifies as bisexual - a part of the very community this person claims she’s discriminating against! For real? Why the f*ck would Rosario jeopardize all of that, over a squatter? No, i think that little part was tacked on so this person could go after Dawson directly because, literally, up to this point, it was everyone else AROUND Rosario committing the transgressions. Everyone around Rosario ain’t famous, though.

This whole situation sounds like an employee was unhappy with the terms of employment and decided to take advantage of their employer’s status as a celebrity for a quick cashgrab. The leaking of this case to the press was meant to damage Rosario’s image in a means to force a “go away” settlement. Do i think there was discrimination? Not any more than this person would have had to deal with as a fifty-year-old lesbian. There might have been ill-intent but never from Dawson, herself. I imagine she snapped and said what she said to this person, after weeks of complaints or a stressful shoot somewhere. Do i think there was an assault? Sure, maybe, but not in the way this person is describing. It doesn’t make sense to me that Rosario, herself, would put her entire career at risk over something so pedestrian. Dawson is well aware of the current political climate and cancel culture. She was right in the thick of the MeToo movement. Ma ain’t stupid. Rosario has wanted to lay Ahsoka for years. You think DIsney would let her if this suit had any teeth? Do i think there’s a semblance of responsibility that must be taken by the Dawson family? Of course. They were dicks to this person and owe them an apology. Do i think Rosario Dawson has to cash-out because her family were assholes? F*ck no. Sue them, they’re the ones who hurt your feelings and that’s the crux of this argument; Rosario is the famous one. Rosario is the rich one. Rosario has to be the target or no one gets paid.

There’s fault on both sides here, i freely admit that, but i don’t think Rosario is involved the way this person says she was. I think this person knows what side the bread is buttered on and is looking to capitalize on this whole SJW/PC, cancel culture, bullsh*t, for a quick payout. Believe all of the gender minorities before actual evidence because they’re so oppressed. Cancel everyone who doesn’t share our politics or, heaven forbid, waits for facts and uses logical assumptions to deduce bullsh*t. For all intents and purposes, this person sounds like an asshole to me. Look at it objectively; Rosario flew this person out from New York, put them up in a rent-free apartment, and paid them a full-time wage while also giving them a stipend to get on their feet out here. This person did nothing but complain and refuse to leave the apartment when both parties agreed for a separation. Instead, this person squatted for weeks to months, freeloading on Dawson, while pocketing thousands of dollars. Seriously, how do you think they’re paying for this Hollywood ass lawyer? They can’t get home but they got money to hire a lawyer, though. Okay. Like, you don't get to be magically absolved from the repercussions of being an asshole just because you decided to transition. No one committed a hate crime against you because they threw you out of their house, yo. You were being a dick and got dealt with as such. ll this “Believe everyone, all of the time” sentient is getting out of hand.

Or, i could be wrong and Rosario Dawson is ball of trans hate who spends her time keelhauling those people in between campaign stumps and acting roles, i don’t know. Pretty sure she’s not, tho. Also, Brie Larson as Mara Jade is a mistake. That’s bad casting, man. Alexandra Daddario, Emily VanCamp, or Alexandra Breckenridge fit that role much better.

[thisdaynews]

‘You’re setting people up for failure’: Castro allies rail against Dem primary rules

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/youre-setting-people-up-for-failure-castro-allies-rail-against-dem-primary-rules/

‘You’re setting people up for failure’: Castro allies rail against Dem primary rules

Julian Castro dropped out of the 2020 presidential race Thursday. | David Becker/Getty Images

Julián Castro launched his long-shot bid nearly a year ago in his native San Antonio, hoping to excite a diverse coalition of voters who could power him to the White House.

When he bowed out of the race Thursday, his allies expressed frustration that he was prevented from doing so, casting him as a victim of a primary process that inhibits candidates of color. In interviews, a half-dozen former aides and allies cast the first major Latino candidate in the 2020 race as a casualty of a system that already felled California Sen. Kamala Harris and is keepingNew Jersey Sen. Cory Booker from gaining traction.

“How you fare in Iowa and New Hampshire sets the tone for how your campaign continues, and when you have these two states that in no way represent the diversity of the Democratic Party, it makes it very difficult for minority candidates to get momentum,” said Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, who noted the impact a campaign’s momentum — or lack thereof — has on fundraising, polling and media coverage.

“If you’ve got people like Booker and Kamala Harris and Castro campaigning in places like Texas, California and South Carolina early on, they’re gonna get momentum,” he argued. “They’re gonna get well known. They’re gonna start raising money. These were high-quality candidates and people who have credentials, who have a history of public service, who are smart, who have ideas and who I think represent where we’re at as a party on the issues important to Americans.”

With some two dozen candidates all vying for the Democratic nomination and party rules that emphasized national and early-state polling and grassroots fundraising to determine who could qualify for the sanctioned debates, Castro’s campaign had an uphill climb, some argued.

Black voters cast a majority of the Democratic primary vote in South Carolina and Hispanic or Latino voters make up a third of the population in Nevada. But the other two early states are overwhelmingly white.

Struggling to keep pace with his rivals in fundraising, Castro lacked the infrastructure and resources of the other Texan in the race, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who ended his campaign in November.

Castro saw his only polling bump when the two Texans clashed over immigration policy at the first debate in June, hitting 4 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post survey days later. In every other approved national and early-state poll released in 2019, however, Castro sat at 2 percent or less.

He cast himself as a voice for marginalized communities, releasing detailed policies on immigration, policing, lead exposure, indigenous communities, people with disabilities and animals while also meeting with inmates and touring a Las Vegas flood tunnel where homeless people seek shelter.

“Some of the people we targeted are people who literally don’t ever vote and could never get included in the political process, people like homeless people,” said a former aide who was laid off when the campaign shuttered its staff in New Hampshire and South Carolina to prioritize Iowa and Nevada.

“It’s tough because in places like Nevada, they rarely poll,” the ex-aide added. “The other issue is polling has always historically underpolled people of color and poor people, people who don’t have landlines. So when you make that system, so when the DNC basically says, ‘Oh, all right, this is how people are gonna qualify,’ you’re setting people up for failure.”

Mayra Macías, executive director of Latino Victory Fund, a progressive PAC that seeks to increase Latino political power and that endorsed Castro in August, said in her experience dealing with media, Castro’s candidacy was often written off. In her estimation, Castro fell victim to an electability argument that rewarded poll leaders in Iowa and New Hampshire with even higher polling and additional media coverage.

Castro never got significant media attention or polled above 2 percent in the first two early states.

“The bulk of the interviews that we’ve had have felt like almost a moratorium since Day One — folks bringing up a million and one reasons why his campaign wasn’t gonna be viable,” Macías lamented. “The mainstream coverage — or lack thereof — that his campaign received was a big factor, particularly because the campaign doesn’t have the resources as other campaigns do to get their message out there to the American people, so a lot of the campaign’s ability to reach out to folks really did depend on this earned media.”

Colin Strother, a Texas Democratic strategist who once advised Castro, said the system seems like it was “engineered” to make the primary a three-person race between the “three white septuagenarians” in former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont while preventing diverse candidates like Castro, Harris and Booker from reaching the goal line.

But Castro’s staff is also responsible for his demise, Strother said, blaming the candidate’s senior team for robbing their candidate of the opportunity “to get to Super Tuesday, when brown people and black people are finally gonna get a chance to vote.”

“They knew what the process was. At the end of the day, you’ve got to have a strategy to give your candidate a shot, and Julián’s staff didn’t,” he said. “They were spending money they shouldn’t have spent and pushing a strategy that they had to have a reasonable assumption wasn’t gonna work.”

Castro’s first campaign stop was Puerto Rico, instead of Iowa or New Hampshire, the traditional early states. And two days after the DNC announced its polling thresholds for the first two debates — thresholds that hinged on performance in the four early states — Castro’s campaign announced a 50-state tour.

The ploy may have been a creative effort to help him clinch 65,000 unique donors since 200 of them each needed to come from at least 20 different states. But the time and resources spent on trips to states like Idaho and Utah could have been used to campaign or advertise in Iowa, Nevada or Super Tuesday states.

After spending more than half a million dollars more than it raised in the third quarter, the campaign entered October with less than $700,000 cash on hand. Later that month, Castro warned his supporters that his campaign needed $800,000 to stay alive in the next 10 days to stay alive, emulating a strategy that helped extend the life of Booker’s campaign.

Castro met the self-imposed deadline, but still lacked the resources to sustain an ad campaign that could boost his polling enough to qualify for upcoming debates. He missed the last two in November and December, and the party rejected campaigns’ plea to allow more candidates to debate later this month.

When he was on the debate stage, Castro held his own, winning plaudits on the left for endorsing decriminalizing illegal border crossings, naming Atatiana Jefferson, a black woman who was shot and killed by a police officer in Texas, and mentioning transgender people when talking about abortion access.

“It’s a strong symbol when somebody can literally change the narrative on a few issues and not have the polling numbers but still the candidates on the stage also go toward that policy,” said another former aide who worked under Castro at HUD. “He pushed the envelope further than black and brown people have seen in a while.”

Castro acknowledged Thursday morning “that it simply isn’t our time” but also signaled that he isn’t leaving the political arena.

Allies say he belongs in the conversation for vice president, highlighting him as a young, progressive minority with executive experience who became mayor of a major city and ran a Cabinet department in the Obama administration.

They note he would be a valuable asset to any Democratic ticket and could see himserving in a Cabinet position under a Democratic administration, running for governor of Texas in 2022 or possibly even president again in 2024 if Donald Trump is reelected.

“I’m not afraid to admit that on more than one occasion I’ve asked each and both of those brothers to run for governor,” said Hinojosa, the Texas state party chairman, alluding to Julián and his twin brother, Rep. Joaquin Castro.

But some Democrats warn that challenging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is a fool’s errand because the state isn’t ready to put a Democrat in the governor’s mansion.

“He wasn’t really getting a lot of traction in Texas,” noted the aide who worked under Castro at HUD. “That’s a good symbol or sign that if you can’t even carry your own territory, how do you push against that narrative, that you’re strong enough or a viable candidate?”

Strother, the Democratic strategist, added that even after O’Rourke dropped out of the presidential race, the Texas Democratic community of donors, activists and elected officials didn’t coalesce behind Castro.

“If he couldn’t count on them in the biggest election of most of our lifetimes and in probably the modern history of the world, then I don’t think that he should expect that they’ll be there for him in a governor’s race,” Strother said, noting Abbott’s popularity and fundraising prowess.

In recent weeks, Castro had begun arguing for a greater focus on diversity on the front end of the primary calendar so that more people of color have more of a say in who ultimately becomes the nominee. No candidates of color this cycle have led pollingin any of the fourearly states.

“A lot of people will point out and say, ‘Oh, but Barack Obama.’ Barack Obama is from Illinois, which is a bordering state to Iowa,” said the former aide who was downsized. “People in bordering states tend to do well, especially when you start sending volunteers. Right over the border isn’t that far. You talk about one exclusion, one exception. That’s not the rule. We have a lot of work to do as a Democratic Party to uplift our candidates [of color].”

Hinojosa, himself a Democratic Party leader, expressed frustration that the party’s system allowed a now-former mayor in Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., to become a front-runner at the expense of more qualified candidates of color.

“I don’t want to put down Pete Buttigieg, but give me a break. This guy never got more than 8,000 votes in any election,” Hinojosa said. “He’s a front-runner in Iowa versus these three other individuals? What the hell does that tell you?”

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#Foreign #Politics #primary #rules

[blogdangerousobjectcollecto-blog]

Auto insurance cancellation in NC?

"Auto insurance cancellation in NC?

In north carolina, people have to have a proof of insurance to get drivers license. so i got quotes from different insurance places, and i got like around $1000 for six months. my purpose is to get a driver's license and then cancel the insurance. i want to to get the license just to have one. my friend said that if i cancel the insurance within 3 days, i get all my money back and i am not responsible for the rest of contract.. is this true?

BEST ANSWER:  Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://howmuchisinsurance.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr 

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I was driving my friends car and wrecked it. My insurance says that insurance covers the vehicle not the driver. Is this the opinion of all insurance companies?

What's wrong with car insurance?

I am a safe driver. I've never had a car accident or ticket. As a consequence of my choices, I pay very low rates for car insurance. Other people I know have had accidents and many tickets, they pay a lot for car insurance. In this system, each person pays a different rate based on the consequences of their choices and actions. So what is wrong with this system? Why can't we use the exact same system for health insurance? If I eat right, exercise, and wash my hands then I will rarely get ill and should pay very low insurance rates. My neighbor eats junk food, smokes, and never exercises, has lots of medical issues and will for as long as he lives, shouldn't he pay a much higher rate for insurance? Why would anybody want a government system in which we will both pay the same rate? That is blatantly unfair to me since I make good choices and wont get sick as often. Furthermore, I have the choice of lots of different car insurance companies (Geico, Allstate, Nationwide, Progressive, etc.), this competition drives lower costs and better service. Why would I want to give up choice in favor of a monopoly? What is wrong with our car insurance system that somebody would not want the exact same system for our health care?""

Is it any difference between Insurance agent and broker?

Is it any difference between Insurance agent and broker

Car Insurance Firms NOT on Comparison Sites?

Can anyone give me a list of car insurance companies that ARE NOT on comparison web sites like Confused.com? My insurance is up soon and I want to make sure I get the best deal by checking with as many of the big companies as possible. I will be using Confused, but I also want to check with the ones that aren't on there. Thanks.""

""Help with car insurance, I'm a new driver..?""

I heard there was a type of cover that covers any driver that drives the car as long as they had the permission of the main owner, and I was wondering two things about this, 1. does anyone know what it's called/ which insurance companies offer this. & 2. do all the names of drivers that will be driving the car need to be listed? Cheers.""

Information on car insurance coverage?

I was being driven over to a friends house to pick up some paper work, I do not have a driver liceance but my friend does, when another car passed us they came to far over and forced us in which resulted in us side swiping a parked car in the street, The car belongs to my fiance and myself, I'am on the insurance as iam in the process if obtaining a permitt, she drives the car very few times, only when I need to get somewhere and her son has her car, I filed the claim and when the claim adjustor got back to me she was saying our friend may have to run a claim through her insurance instead, we have full coverage collision and all, limited tort, in a no fault insurance state, PA, ive talked with many people and been told my insurance should cover it with no problem, she cannot claim this her son literally wrecked her car 2 months back, seeings how we are fully covered and she is a very occasional driver, I was told its the first thing they will try naturally as an insurance company is try to have everyone else foot the bill first, I'am curious as I'am certain we should be able to cover it, even though she was driving it was me on the passenger side who had said she should be able to move over as I was certain there was clearance which guess not as we were pretty certain the other driver would have hit us, will a full coverage policy cover this if the car in question has the policy on it and one of the insured on the policy was in the car at the time as well? we have Infinity auto insurance, thanks!""

Estimate on drivers insurance?

Hello, i'm 16 years old and about to get my license any ideas on how much insurance would cost me? My family has Allstate and i can qualify for the good student discount.""

How Much Would Insurance Cost For A Renault Clio 182?

How Much Would Insurance Cost For A Renault Clio 182?

Car with cheap insurance and cheap to run.?

Can any one advise which car to look for that has cheap insurance , low tax and is economical to run .I dont need a powerful car .""

Auto insurance cancellation in NC?

In north carolina, people have to have a proof of insurance to get drivers license. so i got quotes from different insurance places, and i got like around $1000 for six months. my purpose is to get a driver's license and then cancel the insurance. i want to to get the license just to have one. my friend said that if i cancel the insurance within 3 days, i get all my money back and i am not responsible for the rest of contract.. is this true?

""How much tax does the American person, family pay per week with income and sales tax?""

Feel Free to add in Cell Phone, Cable, Utility,Insurance Car and Health tax""

What kind of insurance should I get?

I need dental braces but can't afford them. Is there dental insurance that I can get so that I wont have to spend so much out of pocket??

How much would insurance on a gt mustang cost for a 17 yr old male?

How much would insurance on a gt mustang cost for a 17 yr old male?

Why did so many Liberals run away from the ACA as soon as they found out that they'd have to pay for their own Affordable Health Insurance ?

Why are so many Liberals running away from the ACA they declared that they needed so desperately as soon as they found out that they'd have to pay for their own Affordable Health Insurance ? I don't get it ?......Liberals asked for Affordable Health Insurance not Free Health Insurance so why are they running way from Affordable Health Insurance now like it is the plague and even opting to pay a fine rather than buy Affordable Health Insurance for themselves /

Is the presidents plan to get everyone insured but no one covered?

The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president. You have to closely look at your plans. Know what illnesses you are going to come down with. See what kind of medications you will need. Know all the advanced medical care needed and the facilities needed. Then insure they are in your plan. That is only the easy part. When you sign up. You should daily check to see if you are covered. People are going to emergency rooms thinking they are covered when they are not. Democrat have an answer to out of network medications and doctors. Pay out of pocket. Democrats say it is personal responsibility to know every disease facilities and medications needed for every conceivable disease. Then insure they are in your plan. Democrats have your best interests at heart when they insure your sex life is listed in your medical record. Democrats would never misuse sex or gun information requested in Obama Care by looking in the electronic records. They are safer then the doctor putting them in a file and keeping them in their office. Now they keep it in their office and a database that Obama can access.

What is the average cost for car insurance?

What is the average cost for car insurance on a standard second hand car worth about 1,000 like a nissan?""

Does anyone know how the Access Insurance works in AZ?

I hear its state wide insurance coverage for those who cant afford or have insurance....

What does your credit score have to do with your car insurance premium?

Why do some some insurance companies base their rates on credit scores? What does that have to do with driving records?

Kit Car Insurance?

How does insurance for a kit car work? I realize you have to specially register it and so forth, but are you charged for a 1986 Ferarri, 1966 Cobra, etc, or is it based on what the engine/chasis/etc came out of?""

Insurance quotes for a 2006 Mitsubishi Eclipse ??

i'm 16 and i need to know where i can go online to get a quote, without people calling me. i just want to know how much it's gonna be every 6 months or every month, etc. online .... THANK YOU ALL !!!!""

Can I keep my cheap auto insurance without my broker?

When I first switched to my current auto insurance I didn't even realize I was dealing with a broker, and was surprised when they charged me a fee in addition to what I am paying the insurance co. Well I paid it (this was 3 years ago) and now I'm supposed to pay them their fee every year! I'm just wondering if there is a way I can cancel the Broker and still have the insurance?""

""On average what would cost more, Universal Health care or Insurance premiums?

per person which would cost more?

How much is car insurance in NYC monthly ?

I'm 21 and i'll be getting a car in 3 months, I would like to know\ how much is car insurance in nyc monthly""

Does mods affect car insurance?

Hey guys I have a honda civic 2000 and i was going to to add some mods such as an intake and a BOV as well as body kit and other engine modifications. I was just wondering what would happen if i didn't tell my car insurance provider about these what would happen?

First car ideas? I'm going to be 17 so insurance is a problem what car is cheapest to buy and insure?

I'm not interested in a Nissan Micra or Ford Ka. Need a cheap car to insure and to buy..

Cons ...why do you argue on behalf of insurance companies ?

Knowing that at some point you'll have to argue with the insurance agent on behalf of yourself ? An argument you will likely lose by the way, since no reforms have been passed....""

Car insurance please answer urgent?!?

my dad recently gave me a car and it is insured but my name is not on the policy. he said the insurance guy told him anyone who drove the car was insured. if this is true am i insured even though i'm a minor? thanks in advance to anyone who answers

Help! I dented a car and need an idea on how much it will cost without going through insurance...?

I have a picture of the damage. I am still shaking so worried, it is my first year of driving so am looking to deal with it privately, luckily my car wasn't damaged, however it was my fault so I am going to have to do the paying! <a href= http://s7.photobucket.com/albums/y298/Gothixpixie/?action=view&current=Photo-0107.jpg target= _blank ><img src= http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y298/Gothixpixie/Photo-0107.jpg border= 0 alt= Photobucket ></a> http://s7.photobucket.com/albums/y298/Gothixpixie/?action=view&current=Photo-0107.jpg Not sure if these hyperlinks will work! Any help would be great!""

Do you need motorcycle insurance in the state of Tennessee?

As a Tennesseean, I was wondering if motorcycle insurance is necessary in order to ride in the state.""

Will my car insurance go up much?

im planing on buying a new car in the next few weeks, im just wondering, will my insurance go up much? I currenty have a Peugeot 206 GLX 1.4, 2000 reg. I am hoping to get a Vauxhall Corsa S 1.0 ecoFLEX, 2011 reg What other cars should i consider, that are cheap to run/ insure / road tax ectect..""

Does auto insurance cover a person or an automobile?What if someone drives your insured car and they have none

If you drive someone's car who has insurance on their car but you don't have any auto insurance and you get in a wreck does their insurance cover it or could you get a ticket ...show more

Who is the cheapest car insurance in USA ?

Ihave finicial problem right now ipay for six month liability $ 300 it us too much for me is there any body knows less than that price iget please let me know?

High risk health insurance for cancer patients?

I know someone without health insurance who just received word of a lung cancer diagnosis. I know most insurance companies won't take him but does anyone know of one that will, or a website that can point me in the right direction?""

Can a health insurance company abroad outside the USA look up my health insurance information ?

If I provide them with my insurance policy and other info can they look up my health insurance information?

Driving Insurance Quotes ?

Im 17 years old and currently taking driving lessons. Does anyone know if I can find out insurance quotes for cars at this age without holding a full UK licence at the moment. I just wanted to find out prices on insurance for me to get a rough idea of insurance quotes for different cars.

Auto insurance cancellation in NC?

In north carolina, people have to have a proof of insurance to get drivers license. so i got quotes from different insurance places, and i got like around $1000 for six months. my purpose is to get a driver's license and then cancel the insurance. i want to to get the license just to have one. my friend said that if i cancel the insurance within 3 days, i get all my money back and i am not responsible for the rest of contract.. is this true?

Why is insurance for mazda cars so high?

I heard mazda cars often increase your insurance? Why do they? Is it for a good or bad reason? Answer with detail please :)

Where can a 16 year old get cheap moped insurance?

I'm 16 a need a moped to commute to college. Where can I find an insurer that doesn't think that every teenager is a boy racer! I've had several years of cycling on the road, would that reduce my quote? Thanks :)""

Only have Learners - Car and insurance?

I need to drive asap. I have my learners currently but cant sit my test until Sept. Would love some help with the process of where to start, can I buy a car and/or insurance before I get sit my test? If so how does the registration work? Maybe worth noting that I need to drive asap for work, I am 23 and going on parents etc is not an option? also im in canada Thanks!""

Where can I find a comparative listing for auto insurance rates?

Where can I find a comparative listing for auto insurance rates?

Progressive is hiking my Massachusetts car insurance rate by 23% this year! Is that normal?

My policy is about to come up for renewal and they're going to hike up my rate by 23%! I just talked to their customer service person and she said they're doing it all over Massachusetts. Are all the car insurance companies raising their rates so much in Massachusetts? Was there some law that passed which changed their profit margin or something? Is there another car insurance company that will give me a better deal?

What insurance company offer the best auto insurance quote?

What insurance company offer the best auto insurance quote?

Where can i get low cost motorcycle insurance ?

i live in ontario canada ,, i want to buy a honda cbr 250 , and would like to find a low cost insurance for my bike , so far i got some way off price quote with a difference of $280.00 ,so i suspect they are over charging ,even at the low end , they say i'm covered for 12 months months but a motorcycle is not meant to ride in cold and snow and salty streets as the salt would ruin the chain and other parts of the motorcycle .""

California Temporary Driver's License?

I'm 20 years old and have a valid UK driver's lisence. As I am now living in California, I was given a 'California Temporary Driver's License'. This expired yesterday but I have my behind the wheel test on Monday (12/7/09). Is this expiration going to be an issue? I did mention it at the DMV office, but the woman just ignored my question as if it was stupid and continued to book my test. Surely it means I am not licensed to drive a vehicle on my test date? Also, the car I will be driving is fully insured by someone I live with, and it is her name that is on the insurance documents. The policy insures anybody with a valid license- can I use this for the test providing it passes all their other requirements referred to on their website? Thank you in advance for any help. I have searched through all DMV related sites but this issue is never addressed.""

What happens if I become a part time student while on my parent's insurance?

What happens if I become a part time student while on my parent's insurance?

""Car insurance, 17 year old.?""

in the state of NJ, do you know around how much car insurance for a 17 year old would cost monthly? or if you know of any other state? i just want a rough estimate. thank you""

What are the most common vehichle that is cheapest on insurance?

I'm trying to find a new vehichle but I want to know which cars are the mostly bought because they are cheaper on insurance.

Which car insurance companies offer temporary insurance?

I'm a 20 yr old male that has had his license since age 18 but has never been insured. My mother would prefer to simply add me on hers, but her insurance company does not offer temporary insurance, which is what I need since I will be going back to school in late September. Which car insurance companies offer temporary insurance (3 months)?""

Health and Maternity Insurance.?

My wife and I are wanting to have a baby and need to get health insurance that includes maternity. I have gotten a couple quotes, but they all seems somewhat high being that she is only 22 and in great health. Who would be the best and most affordable provider to talk to? Thanks, Dustin""

Is there some sort of reason that Car Insurance costs so much more in Nevada than it does in California?

Im looking into moving, and I cannot help but notice that the quotes I am getting are, well, DOUBLE what I pay in California. Granted, I am a 23 year old male and have a decent driving record, it is kind of shocking to see liability only coverage quoted at $250/month for my two 8 and 12 year old cars, when Im paying $125/mo. as of now in California for the same 100/300 coverage. Can someone explain this? I have some friends that have moved to Las vegas, with the same shocking increase in premiums... (And yes, I need the 100/300 since I own a home)""

Do you have health insurance?

If so, How much is it per month? How old are you? What kind if deductable do you have? feel free to answer also if you do not have insurance, also do you suppport Obamacare?""

Fast Car - With Decent MPG (cheap to insure?)?

Hey All. Looking to buy a new car: Current Car: Honda Civic Sport 1.6Li Petrol Wanting: Fast acceleration car possibly diesel turbo with good MPG if required. Distance to work travelled every day: 50 miles Open to all ideas/thoughts. I know with acceleration/speed comes price and loss of fuel mpg, but I'm sure theres a car that can be flexible under different driving conditions etc... Thanks again everyone, best answer to be choosen ASAP.""

How much is my car payment and insurance?

Hey, everyone else is asking the same 2 stupid questions, now it's my turn!""

I think I've made a mistake on my car insurance?

Long story short my Dad has a car that is insured and has been for a while. He has never made a claim in his 40+ years of driving. He's just bought another car that we can both drive (I can't drive his automatic until I pass my test) He was going to insure it with the same company as his other car however they won't let me be a named driver as I'm under 18 so we've found another company to go with. We got a quote and paid the money. No problem. Awaiting conformation in the post. Earlier today, however, I was talking to a friend who is insured with the same company and he says my dads no claims doesn't count because he's still insured with another company. Therefore by putting 9+ years on the form we've lied ?! Is this correct? Does this make our insurance invalid? How much trouble could we get in for this mistake? How can we resolve this?""

Cost of Car insurance for new driver 30yr old Female?

Hi am about to start lessons on learning to drive, and was wondering if anyone knows the cost it would be for car insurance for a new driver annually, car will probably be 1.4, I am female, 29/30 years old. Thanks""

""Maximums for lawsuits in California have been capped at $250,000 for many years, and insurance costs haven't?

...gone down one bit. Lawsuits are only 5% of insurance companies costs - it's been proven many times including during the 2004 Presidential debates. Why is this the only suggestion they ever have?

""Help, I need suggestions for health insurance. Please and thank you. Any ideas?""

My mom got laid off last year and I was on her health insurance. I'm 18 and I attend college. I'm looking for a low cost plan that will cover vision, dental, and regular check ups. Though something without vision is good also. I have no idea where to look. I don't want medicaid. Female, 18, single, no children, no disabilities or medication. Please help.""

Can I drive someone else's car without insurance?

I am getting my license soon (if i pass the road test) can i drive someone else's car without having any insurance in Rhode Island ?

How much do you pay per year for home owners insurance?

i am buying property in northern virginia and just want a general idea of the price. its fine if you dont live around here, or own a single family instead of a townhouse. its whatever, i just have no clue what even a reasonable amount to be charged is btw, sorry if this is a repost but when i post in the business-insurance section all i get are spam links for responses""

Names of Cheap insurance companies in ireland that insure motorbikes??

Just bought a new moterbike and am being quoted mad prices,its only a 125,it shouldn't be much more than 1000,but im being quoted 1600 by quinn direct? anybody know where i could get it cheaper??""

Do you think aero upgrades will cause my insurance to go up?

I live near Virginia international raceway and wanted to add some aero upgrades for my car. I also want to lower it and get performance brakes. Do you think this will increase my insurance greatly? I can't call until tomorrow but I'm just curious what others think.

Auto insurance cancellation in NC?

In north carolina, people have to have a proof of insurance to get drivers license. so i got quotes from different insurance places, and i got like around $1000 for six months. my purpose is to get a driver's license and then cancel the insurance. i want to to get the license just to have one. my friend said that if i cancel the insurance within 3 days, i get all my money back and i am not responsible for the rest of contract.. is this true?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cheapest-auto-insurance-pa-beland-rajka"