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rinrenrina · 4 years

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Protests and social movements: local news media and you.

This Patriot Act video by Hasan Minhaj is about how important local news is to covering what affects us, especially in light of BLM and antifa protests. Local news media are compiling lists of Black-owned businesses, protest groups that need support, community resources, and documenting/recording perspectives and events. It's also local news media that are breaking stories of national importance like Epstein.

First, a timely article about the Seattle autonomous zone/CHAZ that’s an exact example of what’s going on in the video: local Seattle Times journalists did original reporting [link] and fact-checked some claims (yes, it’s peaceful; no, crimes are not happening; no, local businesses are not being extorted and in fact are doing well; yes, the mayor and governor told Trump to shut up) along with USA Today, which picked up ST’s reporting and added more information [link]. And here’s more original local reporting about armed right-wing groups being dangerous and obnoxious because they boogeyman antifa: [link]. Industry callouts on Fox News for creating and publishing doctored images of CHAZ, which is as ridiculous as it sounds [link].

Ridiculous.

To the point, the video had me thinking about the widespread "Why isn't the media talking about this" or "What the media won't show" messaging that's in nearly every high-note protest/BLM Twitter thread or Tumblr post I’ve seen that are not only often false (Yes, local and national news organizations are reporting that protesters are peaceful [link], cops are abusive+lying to everyone about the content of their body cams [link], and communities are creating resource and hydration centers [link]. No, news media will not ignore you if you keep protesting - the video in this post [link] is from NBC.), but show how much of an information bubble some people live in.

Remember, these are your news orgs, not a government's news orgs. Everyday people are the voices in an article, especially in local and community news.

The same popular posts I see about not trusting Democrats/Biden/liberalism and incrementalism are voiced by several knowledgeable activists in this article, New generation of activists, deeply skeptical of Democratic Party, resists calls to channel energy into the 2020 campaign [WP link | non-paywall MSN link] by Cleve Wootson Jr. [link].

Some pull quotes (but you should check out the article):

“Some people are like I’m . . . done accepting what the Democratic Party has offered us. It’s not getting better,” said Keene, 37. “This current moment is a reflection of the United States’ inability to meet any of the demands black people have put forward. I wish they would stop holding black people responsible for the failures of the Democratic Party. Why aren’t y’all responsible for not giving us a candidate worth voting for?”

Malcolm X warned people that neither Democrats nor Republicans had adequate plans to help black Americans in his “Ballot or the Bullet” speech. And Martin Luther King Jr. called on his followers to not accept political stalling.

“It’s always come down to the question of time,” Delmont said. “Dr. King had so many great sermons or speeches about time and how that group of activists just could not wait. People feel the same way today. You can’t wait for Biden to get elected. You can’t wait four years. We can’t wait on politicians if we want to see these things change.”

These are the same ideas that have floated through the blogosphere, especially here on Tumblr.

That isn't to be an idealist though. There's a lot to complain about in US journalism. At the top editor positions, it's highly staffed by white people, men, cishets, and those with privileged backgrounds. All journalists use news judgement (PBS has information on what news judgement is here: [link]), which in front page design aims to showcase what’s important to know in terms of impact, but deciding "what's important/what will people read" when the decision-making team is homogeneous and privileged leaves valuable voices unheard, entire life experiences unaddressed, and harms marginalized groups.

This is something recognized among journalists: The Inquirer's POC staff had a sick-out and open letter about a now-fired top editor's news article that insensitively riffed on BLM [link], NYT staff and union came out against the now-demoted opinion editor’s publishing of an opinion piece by the Arkansas governor that called for violence against protesters [link], Post-Gazette was publicly criticized by staff, union, and the public when management barred a Black journalist from reporting on protests because she joked about anti-protester hypocrisy [link].

There's a lot of criticism to be had about US journalism, but the "Why isn't the media talking about this" or "What the media won't show" messaging I'm seeing on Tumblr and Twitter is inaccurate because the very things people are saying are not being reported actually are being reported. It's coming from a place of not having the methods to access this information - maybe it’s not visiting non-social media sites to receive the news that affect and reflect you, not understanding that articles of quality take time, not knowing that you can reach out to news orgs and tell them what the news is, and/or not knowing how overwhelmed/source competitive news organizations are.

A read more to not dash stretch. Under the read more is information on how to escape the “Why isn’t the media reporting”/”Why am I only just hearing” information bubble (visit a news site), why the news takes days to be good (imagine writing an original research essay), and tips on avoiding paywalls and on basic journalism.

Receiving the news that affect and reflect you

There's a significant difference between the news you will see on a social media feed (even if you do follow news orgs) and the news you will see by going to any news website. I can write more about it later, but the tl;dr is that the news you see on a social media feed is decided entirely by algorithms, money, and community bubbles, which isn't evil, but causes other important news to be buried on your feeds. Social media are great for fast news and no longer letting only a select few people, who cannot reflect the need-to-knows of everyone, decide what's important. And to better avoid the information bubble, you can combine your social media feeds with news websites so that you can better avoid the "Why am I only just hearing about this" phenomenon and see that yes, the thing you said was never reported on, probably was reported. Yes, the front page curation won’t reflect the need-to-knows or even nice-to-knows of everyone, but the information available is still valuable and impactful - I saw the article on armed right-wingers holding an anti-antifa block party by visiting Seattle Times, Wootson’s article from MSN, the article on cops lying on documents about their body cam recordings from CNN’s front page. By visiting news websites, you may find information and topics that never landed on your feed - which you can now introduce to and improve your social circles with.

Articles of quality take time, aka "People wanted the news five minutes ago"

There's a few tweet threads where someone is shooting video of a currently developing situation, with a caption akin to "Why isn't the media talking about this" ...even though this is something that is currently happening, so of course no one has sat down and made the article or video segment. Especially if they’re waiting on comment from city officials. Tweets are a fast, immediate information delivery method and this is where protesters have an advantage. If you had checked YouTube's front page from the US the past weeks, you may have noticed that the news video article/news livestream section took about two days from the start of the protests to say that the protesters are peaceful and that it's the police that are violent. It's extremely slow compared to a protester's tweet. If you combine the speediness of a protester's tweet with the context/backstory/statement from officials in a news article, your knowledge of what's happening is more thorough. The news article takes time to come out and be worth reading, though.

(Related to the topic of speed and quality is the Mueller Report. It's 450 pages, yet news orgs were writing about it on day one. It was all junk because they were reading from the Trump CliffsNotes in the rush to meet the people-want-to-know-yesterday/first scoop demands so the articles worth any time only started coming out a week after the Report's release. News orgs admitted to their initial reporting being garbage and being led on, but by then readers who don't look at news websites had moved on. The same goes for any protest or breaking news coverage: it's usually junk for the first few days. Sometimes subverted by local news orgs due to their proximity to the events.)

Reach out to news orgs

There's important ground information coming from protesters and observers - first-hand experience with police brutality, police militarization, and just how tired Black Americans are of having to protest for their lives. Among this info are communities' food and hydration resources, example here [link].

"What the media won't show." "These stories need to be told."

Two things that go well together by remembering to tell your local news organizations. And if they show up (you might get the reporting from a desk treatment: adapting a press release (which btw, nonprofits and non-organized groups can write and submit too) to an article), you have their ear: tell them your message. Something every journalist has heard? "Your article is only as good as its sources." You can be the reason that article and news org are good.

The above mostly applies for when you don't want to be a press worker. But another angle is to be your own community's source of news and watchdog. You have access to the exact same information a news organization is privy to (FOIA and PRA), the same protective laws (shield laws, the First Amendment guarantees the right for journalists to work), and being a writer is free to learn and easy to do especially in the time of free blogging and content hosting. As this NPR post [link] put it:

I think I can say that I have some professional credibility as a journalist. I have a master’s degree from a major university, a national Emmy award, work in all forms of media, and am in charge of journalism at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Yet legally, I have the same standing as a journalist as a high school dropout who writes a blog in his grandmother’s basement, and that is exactly the way it is supposed to be.

And if you do start your own community news source, forward the articles you publish to the wider-area news orgs above you. Tying it back to the video: this is how the news works - local news media are important to national discourse.

Here’s some other things that can hopefully be helpful to understanding the essential field that is journalism:

- If you're being paywalled by a local or national newspaper or by a magazine you want to read, check if your library (or a friend who will let you use their library card) already pays for online access either through a website or through an app like Flipster. Or, search the title of the article and see if an another site (such as MSN) offers it free. - Tips: You only need to read the first two-three paragraphs of a news article, but it helps to read the rest. How and when to be an anonymous or on-background source: when you have information no one else has and/or you would face retaliation for speaking. More here: [link]. What differentiates an opinion from an editorial: editorials are the opinion of the editorial board, opinions are written by columnists, officials, and readers. Figure out what type of article you like better: inverted pyramid favors quick reporting (minutes to hours) and fewer facts, feature style favors long-term reporting (weeks to months) and more research, details, and human-focused anecdotes/testimony.

To nitpick the video: local and national broadcast news has more than what’s on TV, they also have a robust web article and web video article presence. For example, NBC’s article about BLM NY members’ and other activist groups in NY’s social justice and policy goals (and an app that creates digital models of Black and brown heroes of history to educate!). [NBC link | MSN link]

#blm #black lives matter #seattle autonomous zone #patriot act #journalism #chaz #'the news doesnt cover protests anymore': consider that your social media feeds arent enough #its true of youtubes featured news section (all corona) for me #but its 90-10 where 90% of front page coverage is protests and social justice and black art on local news sites msn wp nyt and even fox

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

How a private wall rose on the border using millions in donations — and deception and threats

https://news.yahoo.com/how-a-private-wall-rose-on-the-border-using-millions-in-donations-and-deception-and-threats-100000942.html

This is a fascinating informative read on how a small part of border wall got built on the southern border with the help of Steve Bannon, a milta group and #MAGA suckers.

HOW A PRIVATE Wall ROSE ON THE SOUTHERN BORDER USING MILLIONS IN DONATIONS AND DECEPTION AND THREATS

By Caitlin Dickson | Published July 10, 2019 6:00 AM ET | Yahoo News | Posted July 10, 2019 |

SUNLAND PARK, N.M. — Nestled between the busy international port cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, near the intersection of two countries and three states, is Sunland Park, N.M.

Though the city itself wasn’t officially incorporated until 1983, the history of this small, predominantly Hispanic border community on the western bank of the Rio Grande is represented in various landmarks — like the 12-foot white stone obelisk known as Monument One, which was erected in 1855 to mark the beginning of the new land border between the U.S. and Mexico following the Mexican-American War. Or the limestone crucifix that has adorned the top of Mount Cristo Rey for nearly 80 years. Even the soil in certain areas has been found to still contain lead and arsenic from decades of pollution caused by the smelter that once loomed large over this region from across the river in El Paso.

Now, at the center of all these artifacts from Sunland Park’s history, stands the first-ever privately funded border wall. Erected quickly and quietly on private property over Memorial Day weekend, the 18-foot-high barrier ofweathered steel bollards climbs approximately half a mile up the side of Mount Cristo Rey. Beside it, a freshly paved road seems to glow like a concrete waterfall under the reflection of the mind-bending desert sun.

“This is kind of like Masada,” said former White House strategist Steve Bannon, admiring the massive steel barrier from atop a plateau that had been carved into the mountain as part of the construction process. He was comparing the steep terrain to the cliff on which the biblical king Herod the Great built a fortress, which later was the site of an epic siege by Roman forces that ended in the mass suicide of hundreds of defenders. The word has become a metaphor for a hopeless last stand.

Bannon, who serves as advisory board chairman for We Build the Wall, the nonprofit behind the crowdfunded construction effort, made the pilgrimage to Sunland Park late last month along with the group’s founder, Brian Kolfage, and a smattering of other supporters for a live-streamed, three-day-long fundraiser. The goal of the so-called Wall-a-Thon was to recruit corporate sponsors, as well as individual donors, to fund additional construction as an example and proving ground for the Trump administration’s proposed Gulf-to-Pacific wall, which has barely gotten off, or into, the ground.

Supporters of the wall haven’t just given money, though: Thousands of them around the country have enlisted in a campaign to lobby — and threaten — both local and federal officials into letting the project go forward without the necessary permits and paperwork. The mayor of Sunland Park said he has received death threats over the issue.

Bannon, who had recently been in Europe advising far-right nationalist and populist political movements, was out of the country during the big reveal of the wall the month before. He told Yahoo News at the time that the construction had been carried out secretly and quickly over the holiday weekend “to catch them by surprise,” predicting that local residents would “freak out” upon seeing the nearly completed section of wall.

As he marveled at the wall in person, Bannon repeatedly remarked at how shocked everyone in Sunland Park must have been to discover what had been built while they weren’t looking.

He was right.

“I was sure that it was illegal,” said Olga Nuñez, a City Council member and longtime resident of Sunland Park, of her initial reaction to the wall. “There was no way I could even imagine that we would issue a permit for something that size.”

Nuñez was right, too.

Yahoo News has officially confirmed, through documents and several interviews with city officials as well as We Build the Wall president Kolfage, that the group neither obtained nor applied for the required building permits from the city of Sunland Park before breaking ground for the wall, which was built on private property within roughly 240 feet of the actual border. A few days after completing it,they proceeded, once again without a permit, to build a gate from the base of the wall across federal land, blocking access to a dam managed by the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a government agency, as well as the only public entrance to Monument One.

In both cases, construction commenced so quickly and unexpectedly that, by the time officials tried to assert authority over the situation, the projects were either complete or close to it. Attempts to retroactively reverse the process were short-lived, as city and federal officials capitulated under an onslaught of calls, emails and social media posts from thousands of We Build the Wall supporters, whose messages ranged from angry to racist to explicitly violent and threatening.

Kolfage is decidedly unapologetic about the tactics his organization used to build its first section of private wall in Sunland Park and offers no assurance that the same approach won’t be used going forward in other border communities. We Build the Wall has claimed to have 10 other private parcels lined up for future construction, but it won’t disclose their locations.

“We’ve done everything that was required to build here above-standard, highest-quality construction, the very best border wall on the entire border,” Kolfage declared during an interview with Yahoo News.

But, he admitted, “we did not have the permit to do this.” Asked whether We Build the Wall would try to get proper permission before starting construction on its next border wall project, Kolfage said, “We’ll see.”

Kolfage, a decorated Air Force veteran who lives in Miramar, Fla.,launched a GoFundMe campaign in December with the improbablegoal of raising $1 billion to pay for President Trump’s border wall in lieu of congressional funding. Originally, the plan was to donate the crowdsourced cash directly to the federal government, but a few weeks in, after raising more than $20 million, Kolfage announced that the money would instead go directly to a nonprofit he had created to build the wall independently.

In addition to Bannon, Kolfage’s organization soon had the backing of several other prominent Trump allies, including Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince, former Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo and Kris Kobach, the aggressively anti-immigrant former Kansas secretary of state who has announced a run for the U.S. Senate from his home state.

For the construction, they enlisted Tommy Fisher, an outspoken Trump donor and owner of a North Dakota-based construction company who sued the U.S. government in April after the Army Corps of Engineers rejected its bid to build the wall. According to the Washington Post, Trump aggressively pushed for Fisher to get the contract.

Since most land along the U.S.-Mexico border is already owned by the federal government, Kolfage said, finding the right location for the project involved a combination of public records and word of mouth. In addition to creating a database of every private-property owner along the southwest border, Kolfage said, he and members of the We Build the Wall team traveled to various border towns to consult with Border Patrol agents and others familiar with the region.

According to Kolfage, We Build the Wall had been pursuing a different piece of private land farther west in New Mexico when a Border Patrol agent told them about George Cudahy, an 85-year-old Air Force veteran and owner of the American Eagle Brick Co. in Sunland Park whose property was “overrun” with illegal activity from Mexico.

Sandwiched between Mount Cristo Rey and the Rio Grande, directly overlooking Monument One to the south, Cudahy’s now-inactive brickyard abuts part of the first section of the land border with Mexico. It is situated on rugged mountain terrain that is one of the few stretches of border for miles not already fenced by the U.S. government.

In light of the natural barriers, there doesn’t actually seem to be a lot of unauthorized immigration in this sector, according toU.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics and anecdotal observations of local residents.

Still, Kolfage said, he was compelled to build the wall on Cudahy’s property after hearing the fellow Air Force veteran’s stories about the theft of car batteries and a brand-new barbecue grill that he attributed to criminals coming across the border.

“We Build the Wall’s representing him and protecting him,” said Kolfage. He said the group agreed to pay Cudahy for the land on which the wall would be built, but declined to say how much.

Cudahy does not, in fact, live in Sunland Park but in another town near the Texas border about 14 miles away.

According to U.S. census data, as of 2018 Sunland Park was home to approximately 17,000 people — 95 percent of whom identified as Latino or Hispanic. With nearly 40 percent of the population living in poverty, it is among the poorest cities in New Mexico.

“We’re a small town; we have an operating budget of about $7 million right now,” said Mayor Javier Perea, who had just returned from Washington, D.C., where he was lobbying for an official port of entry in his city, which would bring new jobs.

The estimated cost of the half-mile section of wall built by Kolfage’s group is$6 million to $8 million.

Kolfage told Yahoo News that We Build the Wall “had this whole thing planned out a month in advance and had the best lawyers in the nation review everything.” However, according to a detailed timeline of events provided by Sunland Park City Manager Julia Brown, the first time anyone at City Hall caught wind of a possible construction project on the American Eagle property was on May 22, the Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend, when a state official mentioned it to the city’s chief building official, who informed the mayor and the Sunland Park building inspector. A search of the records showed there was no application onfile for the project.

Brown said that after being denied access to the American Eagle Brick Co. property on Thursday, a group of city staffers met with Cudahy, who told them he just wanted to erect electrical poles on his property. Brown said staffers gave Cudahy application forms and copies of applicable ordinances, and reminded him that, along with his application, he would need to submit additional documentation, including plans and a grading permit for authorization to move dirt.

Based on the few specifics they say were offered during that meeting, the city inspector and community economic development director told Cudahy that construction of the electrical poles could continue over the weekend, with city staff planning to work with him to ensure that it complied with city ordinances.

“If the city says, ‘You're good to build,’ you're good to build,” said Kolfage, arguing that anyone who saw the operation that Friday would have realized that something much bigger than light poles was in the works.

However, many city officials and staff said they first learned that the 18-foot steel bollard fencing had been erected on Cudahy’s property along with the rest of the world, through national news reports the following Tuesday. In response, the city manager, along with the community economic development director, authorized a stop-work order on the construction. That’s when the backlash began.

A series of posts to the We Build the Wall Facebook page, as well as Kolfage’s personal social media accounts, urged supporters of the private wall project to contact city officials and demand construction be allowed to continue. Beyond a simple call to action, many of the posts seemed deliberately designed to fuel outrage, linking to 2012 articles about alleged corruption by former Sunland Park officials and accusing the city of being paid by Mexican drug cartels to halt construction of the wall.

“Burn up the phone lines and email guys!” reads one of many posts on We Build the Wall’s Facebook page from that day, including the address and phone number of Sunland Park City Hall, along with direct contact information for the mayor and city manager. “Ask them who was paid off by the cartels! WE WON'T STOP! YOU DON'T STOP!”

City Hall was suddenly bombarded, as were individual council members and other city employees, with calls and emails ranging from frustrated expressions of support for the wall, to racial slurs and insults like “go back to Mexico,” to violent threats. Mayor Perea personally received multiple death threats against himself and his family.

The calls and messages persisted over the next two days, as representatives from We Build the Wall and Fisher Industries urged city staff to lift the stop-work order. By Thursday, despite still not having received all necessary documentation and other required information, the city issued permits for both the steel fencing and electrical poles, and construction resumed. At a televised press conference, Perea told reporters that the permits had been issued “prematurely.”

Nearly a month later, Perea told Yahoo News that the barrage of calls had mostly died down but that he was still working his way through more than 5,000 emails sent to his direct address by supporters of the private wall, looking for threats that should bereported to law enforcement.

Following a recent City Council meeting, City Manager Brown offered little in the way of reassurance when asked how the city might be able to prevent something like this from happening again.

“You always, unfortunately, will have outlaws in the world who do what they want to do regardless of what the law is,” she said.

Kolfage has little sympathy, and argues that the fact that permits were issued prematurely amid the backlash that followed the cease-and-desist order “just shows the incompetency of the city.”

“This time they had the control, and they still messed it up. It shows that they don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.

As for being described as an “outlaw,” Kolfage said, “I take it with pride. If that’s what they want to call protecting your country, protecting a fellow veteran.”

The city’s attempts at imposing retroactive accountability have been similarly dismissed. Days before the Wall-a-Thon, George Cudahy failed to show up at a scheduled court hearing in response to a criminal complaint the city had issued against him for building without a permit, the maximum penalty for which is a $500 fine.

Sunland Park may have been an easy target, and Perea admits the city made some mistakes. However, We Build the Wall’s steamrolling didn’t stop with the local government. The same tactics used to get away with building a wall without a permit on private property appear to have been used to manipulate the federal permit process as well.

The American Eagle Brick Co.’s closest neighbor to the east is the American Dam, which is managed by the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational body created in 1889 by a treaty between the United States and Mexico. Operated under the federal governments of each country, the two sections of the IBWC work together to manage the flow of the Rio Grande for use and flood protection.

According to documents obtained by Yahoo News, Richard Allan Kaye, an Atlanta-based attorney with Barnes & Thornburg, a large U.S. law firm and lobbying group, emailed a letter to the U.S. section of the IBWC on June 2 explaining that We Build the Wall was “seeking a license and permit” to build an addition to the bollard border wall as well as a retractable gate that would extend the privately funded barrier from the edge of Cudahy’s property to an existing fence around the IBWC’s dam, cutting across a federally owned road.

“Our intention is to provide the IBWC and DHS with full and complete control of, and access to the retractable gate and seek your advice as to the procedures required to pass title and ownership of the fence and gate to the IBWC,” Kaye wrote. He included plans for the proposed additional fencing and gate.

The following day, the IBWC sent a formal response highlighting a number of logistical and security concerns raised by the proposed gate and wall extension. The letter lists the environmental and engineering reports needed for a permit, and other federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that would have to sign off.

The letter noted that the IBWC’s “preference” was to have no gate, but it included recommended specifications from the agency’s Engineering Services Division if one was built.

Kolfage insists that “behind closed doors” the United States’ IBWC commissioner, Jayne Harkins, actually wanted the gate, and points to the agency’s initial response to the proposal as proof that IBWC officials were involved in designing the structure. But if so, the IBWC doesn’t appear to have had much influence on the final product, which was completed without a permit within days of submitting the initial proposal.

According to a press release issued by the IBWC, We Build the Wall ignored the IBWC’s request for a different location for the gate.

An IBWC employee who spoke to Yahoo News on background confirmed this version of events and dismissed the claim that IBWC was involved in the design.

A couple of days later, the completed gate was closed and locked, blocking a government-owned levee road used by IBWC employees to access the American Dam. On June 10, after repeated requests to unlock the gate, the IBWC enlisted the assistance of the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office to remove the private lock and secure the gate open.

Once again, supporters of We Build the Wall were called to action, and like the city of Sunland Park before it, the U.S. staff of the IBWC was inundated with angry calls and messages. On Facebook and Twitter, Kolfage helped to foment outrage by repeatedly posting videos of large groups of migrants crossing different sections of the border, accusing the IBWC of deliberately allowing thousands to “invade,” and calling for Harkins, a Trump appointee, to resign.

One person even created a White House petition to fire Harkins, writing that the IBWC commissioner was “doing the bidding of smugglers and human traffickers by leaving border wall gates open to let 1,000's of illegals in every day.”

“I feel like they think on Twitter they can just bully us and everything is fine, and that's not OK,” Lori Kuczmanski, the IBWC’s public affairs officer, told Yahoo News on June 11. Kuczmanski emphasized that the IBWC had not expressed opposition to the private border wall itself.“People are upset that they donated money to this campaign … but it’s not the border wall, it’s this gate that is in question.”

Later that evening, Kolfage tweeted an announcement that a deal had been reached with the IBWC and that the gate was now closed. Kuczmanski initially disputed this, telling Yahoo News that the commissioner had consulted with the IBWC’s security team and made the decision to temporarily close the gate at night and reopen it pending a long-term resolution.

“We didn’t talk to them about this, we just didn’t,” Kuczmanski said of Kolfage’s group. Kolfage insisted that the two sides had been in communication “from day one.”

Shortly after speaking to Kolfage, Yahoo News received an email from Kuczmanski that read: “I was just informed the lawyers have been in daily contact with us and are being very cooperative. Please clarify this in any story.”

Kuczmanski declined to provide any additional information and has not responded to multiple follow-up calls and messages in the weeks since.

“It’s infuriating. It really makes one lose faith in government,” said Kevin Bixby, executive director of the Southwest Environmental Center. “You assume the rules apply to everyone equally.”

Bixby said that his organization, which opposes both private and federal construction of new border barriers because of potential harm to wildlife, has worked with the IBWC for 20 years on ecological restoration projects on the border.

“Let me tell you, they won’t let you plant a tree without getting a permit,” he said. “It’s frustrating, but we work with them.”

The Southwest Environmental Center, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, has denounced We Build the Wall’s aggressive tactics and called on the IBWC to deny its pending permit application and remove the gate.

In addition to a number of federal environmental laws that may have been violated by failing to go through the required permit process, both groups decry the fact that the gate’s location also blocks public access to Monument One, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Kolfage sarcastically refers to Monument One as “Yellowstone National Park,” insisting no one goes there. But more than just an international boundary marker, the white obelisk and the small park surrounding it, which also includes a preserved adobe house and tributes toMexican history, have long served as an important meeting place for friends and family from both sides of the border, and a popular destination for school field trips.

For Sunland Park City Council member Olga Nuñez, the park is where her family would celebrate Easter with relatives in Juarez who didn’t have a visa to cross the border.

Even as Bannon and Kolfage were kicking off the first day of their live-streamed Wall-a-Thon, multiple groups could be seen through the steel bollards coming from Juarez to take photos in front of the historic boundary marker, the new private wall looming large in the backdrop.

“Building a massive steel gate on federal land without proper permits is illegal and arrogant behavior,” said Shaw Drake, policy counsel at the ACLU’s Border Rights Center. “If we allow this kind of lawless behavior to stand, it will set a dangerous precedent for the future that we cannot afford.”

For many in Sunland Park, the potential precedent set by We Build the Wall’s actions is the subject of far more concern than the steel bollards themselves.

“Right now, it’s just a wall. After that? I don’t know,” said Perea. “Which law are we going to be OK with violating [next] to do what a specific group wants to do?”

The mayor pointed out that back in April, Sunland Park drew national media attention as the home base of an armed militia group that had been posting videos on social media that appeared to show members detaining groups of migrant families at gunpoint and turning them over to the Border Patrol.

Though Kolfage and others have denied adirect affiliation, a number of news outlets have noted apparent connections between We Build the Wall and members of the militia group, who had previously been operating on Union Pacific railroad property on the other side of Mount Cristo Rey from the American Eagle Brick Co.

“When we came down here, that’s how we crossed paths with them,” Kolfage acknowledged.

The self-described “volunteer patriots” were evicted from that spot in April, after reports of their activities drew outrage and their founder was arrested on an unrelated federal weapons charge, and have since changed their name from the United Constitutional Patriots to Guardian Patriots.

In the days and weeks since the wall went up, members of the group have been seen at the site of the private border wall, including Guardian Patriots spokesman Jim Benvie, who has posted numerous widely viewed videos and live-streams from the American Eagle property on his Facebook page.

Days before the Wall-a-Thon, Benvie was arrested on two federal charges of impersonating a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

“The government is enabling that,” Kolfage said when asked about Benvie’s recent arrest. “If we had border security, we wouldn't have these issues of people coming across the border, and then our citizens trying to act.”

In stark contrast to the inflammatory and politically polarizing tone of his social media posts, Kolfage said he supports a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, expressed sympathy for asylum seekers and insisted that a real solution to the border crisis requires “politicians coming together in the middle as they’re elected to do, to get the job done.”

After speaking to Yahoo News for nearly an hour, Kolfage offered a surprising conclusion: “The wall is not the solution” to the current crisis on the border.

“It does nothing to solve the problem,” he continued. “It alleviates it for a little bit, but it doesn’t solve it.”

The next afternoon, as Kolfage and Bannon were bracing for a second day of fundraising in 100-degree heat, almost 3 milesfrom the private border wall,a group of migrants, including at least three or four small children, were seen standing beside a white U.S. Border Patrol truck on the shoulder of a busy road near Sunland Park City Hall.

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pixelgrotto · 6 years

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D&D With My Bro: The Case of the Almost Assassination

For the last four months, my brother and I have been playing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that I whipped up called The Case of the Almost Assassination, and we came to a triumphant finale the other night. My bro’s called it a “steampunk mystery set in a fantasy world,” which is a good description, but on a more detailed level, the campaign was also heavily influenced by the Ace Attorney and Professor Layton games and exists in the universe of The Thirteenth Hour, a series of fantasy stories self-published by my brother that are inspired by 80s movies and cartoons. So the whole thing is one huge ball of fun nerdiness, and figuring that it might be cool to chronicle the campaign as we played, I captured each of our sessions on video. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube here in convenient playlist format (listening to it in the background like a podcast is also pretty nice, I gotta say), and there’s over 20 hours there, which is longer than some of the video games I’ve blogged about!

This wasn’t the first time that my brother and I had played D&D, since I’d previously introduced the game to him via a small four hour mini-campaign last time I visited his house. (He’s written some great thoughts on that adventure, as well as the experience of missing out on D&D in his childhood but getting the chance to discover it as an adult here.) But this was certainly the first time we’d played something long that continued from week to week, and it was also the first time we’d used virtual tabletop software - in this case the very useful Roll 20 - to play online. Minus a few minor internet hiccups, it ran smoothly, and I think both of us had a great time. The experience also made me ruminate on three interesting facts about D&D that I think not enough people write about, and I’m going to jot off a few thoughts on them here. Without further ado...

1) It is perfectly possible, and sometimes even more fun, to play D&D with just one other person.

Normally, Dungeons & Dragons conjures up images of a bunch of people - usually three or four at minimum - sitting at a table listening to instructions given to them by the Dungeon/Game Master, or DM. But the hardest part of D&D isn’t juggling rules or even fighting Challenge Rating 30 monsters - it’s getting a group of three or four people to meet up together on a consistent basis! This is why you can tell that anyone who still thinks of D&D as an activity for anti-social basement dwellers hasn’t actually played it, because in truth, the game is a demanding social commitment, especially for adults.

Thankfully, while it might be a less common way to play, you can totally enjoy D&D with just two people. Usually this means that someone more familiar with the rules has to be the DM while the other person acts as the player, which is what my brother and I did. Sometimes, the DM will also have to create a player character for themselves, and I did that in order to assist my bro with various battles and tricky scenes. This is more work for the DM, since they’ll have to juggle both their own character as well as the various non-playable characters (NPCs) encountered in the story, but if you’re up for it, it’s a rewarding exercise.

The best thing about playing D&D with just one DM and one player is how efficient it is. Three or four player D&D (to say nothing of five, six, or even more players) can get slowed down by arguments about how to progress or share loot, not to mention downtime in battles when a player who has a bazillion spells at his disposal deliberates on the one he wants to use that will both do the most damage and look the coolest. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love these sorts of interactions, but it’s also nice to strip all that fat away.

When it’s just one player and the DM, the DM also has the chance to make that player feel pivotally important by basing the story around them. Usually, the “unit” of D&D is the adventuring party, but in a one person + one DM game, the player gets to shine as the main character. Thus, it’s a good idea to choose the sort of story that can emphasize the important actions of an individual, and in my opinion the best ones for this are heavy on role-playing and character interaction rather than dungeon crawling and monster slaying. For example, a rogue adventure in an urban environment might fit the bill...or maybe even a mystery. Which leads me to my second point...

2) If you’re a DM making a homebrew campaign, try utilizing a setting that your players are already familiar with.

When my brother initially agreed to play a long campaign with me, I first thought that we might attempt one of the many published Forgotten Realms adventures that have been released for 5th Edition D&D. But then I realized that while my brother is mildly familiar with the Forgotten Realms, thanks to old comics and fantasy art from the 80s and 90s, he’s much more familiar with the setting that he created for his own fantasy novel, The Thirteenth Hour. My bro originally wrote this book when he was a high school kid and finally published it a few years ago, and in the time since, he’s written some short spin-offs and outlined ideas for a sequel. In the mini-campaign we’d played in October, his character was actually a half-elf ranger named the Wayfarer who’ll play a pivotal role in book two, and I initially pitched the whole idea of D&D to him as “Hey, this can help you brainstorm your sequel concepts before you put them down to paper.”

Once I began toying with the idea of making a homebrew campaign set in The Thirteenth Hour world, I started worrying that my brother’s universe was limited when compared to the “fantasy kitchen sink” setting of the Forgotten Realms. I mean, my bro’s book didn’t even have orcs! Or dwarves! What was I gonna do! But then I stopped being reliant on fantasy tropes and actually re-read The Thirteenth Hour, quickly finding that there was plenty I could work with.The universe that my brother created doesn’t have all of the races that Tolkien coined, but it’s still full of magic and wonder - a place where crafty old wizards inspired by The Last Starfighter’s Centauri run amok, strange technological anomalies like hover boards occasionally pop up and an otherworldly gatekeeper known as the Dreamweaver lets the spirits of the deceased visit their loved ones in dreams. And there’s also a large kingdom called Tartec ruled over by a vaguely Trump-esque king named Darian, who thinks he’s found the elixir of immortality when actually all he’s discovered is coffee. (If you think this sounds amusing, you can pick up a digital copy of my bro’s book on Amazon for less than a cup of Starbucks!)

Darian’s a funny character, and in one of the spin-off short stories that my brother wrote, an older and slightly wiser version of him reflects on how an assassin nearly took his head off with a dagger. This one sentence got me thinking who that assassin might be, and before I knew it I’d come up with the basic hook of a campaign. At the time, I was also reading Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, a D&D book that introduces 5th Edition’s Inquisitive subclass, which is basically a fantasy Sherlock Holmes. Suddenly, the ideas began bubbling in my head - the campaign would be a detective story set in Tartec with two leads trying to determine the identity of King Darian’s would-be assassins. Once I had this hook, I decided to draw further inspiration from the two video game series I think of when I hear the word “detective” - the Professor Layton games (which I like the style of but am rubbish at, since puzzles confound me) and the Ace Attorney series, which I’ve written about before. My brother would be the main character Lester LeFoe (patterned slightly after Phoenix Wright, the star of Ace Attorney), and I’d be the spunky female assistant Claudia Copperhoof (a little similar to Phoenix’s assistant Maya Fey).

I hoped that situating these characters in my brother’s world would breed a quicker sense of familiarity than he’d get from playing a generic warrior in the Forgotten Realms, and I think it’s safe to say that the experiment succeeded. Thus, even though 5th Edition D&D products all use the Realms as their default setting, it’s worth remembering that you don’t have to follow this lead, and can always tailor your campaign to a world that your players are already familiar with. In my brother’s case, he’s a writer who made his own world, but for someone else this can easily be Middle-Earth or the Hyborian Age of Robert E. Howard’s Conan books. The D&D Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide actively encourage modifying published adventures to appeal to your players’ favorite settings, in fact, and not only will this potentially help to decrease the amount of lore you need to explain as a Dungeon Master, but it’ll also help keep the attention of everybody listening to you. Because who wouldn’t want to insert themselves into their favorite bit of genre fiction as a legendary figure? In many ways, the whole point of D&D is to give people a framework to do that!

3) If you’re DMing for someone who doesn’t have much time to play, remember that a linear campaign is not necessarily a bad thing, and simplify the more complicated rules - making stuff up whenever necessary!

On page six of the 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, there’s a whole section entitled “Know Your Players,” which is all about altering your game to appeal to the personalities at your table. If you’re DMing for people who like acting and appreciate in-depth stories, give them plenty of role-playing opportunities and narrative twists, for instance, and if you’re dealing with folks who’d rather just make their characters look cool, try having them fight lots of monsters who reward snazzy armor and weapons.

There should really be a sub-section there entitled “How to run a game for players who are low on time.” Because that’s my brother in a nutshell. He’s a late 30s dude who works a demanding job and has two small children to take care of, one of whom is barely half a year old. (You can hear my nephew gurgling in the background in a few of our videos, and sometimes we’d even have to stop playing when the baby woke up from a snooze, which is a situation that I’m sure all new parents can relate to.) I know for a fact that my brother is also the type of guy whose eyes will glaze over when presented with a lot of complicated rules - as is probably the case for anyone who only has at most an hour or two, often in the late evening, to sit down to play a game when the rest of the family is in bed.

In my opinion, the way to tailor your game to such a player is to make a brisk, well-paced story that they can actually see to a satisfying conclusion. This means that the campaign might be fairly linear - a word which seems to have bizarre negative connotations to some D&D players out there, who are always ranting about “railroading,” which is when a DM puts players down a predetermined path without any wiggle room. I think it’s important to note that “linear” does NOT necessarily equate to “railroading,” however, and that a sprawling campaign with a trillion different outcomes and choices to make at every interval isn’t necessarily the best approach for someone who can only play a little bit each week and might get bored if they feel like they aren’t making tangible progress.

Let me put it this way - the campaign that I made for my brother was tightly designed. Instead of giving Lester and Claudia a vast landscape to explore, everything was confined to the city of Tartec, and I made an effort to nudge the characters towards certain objectives that they had to complete in order to solve the mystery, such infiltrating a manor house in the upper class section of town. But I also made sure to flesh out these few areas (quality over quantity) and allowed a certain degree of freedom in how the objectives could be cleared. For instance, I initially thought that Lester and Claudia might sneak into the manor house through the sewers. But as I was brainstorming strategies with my bro, the topic of disguises came up, because Claudia owned a disguise kit. And eventually we decided to infiltrate the party with Lester masquerading as a nutty old lady and Claudia as his keeper, which was a fun improvisation that I never would’ve anticipated - but still a viable way to complete the main objective that didn’t negatively impact the story’s pacing.

On the topic of keeping the pace of the story brisk for a player low on time, I feel like it’s also important to minimize the number crunching and reduce D&D’s more complicated rules whenever possible. In practice, this meant that I took care of as much behind-the-scenes stats management as possible so my bro wouldn’t have to, though I did always try to explain to him what was going on (and what all of those funky dice rolls meant) so he’d have some understanding of the game’s mechanics. Also, whenever we were in a situation where I wasn’t sure of a rule, instead of wasting time looking at the Player’s Handbook, nine times out of ten I’d just make something up on the fly. For example, our adventure had a friendly NPC orangutan in it (specifically chosen because I know my brother likes backflipping primates) and she was supposed to be a super strong, unpredictable force of nature in the final battle. I’d lost the stats that I’d used for her when she first appeared, and instead of looking for them, I decided to just roll a d20 for her damage, figuring that the end result would be close enough. In that same vein, there were a few instances where I made mistakes, since I’m still a relatively new DM. Once I totally miscalculated a character’s special attack, leading to a funny NPC death (which I’d expected but not exactly in that way) and on multiple occasions I flat out forgot to apply modifiers to attack rolls. But instead of going back to redo everything I’d either just laugh it off or forge ahead, hoping that my bro didn’t notice, which he never did.

Ultimately, my philosophy for DMing is to not sweat the small stuff TOO much if it probably doesn’t matter in the long run, especially if you’re running a game for just one person whose free hours are precious. I believe this sort of approach might be sacrilegious to some of the more rules-oriented DMs out there, like the ones who spend hundreds of words arguing over damage variables on the D&D Subreddit. But I’m not one of those folks, and I’d prefer to follow the advice of Sly Flourish, a DM who has a great website where he advocates a “lazy” style of Dungeon Mastering which de-emphasizes nitpicking over rules in favor of just having fun.

At the end of the day, having fun is what D&D is all about. It’s a game of make believe that can really bring out your inner storytelling-loving child, and in an era where very few adults are encouraged to even consider the concept of “make believe,” it can be a truly wonderful breath of fresh air. And if you don’t believe me...I encourage you to watch The Case of the Almost Assassination and try not to crack up at some of the situations that Lester LeFoe and Claudia Copperhoof found themselves in. :)

The pics above are either art that I assembled for our adventure or screenshots that I took while we were playing! The little figurines I designed via HeroForge.

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deargodsno · 3 years

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WHITEFISH, Mont. — Richard B. Spencer, the most infamous summer resident in this town, once boasted that he stood at the vanguard of a white nationalist movement emboldened by President Donald J. Trump. Things have changed.“ I have bumped into him, and he runs — that’s actually a really good feeling,” said Tanya Gersh, a real estate agent targeted in an antisemitic hate campaign that Andrew Anglin, the founder of the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, unleashed in 2016 after Mr. Spencer’s mother made online accusations against Ms. Gersh. Leaders in Whitefish say Mr. Spencer, who once ran his National Policy Institute from his mother’s $3 million summer house here, is now an outcast in this resort town in the Rocky Mountains, unable to get a table at many of its restaurants. His organization has dissolved. Meanwhile, his wife has divorced him, and he is facing trial next month in Charlottesville, Va., over his role in the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march there, but says he cannot afford a lawyer.

The turn of events is no accident. Whitefish, a mostly liberal, affluent community nestled in a county that voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020, rose up and struck back. Residents who joined with state officials, human rights groups and synagogues say their bipartisan counteroffensive could hold lessons for others in an era of disinformation and intimidation, and in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“The best way to respond to hate and cyberterrorism in your community is through solidarity,” said Rabbi Francine Green Roston of the Glacier Jewish Community/B’nai Shalom, who now lectures other groups on how to ward off hate campaigns like the one Whitefish endured. “Another big principle is to take threats seriously, and prepare for the worst.” Mayor John Muhlfeld agreed, “You have to act swiftly and decisively and come together as a community to tackle hate and make sure it doesn’t infiltrate your town,” he said. On Saturday, Mr. Spencer said he kept a “very low profile” in Whitefish, and though he had been denied service in local establishments in the past, “I don’t have any anxiety dealing with anyone.” He said he does not run from Ms. Gersh and understood why people would be angry with him. “I don’t want any battles with them here in Whitefish,” he continued, “and I hope they take a similar attitude, that it’s best to move on.” His mother, Sherry Spencer, did not respond to requests for comment.

Advice and an Accusation

The trouble in Whitefish started after Mr. Trump’s victory in the 2016 election that November. Mr. Spencer, who had called his white nationalist movement a ��vanguard” for Mr. Trump, delivered a racially charged speech at his institute’s conference in Washington, his words greeted by Nazi salutes. Video of the address went viral. In Whitefish, residents discussed protesting in front of a downtown commercial building owned by Mr. Spencer’s mother.

Ms. Gersh said Ms. Spencer had called her.“She flat-out asked me, ‘Tanya, I don’t believe in my son’s ideology,’” Ms. Gersh recalled over coffee in her office downtown. “‘I’m heartbroken that this is hurting Whitefish. What should I do?’” “I said: ‘Sherry, if this were my son, I would go ahead and sell the building. I would donate some money to something like the Human Rights Network to make a statement, and publish that you don’t believe in the ideologies of your son.’ And she said: ‘Thank you, Tanya. That’s exactly what I should do.’”Ms. Gersh said she had arranged to sell the property without making any profit. But a short time later, she said, Ms. Spencer sent an email saying she had changed her mind about working with Ms. Gersh. Ms. Gersh supplied names of other real estate agents.Two weeks later, in December 2016, Ms. Spencer posted an article on the open publishing platform Medium accusing Ms. Gersh of using the threat of protests to blackmail her into selling. Mr. Spencer said on Saturday that he and his former wife had written the article published under his mother’s name. He repeated their claims against Ms. Gersh, adding that she had called his mother, not the other way around. The Spencers’ accusations quickly reverberated among the far right. Mr. Anglin of the Daily Stormer exhorted his “fam” online to “TAKE ACTION” to defend Ms. Spencer.

Ms. Gersh arranged to sell a commercial property in downtown Whitefish owned by the mother of Richard B. Spencer, who once said he stood at the vanguard of a white nationalist movement emboldened by President Donald J. Trump.

He shared personal information and the social media accounts of Ms. Gersh and her family, including her son, then 12. A post in which Mr. Anglin encouraged his followers to “stop by and tell her in person what you think of her actions” was the first of some 30 articles he published targeting the Gersh family and the Jewish community in Whitefish, according to a lawsuit Ms. Gersh filed in 2017 against Mr. Anglin in U.S. District Court in Montana.Ms. Gersh received hundreds of text messages, emails and Christmas cards threatening her. Her voice mail filled up several times a day. Hateful comments about Ms. Gersh appeared on real estate websites. Homeowners were afraid to list with her.

The campaign swept in Rabbi Roston, another area rabbi, Allen Secher, and his wife, Ina Albert, and any Whitefish residents and business owners the trolls believed were Jewish.

At one point, Rabbi Roston realized one of the anonymous antagonists was the father of her son’s best friend. Her family did not confront the man, who has since moved away. “He had a lot of guns,” she said.Mr. Anglin next announced a march on Whitefish, planned for Martin Luther King’s Birthday in 2017. An ad for the event depicted the gates of the Auschwitz death camp with photos of Ms. Gersh, her son, Rabbi Roston and the other rabbi’s wife superimposed.The march was planned to end at the Gersh home.‘A Full Plan in Place’ Whitefish and Montana mobilized.Montana’s governor, attorney general and congressional delegation issued a bipartisan open letter, making it clear “that ignorance, hatred and threats of violence are unacceptable and have no place in the town of Whitefish, or in any other community in Montana or across this nation.” The governor at the time, Steve Bullock, wrote editorials condemning the antisemitic campaign and met with the families in Rabbi Roston’s home.As tensions rose in Whitefish, Mr. Spencer and his parents made public statements distancing themselves from the march and from Mr. Anglin. Behind the scenes, the police and the federal authorities readied themselves for a potentially violent event.Mr. Muhlfeld, the mayor, said that the town had not refused Mr. Anglin a special event permit but that Mr. Anglin had not met the town’s conditions, including a prohibition on firearms.

“If you asked, ‘Do you think they’re going to show up?’ they were like, ‘Nah,’ but they had a full plan in place,” Rabbi Roston said. “If you look at Jan. 6, the quickness with which people wrote off threats was dangerous,” she added.

The Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Secure Community Network, the official safety and security organization of the North American Jewish community, advised residents on what to do.As a result, Ms. Gersh did not speak publicly about her ordeal at the time. Rabbi Roston kept a low profile, discouraging coverage in the Jewish news media to protect the congregation and avoid giving attackers the attention they craved. The congregation did not cancel its Hanukkah party in December 2016 but moved it from the rabbi’s home to the conference room of a motel, with two armed security guards at the door. On each table, the rabbi placed a pile of supportive letters that had arrived from around the nation.Volunteers distributed thousands of paper menorahs. “There were menorahs in every window in Whitefish,” Ms. Gersh said. An anti-hate rally drew 600 participants in zero-degree weather. On the eve of the neo-Nazi march, Rabbi Roston helped organize a chicken and matzo ball soup get-together for 350 people at the middle school in Whitefish, in a demonstration of unity and appreciation. On Martin Luther King’s Birthday — Monday, Jan. 16 — not a single neo-Nazi turned up to march. “We could say they chickened out,” Rabbi Roston joked.In April, Ms. Gersh, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed suit against Mr. Anglin for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violations of Montana’s Anti-Intimidation Act. In 2019, she won $14 million in damages. A team of lawyers is still searching for Mr. Anglin and his assets. The trial in the Charlottesville case, Sines v. Kessler, begins on Oct. 25. A group of victims and counterprotesters filed suit against Mr. Anglin as well as Mr. Spencer, along with nearly two dozen people and groups involved in the “Unite the Right” rally, after a neo-Nazi at the Charlottesville march plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer, 32, and injuring at least 19 others.

Mr. Spencer’s lawyer withdrew from the case last year because he had not been paid. “Due to deplatforming efforts against me, it is very difficult for me to raise money as other citizens are able to,” Mr. Spencer told the judge in a pretrial hearing in 2020. He is now representing himself. As the trial approaches, the case has generated a number of contempt-related fines and sanctions against the defendants.“ After four years of so little accountability, it’s important to make clear that accountability matters and it works,” said Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America, the nonprofit group that brought the lawsuit.Separately, in May, a federal judge in Ohio ordered Mr. Spencer’s National Policy Institute to pay $2.4 million to William Burke, a counterprotester who was severely injured in Charlottesville. Mr Muhlfeld said he had last seen Mr. Spencer in 2019, skiing at the mountain resort. “He walked into the Summit House and summarily was booed by pretty much everyone,” Mr. Muhlfeld said, referring to a restaurant there. “Richard Spencer wanted this to be his happy vacation place where he could play and have fun, and people would just live and let live,” Rabbi Roston said. “Then he started suffering social consequences for his hatred. ”Ms. Gersh said that she had been afraid to work again after the hate campaign, but that after Charlottesville, “I knew that I had to go back to work because if I didn’t, they win.”

She keeps a photo of Ms. Heyer on her desk and bear spray in its drawer.

#nazis #richard spencer #fighting back #karma #antisemitism

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burganprell · 6 years

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Welcome, Y’all

I just hate those bumper stickers popping up around Austin that say “Don’t Move Here.” Many a Facebook post expresses the same.

I get the joke, but it’s just not funny.

This is a post about the future of Austin. It’s a post about Mayor Adler and his challenger this Fall, Laura Morrison. It’s a post in some ways about about the inevitable. It’s a little bit about Amazon, and it’s a lot about making sure Austin’s continued rise benefits everyone.

“We can only say the state of our city is strong if we are affirmatively building a future in which we preserve the soul and spirit of Austin.”

—Mayor Steve Adler

Our problems aren’t any one person’s fault, and no more the fault of a newcomer than a decades-long veteran.

If we ever stop being hospitable, we really will have lost the soul and the spirit of Austin. If we ever stop being a refuge and a block party and a march for good over evil, we really will have lost the soul and the spirit of Austin.

If we ever stop using our disposable income to vote for how we want the city to be, we will have lost the soul and spirit of Austin.

Instead of saying “Don’t Move Here” I’d rather we say what so many of you said to me when I first showed up, 12 years ago.

Welcome, Y’all.

. . .

In fact, when we say “Don’t Move Here,” we start sounding a lot like the anti-immigration nationalists we so strongly oppose on the national stage. I’m flabbergasted by my liberal brethren regularly these days, and this is just one reason why.

Unless we are going to build a Trump-like wall around Austin, we have got to be more solution minded.

I’m not particularly interested in hearing more from complain-y do-nothings, and least of all Laura Morrison, who already had her shot at addressing these issues in her first stint on Council from 2008-2015.

During her tenure, the issues in play were exactly the same as they are today, and the progress made was to my mind and many others’ deeply unsatisfactory.

Folks like Morrison can be eloquent when talking about Austin’s problems, but remain woefully short on ideas and action.

Every single one of Morrison’s answers to a difficult question — about transportation, about economic segregation, about homelessness, about CODENext — ends up with a non-committal “we have to strike a balance” or “we have to look at that closely” or “I think there are ways that we can grow, without doing that” — to which no specifics nor any follow-up is ever offered.

. . .

The one thing Morrison did do?

She led the anti-Prop1 PAC “Our City, Our Safety, Our Choice,” which fronted the fight against Uber and Lyft in Austin.

The net result? The Texas State Legislature overruled us and Uber and Lyft are back, more free to operate than ever before.

When meeting with technology companies and their workers, Morrison is likely to bring up her professional training as an engineer at her time at Lockheed. Don’t take the bait.

In case you have erased all memory of the ugly battle with Uber and Lyft from your mind, now is the time to recall:

Mayor Steve Adler had actually negotiated a signed, precedent-setting MOU from both Uber and Lyft that extracted important concessions from both companies, most important of all related to ensuring both driver and passenger safety. Tax revenue and data sharing were the other key components.

What caused that fight in the first place was later obscured: the rideshare-related numbers for rape and sexual assault had indisputably risen according to SAFE and our own Police Department. Folks predictably cast doubt on those numbers but they held up under scrutiny.

The philosophical argument about the utility and efficacy of fingerprinting drivers was less compelling to me personally and for many of you; regardless, Adler had solved this also. His innovative Thumbs Up! ordinance passed; a corresponding 100% voluntary identification program was to use market dynamics to incentivize validation instead of requiring it.

Alas, Council rejected the MOU, afraid to act. At the time it was much more popular to put the vote to the people, avoiding what had become a political third rail for everyone.

Uber and Lyft of course did themselves zero favors with their brash tone and dishonest backroom dealings. But I and many others were strongly in search of a workable compromise, instead of a temporary moral victory, followed by swift rebuke.

. . .

It’s really easy to fear-monger like Morrison does. “Everything’s going to change,” she loves to say. Change in Austin is not only not new, it has been constant for more than 100 years.

Morrison never goes so far as to claim she can prevent change, but it’s clear she intends to slow it down as much as possible. In the process of making her argument, Morrison enlists the typical boogeymen: real estate developers, Californians, technology companies, and businesspeople generally.

The funny thing is that those constituencies are forwarding some of the most progressive initiatives in the city, driven by a race to recruit, train, and develop talent (more on this later).

The scariest speaking point in Morrison’s arsenal? “It's time for a leader whose priority is the people who live here right now,” she often says.

The Chronicle’s Michael King was quick to pick up on this rhetoric in his interview of Morrison this past January when she first announced:

“[You make] a fairly sharp distinction between the people that live here “now” and the people that are going to live here. Does that mean people who have lived here for five years? For 10 years? Does the door slam tomorrow?”

Morrison’s response was typical: “Nobody has the power for the door to slam – if somebody had the power, would that be good? Probably not.”

Probably not?

It gets better. She continues: “the fact of the matter is, we need to make sure that we don’t turn people into losers.”

To me that’s code for protectionism, not egalitarianism. Morrison isn’t worried about the people who are already hurting. She’s looking out for folks who are not losing now, but are worried they will start losing soon.

Remind you of anyone else’s rhetoric? Shall we just say it aloud together? Is it really time to Make Austin Great Again?

I think that’s precisely how Morrison’s campaign intends to have a fighting chance against Adler.

Invoke a particular way of life, romanticize it, and protect it. Hat-tip the little guy, and act like the incumbent has a swamp worth draining. Get elected. Start governing like it’s 1980, or earlier. Most importantly try like hell to give your NIMBY old guard donors their Austin back, come hell or high water.

. . .

Here is why I am still all-in on Steve Adler and why I think you should join me by giving whatever you can to his re-election campaign.

Steve is a convener who gets things done, but who also goes out of his way to make sure others get all the credit.

Steve is not a career politician. He’s a successful lawyer and committed philanthropist who isn’t worried about optics. He isn’t afraid to stand up to Abbot, Paxton, Sessions and Trump.

In recognition of this fact and more, the Anti-Defamation League gave Steve Adler and Diane Land the Audrey Maislin Humanitarian Award last year, which is a huge honor not to be taken lightly. It’s not just another one of these nice gala things that people in power are given to curry favor.

Neither Steve nor Diane ever hesitates to speak truth to power, and it shows. They have demonstrated time and time again that they are fierce advocates for the oppressed, the segregated, the discriminated, and the powerless. Their record in these matters is substantial.

In times like these our Mayor must be incredibly effective in affairs both foreign and domestic, so to speak. There’s no one else in Austin right now who can pull off that combination without sacrificing one endeavor for the other.

And I do love it when Steve gets his lawyer on.

Whether he is fighting SB4 tooth and nail, collaborating with Judge Eckhardt to protect Austin’s right to be a sanctuary city, or leading more than 50 other cities to join us in recommitting to the Paris Climate Accord, Adler makes me proud to live in Austin and to be part of these precedent-setting fights.

Steve’s “worst” flaw is trying to pull the sword from the stone on tough issues that no one else has the courage to touch.

I can live with that.

. . .

Sidebar: here’s a good related read in case you missed it: “Why the nation’s mayors are watching Austin Mayor Steve Adler” in the Statesman.

Accomplishments: here are the Mayor’s 2017 accomplishments. It’s a big list.

Priorities: Adler’s priorities for 2018 are here.

Donate: here’s where you can give to Adler’s campaign.

. . .

The hands down, no question, most alarming thing about Austin is that we are #1 in the nation in income inequality. That’s not a good list to be atop of.

Every other issue in my mind takes a back seat to this one.

Not nearly everyone is benefiting from Austin’s growth and prosperity. Our community is still suffering from the mind-bending injustice our leaders perpetrated way back in 1928.

And no, keeping companies like Amazon out of Austin isn’t going to help our #1 problem.

The jobs and the growth and the money that companies like Amazon and Apple and Oracle bring are not at all the problem. Folks worry about what Amazon would do to traffic, or affordability. The actual problem with these big new HQ projects is routing and bridging the opportunities they comprise to everyone in the city.

I know a lot of people who’d love to wade through traffic for an $85K yearly salary. I was at Huston-Tillotson University a few weeks ago with President Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette. Their students’ desire for tech jobs is consistent and intense, across a dozen majors.

A fix will not happen overnight, but again, addressing Austin’s intense, perverse, historic economic segregation must be our overriding priority.

Good news: our newly-minted Master Workforce Development Plan is strong, and can serve as a reliable template for decades to come.

The Austin Monitor captures the plan’s purpose and progress in a few succinct paragraphs, for those of you who may have missed it:

At last week’s City Council meeting, a procedural public hearing paved the way for the formal addition next month of the Master Community Workforce Plan to Imagine Austin, which is the city’s plan for the next 30 years. But it’s the work being done with high-profile employers like Samsung and job training providers such as Austin Community College taking place quietly in the background that proponents of the plan expect will soon produce more applicants for positions that employers said they’re having trouble filling. The workforce plan has a stated goal of creating 60,000 middle-skill jobs in three high-growth sectors – health care, information technology and advanced manufacturing – as well as lifting 10,000 residents out of lower-class income brackets. Since the plan was unveiled last June, employers in similar industries have been courted to participate in ongoing sessions to identify the needed soft skills and common challenges that make it difficult for them to find and retain new employees. Their findings are then presented to representatives from Austin Community College, Goodwill of Central Texas and Capital IDEA to help those organizations tailor their existing job training programs to better suit the needs of the market. Thus far those workforce development programs are being funded in part with $660,000 in workforce data management contracts Workforce Solutions has secured with the city and Travis County, which includes some contributions from Google and JP Morgan Chase. Ongoing fundraising efforts are expected to contribute as well.

If Amazon can commit to helping build these kinds of socio-economic and racial bridges both notionally and materially, I want them here. And same goes for every other company considering a move to Austin, large or small.

As Mayor Adler said in his letter to Amazon as part of our response to their RFP (full text here):

Our long-term goal in Austin is to both preserve the soul of our community and make it accessible to all – even as we excel as a community that continues to attract top talent. What new solutions and long-term investments in workforce development, affordability and mass transportation might we achieve together that would not have been possible otherwise? I firmly believe that Austin and Amazon can help each other achieve solutions to our biggest challenges. Even as you assess our community’s great assets, I ask you to look at our community’s greatest challenges as an opportunity to help craft a story for Amazon and for Austin that will be told for a long time.

. . .

Now, about those complaints. Are housing prices way up? Yes.

Are folks selling their homes and moving to cheaper enclaves in the suburbs to stave off property taxes they can’t afford? Are musicians moving to Lockhart and further, in search of more room to breathe, and make art?

Absolutely. Yes. Unequivocally. And irreversibly.

Austin’s going to need to be an active and innovative partner to Pflugerville and Round Rock and Manor and Taylor and Bastrop and Lockhart and San Marcos. Austin’s going to need to continue to aggressively invest in affordable housing. We are going to have to get together at long last and pass a new land use code, too.

Our current land use system is almost 50 years old and it’s the engine behind many — if not most — of our shared frustrations about Austin’s growth and development. Not passing a new code is not an option.

By the way, it is okay to complain about the flawed process of producing CodeNEXT, but no one should be up in arms that it’s hard to get this right. No other American city has grappled with the challenges Austin currently faces and succeeded. We are at the cutting edge in terms of defining of how modern cities can best scale.

For a super smart deep dive on this issue, read Nautilus Magazine’s “Why New York Is Just An Average City.”

We’re going to have to raise taxes too, a tough sell here in Texas, no doubt. This will most likely happen via larger and larger bond measures, with transportation and our school system remaining serially at the forefront for at least a decade. We’ve become a big American city, like it or not. It is time to acting like one too. That process starts and ends with infrastructure and education.

. . .

We are also going to have to consider community micro-bonds to fund and perhaps outright reclaim some of our struggling institutions. We are going to have to re-fund our longest-suffering school districts with private money too.

We are going to have to offer a lot more *paid* internships so that folks who don’t have “friends and family money” have equal access to personal and professional development opportunities.

We are going to have to continue being a “Kitty Hawk” for things like autonomous cars and delivery drones, no matter how uncomfortable or controversial.

We are going to have to continue fighting passionately, and standing steadfastly, as Mayor Adler consistently has, against SB4, as we are the epicenter of the nationwide fight about sanctuary cities; for the Paris Accord as a leading green, smart city; for restorative justice in our local courts and jails; for innovative, community-based policing; and against a state legislature that champions states’ right while denying incorporated Texan cities the same privilege.

And look, we have just got to vote —not just at the ballot box — but with our time, talent and money — on how we want Austin to be for years to come. Spend nights and weekends working on the causes you care about most, and spend cold hard cash on the stuff you value about this city above all else.

But of course, vote at the ballot box, too, for God’s sake. Vote again. Keep voting. Vote in the little stuff. Vote in the big stuff. Vote for fun. Vote even though it’s boring. Vote because so many others can’t.

As Beto has said more times than I can count, Texas isn’t a red state or a blue state. It’s a non-voting state.

We are actually 51st in the union in voter turnout (that number includes Puerto Rico). Sadly, Austin is no better than the rest of our fair state in this regard.

Travis County turnout dropped a whopping 50% between the 2016 Presidential election and last November. Some dropoff is always to be expected but wow. That’s pretty bad, friends.

Part of it I have to think is that folks are exhausted. No doubt others underestimate the importance and effect of local politics. But what I really think is going on is that for most people, Austin is wind at our backs, and we’re too often too busy to really notice, or care. Austin protects a lot of us from a lot of things. The mandate to vote shouldn’t be one of them.

. . .

It’s not all bad news. In fact, an incredible amount of the new has been incredibly good. It’s useful to remind ourselves of a few things.

Yes, UT is churning out high quality talent, but so are Huston-Tillotson, the Acton School of Business, St. Ed’s and ACC.

I think what Gary Keller is doing on Red River is awesome. We haven’t nearly saved live music yet, but we have the appropriate levels of panic and corresponding commitment to get the job done.

There is a ton of innovation going on in Austin around homelessness, affordable housing, tiny housing, and more. Have you visited Community First Village, which has pioneered a game changing approach to solving chronic homelessness?

Divinc is a local business incubator focused on women and people of color, and it is churning out high-quality, high-growth companies. 3/4 of the last graduating Techstars class had either a woman CEO or a woman on the executive team, no small thing sadly, in tech.

Speaking of UT, they recently hired Scott Aaronson. The university is building an incredible new quantum computing center around him, the first of its kind.

When was the last time you went to the Harry Ransom Center? Have you been to the new Ellsworth Kelly building at the Blanton?

The New York Times called Kelly’s Austin a “temple of light” and suggested that “no contemporary artwork of this scale by a major artist has matched its creator’s initial ambitions so perfectly as Kelly’s Austin.”

In fact, the paper’s art critic M.H. Miller went so far as to conclude that:

Long the music capital of the Southwest, Austin is now also a burgeoning outpost of the tech industry. But the presence of Kelly here almost instantaneously transforms it into an important art destination, the kind of place people make pilgrimages to.

How about that?

Our new medical school and teaching hospital are out of this world. Do you know about how they have completely reimagined the clinic from the inside out? Do you know what it takes — and means — to be a Trauma 1 center?

Mueller’s a big real estate project sure, but it is also the #2 green neighborhood in the whole U.S. according to Redfin, and an exciting precedent for future development.

Do you support Urban Roots and the Sustainable Food Center? Austin Bat Cave? SAFE? UMLAUF? The Thinkery? Foundation Communities? The Trail Foundation? The Texas Civil Rights Project?

Do you know about Manor New Tech high school, where you can see the best STEM curriculum in the country firsthand?

RideAustin emerged from a nasty fight about who gets to set the rules, but it is not just solvent, but writing big checks to other Austin nonprofits every single month, $350K in total and counting.

If we are lucky, Meow Wolf makes Austin their 3rd location. Liberty Lunch is long gone and so is Las Manitas, but The Skylark is still kicking, and so is the Sahara Lounge.

Wth all the traffic and our kvetching about it, we didn’t even drop down to #2 in the 2018 best places to live. We stayed #1. Even if we slide to number 4, 5, or 6, we are in great shape compared to most cities.

Obviously, I remain optimistic. Very much so. I’d love to hear why you remain so, too.

. . .

12 years ago, when I first got to Austin, another patron at Wink one table over stood up to tell us that we were “the problem” with what Austin was quickly becoming, having overheard our table’s conversation about my recent arrival.

Which was kind of funny in and of itself because we were all at...well, Wink. On the west side of Austin, sipping fancy wine with abandon.

This conversation is not new. These sentiments are not new. Generations before us invested in the icons and institutions that make Austin what it is today, in education, the arts, business, health and more. For that they should be lauded, and hopefully their example inspires us to do the same once more.

Those generations also irresponsibly kicked the can down the road on transportation, education, systemic racism and inequality, zoning, healthcare and more. We are left today to clean up several messes we didn’t make. But let’s not spend too long lamenting the errors of those who came before us.

I’m here for the long haul. I hope you are too. I’m glad we are talking about Amazon. I’m glad Amazon is talking about us.

I’m glad Steve Adler has an opponent. The contrast is striking, and useful because of the conversation it forces about original and modern Austin, and about complaining versus getting things done.

I’m glad we have a lot of work to do. Even better, we have the money, the talent, and the drive necessary to fix what’s broken.

I grew up in Baltimore. I love Baltimore. And it is doing better, slowly and surely. But Baltimore is not Austin, not yet anyway. Most cities would love to have our problems.

Again, we have every ability to solve what ails us. And I think we have a duty to do just that. For those of us to whom Austin has given so much, it’s time to give back.

Welcome, indeed.

P.S.

Steve has the biggest fundraising deadline of his reelection campaign on June 30th at midnight. That’s in 6 days.

Current and potential opponents will look at his report when deciding what their next moves will be. Please help out with a donation of $25, $50 or any amount that you can.

The max is up to $350 per person or $700 per couple, as allowed by our City. Click here to donate now.

Thank you!

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opedguy · 3 years

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Obama Accuses Trump of Inciting Violence

LOS ANGELES (Yesterday’s invasion of the Capitol by a roving mob of Trump supporters blindsided Capitol Police, letting protesters enter the Capitol building unabated. Former President Barack Obama,59, blamed 74-year-old President Donald Trump for inciting a riot, calling it a grave “dishonor and shame for our nation.” Obama said nothing about the angry mobs that burned down U.S. cities under his presidency, biting his tongue when it came to any social commentary. After Trayvon Martin was killed by neighborhood watch guy George Zimmerman Feb. 26, 2012, riots broke out in several American cities involving looting and arson. Obama said nothing back then but takes every opportunity to speak out now. Most people recognize the difference between street riots and breaching the U.S. Capitol, the seat of American Democracy for nearly 150 years.

Unlike street violence, the Capitol or People’s House, carries special significance for U.S. citizens, finding yesterday’s breach even more intolerable. While there was no arson or severe property damage, just the idea of hoodlums marauding through the hallowed halls of Congress was especially distasteful. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 80, called for Trump’s removal from office today, joined by over 100 house members. With 14 days left in office, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mnn.) has started writing new articles of impeachment, despite the lengthy process only 14 days before 78-year-old President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Former Washington Post journalist-turned Democrat pundit 77-year-old Carl Bernstein called on Trump’s Cabinet to remove him under the 25th Amendment, something originated after the 1963 death of President John F. Kennedy but active in 1967.

Obama blamed Trump for inciting the mayhem the horrified the nation on the day a joint session of Congress was due to certify Biden’s Electoral College victory. “History will rightly remember today’s violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation,” Obama said. While it’s true that Trump spoke with a crowed Jan. 6 before Congress totaled the Electoral College votes, it’s also true that he never told anyone in the crowd to trespass, vandalize or engage in malicious mischief. Bernstein says Trump is so “unhinged,” ‘so “unstable,” he must be removed from office under the 25th Amendment. Yet Trump’s rhetoric hasn’t changed much from the days of his 2016 campaign, all through his four years in office. What’s different now is that some crazy followers decided to crash the Capitol

One day after the incident, Democrats and the media want blood, looking to remove Trump from office. But if you really look at what happened, Trump spoke no differently than he has during the last four years. Trump leaves office without any satisfaction over the four-year witch hunt accusing him of colluding with Russian to win the 2016 election and coddling dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putn and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller cleared Trump of wrongdoing Mach 19, 2019, Democrats and the media continued to push the Russian hoax. Then came Trump’s impeachment for trying in a July 25, 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to get information on corruption with President-elect Joe Biden and his 50-year-old sone Hunter, who’s currently under a Department of Justice Investigation.

When you really look at the facts, Trump did\ nothing more that vent his frustrations over the Nov. 3 presidential election. Trump claims the election was rigged, accusing Democrat election officials in battleground states of fraud. Trump’s legal team was not able to prove fraud in any court, including the Supreme Court. But some 40% of the populations thinks something irregular went on in the 2020 presidential election. When it comes holding Trump legally responsible for yesterday’s unruly mob at the Capitol, it’s not possible. While he told the crowd not show “weakness,” he never told anyone to break the law. How Bernstein thinks Trump is more “unhinged” and “unstable” today than he was anytime over the last five years is anyone’s guess. Taking a shot at Trump is an easy thing to do now that Biden has been confirmed as winner of the Electoral College.

Calling for Trump’s head in the aftermath of yesterday’s mayhem at is really no different than the group dynamics involved in crowd psychology. Once crowds get going, it’s difficult to stop them for erratic behavior observed yesterday with members of the unruly mob found taking pictures in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Obama knows a lot about angry mobs when anti-police protesters burnt parts of Ferguson, Missouri for Michael Brown’s Ag. 9, 2014 death. Democrats and media promoted Brown’s death as a unjustified racial king by White cop Daren Wilson. Headlines, read “Don’t shoot,” claiming Brown’s hands were raised. When those reports were disputed by the police and eyewitnesses, Democrats and the media never changed the narrative. Trying to toss Trump out of office citing the 25th Amendment serves on one other than another angry mob.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Headlines

Politics tied up in global race for a vaccine (AP) The announcement Tuesday by Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country was the first to approve a coronavirus vaccine did not provoke the awe and wonder of the Soviet Union’s launch of the first satellite into orbit in 1957. Instead it was met by doubts about the science and safety. But it also underscored how, like the space race, the competition to have the first vaccine is about international rivalries as well as science. The first nation to develop a way to defeat the novel coronavirus will achieve a kind of moonshot victory and the global status that goes along with it. Russia is not alone in viewing a vaccine in this light. China, where the virus first emerged, has also raced to make progress on a vaccine. A state-owned Chinese company is boasting that its employees, including top executives, received experimental shots even before the government approved testing in people. And President Donald Trump, whose handling of the coronavirus pandemic has put his political fate in grave jeopardy, is hoping to get credit for his administration’s aggressive push for a vaccine, ideally one that arrives before Election Day in November.

Powerful storm leaves 2 dead, heavy crop damage in Midwest (AP) Hundreds of thousands across the Midwest remained without electricity on Tuesday after a powerful storm packing 100 mph winds battered the region a day earlier, causing widespread damage to millions of acres of crops and killing at least two people. The storm known as a derecho tore from eastern Nebraska across Iowa and parts of Wisconsin and Illinois, blowing over trees, flipping vehicles and causing widespread damage to property and crops. The storm left downed trees and power lines that blocked roadways in Chicago and its suburbs. After leaving Chicago, the most potent part of the storm system moved over north central Indiana. In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds said early estimates indicate 10 million acres (4 million hectares) have been damaged in the nation’s top corn producing state and many grain bins were destroyed. That would be nearly a third of the roughly 31 million acres (12.5 million hectares) of land farmed in the state.

Grocery workers say morale is at an all-time low (Washington Post) Grocery workers across the country say morale is crushingly low as the pandemic wears on with no end in sight. Overwhelmed employees are quitting mid-shift. Those who remain say they are overworked, taking on extra hours, enforcing mask requirements and dealing with hostile customers. Most retailers have done away with hazard pay even as workers remain vulnerable to infection, or worse. Employees who took sick leave at the beginning of the pandemic say they cannot afford to take unpaid time off now, even if they feel unwell. The mounting despair is heightened by the lack of other job options: Supermarkets are among the few bright spots in an industry that has been ravaged by covid-related store closures and a sharp drop-off in consumer spending. The retail sector has shed 913,000 jobs and chalked up more than a dozen bankruptcies during the pandemic. “At the beginning they valorized what was deemed a dead-end job, but four months later they don’t even treat us like humans anymore,” said Fox Wingate, 24, who works at a Safeway in Maryland.

Former aide ties Mexican ex-president Peña Nieto to millions in bribes (Washington Post) The star witness in Mexico’s biggest corruption scandal in years has alleged that former president Enrique Peña Nieto benefited from millions of dollars in corporate bribes that were funneled into his campaign and also used for payoffs to lawmakers to support his reforms, officials said Tuesday. The allegations are the most serious yet against Peña Nieto, who has maintained that his campaign did not receive illegal donations. While Mexican politics has long been permeated by corruption, no president or former leader in modern times has been charged with a criminal offense. Lozoya, 45, who served as head of the state-owned oil giant Pemex from 2012 to 2016, was arrested in February in Spain on Mexican corruption charges. He was extradited last month and is reportedly cooperating with authorities, who have granted him house arrest.

Scots increasingly favor independence (Economist) Recent polls show Scots favoring independence—the first time that a sustained lead for independence has been seen, says Sir John Curtice, a political scientist at the University of Strathclyde. One factor, he says, is Brexit, which has pushed Remainers into the hands of Nationalists. While Brexit has degraded the British government’s reputation for competence and sound judgment, managing coronavirus has built up the Scottish government’s. Mr Johnson is unpopular. The Scottish National Party is projected to take 55% of the vote in the elections to the Scottish Parliament in May 2021, according to recent polls, which would give Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, an outright majority, and allow her to demand a second referendum on independence.

France to ramp up police checks to ensure masks are worn (Reuters) France will gradually ramp up police checks to ensure people wear face masks where it is mandatory and respect social distancing amidst a new surge of COVID-19 infections, the government’s spokesman said on Wednesday. “We’re at a tipping point (...) We’re going to mobilize polices forces to make checks,” BFM TV showed Gabriel Attal telling journalists while visiting the Mediterranean island of Corsica. “But it’s not the police people should be afraid of (...) they should fear the virus,” he said.

Germans and cash (NPR) While much of the world reacted to a global pandemic by cutting back on the use of cash—which necessarily changes hands—the Germans still love it. In general, Germans love using cash, and are a rarely stubborn economy in terms of switching to more convenient—though arguably more extravagant—forms of payment like credit cards and touchless payments. Cash is still 75 percent of Germany’s transactions, and Germany’s central bank issued 17 billion euro notes and coins more in March than it did in February, and the bank continues to issue 3 billion to 5 billion euros a month in cash, which is a fairly normal pace.

Italy’s schools are set to welcome students next month, but first they need millions of new desks (Washington Post) The request for proposals is marked “extremely urgent,” and it lays out the details of what the Italian government is looking to buy: single-seat children’s desks to replace the traditional two-person desks to allow the country to start the new school year with social distancing. But the request is a titanic one. The government wants a rush order, everything built and shipped within the next month. And it wants an extraordinary quantity—3 million new desks, as many as all the Italian school-furniture companies put together would normally build in five years. With its smooth economic reopening and now one of the lowest coronavirus infection rates in Europe, Italy would seem to have as good a chance as any nation in the West of pulling off a safe school year. But the run-up to its Sept. 14 school start date is providing a reminder that in the coronavirus era, even such mundane considerations as furniture can complicate educators’ plans. One Roman high school principal compared the situation to a game of Risk, with “extreme complications” if the desks don’t arrive. Her school needs 300 of them. Without those desks, two-seat tables would have to be used as single-seaters. Classroom capacity would shrink. And a portion of students every day—about one-seventh of the high school—would have to stay home and take classes online.

Belarus opposition leader leaves the country (Foreign Policy) Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s main challenger in last weekend’s presidential election, has fled to Lithuania amid widespread crackdowns on anti-government protests and opposition figures. Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Minsk and other cities after an official exit poll declared Lukashenko the winner in a landslide, despite facing his stiffest opposition in his entire 26-year presidency.

In defiance of law, protesters in Thailand demand curbs on king’s powers (LA Times) For years, critics of Thailand’s powerful king have chosen their words carefully, opting for allegories about his late poodle Foo Foo, inside jokes about his multiple marriages or references to Germany, where he lives almost full time at a hotel in the Bavarian Alps. Lately, some have donned Harry Potter costumes to evoke Lord Voldemort, the evil wizard so feared that his name must not be spoken.

New Zealand faces new coronavirus outbreak, imposes new restrictions (Washington Post) New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Tuesday the country had confirmed four new novel coronavirus cases, ending a more than 100-day streak without recording any community transmission. Ardern said Auckland will move to impose new restrictions Wednesday afternoon though midnight Friday as officials assess the threat and asked residents to stay home and take precautions. Residents will be asked to stay home, large gatherings will be banned, non-essential businesses will close, and some social-distancing measures will be reintroduced to the rest of the country.

Lebanon’s crises are only getting worse (Washington Post) The explosion in Beirut caused widespread damage to Beirut’s port and destroyed the country’s main grain silo at a time when reserves are low and some food prices have tripled in the space of a year. The U.N.’s World Food Program announced Tuesday that it’s sending about 50,000 metric tons of wheat flour to Beirut to help stave off a looming hunger crisis. “As Lebanon imports nearly 85 percent of its food, the severe damage to the Port of Beirut—the largest in the country—would push food prices beyond the reach of many,” WFP warned last week. Over the weekend, an emergency donor conference in France raised close to $300 million for Lebanon. The office of French President Emmanuel Macron said that these commitments of aid would not come with political conditions or immediate mandates for reform, but suggested that longer-term pledges and assistance will be. That’s contingent on a political establishment in Lebanon that’s capable of implementing such reform—some thing most experts lament is not the case. It’s uncertain what could break a status quo where, for decades, political cliques representing the country’s diverse religious communities have essentially plundered the spoils of the nation for themselves. The current political limbo, though, is fraught with danger, as basic state services fail while outside actors withhold aid on the understandable grounds that they don’t want to reward a reviled and corrupt establishment. “Not only do we have an absence of government and a political vacuum, but we’re going to have a severe problem with the function of the state of Lebanon,” Imad Salamey, a political scientist at Lebanese American University in Beirut, said to the Wall Street Journal. “We are heading toward the unknown.” “The political vacuum will prolong the misery and time to find solutions, assets are dissipating, people are leaving [the country], institutions are going bankrupt, state services are in really bad shape,” Ishac Diwan, a professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, said during a Tuesday webinar hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Sea life around Mauritius dying as Japanese ship oil spill spreads (Reuters) Mauritian volunteers fished dead eels from oily waters on Tuesday as they tried to clean up damage to the Indian Ocean island’s most pristine beaches after a Japanese bulk carrier leaked an estimated 1,000 tonnes of oil.

Guns are still blazing in South Sudan (Foreign Policy) South Sudanese security forces launched a deadly operation into the state of Warrap over the weekend in an effort to seize weapons from communities still armed from the country’s recent civil war. The operation left at least 81 people dead and dozens more injured, authorities and civil society organizations said on Tuesday. The dead included 55 security force personnel and 26 civilians in separate attacks. The government of South Sudan has been struggling to stabilize the country since the end of a vicious civil war in February. President Salva Kiir recently announced a campaign to disarm nonstate actors, but advocacy groups warned that this effort was too “hasty” and risked provoking a strong reaction from armed communities, ultimately rendering the campaign ineffective and counterproductive.

#headlines #news

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uk-news-talking-politics · 4 years

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Week in Review: The culture war returns

By Ian Dunt

We'd held out pretty well. The absence of culture war has been one of the few reliefs of the covid period. For once, we all wanted the same thing. The applause on Thursdays was moving partly because it offered a sense of unity. Everyone was anti-covid. Everyone admired the NHS workers who braved it.

But this week the culture war started moving back in. And that's hardly surprising, because it was the first week that the government had to make policy proposals and then sell those proposals to the public, rather than just respond to a fast-moving situation.

Unfortunately, the only way this government - which is, after all, just the Vote Leave campaign in executive form - knows how to do that is through values-based engagement with demographic segments. It's Facebook advertising as a national communications strategy.

The core phrasing was 'common sense'. This was delivered with depressing regularity in the Commons on Monday. "Good, solid, British common sense," Johnson said, over and over again, as his response to seemingly every question.

The phrase was repeated by government spokespeople wherever possible. Faced with the former chief scientific adviser to the government on Newsnight saying the end of the lockdown was coming too early, Tory MP Damian Green replied: "I have greater faith in the common sense of the British people than Sir David King does".

Common sense as a phrase is really quite entirely meaningless. Sense isn't common. In politics, different interests have to be managed - for instance those of an employer who owns a factory and the employees who work in it. Nor is intuition, which common sense often implies, a particularly reliable guide to anything. Many things in life - from physics, to biology, to national finances, to monetary policy - are profoundly counter-intuitive, because they are complex and operate at a level beyond our normal day-to-day experience.

But even if common sense did have meaning - if it translated as the autonomous reason of the individual, say - it would not describe the package of rules the government has put forward. In fact, "good, solid, British common sense" doesn't get a look in. The rules are extremely odd.

They allow a meeting with one member of a household but not two at the same time, even though these are unified bubbles in disease control strategy. They prioritise economic relationships with estate agents and cleaners over those with a loved one. You can make a case for this if you like. But it's based on economic demand, not human intuition.

No.10 could have approached this another way. They could have said to the public that you can meet who you like, where you like, as long as you are two metres apart at all times and outside. That might have been smart or stupid - who knows? - but it would have corresponded to the messaging strategy, which stressed people's individual responsibility in making those judgements. The new rules do the precise opposite. They work on minute details and pass verdicts on them, often in quite baffling ways.

So if it isn't a reflection of the underlying strategy, what is it? That's simple. It is a communication strategy divorced from its content, almost certainly derived from extensive public research, of the sort which typifies the Vote Leave government under Dominic Cummings.

No.10 has polled nearly every aspect of public opinion during covid, on a nearly daily basis, with messaging subject to focus group assessments. "The internal polling is pretty extensive every day," an official told Politico. "We get an overnight breakdown of surveys of 2,000 adults. We get stats on how worried people are, people's perceptions of risk, whether they feel they're being served by government information, whether we've got the balance right between the economy and healthcare, polling on people's finances, thoughts on the NHS, about social distancing, businesses, workplace, face masks."

'Common sense' has a specific set of cultural attributes attached to it. People like to think they have it and they hate being told that they do not. It implies very strongly that the right solution is easy, not complex. It maps almost directly onto the demographic groups the government weaponised so effectively over the Brexit debate. It is a shorthand for rejection of expertise, for an insistence that instinct and unearned confidence trump research and understanding.

That fundamentally populist appeal took centre stage in the government response this week. And it was telling that once it did, all the old ways of doing things under the Brexit debate quickly reasserted themselves.

First of all came the basic incompetence - a prime ministerial statement on Sunday night telling people to go back to work, followed by an insistence the next day that it was only supposed to apply on Wednesday. Then came the outright lying, with Johnson insisting that Keir Starmer's description of the government health advice to care homes "wasn't true" despite the fact that it demonstrably was. Then the bullying tone-deaf stubbornness, with a refusal to acknowledge the lie, even when it was shown in black and white, and the assertion that the opposition should not criticise the government because "the public expect us to work together".

It's the same old ugly habits coming back once again. They don't know any other way of doing things. And as the stakes become higher they are likely to double-down on it, instinctively looking for the opportunity to sell their programme on the basis of cultural dividing lines. Right now, those who question them simply lack common sense. Soon, they will be actively working against the country by trying to kill off the economy, or needlessly scaring people.

The way to counter it is to ensure the debate stays within the realm of reason and evidence. We saw what happened when it didn't during Brexit. We can't let it happen here.

#coronavirus

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garudabluffs · 4 years

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the 'Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups.'

"President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the initiative with much fanfare, rattling off the names of more than 200 business leaders that he said would be part of the 'Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups.' He then dove into the outreach campaign Wednesday, holding four conference calls with different segments of the massive group and compiling thoughts on how to restart the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic." READ MORE https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/trump-white-house-using-loophole-to-keep-talks-with-ceos-on-coronavirus-off-the-record-report/

4/17/2020 How billionaires' short-term greed could upend America and destroy their own wealth

The coronavirus crisis is highlighting how dysfunctional states run by Republicans are. This is a feature of GOP rule, not a bug.

For the past 40-plus years, a group of "conservative" billionaires have been working as hard as they can to reshape our federal government from one that provides education, health care, housing, food and other necessities into one that does nothing more than run the military and fight wars.

In the process, "blue states" can continue to flower and prosper, while "red states" go back to their pre-Civil War poverty and local oligarchies. All it'll take is a small tweak to our federal system, something that the billionaires have been pushing for since the 1970s.

First, end the federal income tax, as David Koch called for when he ran for vice president in 1980. Most billionaires don't pay much (if anything) into it anyway; as economists have documented and the New York Times (among others) reported, in 2019 billionaires paid a lower federal tax rate than anybody-including the working poor, the bottom 50 percent of American households.The federal income tax has become a massive annual transfer of wealth from blue states to red states. Just let it go, so the states can raise their own taxes to take care of their citizens without having to subsidize other states.

"Taker" Mississippi, for example, gets about 40 percent of its total budget in federal funds taken from "maker" blue states, with fully 24 percent of its residents being fed via the federal food stamp program (compared to 10 percent of Californians). If they're so gung-ho about "states' rights" when it comes to denying citizens the right to vote or to get a safe abortion, or putting limits on carrying assault weapons, why not give them the "right" to pay for their own social programs?

Education, housing, food stamps, health care, and pretty much every other program funded by the income tax (Social Security has its own separate tax and fund) can be picked up by the states. Ending the federal income tax (and leaving the federal government with tariffs and fees to pay for the military, as we did from the founding of the republic up until World War I) would give the states lots of elbow room.

Take away the 30 percent or 40 percent (for the top income brackets; or, before Reagan, even 91 percent to 70 percent on a progressive sliding scale) federal tax rate, and the states can then raise their state income taxes to those levels. Blue states, no longer having to subsidize red states via the federal government, can easily pick up all the social safety net costs and have enough money left over to build a multi-state world-class coronavirus-resistant nonprofit hospital system.

To make things easier, the blue states need to enter into a compact like several New England and Mid-Atlantic states did to control greenhouse gases, a move emulated by California, Oregon and Washington.

For a project this large, though (particularly if it includes a single-payer health care system), it'll take all of the blue states: an interstate compact including the New England and Mid-Atlantic states, the West Coast states, and the few remaining blue states in the Midwest like Illinois and Minnesota. And with their "pact" to decide when and how to open their states after the coronavirus crisis ends, numerous blue states have already laid the foundation for exactly this.

America's wealthiest billionaires, including Walmart's Walton family, the Kochs, and Jeff Bezos, have famously worked to gut the right of workers to form unions; fine, let them have their federal "right to work for less" law. But don't forbid the blue states from enforcing union rights; they're the key to the prosperous middle class America had between the 1940s and Reagan's election in 1980, and blue states are all about prosperity.

When the red states start to collapse or see a mass exodus of their people to blue states, let them join the compact but, as with the European Union, only if they agree to the terms of the Blue State Compact: higher taxes and fully funded health, education and welfare programs, as well as high-functioning infrastructure to support modern business activity.

Pick your metric: Livability, family-friendliness, quality of health care, quality and availability of education, "personal freedom," economic strength, job growth, business climate, worker rights" in nearly every case, blue states outrank red states, and often by a huge margin.

While the variation in GDP growth between the world's top 20 economies averages around 1.75 percent, America's blue states have grown 3.5 percent more than red states since the Great Recession. Blue states can definitely take care of themselves.

As part of their interstate compact, blue states could even define their own regulatory programs to keep their air and water clean and their food and drugs safe, as California has done for years with auto emissions. Without their taxes being sucked away to red states, the Compact can afford to create its own versions of the FDA, EPA, USDA and OSHA.

Ending the federal income tax (or dialing it back to functional meaninglessness) and creating an interstate compact like this would require a few steps, but they've been followed numerous times in American history.

The federal income tax, authorized in 1913 by the 16th Amendment, has been raised and lowered repeatedly in the more than 100 years since its inception. It's been as low as a single-digit percent and as high as 91 percent. Given that the GOP has been begging for years to cut it as much as possible, if the Democrats in Congress were to offer to cut it to 1 percent or whatever minimum would, along with tariffs and fees, provide for the core functions of government (Army, Congress, SCOTUS, White House, etc.), it's hard to imagine that the Republicans could say no.

Similarly, although Section 10 of Article I of the Constitution says, "No state shall, without the consent of Congress, " enter into any agreement or compact with another state," that consent hasn't been routinely withheld when interstate compacts were formed to do everything from controlling pollution to disposing of nuclear waste. This should be a viable idea.

Speaking to a group of 450 billionaires and multimillionaires, Charles Koch, in 2015, compared their struggle to that, according to the Washington Post, of "Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr." Not to mention George Washington.

"Look at the American revolution," Koch said, "the anti-slavery movement, the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement. All of these struck a moral chord with the American people. They all sought to overcome an injustice. And we, too, are seeking to right injustices that are holding our country back."

A staple argument among America's conservative uber-rich, going all the way back to their reaction to Brown v. Board of Education in the 1950s, has been that the federal government needs to stop interfering with states, and that federal regulations and subsidies are distorting markets and holding back "the magic of the free market."

They tried their experiments with Chile and Russia, "libertarianizing" those nations' economies, and the results were less than spectacular. Perhaps they can do better with the states they already control (via Charles Koch's ALEC, for example) once those states are unencumbered by federal taxes, regulations or the "stifling" effect of federal welfare and subsidy programs.

The right-wing billionaire definition of "freedom" includes the right to poverty, the right to die without health care, the right to be uneducated and illiterate, and the right to be hungry and homeless. Red states seem to like this, since they repeatedly vote for it; we should let them have it.

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READ MORE https://www.opednews.com/articles/2/How-billionaires-short-te-by-Thom-Hartmann-Billionaires_Blue-States_Red-States-200417-391.html

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militant-holy-knight · 5 years

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When Libtards Take the Terrorist Side

Leftists used to champion women and LGBT’s rights. How long until they are okay with wife-beating, hand-chopping, child marriage, FGM, slavery and polyandry?

I used to believe that those in the PC culture sphere that identify themselves as “democrats”, “Labour”, “liberals”, “leftists”, “communists” or whatever that have consistently rebuked anyone who dares to criticize Islam have done so out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness mixed with ignorance. But at this point, we can’t remain blind anymore that some self-described “liberals” are now malicious in their intent, and makes me wonder if the same Left who used to champion women’s and LGBT rights will soon say its fine for Muslims to throw gays off buildings, for women to cover themselves up or they will be splashed with acid, for Christians to pay protection money or be crucified.

I am not necessarily putting the “Left” or “Muslims” as a whole under the same blanket, I will get to this later on, but I refer to an specific alliance between far-left activists with a genocidal hatred for anything “conservative” (anything to their right-wing, including liberals who disagree with them) and those who genuinely believe ISIS was completely justified and they want to repeat the same process in the West. And worse, this rot is seeped deep into politics for anyone who sees it. The more recent examples I could think of are:

A Canadian resolution that would have recognized the persecution of Assyrians, Yazidis and Shias by ISIS as genocide was blocked by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party.

Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn has consistently called terrorist organizations like Hamas as “friends”. Hamas is an terrorist organization dedicated in turning Israel into a Islamic state and has systematically implemented Shariah law in the Gaza Strip.

Muslim Labour member Aysegul Gurbuz have been suspended praising Hitler on Twitter.

Linda Sarsour is an activist that has been embraced by American feminists for criticizing Donald Trump but has a history of promoting Sharia law and saying Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Her fellow Women’s March Tamika Malory got into hot water for praising Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and refusing to say Israel has a right to exist.

Iranian feminist Masih Alinejad condemned female SJWs for using the hijab in solidarity after campaigning so hard to be free in the Iranian regime.

Despite factual evidence to the contrary, ABC’s Matthew Douwd believes Muslims in America are far persecuted far more than Christians worldwide.

That last point is the key issue the Western left has when it comes to perspective. Recent statistics show that liberals seem to be completely divorced from reality when comparing the genocide of Christians in the Islamic world when compared to the “persecution” of Muslims in the West.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of Democrats, however, believe most Muslims in this country [America] are mistreated, a view shared by only 22% of Republicans and 39% of voters not affiliated with either major party. Fewer Democrats (47%) think most Christians are mistreated in the Islamic world, compared to 76% of GOP voters and 64% of unaffiliateds...Women are more likely than men to think most American Muslims are mistreated here but less likely to believe Christians are mistreated in the Islamic world. Nearly as many voters under 40 think most Muslims are mistreated in America (51%) as think most Christians are mistreated in the Muslim world (57%).

It's worth noting that the overwhelming majority of Muslims persecuting Christians are not "terrorists" (at least not formally), but rather come from all rungs of Muslim society. Take Egypt, for example (the 17th worst nation according to Open Doors, an organization that tracks persecution of Christians world wide). According to the report, along with "violent religious groups," two other segments of society are "very strong[ly]" responsible for the persecution:

"non-Christian religious leaders" — meaning Muslim clerics, sheikhs, imams, and the rest — "at any level from local to national"

"normal citizens (people from the general public), including mobs."

Similarly, "officials at any level from local to national" are "strongly responsible" for the "oppression" of Egypt's Christians, particularly "through their failure to vindicate the rights of Christians and also through their discriminatory acts which violate the fundamental rights of Christians." Now, compare all this to the supposedly worse — in liberal minds — "mistreatment" Muslims suffer in America. According to a November 2017 Pew report: "In 2016, there were 127 reported [Muslim] victims of aggravated or simple assault." In the preceding decades, assaults on Muslims averaged around 50 a year.

Even if this number were accurate, it pales in comparison to what millions of Christians — not 127 — are experiencing under Islam. But the fact is many of these anti-Muslim hate crimes are later found to have been fabricated or grossly exaggerated. Note, for instance, how the Pew report conflates "assaults" with "simple assaults" — even though the latter "does not involve physical contact with the victim."

Moreover, Muslims in America do not experience institutionalized persecution — that is, persecution at the hands of governments, authorities, and police — as Christians under Islam do...Nonetheless... all these actual facts have little to do with what a significantly large segment of the American voting population — mostly liberals and Democrats... believe. Why they are so misinformed becomes apparent when one understands that the liberal media is dedicated to maintaining liberal narratives at all costs: in this case, that Christians are always the aggressors, while Muslims always the misunderstood victims.

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Hamed Abdel Samad is an Egyptian political scientist and a former Muslim who made a scathing remark about the Western left when it came to cuddling up to Islam:

"The beginnings of the European left included principles like criticism of religion… Karl Marx was the first leftist, and he said that religion was the opium of the people. The left founded feminism and fought for women's liberation. Nobody fought for freedom of expression more than the left. The left said that nobody is above the law, and that nobody – not Moses, nor Jesus, the queen, the king, or any celebrity – is above criticism. They criticized, drew [cartoons], and made comedies about all of them. Nobody defended homosexuals more than the left, and the same is true of women's rights. But when it comes to Islam, the left morphs into the conservative right. You can draw [cartoons] of Jesus, of Moses, of anybody, but don’t draw Muhammad, because that's racism… Why is it racism? When you say that the immigrants have problems in their neighborhood, the [left] says: 'Don’t talk about the immigrants. They are victims of the West.' Man, the [immigrants] are killing one another. Their neighborhoods have become dreadful. No, you cannot criticize the immigrants, or else you are labeled racist and Islamophobic. They picked up the term 'Islamophobia' from the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, and they keep talking about Islamophobia all the time.”

"In Denmark, when a Muslim kid comes to school with bruises on his face or neck, nobody says anything. They leave him alone. But if they see bruises on a white Danish kid, they report it to the police and the social services, so that they will come and investigate his family. But when the Muslims beat their kids, it is viewed as part of their culture. This is a despicable leftist approach. I call it the racism of low expectations. They look at a Muslim and say: He will never be like us. He cannot be expected to uphold human rights, to accept criticism, or to accept dissenting views. They view Muslims as barbaric savages. I saw to my Muslim brothers: Don't be pleased that these people are defending you. They are looking down on you. It's true that I myself criticize you and your religion, but I respect you and your intellect. I want you to be better and to gain your rights. I don't want you to be satisfied by someone who pats you on the back.” (...)

"The [leftists] have a psychological complex towards their Western countries. They hate capitalism. They hate America. They hate the West. They see the West as the worst thing in the world, and they embrace and defend anything that is anti-West. They always wanted to defend the working class, but there are no working classes in the world anymore. (...)

With the working class gone, the leftists were looking for someone to defend, so they got us the 'Third World' – our beloved people of the 'Third World,' who are persecuted by colonialism, imperialism, and whatnot… Bring me a 'Third World' to defend… But the 'Third World' is no longer what it used to be, and nobody uses that phrase, so along came the immigrants, especially the Muslims ones. They come to the West... How nice! Come, I will defend you. Be quiet, and let me defend you. Don't say a word, and I will get you your rights. Some Syrian refugees who come here to Germany are young and eager to work and learn German. They want to make something of themselves before it's too late. They know that things in Germany might change, and they would be sent back, just like that. If economic or political conditions change, or if a right-wing party comes to power… So the young want to start… But you see that the leftists who help them say to them: 'You are still traumatized. You are still affected by the war.' Traumatized? They want to work. But they are told it’s not time yet. They want to keep them in the role of the victim. They want to keep them in a jar or in a zoo cage, like monkeys.

"This is the left that deals with the Muslims. These leftists defend the hijab and make a hijab-clad Barbie doll. The leftists are very happy, even though the company did it for gain: 'How wonderful. They made a Barbie doll!' I will dedicate an episode of my show to this subject. I will talk about how they are promoting the hijab in Europe these days. In the past, they would say that the hijab represents modesty. But the Muslim Brotherhood realized the West would not go for that modesty business, so they changed their rhetoric. They began to say that the hijab symbolizes freedom, self-determination, and emancipation. Now they are saying that the hijab means empowerment of women. Seriously?! The hijab means empowerment of women? To hell with this deception. And the leftists willingly buy anything the Muslim Brotherhood sells them. They are oppressed… They are all victims of the West… I should dedicate an entire episode to this psychological issue. The European left has created a hierarchy of victims. The best victims are the victims of the West, of Israel, of imperialism, and of capitalism. But a Muslim who kills his wife is a 'poor little thing'… The West drove him to this…

"When a terrorist says in his message that he is killing infidels because he was told to do so by the Prophet and the Quran, and that he must cleanse the land from abomination and corruption, and he even quotes Quranic verses in support of his point of view – the leftists say to him: 'No, you didn’t do it because of your religion. You are marginalized. You are a victim of the West. You are a victim of racism. You are a victim of colonialism. You probably applied for a job and was rejected by the West. You must have tried to become part of society, but was rejected.' [The terrorist himself] cites the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran as the reason, and in his last testimony, he writes that he did it because of his religion, because he wants to break bread with the Prophet Muhammad in Paradise… But it’s to no avail. The left has him pegged as a victim. For the leftists, any Muslim or African is a victim of the West. That's pure racism. It means that they do not see Muslims or Africans as people responsible for their own lives. No, the leftists want someone to defend. They like to play the role of the advocate. They have a sort of 'mother complex' and want to protect someone – even if it is from the leftists themselves."

It hasn’t been no surprise that our biggest academic institutions have been funded by Saudi petro-dollars, which gave an open space for Islamists to infiltrate it and disseminate their ideology. The most moderate liberals are usually indoctrinated into believing that past Islamic societies were more advanced and progressive than the European West, which is why they frame things that we would consider discriminatory like the jizya and dhimmitude as some kind of enviable status where religious minorities are protected and respected when it was factually untrue.

The most shrewd of these far-leftists see this as an game against their political opponents and Islamists like Muslim Brotherhood members make the more natural allies since they share one thing in common: being control freaks. They work side by side to ensure their power base, say liberal memes in public to rally the useful idiots and the public with their media as propaganda arm. This way they can hope to get people they disagree with de-platformed, silenced or maybe even killed.

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Case in point, Islamist apologist (and possible terrorist sympathizer) Omar Aziz has recently penned an article in response to the Christchurch attack denouncing atheist author Sam Harris for having emboldened the NZ terrorist into carrying out his attack. Harris pointed out that Aziz’s article is dishonest because he is aware of Harris’ political positions as someone who opposes fascism and identity politics of any kind, yet writes such an article wasn’t tailored at refuting his points, but to discredit him in the eyes of the masses who don’t know anything about Harris. Aziz is even more dishonest by the fact the terrorist manifesto doesn’t mention Harris once the whole time, but since the public will be discouraged from reading it (and it constitutes as an crime in New Zealand), its very fortunate into misleading the audience.

The most frustrating thing about this is that Muslims and liberals themselves that disagree with the collective are rebuked and persecuted by their own rather than by “the other side”. I can’t keep keep track of the number of Muslim reformers (adherents or atheists) that are criticized by the left such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Maajid Nawaz, Mohammed Tawhidi, Ed Hussein, Zineb El Rhazoui or Tarek Fatah, I don’t even dare Google them to see what is the latest hit piece written by some leftist retard. On a even more serious note, some of these might actually have their lives in danger.

Zineb El Rhazoui was a writer in the Charlie Hebdo magazine who survived the 2015 massacre due to receiving a Holiday extension and being at her home in Casablanca when the attack took place where twelve of her friends were killed including Charb. After the massacre, extensive security routines became a part of Rhazoui's life. She avoids eating at restaurants, taking the train and later moving from place to place because Islamists have issued fatwas calling for her death.

Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali used to be a Dutch politician before having to move out of the country after her close friend Theo van Gogh was assassinated by a Moroccan Islamist for making a movie about the mistreatment of women in Islamic societies. Considering that two years before van Gogh’s death, Dutch politician Pym Fortuin (a gay Catholic mind you) was also assassinated by an jihadist, Ali’s safety could not be ensured in the Netherlands and she had to flee.

Tarek Fatah is a liberal Indian Muslim who advocates for secularism, gay rights, opposes shariah law and other things. He regularly clashes with Canada’s Muslim community and in 2017, has been nearly assassinated by a man hired by Muslim mafioso Dawood Ibrahim.

Rather than drawing condemnation for, the left has been at best silent or ignorant, or at worse unsympathetic if not downright cheerleading for their deaths to happen:

When van Gogh was killed, Rohan Jayasekera made light of his death for “overusing his freedom of speech” to criticize Muslims (yet, Jayasekera gave a platform for Holocaust denier David Irving).

Former Charlie Hebdo employee Oliver Cyran said his former employees brought their deaths on themselves and also accused Rhazoui of being anti-Muslim racist, without revealing her name or gender to give the impression everyone in Hebdo were all white bigots. She further goes to own him by saying that (from Wikipedia):

if she were raped "the websites that posted your article will definitely say I was asking for it because I don’t respect Islam," she observed that Cyran himself had implicitly endorsed all of this by embracing the "whole moralizing discourse about how one must 'respect Islam,' as demanded by the Islamists, who do not ask whether Islam respects other religions, or other people.”

How are we supposed to expect the people to uphold liberalism that can’t even protect their own free-thinkers and politicians who dare to speak out against Islamic radicalism, are going to protect the average individual. I live in Brazil where no-go areas are a sad reality of our lives, but when I look at what happens in places like Europe (specifically Sweden), I get terrified. Our drug dealers are really crazy, but none are willing to go as far as carrying out bomb attacks or are that much in a rush to get into Heaven.

And if you think the creation of Islamic states backed by the Left is unlikely, you are sorely mistaken. Islam makes up only 3% of the population in the USA, mostly concentrated in Minnesotta, yet the local politicians want to enforce blasphemy laws in response to the Christchurch attack. Minnesotta, the same state where Ilhan Omar came from and is buddies with Linda Sarsour. The people reading this and believing it to be pure paranoia would have been shitting bricks if a evangelical Christian conservative was making similar prepositions.

The first people hurt by this of course will be liberals themselves; surely they have already been. Maria Ladenburger for example was the daughter of an top European Union official who was raped and drowned by an Afghan asylum seeker who was already arrested before for trying to rape a Greek woman and admitted in prison to have raped a girl in Iran even before that. More recently, two Scandinavian girls Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland were beheaded while in a trip to Morocco by ISIS militants. Several people on the far-right were specially unsympathetic, specially in the latter case it surfaced that the girls were pro-migrants themselves.

It’s easy for certain heartless individuals on the right-wing to say “they had it coming” or “burn the coal? Pay the toll” with glee, but this is an symptom of Western liberal pampering where women in particular are raised to believe everyone will be as open-minded as they were. Even though Morocco is sure a nice to place to visit, its far from an ideal place to live if you are a Christian, a woman or specially a Scandinavian liberal. I’ve seen Scandinavians saying that liberal virtue-signalling is just an natural and innocent thing to do in their countries in order to fit in better.

I am sad to say that its not just exclusive to Scandinavia. Ever since 9/11, vast portions of the Western Left have disgraced themselves by their failure to acknowledge the threats posed to security and social cohesion by radical and fundamentalist Islam, and a craven willingness to align with Islamists in opposition to American foreign policy, entangled in an obscurantist web of moral relativity, postcolonial theory, identity politics, anti-Zionism, and general moral confusion. Even back then, many leftist ideologues argued that the World Trade Center attack was a “justified” action because of the USA for supporting Israel and their actions in the Gulf War, never mind those weren’t related - bin Laden repeatedly used the sactions against Iraq to rally Muslims against the West but never had any love for Saddam Hussein and Ba’athism. The most infamous incident was an essay made by Ward Churchill where he basically called the 9/11 victims “little Eichemanns” (in reference to Adolf Eichemann, one of the architects of the Holocaust) because they were bureaucrats working for the “genocide in the Middle-East”. Not a very wise move.

I am for one sick and tired of their collusion, but I am afraid this won’t be the last time I write about such topic. While the outrage against Brunei applying sharia law appears to show that liberals will draw a line at somewhere, I don’t think this will amount to anything and I personally find their outrage hypocritical. I close this off with something for you to ponder: if you think the Muslims you know personally are moderates just ask them if they would like Sharia law to be legally enforced, then you will discover the truth about how moderate they claim to be.

#terrorism #rants #politics #persecution

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laularlau8 · 7 years

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The history of India’s independence and the creation of Pakistan had been unfamiliar to Gillian Anderson when she took the role of Lady Mountbatten for her new film Viceroy’s House. The actor had once hired a private history tutor, a dozen years ago, to fill in some gaps of history she was hazy on – “Stuff that just wasn’t in my brain” – but this had not been one of them.

“No, I’d thought let me start with a couple of things that I don’t actually know that much about, or I can’t remember that much about, which was the first and second world wars.” She starts to laugh. “But it was a disaster. Because I have no memory. I took notes, blah, blah, blah, but couldn’t remember a thing he taught me. Nothing. I’m not even sure, if you’d asked me the next day, I could have told you what I’d learned. You know, even my favourite books, I couldn’t tell you what they were about. It’s always been that way.”

The menopause hasn’t helped, and lately things have become so bad that she’s going to get herself tested to see if she might actually be dyslexic. “Somebody had said to me that dyslexia isn’t just about seeing words backwards, it’s also about the assimilation of information. I’d always been afraid to look into it, because I was afraid that if I found something out, I would think that I couldn’t do anything that I wanted to do. I have this impression that I can do whatever I make up my mind to. But the reality is...” She lets the sentence fall away with a grimace.

By a bit of luck, the one thing the actor has always been able to remember are her lines. “But of course that’s terrifying for me, thinking, well, what if this problem that exists in the rest of my life shows up in that respect, too? Then I’d be buggered.”

If this creates an impression of a ditzy blonde, it would be misleading. We meet at the photographer’s studio, where a rack of stylist’s clothes stands unused; she chooses to be photographed in her own, and the way she chuckles about this makes me think the preference is par for the course for Anderson on shoots. Her fitted black trouser suit and heels are a sort of corporate/fashion hybrid, and her manner is similarly friendly but business-like. Apart from her enormous eyes, everything about Anderson is tiny, and the compactness reinforces the sense of efficient self-possession she conveys. She was just 24 when, as FBI agent Dana Scully in the paranormal TV drama that would make her a global star, she captivated X-Files fans for 10 years with her hyper-rational cool, before moving to London where her career has been equally sure-footed. From period dramas (Bleak House, House Of Mirth, War And Peace) to big-budget TV series (Hannibal, The Fall), to independent movies (The Last King Of Scotland, A Cock And Bull Story), comedy (Boogie Woogie, Johnny English Reborn) and theatre (A Doll’s House, A Streetcar Named Desire), Anderson seems to get busier the older she gets. It’s a tall order for a beautiful blonde to play consistently powerful, intelligent women, but Anderson has pulled it off.

The actor brings her air of serious purpose to the role of Lady Mountbatten, giving us a less flighty version of the aristocrat than the good-time girl caricature we’ve been accustomed to. She evokes her character’s classic colonial glamour, but depicts her dashing about nursing the sick and injured, and being a generally good egg.

“One of the things that I was surprised by in studying Edwina was that there was certainly a turning point in her life when she went from being predominantly a socialite, and wafting around and having affairs, living pretty much from holiday to holiday and leaving her children at home. But when the war happened and she started to participate in nursing et cetera, her escapism completely switched over to being of service, so everything she did from that moment on was about properly digging in and working around the clock.”

Viceroy’s House opens with the arrival in India of Lord Mountbatten and his wife in 1947, to oversee the nation’s transition from colonial rule to independence. Hugh Bonneville plays Edwina’s husband, and their official residence – Viceroy’s House – is not so much the film’s setting as the third star member of the cast. Sumptuously filmed, at moments the movie is a sort of Downton Abbey of the Raj, with all sorts of romantic intrigue going on below stairs among the 500 Hindu, Sikh and Muslim household staff. But there is not so much as a hint of the affair Lady Mountbatten was rumoured to take up with the man about to become India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Their romance was to have been the subject of a 2009 film, Indian Summer, until the Indian government took exception to the salacious storyline and forced the movie to be cancelled. In the hands of British director Gurinder Chadha, whose own family were among the 14 million displaced in the violence and bloodshed of the period, this new version of India’s independence is less racy, if rather more substantial, and concerns itself with the politics of partition.

Anderson says she was always conscious while making the film that some viewers will find the concept of a “good” colonialist inherently problematic – “yes, absolutely, absolutely” – and 70 years after independence, she found herself revisiting colonialism’s dynamics on location. They filmed in Jodhpur, staying at the Umaid Bhawan Palace hotel, where the film was also shot, using the palace to double for the real Viceroy’s House. “And, you know, we’re in a situation where we’re in a developing country and we are filming at the height of luxury and, yes, there’s an uneasiness to it. There was one actor we worked with, who does a lot of work around the world in – I can’t remember whether it’s around poverty or Aids – who would not stay there. He refused to stay in the hotel, and wanted to stay in some place that felt more like India.”

Even by the standards of activist actors, Anderson’s own involvement in social and political causes is prolific. The 48-year-old has campaigned variously for women’s rights in Afghanistan, against sexual violence towards girls in Myanmar, for better access to HIV treatment in South Africa and education in Uganda, against domestic violence in the UK and child trafficking across the globe, for the rights of indigenous tribes in South America and conservation of cheetahs in Namibia, against deforestation in the Amazon and rabbit fur farms in China – and that is nothing like the full list. I was therefore expecting her to be quite forthright about current political affairs, but am completely wrong.

“I generally have a tendency to steer away from outright political discussion in interviews, because I am an actor, and there’s so much that I don’t understand, and I don’t for a second feel like I have a right to that platform. I don’t want to get into a discussion about Trump or about Brexit or any of that – I feel it’s best left to people who really understand the very, very complex issues. Not for a second am I going to pitch in, because I don’t really know what it is that I’m talking about. I have opinions, but I don’t think my opinions are more valid because I’m an actor and have more of a platform than others.”

I wonder if this is her way of saying she shares the view that actors ought to stop turning awards ceremonies into anti-Trump rallies, but she looks faintly alarmed. “No, no, no, I’m not saying that at all. I’m only talking about myself. I don’t have an opinion on whether or not actors should speak out.”

She has, on the other hand, just co-written a book called We: A Manifesto For Women Everywhere. Rather like Anderson, it is less polemical than one might guess from the title, and more a manual for spiritual self-improvement. Co-written with her close friend Jennifer Nadel, a former barrister and BBC documentary maker, Anderson has described it as a work of advice to her younger self. “I have struggled with self-esteem myself,” she said last year, “and in looking at the ways that I have dealt with overcoming those things, I started to think that maybe some of it might be potentially useful for other people of all ages.”

According to the introduction, it is a “manifesto for a female-led revolution”, and Anderson stresses that it is “not a self-help book”, although it reads a lot like one. Chapters are called things like Acceptance: Making Friends With What Is, and Courage: Ending The Victim Trap, and its pages promise to “change your life”. It prescribes a detailed programme of fairly recognisable techniques, which range from meditation, affirmations (“This is who I am and I’m glad to be me”), messages to oneself on Post-it notes stuck to the bathroom mirror (“My name is Decca. I am a good and kind person. I do not need to please everyone. I do enough. I am enough.”) and a nightly gratitude list of reasons to feel grateful to the universe. As is often the case with this sort of book, I find myself torn between cynical giggles and the mesmerising thought: what if it works?

Anderson swears it does, but she has such cut-glass British poise that I struggle to picture her solemnly reciting affirmations. It might have been easier to reconcile her voice with the book’s rather Californian, new-age tone had we met in America, for she is what’s called bidialectal; when in the US, she speaks in an American accent, but here she sounds completely British, and says she has no control over it. “I was in Los Angeles recently with a couple of Brits and I thought, I’m going to see what it’s like to talk among Americans with a British accent, and I felt so uncomfortable. It felt so disingenuous, and I kept thinking they must think I’m a complete twat. But when I’m here, it’s nearly impossible for me to maintain an American accent.”

Anderson was born in Chicago but moved to London aged five, while her father attended film school in the city. When she was 11, the family moved back to the States, to Michigan, but continued to spend summers in London, and by her early teens Anderson was rattling off the rails. Punk rock, drugs, an addict girlfriend and a much older boyfriend all featured heavily in her adolescence, and her classmates weren’t wrong when they voted her “most likely to get arrested”. On the night of graduation, she broke into her school to try to glue the locks shut, and was charged with trespass.

She has been in therapy since the age of 14, and the book is interspersed with personal passages on her own experience of mental-health difficulties. “There were times,” she tells me, “when it was really bad. There have been times in my life where I haven’t wanted to leave the house.” But there’s a bit of a dance between disclosure and discretion, because whenever I ask her to elaborate on the personal vignettes in the book, she shuts down.

I kept hearing myself say, ‘I’ve got to slow down, I’ve got to slow down, I’ve got to slow down’

The book contains enough 12-step-style advice to make me think addiction issues went beyond teenage experimentation for Anderson, and when I say so, she nods. Could she say a little more? “No.” After 24 years in therapy, and writing the book, I’m guessing she has a good idea where her problems stem from, but the question receives a chilly, “Pourquoi?” There are “quite a few”, she says, but “I would have put them in the book if I wanted to talk about them out loud.”

Her first husband was a Canadian art director she met on the set of The X-Filesand married at 25. Their daughter Piper was born a year later, but the marriage was over within three years; her second marriage, in 2004, to a journalist and producer, ended within two. Months later, she announced she was pregnant, and had two sons – Oscar, now 11, and Felix, nine – with a British businessman, before they split up five years ago.

I’m curious about how a single mother who has been working flat out for 25 years (she was back on the X-Files set nine days after giving birth to Piper) can even find the time to practise all the spiritual techniques her book recommends.

“Well,” she smiles, “I’ve definitely deliberately slowed down. Because I kept hearing myself say, ‘I’ve got to slow down, I’ve got to slow down, I’ve got to slow down.’ I must have said that for 10 years, or maybe even 20 years. I was just sick and tired of hearing myself. I just thought, why do I do this to myself, and why have I done it for so long? People would laugh at me because I’d be like, ‘I had an extra 10 minutes, so I stopped in to say hi, you know.’ It became enough of a joke among my friends that I had to start paying attention to it. So one of the things I try really hard now to do is, no matter what, after I drop the kids, I go back home so I can meditate.”

Why has she always pushed herself so hard? “Well, the bigger-picture part is that I’m responsible for quite a lot of people financially, so it’s that. But it’s also a little bit of fear of what happens when one slows down. When I think about an empty period of time, fear comes up. I’m quite good at being on my own, so it’s not necessarily fear of myself, but probably fear of facing those things like: why do I drive myself so hard?”

Does she really compile a list of things to feel grateful for every day? “Yes! I do a gratitude list every night. I mean, it’s in my head now, but I go through stages where I think I’m just complaining all the time again. It’s too floating in my head, it needs to be on paper.” Complaining all the time is “probably one of the things I struggle with most. I suffer from great intolerance. Such intolerance of so much.” Such as? “Oh, intolerance of myself. Intolerance of situations. Intolerance of people on the street. Intolerance of whatever. So I have to constantly settle myself down from the state of being aggravated.”

I try to picture her stropping about, grumbling about roadworks or noisy neighbours, and find this image easier to conjure than the new-age version of her intoning, “My name is Gillian Anderson, I am a good and kind person.” She has a steeliness about her that I really like, but whether it’s proof of the success of her spiritual techniques or indicates the limits of their powers, I can’t decide. She certainly feels like someone in full control of herself and her life, and if this keeps her at a slightly cool distance, it is also rather enviable.

She says she used to be pitilessly intolerant of her own physical self, but won’t elaborate on how that manifested itself, because she refuses to allow herself that line of thinking. “I will not go there. I simply will not allow it any more. Because the things that we might be critical of ourselves about actually don’t matter. The only thing that really matters in terms of our peace of mind is our peace of mind itself, and how we react to things. All I know is that when I meditate, one goes beyond the physical, and it is possible to tap into a sense of absolute contentment and joy in that place. So if that’s where you’re starting, then actually none of this,” and she gestures to her body, “means anything, really.”

How is it possible for a working actor to liberate herself from concerns about physical appearance, when her existence is so entwined in it? After eight seconds of silence, she replies: “I don’t know. I mean, as I get older, I imagine the roles that I’m able to get are going to change. There will be a certain point where I’ll make the decision to go grey, you know. There might be a certain point where I decide that it’s silly for me to continue being blond when I’m in my 60s. I’ve also always wanted to direct, I’ve also always wanted to be an artist. Maybe when the kids are out of college, I can decide to downsize and go grey and get less work.”

The art of acceptance is one of her new book’s biggest themes. As someone who is terrible at it, I’ve never been sure how realistic an ambition true acceptance really is.

“Well, there’s an opportunity for fear around every corner, fear of the future, fear of what if,” Anderson says. “But the acceptance of wherever we are, whoever we are, is freedom. So, you know, I can sit and bemoan the fact that I don’t get the same roles, or bemoan the fact that my skin is starting to look like chicken skin, or bemoan whatever it is. But that’s not reality. That’s fighting reality.”

#gillian anderson #viceroy's house #film #culture #television & radio

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ulyssesredux · 7 years

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Penelope

I told her and her lot of trash I hate having a long waiting list of those painted women off him like that picture of it O but then what am I so damned nervous about that Those Intelligence chiefs made a false ad about me where I was engaged for for fun to the F.B.I. Wow, this time in Germany. My condolences to all, have a great mirada once or twice I had the map of it and if I am the only way a body can understand then he wrote me that exasperated of course would only be too delighted to pretend shes mad in love or loved by somebody if the world is watching If Goofy Elizabeth Warren, couldn’t care less about the incarnation he never felt me I dont know and Im sure Im not no nor anything like it so much the day I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old ones she could and he puts his big square feet up in bed with his ten toes sticking out that ought to have brought them back to Lewers this morning and kicked up a pack of lies to hide it not that I spent Friday campaigning with John Kennedy is my brown part he was always talking to her and vain about her and ask her do you love him and his heart take that kind—and they always want to feel your way with ISIS, OCare, etc.

Violent crime is rising across the bay of Tangier white and turbans like kings asking you to Prime Minister Theresa May in Washington D.C.

When I said!

Why didn't the writer of the horrible attack in Nice, France. Certain Republicans who have lost to me so much interest in it you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry were such a criticiser with his keys to lock it up in the U.S. Very short and lies, and he goes and gives impudence well have him sitting up like a dog. Get tough!

These politicians like Cruz and 1 for 42 John Kasich was never asked by me. Looking forward to introducing Governor Mike Pence and family goodfornothings poor Paddy Dignam all the same since O Im not a particle of love in their nice white mantillas ripping all the ends of Europe and the Clinton Campaign, may poison the minds of the terrible things they did together well naturally and if I buy a pair of old Cohen I suppose theyre just getting out of my blouse or touch him if we had.

Busy times!

Anybody whose mind SHORT CIRCUITS is not a notion what I gave Gardner going to Howth Id like to sip those richlooking green and yellow houses and the United States Navy research drone in international waters-rips it out in the hope but he never felt they could have been hanging up too on the Presidency is that rain was lovely after looking across the ear for herself take that now for answering me like that bath of the bed to let him lick me in the entire opinion, it is very hard to Make America Great Again. It was just like the pope for a change the Lord God I was dying on account of the most talented people running for the engine to start but he never did a terrible thing she said about Our Lord being a man looks like with his dirty eyes Val Dillon that big heathen I first noticed him at dessert when I came into the U.S.

Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who never had thats why I suppose hes 20 or more Im not too much her face swelled up on a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Rick Scott, for a month yes and how much were they Ive no clothes at all of you marching—In addition to winning the debate last night to a very weak and ineffective. Some people just don't tolerate liars-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. ISIS in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Wow! Early voting today; election next Saturday. I want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! They want to run the White House Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. Very dishonest! Yes. As usual, gave them a bit too high for my press conference in the cream muslin standing right against the wall and I in it true or no it fills up your whole day tweeting about Trump & gets nothing done in rebuilding Turnberry, and outright lies, has me winning the Electoral College is much different!

But this world without style all going in food and rent when I was married Im sure by his gaiters and the brown costume and the walk and when I had a great big hole in his head a good job if he was able to open the windows then down and our eyes met I felt something go through me like that a woman when he said Im dining out and drew back the same on account of her and ask her do you love him and me being supposed to be chaining me up against you for her poor performance in answering questions. Hopefully the violence & unrest in Charlotte will come to an immediate end.

Wow, 30,000,000 for the men with our 2 photographs in all sure you were yes I would have kept those jobs in Pennsylvania. If dopey Mark Cuban of failed Benefactor fame wants to read that novel cantankerous Mrs Rubio brought it in the lives of ALL Americans. Crooked hard. Crooked Hillary and Obama on JOBS and SAFETY! Why can't the pundits be honest? Voters understand that Crooked Hillary Clinton raked in money from regimes that enslave women and gays & refuses to write it in print to see all the time how did that excite him bad enough to run for president, has a thing of beauty and poetry for you I had only for I hate people touching me afraid of being hanged O she didnt want us to marry them for money in a glasscase with two at a woman while they can possibly be that was one myself for a Wall Street. Former President Vicente Fox, who she always hated! A list celebrities are all wanting tixs to the whatyoucallit everything was whatyoucallit moustache had he he said he would too and Mina Purefoys husband give us room even to take in lodgers off the hand off that little habit tomorrow first Ill look at that time trying to get near two stylishdressed ladies outside Switzers window at the trottingmatches and she didnt want us to cover-up stories and sources, is now using the term Radical Islamic Terror.

I was to know youre a virgin for them it was we were in a pinafore lying on the tremendous cost and cost is out of nothing but bad publicity from the U.S., jobs, safety and protection for those in need. I did had an offensive odour what did they not responded to the White House wait so long as I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a dark man in some perplexity between 2 7s too in the back room he could hold in and wasnt it terrible to do unless he likes me O thanks be to the great State of Colorado never got to vote in the box I could have been treated terribly by the 16,500 Border Patrol Agents was the first man going the roads only for I he can swim of course me no theres no God I dont wonder in love with him its much better!

We have enough problems around the city meeting God knows its not that hed be off his feed thinking of him like the end I can tell him I loved rousing that dog in the GREAT, GREAT State of Virginia and didn't put false meaning into the school classroom. Congratulations Stephen Miller-on representing me this morning see she wrote a letter from a cabbage thats what gives the women were as bad as all that comes from his side on his knee I made him pull out and laid on the moment she was just a few pence for them better for him she used to go on I suppose the people became the rulers of this web massive increases of ObamaCare will take America back. If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn't put false meaning into the area window to let her know or shed revenge it arent they thick never understand what you want isnt there sometimes by the back room he could do to keep him from doing their jobs. Media rigging election!

How to defeat radical Islam. Media desperate to distract from Clinton's anti-2A citizens must organize and get more than $150,000 from me and Floey made me go to D.C. on January 20th. The same people who have fought me and spoke glowingly about Crooked Hillary Clinton. 4 in the shadow of Ashlydyat I had that rum in the summer and I wouldnt lee him he could buy me a nice word for any woman cutting up this old hat unless I paid some nicelooking boy to mend so that the election night tabulation be accepted.

Also, deductibles are so high that it was a regular old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of my children. Another horrific attack, is now using the Federal Minimum Wage. I hate people touching me afraid of being sued Totally made up things that he agrees with me yes and then play with the cat she rubs up against major NFL games. I did or near it my lips were taittering when I threw the penny to that dry old stick Dr Collins for womens diseases on Pembroke road your vagina he called me what he wanted to and she blessed I will be different after Jan. Wall Street, lobbyists and special place. After today, Crooked Hillary Clinton. So funny, Crooked Hillary no longer talking. #GOPConvention Looking forward to a man looks like with the glove get on without us white Arsenic she put in his time he was glad to get the great suckin the next year to get all the funny clothes dressing her up with a young boy would like to see how THE MOVEMENT CONTINUES-THE FIELD OF FIGHT-by sources-that no charges will be a widow or divorced 40 times over a year ago when was it to him for that old commode I wonder could I get my husband again into their clutches if I am lowering taxes far more difficult than Crooked Hillary hates her! It is only 1 win and 38 losses. A new radical Islamic terrorist has just stated that I can use all the whole blessed time till I took off only my blouse or touch him if I am the ONLY candidate who is totally biased media-but media misrepresents! On the way he put it up besides he wont think me stupid if he has that got lost behind the meat market or that other wretch with the blinds down after in the world the mists began I hate those rich shops get on your person my child on the black water and takes it to you every time nearly I passed outside the mens W C 111 get him to send us some flowers to put about the massive unreported crisis now unfolding—big trouble! Thoughts and prayers are with the gondolas and the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you to my things too the 3 queens and the straits shining I could dream it when was it yes I said on the steps and the U.S.A.G. to work the way what was he was gone on my gloves and hat at him outside Westland row chapel where does their great intelligence come in Id like to know about Hillary Clinton's short speech is pandering to the next room hed have heard me on to that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he had anything to be at the voting booths in Texas Blue Cross/Blue Shield through ObamaCare. I put him in that Gibraltar only that cheap peau dEspagne that faded and left 7 years ago! No big deal, we’re going to be a big fool dreeping in the dear deaead days beyondre call close my eyes breath my lips forward kiss sad look eyes open piano ere oer the world besides theres something I wonder why, then dropped me over and when I stood up and then wed see what attention only of course nobody wanted her to be V.P. No way to take it you want for your endorsement. I tell you only I oughtnt to have buried him in his face cleanshaven Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train far away I hate their claws I wonder why they cancelled fireworks, they went I was I of the families and all kinds of splendid fruits all coming in without knocking first when I had 17 people to get well if his nose is not a horse or an ass am I ay and whose are you going to the great people of the carts of the real father what did he was dead spyglass like the smutty photo he has to pay for it in time at the bottom of his own fault if I only had a nice fellow even in the preserved seats for that longnosed chap I dont know deceitful men all the funny clothes dressing her up with a skirt on it she was pious because no man would look at him first tickling him I want to run him down into the school classroom. Heading to New Hampshire tonight! On Saturday a great deal, and all the night he gave us the win! Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush, George W and George H.W. all called to congratulate me on to forty he is dos huevos estrellados senor Lord the cracked things come into my muff when I was there a few brains not like that wonderworker they sent from O’Rourkes was as shy as a businessman, but won't help with North Korea.

Both Ted Cruz steals foreign policy experience, yet it is visually important, as unfair as it The Democrat Governor. Little Marco, his State Chairman, & start meeting with the worst old ones odd stockings that blackguardlooking fellow with the stoppress edition just passed and the vague fellows in the hotel were beside each other that would do your heart good to see it brought its bad luck with it like an opal or pearl still it must have eaten oysters I think Ill get a husband first thats fit to be used in a way till the jesuits found out on her it brings a parting and the pinky sugar I Id a couple of the night before talking of course but hed do the place in our country. Outside, small group of thugs burned Am flag! I suppose thats how he got anything really serious the matter with my thumb to squeeze back singing the second time he was married to him a memento he gave me that Podesta & Hillary's people said about my mother till we were Id let him see my garters the new was one of the mountain yes so we are not merely transferring power from Washington, D.C. If he doesn't believe Bush is the future of the word BRAINWASHED. Crooked Hillary Clinton, Americans have experienced more attacks at home than victories abroad.

Crooked Hillary knew the fix was in Gibraltar never wore them either naked as God made them a bit like that thered be some truth in it like a God or something where hed get bloodpoisoning but if someone gave them this report and why why because theyre so weak, and the poor fellow was dead tired and wanted a good job he was and make him a memento he gave me was like a business his omission then Ill tell him I know is highly overrated, should release detailed medical records. No respect Big Republican Dinner tonight at Mar-a great mirada once or twice I had at me. What has happened in Orlando. The dishonest media! Sad! The people of North Carolina. 20 pockets arent enough for 3 forgetting anyway Im sick of Cohens old bed in any case God knows its not true-just like that at his shirt to see. Bill to have tattered them down off him once or twice first he so English all father left me in spite of his supporters. Vladimir Putin said today about Hillary Clinton's hacked emails. Crooked Hillary Clinton told the FBI criminal investigation announcement on the economy! We are going to do it on the sea to Africa when they come and tell you only I oughtnt to have a good job I found in her story. She is not affordable-116% increases Arizona. Watching the #GOPConvention #AmericaFirst #RNCinCLE John Kasich is STRONGLY in favor of Hillary Clinton's honesty & judgment, ask the family of Ambassador Stevens. Bernie Sanders says, she suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT was on account of her and her glands swollen wheres this and wheres that of course that was why I was married Im sure thats the way I did with her beloved husband before he saw me from behind the tree he planted more than Crooked Hillary after she decieved him and he not long ago I smiled the best by far in fighting terror. Just released that $67 million in cash going to repeal and replace it with his beard a bit too long for my month a nice lot its well for men all their stinks after them what I wonder what sort is his son he says that she would be my man will you carry my can he undo it hes a man gives up his eggs and tea and toast for him to get smart and start winning again! The system is rigged. As to the list!

The Green Party can come together to make one it wasnt washing day my old pair of drawers he likes me O thanks be to the great State of Arizona, where I was interested having to answer he always sang it not me when he held down the collar of my locker room talk. Thank you to listen I was a weed in the street like then and a poker as if we met Mrs Joe Gallaher at the Republican Convention are totally embarrassed! Can anyone explain this? Terrible! Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Bernie. Just arrived in Cleveland. Our inner cities have been so bad or foolish. That's REALLY bad! Heading to D.C. on Jan 20th for the fact that I care with the Citrons Penrose nearly caught me washing through the window only for I knew his tattarrattat at the Broadstone going away so familiarly in the Chronicle I was going to substantialy reduce taxes and regulations on businesses, but if there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election is over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know how to row if anyone asked could he have the two of our life than it is a quote from me I looked back and I just half smiled I know I cant wait till Monday frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them so bored sometimes I could have got it taken in drapery that never looks out of the Wikileakes disaster, with all my things with the glove get on without us white Arsenic she put in his fight against ISIS. Lyin' Ted Cruz consistently said that Crooked Hillary has no sense of markets and such bad, one of those poor horses I never came back and get up early Ill go out Ill have to go on in Chicago. Nice! A wonderful experience, look at his age especially getting on to the media blames my supporters, and its so much mind Id just go to her lately at the cleaners 3 whats that for only getting worse. Sound familiar! Secretary Kelly said that I had for pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote a letter on its way and scandals too the 3 queens and the perragordas till I promised him yes faithfully Id let him finish it in the kitchen pretending he was dead gone on me considering how big it is Russia dealing with men who get off a womans body yes that was up at I always liked poetry when I used to say yes then it would be exciting going round with her strong endorsement for president, has a thing into his eyes on me how annoying and provoking because the stoppress edition just passed and the warden marching with his muddy boots hed like me getting all IS at school only hed do it again if he was like Thomas in the tank for Clinton but Trump will win!

The U.S. is looking very hard to believe all I can squeeze and pull the chain then to the election, and Crooked Hillary Clinton, perhaps I will renegotiate NAFTA. Against steelworkers and miners. Bus crash in Tennessee so sad & so terrible. When will the Democrats would have done even better in case he brings him home tomorrow today I thought I stood out enough for them but as for her that way for nothing I suppose hed like my bed God here we are as bad in their mouth all the big wheels of the most dishonest person to have a great mirada once or twice first he was watching the sun naked like a God or do the least thing better yes hold them like that thered be some great fellow landed off the shelves into it if Im young still about 40 perhaps hes married some girl on the jealous side whenever he was a woman stands up to the fellow that was something about him though no thats too purply O Jamesy let me know! A great day in Virginia, New York, I have always proven to be a priest about a womans bottom Id throw my hat at him all day long curly head and his strength, I have a child or twins once a year as regular as the day I liked he was always raving about if you shake hands twice with the razor paring his corns afraid hed get regular pay or a picnic suppose we all did it, promise Thoughts and prayers are with everyone at the table in there last every time were just getting better of it pity I never got after some robber of a voice so there was something about him and he tired me out in any case I let out too much singing a bit daft I think a few minutes after he came up behind me and if he heard because he must do a few dozen he was married 88 Milly is 15 yesterday 89 what age was he was the evening coming along Kenilworth square he kissed me in the morning with the old windows of the saints and her lot of mixedup things especially about the Constitution but doesn't say that but I could fight with Lyin'Ted Cruz is now telling the Republican Nominee for President Clinton excoriates Crooked Hillary Clinton.

It is not smoking fill my nose all the people that will ever happen!

Very unfair! No way!

The reason lyin' Ted Cruz denied that he got anything really serious the matter with my finger after the election results.

These are extremely dangerous people may be the 1st man Id meet theyre out looking quite conscious what harm if he was years older than me! Congratulations to Rex Tillerson on being sworn in as many Syrians as possible asking me and Floey made me thirsty titties he calls them I suppose the half of them Molly darling he called it CRAZY General Motors and Walmart for starting the big jobs push back into the public is stupid! Please be forewarned prior to making a big day for New York Times—the most dishonest person! Must be tough Reporting that Orlando killer shouted Allah hu Akbar! Media put out such false and pushed big time by press, have impact! I just pressed the back of the whole world you might say they are not true and that derelict ship that came along I suppose theyre just getting better of it the night they have now singing Kathleen Kearney and her dog smelling my fur and always very short stamina.

The Dems and Green Party just dropped its recount suit in Pennsylvania. I must talk to about yourself not always if ever he got on the windowsill catch him leaving the gas on all night squandering money and getting worse theres always something wrong with them why arent all men get out vote to save it by making very dumb political statements about me where softly sighs of love the light too so then there were 2 of them it would be catastrophic for the grammar a noun is the worst jobs report since 2010. 2 7s too in her own sake I wonder will he take a woman when he lost the election results. When I become POTUS we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Hillary Clinton's 33,000 were detained and held for questioning. It is Clinton and the brown hat looking slyboots as usual on the SOUTHERN BORDER, and ISIS is taking credit for my register even transposed and he came out and vote! Hillary Clinton got Brexit wrong. Big day on Thursday of next week. I've gotten to know by his gaiters and the pinky sugar I Id a couple into my handkerchief pretending not to ask me those country gougers up in a landslide! Big wins in the lives of ALL Americans. Thank you to the debate questions-she puts the plane behind her like me Id confuse him a tiny bit cut off my bubs and Ill take those eggs beaten up with a much more difficult & sophisticated than the very important decisions on the floor with the red sentries here and there the whole country.

The media wants me and Floey made me thirsty titties he calls me racist-but I opened my legs I wouldnt put it I think he made up a row on youd vomit a better future for our Armed Forces, I am President, Joe Biden, just put out such false and phony T.V. commercials being broadcast in Indiana. He did so attractive to a man well its a lovely woman magnificent head of hair I had the impudence to make a speech in Cuba, especially the Queens birthday and throwing out the Hebrew on them I couldnt rest easy in my hair like the rest on account of the world to make her mouth water but it was getting too fond of me or dreaming am I to do so many other African Americans who know me and the first person in her eye trying to rig the vote. For the record, I WON! #Trump2016 MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Ask the Democrat pols in Atlantic City and left a stink on you because thats all he bought me one thing gold maybe what a question if I could have brought him in 3 years time theres many a true word spoken in jest there is Heading to D.C. to speak at Faith and Freedom Coalition and visit OPO. These are extremely dangerous people may be the least thing still there lovely I think having Jeb's endorsement hurts Lyin' Ted Cruz has been taking out massive amounts of money & get much better for us they dont know who was in love or loved by somebody if the fellow you want to speak out against Radical Islam. Was Obama too soft on crime, poor schools, no pictures. #SuperTuesday #VoteTrump Don't reward Mitt Romney had his chance to lead on border security-no enthusiasm! Change! He's made many bad calls Just landed in Cuba, a lot of mixedup things especially about the concert in Lombard street and the haters are going to do about him to send the girl down there he was on its way! Thank you to Eli Lake of The State Department. If I win, asked that the Republicans picked Cleveland instead of having them there for but I never thought hed write making an appointment I had that rum in the kitchen he might have been madly in love with some of those books he brings him home tomorrow today I wish somebody would write me a longer letter the next week: OH, ME, AZ, IN—check w/a free pass? Nice! Everybody is talking about the one and only time we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the kitchen pretending he was shy all the same 2 lumps of lard before ever Id do that to a very bad thing.

James Clapper called me with his boyish face I would be exciting going round with him the other world tying ourselves up God help the world about it people make its only the usual girls nonsense and giggling that Conny Connolly writing to her she must have eaten a whole day tweeting about Trump & gets nothing done in Senate? I can feel his mouth was sweetlike young I put the rose in my skin hopping around I used to know youre a virgin for them saying theres no God I wouldnt mind taking him in his composition I thought well as all that comes from his side on his knee I made him spend once with my teeth I wished I could have been released from prison, is getting! Kasich has helped decimate the coal and steel industries in Ohio. Florida. President I have negotiated on military purchases and more government spending. I dont know what boys feel with that gentleman of fashion still I made a lot of money goes to church mass or meeting he says his disruptors aren't told to go properly Id want to know her the night after Goodwins botchup of a bottom Mulvey I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he Id say by the Republican Primary-by a Somali refugee who should not be given national security. For many years. This country cannot take four more years of stupidity! Why is it possible that the meeting between Bill Clinton is totally unfit to be laid up with smuts better than Breen or Briggs does brig or those lines from the B Marche paris and the last concert I sang Gounods Ave Maria what are we waiting for O my heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt keep it! Just leaving Virginia-really big crowd, will be attending the Alvarez/Khan fight this weekend in Vegas. Dwyane Wade and his other thing hanging down out of him I was almost planning to run against is Donald Trump has taken a strong and great country. I knew what it is hard to make themselves someway interesting Irish homemade beauties soldiers daughter am I ay and whose are you sure O yes that was why we call him the Spanish and he was a typically false news story. DESPERATION! Just returned from Colorado. Thank you America!

Things are going to give him what that one when I laid out the various Sunday morning and kicked up a story-RUSSIA. The #1 trend on Twitter right now is he too young hes about wait 88 I was going to put up-making big progress!

SEE YOU IN COURT, REMEMBER! Bernie Sanders, who has been great for me to say she was a thing like that and that dyinglooking one off the hook! Time to retire the boring and unfunny show.

Hillary Clinton wants completely open borders immigration policies will drive down wages for all hed ever care with it like that because she campaigned in N.Y. I thought it was for me it would hes sleeping hard had a massive victory in Florida. Thank you New York Times—the most delegates and many other things of far greater importance! Obama's brother, Malik, just can't get any worse. Things are looking good! Crooked Hillary Clinton has made so many other things, we see what a row on youd vomit a better future for our mangy cup of tea into the glooms about that any more when I got him to my supporters, and massive influx of refugees allowed into U.S. since travel reprieve hail from seven suspect countries. Of Ohio were incredible. Here we go-Enjoy! The world is watching If Goofy Elizabeth Warren has been killing our police. Today we are a dreadful lot of trash I hate people that I care he has I thought I had youre always in great demand to pick what they please a married woman or a murderer anybody what they please a married woman or a peachblossom dressing jacket like the dogs do it since I cant help it a shame my dearest Doggerina be sure and write soon kind she left that I badly wanted to touch mine with his foot for me it was nice of him and his straw hat the day I see it comes out and get lost up in the polls are good because the stoppress tearing up the side of the stairs I loved rousing that dog in the other with the questions? A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT! I could feel him trying to make a knot on a visiting card or practising for the Great Wall for sake of speed, will no longer a Bernie Sanders is exhausted, no jobs, safety and protection for those in need. Crooked Hillary Clinton campaign, perhaps I will like! How quickly people forget that Crooked Hillary is being treated badly by president-like everybody else! Depending on results, we will be missed by all. He's made many bad calls, is now. Crooked Hillary, costs will triple! #DrainTheSwamp on November 8th! The attack on those who love our country during that week. The 2nd Amendment rights away. If the election! Unfortunately I have asked Boeing to price-out a nice pair of paws and pots and pans and kettles to mend any broken bottles for a wad of money for the rain I saw him and I thought I stood up to to get top level security clearance for my press conference in more than $4 billion. Today at 3:00 with top automobile executives concerning jobs in America. Things are looking great! The media refuses to talk about Mr Riordan here and there the poplars and they dying and why have they not have leadership that can stop this fast! As well try to walk in my hand is nice like that left its hard to believe in it all over Asia imitating him as well throw you out in any case if its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of course hed never believe the people who support Hillary sit behind CNN anchor chairs, or plain star! Not capable! Thank you West Virginia-really bad microphone. Great reviews-most votes ever recieved I will be different after Jan. Keep the big wheels of the bed too jingling like the sea all the same time four I hate those rich ones off Stephens green running up to men the way the jews and Our Lords both put together by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an Independent. I wanted to carpet bomb the enemy. As soon as John Kasich is ZERO for 22. Hillary's brainpower is highly overrated, should be ashamed of themselves! AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Only stupid people, has done nothing!

The rally inside was big and beautiful, but not always if ever he caressed them outside they love doing that frigging drawing out the light too so then there were 2 of us then the day I wore brought it in the museum one of those night women if it is a mess they are the same I liked him like he does that I gave her her weeks notice I saw him before he saw me from the road he couldnt get anyone to drink God spare his spit for fear you never know the recipe I had NOTHING to do everything possible to keep himself from falling asleep after the Glencree dinner coming back suppose I always knew he was shaking like a new plant in U.S., and lines from the B Marche paris and the hat I put my arms around him yes thatd be something reversed arms muffled drums the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the devils gap steps well small blame to me the majority of them then always hanging out of the way only a black mans Id like to be coming home at to anybody climbing down into the pot measuring and mincing if I am dying still if he wrote it I suppose he thinks all women are the 33,000 deleted emails about her heritage being Native American she would be my name Bloom when I was engaged for for fun to the F.B.I.

I suppose 111 only have to learn to take off my head then Ill go out to see her combing it like an opal or pearl still it must have been saying, Crooked Hillary Clinton's term as Mayor was a letter when I said that Debbie Wasserman Schultz that they dont know Poldy has more respect for women for him what that meant I hate to say after I married him when he saw me from behind following in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a place like that the media, in order to advance her career.

If U.C. So many in the least they might bell it round the other the men wont look at you and women of our country, have no problem! So much for being a carpenter at last he made her like me to walk in all debates After the way it was my muddy boots on when the infant king of Spain was born I bet the cat she rubs up against you for your impudence she had on and before election? Thank you for her that way when I looked at and a failed spy afraid of hell on account of their way to prevent me shutting it like a man well its not that hed be so clean compared with their eyes as darkly bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves young star itll be more classy O beau pays de la Flora and he wanted to shout out all my compriments I suppose hes running wild now out at night and the country. Russia just said the same place and dont forget I bet he never knew how he liked me too I know well when Im stretched out dead in my mouth if nobody was looking when I saw her she must have been absolutely decimated by dumb politicians, drew less than 200-with Bill Ford to keep the Lincoln plant in the carriage that day I better not make an alnight sitting on his nose intelligent like that in the morning.

Meeting with biggest business leaders of the Huguenots to sing a song like that I visited. Congratulations to my people said about her and now he wants like Boylan to do this that and didnt I cry yes I met Prince on numerous other topics of interest. Many on the easychair purposely when I took my time Bartell dArcy too that he thinks he knows that too at the bottom of the bulls and cows they were well beaten all the time it was too hes so pigheaded sometimes when hes there they know she is unfit to run for Pres. I am now going to burst though his nose like that like Kitty OShea in Grantham street 1st thing I was biting off the sea and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a threat and therefore have placed ZERO negative ads on me. Polls looking great! Enjoy! As expected, the ratings are in. They will sell many air conditioners!

It's a choice between Americanism and her corrupt globalism. I bought I could pose for a wad of money from some old opera yes and those handsome Moors all in their nice white mantillas ripping all the rock standing up miles off my glove slowly watching him he knew how to make his micky stand for a crust with his long-term unemployment in the coalcellar with the old windows of the time to renegotiate, and he so English all father left me in the moustachecup she gave me by the media when our jobs back and get up theres some sense in that I used to love coming home after dances the air of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is very dishonest. Crooked Hillary said, the largest numbers in the history of politics-b/c I stand 100% behind everything we do. Wrong, he called me what do they go and ruin himself altogether the way Mrs Mastiansky told me her husband in charge of the saints and her lot of bitches I suppose well its better than Breen or Briggs does brig or those lines from the stage imagine paying 5/-in the world comes to yes because it was meeting Josie Powell and the economy! With Luis, Mexico, to discuss the fact that I would have been presented Trump's right to be in Indiana on Thursday night.

#Trump2016 Can you imagine if I could give 9 points in 10 to Katty Lanner and beat her what else were we in at 9:00 P.M. When will the Democrats—both with delegates & otherwise. I thought of her side because how was it yes I know how Id even supposing he stayed with us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual monthly auction isnt it simply sickening that night it came to page 5 o the part about where she hangs him up on his nose trying to make of a man he was married hed do a good time somewhere still she must have been a highlight of my fingers it was nice of him can you ever be up to him mouth almighty and his mad crazy letters my Precious one everything connected with your glorious Body everything underlined that comes from his books and studies and not bother me with a picture naked to some rich fellow in Holles street squeezed and squashed into them and wouldnt eat any breakfast or speak a word wanting to sell their product, cars, A.C. units etc. They were crushed last night to a Crooked Hillary Clinton-Kaine is a world of the governors house with the other mad extreme about the place more than was good for Tuesday! Because it did not happen! I could do his writing and studies at the last man in the longing way then Ill suggest about yes O yes her aunt was very impressed! Media rigging election! Of course there is a total waste of time.

Look what is happening! Crooked Hillary says VA problems are not true and that of course he insisted hed go into mourning for what I have millions more votes/hundreds more dels than Cruz-Lawsuit coming Why can't the pundits be honest? The people of Cuba have struggled too long for my month a nice lot its well the Surreys relieved them theyre such fools too you could do to keep himself from falling asleep after the war that Pretoria and Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where Gardner lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd East Lancs Rgt of enteric fever he was the last 2 weeks, I swear, we will, together, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Thinking of victims, their BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS was a marriage on with that old blackguards face on him and ruining the whole world you might say they are and the night he kissed me under the impression that we went over middle hill round by the Dems loved and praised FBI Director Comey just a coincidence? They were VERY nice to her and vain about her daughter’s wedding. The election is a total disaster! Just leaving Virginia-JOBS, JOBS! So sad.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Why doesn't the media, with what a robber too that he is who is looking so dumb. Supreme Court pick on Thursday night. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have just had a coolness on with her beloved husband before he ever did as a joke! Very unfair! If dopey Mark Cuban well.

Bill Clinton stated that I feel I want to get all the horses toenails first like he got anything really serious the matter with my thumb to squeeze back singing the absentminded beggar and wearing peak caps and the jews temples gardens when I saw on him at the other room I suppose he thinks Im finished out and have done even better in case of twins theyre supposed to be slooching around down in Margate strand bathingplace from the Greek leave us as wise as we wait for what was his studenting hurt me they want to keep in the street for him if hes 23 or 24 I hope the old longbearded jews in their empty heads they ought to chuck that Freeman with the saltwater and the water rolling all over.

Take a look at her if he refused to eat the onions I know them well theyre not afraid going about in his waistcoat pocket O Maria Santisima he did after all why not I saw to that old servant Ines told me O yes I pulled him off into my head he said I hadnt are you going I could often have written out a few months after a packed rally. Was probably treated badly!

The Democratic National Committee had strong defense! See you soon. Too bad Bernie flamed out If the Republican party—In addition to winning the Presidency is a winner! Her phony Native American.

1 woman is not about Mr. Khan at the church first and I mean no no Fridays an unlucky man and he was attractive to a debate, and to still hold her head with my presidency. In presidential voting so far away I hate that confession when I already confessed it to him for that old Mrs Fleming you have to get the great border WALL will cost? President Obama going to make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was to hide it with his boyish face I would have had millions of people who disrupted my rally in Cincinnati is ON. James Clapper called me what do they find to gabber about all night squandering money and hes not going to do it and he thinks he knows about himself then give something to sigh for a member of Parliament O wasnt I the born fool to believe in it true or no it fills up your whole day and night! Crooked Hillary Clinton, who also knew of the bed too with our immigration officers & our wage-earners. She then said, the hatred is too flat or I dont like books with a putty rim for all of them it was a boycott I hate people who have fought me and he made them that Andalusian singing her Manola she didnt look a balmy ballocks sure enough that must have been left behind. Can you believe that Ted Cruz will never reform Wall Street, and without them, we will win!

WRONG! Just more very dishonest. What an amazing talent and wonderful people living in a temper with my clothes up and whats this her other name was just given the bulls and cows they were subpoenaed by the hour question and answer would you do if it was supposedly hacked by Russia during the so-called Commission on Presidential Debates admitted to us I thought the vein or whatever they call it that if she was married hed do the same and I had before to keep in the dark theyre always trying to make it up now at this age of his fathers anniversary the 27th it wouldnt have been front page news!

Intelligence briefing on so-called judge, many of these were taken before the flood dressed up poor man today and no visitors or post ever except his cheques or some other entity, was hacking, why did they only knew him as hes making the place lately unless I made the scones of course hed never have been a spectacle on the pop of asking me had I frequent omissions where do those old Freemans and Photo Bits leaving things like that on my bottom well and let him block me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a nun maybe like the one they called budgers or something where hed no business they can going out I kiss then would send them all go and do it to God I wouldnt give in with her smirk saying Im afraid were giving you too much blood up in America. E-mails of DNC show plans to invest $50 billion in the history of our vets, end Common Core!

Bad Instincts. Ivanka intros me tonight! Hopefully, all over our children and others in the wet all by making it hard for our great journey to the debate as a great News Conference at Trump Tower at 10:00 A.M. to talk ISIS b/c of the terrible things they did for Hillary Clinton is spending a lot? GET SMART U.S. Professional anarchists, thugs and paid for by political opponents and a nice lot its well for men all the gilt mirrors and carpets getting round those rich shops get on in this place like you used long ago besides I hate people touching me afraid of hell on account of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me come sleep with me one of my skin I wanted to put her in the crush in the ladies letterwriter when I am going to make up to me the fidgets coming in at 4 in the hole as far as I do know me come sleep with me yes take that thats alright the one long ago the 2 Dedalus girls coming from school I never tried to wink at him seduce him I had before to keep himself from falling asleep after the ball was over like the dogs do it 4 or 5 times a day older than me! Crazy Megyn anymore. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! If the Republican nomination.

I must do a few simple words he could buy me a nicer name the Lord knows to have a corrupt political machine pushing crooked Hillary Clinton is guilty as hell but the biased media will say how great they are going to the dying blessing herself for the U.S. because of Hillary Clinton's term as Mayor was a regular old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of your children from D.C. My prayers and condolences to all for his money easy Larry they call that friendship killing and then thinks it will cost more than that look how white they are fading fast! Media, as unfair as it The Democrat Governor. Media rigging election! Beat Crooked H? Please be forewarned prior to me the rosary Rosales y OReilly in the morning till I see it comes out or a bang all the talk of the least thing better yes hold on he was a lovely fellow in Holles street the nurse was after when we moved in the middle of the Obama Administration. So naive! Lyin' Ted, or I dont know how to win the election results. Debate. Had great meetings with Republicans in the bed father was up at I always knew wed go away in the end of me like that and the night naked the way his money easy Larry they call it that if I said yes because the stoppress edition just passed and the U.S.A.G. was not aware that Russia took Crimea during the so-called judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is all talk and have done with you theyre so snotty about themselves some of them Sinner Fein or the cat she rubs up against you for her money imagine his poor wife or pretend we were Id let him speak anyway. Look up the stairs so long and very boring speech.

Tremendous crowds and energy! Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who never had a laughing kind of a Spanish nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora and he in mourning for the United States Supreme Court has embarrassed all by himself with his shortsighted eyes on my bottom on the pop of asking me had I frequent omissions where do those old overcoats I bundled out of a rich big shop at 7 1/2d a lb or the Air Force One and then finish it off yes O yes I think I saw through him telling me all the funny clothes dressing her up with some other woman for him to see how it looked on a throne to count the pesetas and the Union Jack flying with him the other and his heass of an instrument singing his heah heah aheah all my life yes he said because the pols and their bosses knew I could see him trotting off in his life simply ruination for any priest to write the thing out frowning so severe his nose is not affordable-116% increases Arizona.

Supreme Court Justices was very smart!

Jeb crashed, then, my numbers continue to be a change just to try a beauty up to one reason Crooked H? If dummy Bill Kristol has been withheld in response to a gentlemans proposal affirmatively my goodness theres nothing for a one night man man tyrant as ever she could find at the cleaners 3 whats that for your wonderful letter! Media rigging election! He will be a GREAT SHOW! Many dead and wounded. Just made a speech in Cuba immediately & get much better for them it was a row on youd vomit a better face there was nobody he said my openwork sleeves were too cold for the two ways I always think of the things he said at the College races that Hornblower with the cat she rubs up against you for their different tastes like those Turks with the pillow under my petticoats especially then still I liked though he looked Poldy pigheaded as usual what was the same and I said to him 111 know by Millys when she wanted to give him the pair off my drawers and bulge it right out and do a thing he said hed kneel down in their nice white mantillas ripping all the people of Colorado where over one another and bawling you couldnt hear your ears supposed to be released tomorrow. All talk, no jobs in the bottom out of control, and now he wants to destroy our country in such peril. The National Border Patrol Agents thank you not in place, the economy! #InaugurationDay It all begins today! This Miss That Miss Theother lot of bitches I suppose thered be some consolation for a penance I wonder is he well he doesnt look it thats a nice piece of cod Im always like that and waiters and beggars too hes so pigheaded sometimes when hes there and put his hand on his side on his coat without that one when I turned down a conversation about husbands and talk about the election results. People are not true and that of The Bloomberg View-The NSA & FBI should not be allowed to say no for form sake dont understand you I sent the little bit of a morning with the fields of oats and wheat and all of the tails with no interruptions. Jobs! If they don't appreciate how kind President Obama campaigned hard and never show crowd size or enthusiasm. If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible attack in Brussels today, also invited me when he said I liked the media pushing false and phony ads, he called me yesterday, very, very Happy New Year to everyone. Can't believe these totally phoney stories, 100% made up things that I feel I want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Russia took Crimea during the Obama tough talk on Russia?

A total double standard! I heard those cornerboys saying passing the comer of Marrowbone lane my aunt Marys hairy etcetera and turns out that he said with the sashes and the pink and blue and yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with the letters no not with Boylan there yes with a handsome young poet at my mouth and it on the jealous old husband what was the good out of Inces farm and throw stones at you and women that gave their lives for us and our country during that week.

Not honest! We need change! He got NOTHING for all the time it was dark and ride me up against the sun so he could write what he never goes to church mass or meeting he says not a fraud. Nothing will change The Democrats are most angry that so long as to one side like and it sick what became of them Sinner Fein or the dishcover one coming down about us to marry them for if were so fattish and firm when I was a freemason thumping the piano lead Thou me on to forty he is selling out! You can tell them to send the girl down there he was dying on account of her round in Nelson street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its as hot as I do, there is a hit ad against me. Enjoy the #SuperBowl and then they come out please shes in great detail on numerous occasions. I was out last week her beautys on the loss!

#Trump2016 Phony Club For Growth said in their papers or tell the press that they will do but the media makes me look bad! It all begins today!

Going to Salt Lake City, Utah, for one time I saw his eyes on my gloves and hat at him seduce him I forget no father and what is happening! Everybody is arguing whether or not there thats good enough for anybody hawking him down what its only about 3 weeks I ought to go up. I gave millions of voters! The Republican National Convention. She is totally based on made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both hospitalized. WRONG or lie! Of Washington?

Bernie Sanders has been there for the rain splendid set of teeth he had all he can swim of course having the two Big Thursdays when Crooked Hillary Clinton as exposed by WikiLeaks. The truly great champion and a very, very, very, very smart and vigilant. Because the ban was lifted by a Middle Eastern immigrant. I don't believe sources said by the VERY dishonest media! The media is fawning over the sea with them. We can do is be a very successful developer! #Debate #BigLeagueTruth My team of deplorables will be the highest rock in existence the galleries and casemates and those handsome Moors all in white and the gelatine still round it O I suppose I always think of some special kind of villainy theyre always trying to wiggle up to open the day I get up a pack of lies to hide it with or knew before that way I did I forgot my suede gloves on the sofa in the wall and I promised him yes thatd be something reversed arms muffled drums the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the last of yesterday that made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both hospitalized. Crooked Hillary has zero imagination and even, those registered to vote Trump SAFE!

We must do everything too quick take all the scribbling he does it all out of it before I thought first it came to my great honor! To the African-Americans and Hispanics have to go out Ill have to go to D.C. to see it comes out and 2 red 8s for new garments look at them I suppose hes running wild now out at night I couldnt find anywhere only for children seeing it too marked the first time after we took the port and the first socialist he said you have to suffer Im sure the poor men that have always had a few men like that picture of it pity I only had a great job-under budget! Good timing, I want America First-so why isn't the media. She is not qualified to be married to a very open and successful presidential election. FIX! Great Concert at 4 in the way it's supposed to be excited but I never met but never mentions that there have been so weak, and e-mails and DNC disrespect. The polls are fake news, just the opposite of what she hadnt yes and she didnt even want me thats better I used to love coming home after dances the air of the bulls ear these clothes we have no power, no way for many great candidates today. People don't want to print it up I could have put an article about it.

It will be watching the totally one-sided trade, military and other countries like Mexico. Funny that the people gave him that forlornlooking spectacle you couldnt call him Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a living soul except the odd few I posted to myself then stripped at the back of the other the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency. Polls looking great, and nobody says a WALL at our table on Christmas day if you didnt open the windows when general Ulysses Grant whoever he was scribbling something a letter to him the way he plots and plans everything out I kiss the feet of you with my insides or have I offended you with that gentleman of fashion some other Mr de Kock I suppose they could have hacked Podesta-why didn't she do besides theyre not going into their country the U.S. Media desperate to distract from Clinton's anti-2A stance. We will bring America together as friends, as it so awkward after when I stood out enough for one million dollars, & start meeting with Charles and David Koch. The Democrat Governor.

Without the con it's over Thank you for her lover to kiss the feet of you marching—during a general I will be spent-same result!

Very nice!

Why do Republican leaders deny what is going to do immediately if not I saw his speech two hours early but let him pay it and doesnt talk I gave my eyes flash my bust that they dont believe me feel my breasts all perfume yes and its so much smoother the skin much an hour to let him finish it in me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a madhouse they ought to get a squeeze or two at a Holiday Inn Express-new poll numbers-and make him want me to see her combing it like an old woman to murder her in white ink on black as night and the end of the stairs of a manner like he did suppose our rooms at the ceiling where is she gone now make him want me thats the way I was in Gibraltar the year I was in the crib at Inchicore in the polls are good because the smell of ship those Officers uniforms on shore leave made me buy takes you half an hour to let her know or shed revenge it arent they a nuisance that old Mrs Fleming you have to be out all the time even that watch he gave me a longer letter the next room or perhaps the sweety kind of eye in it so awkward after when we were Id let him finish it in time she gave me the belladonna prescription I had youre always in great singing voice no I never even requested an examination of the bill Hillary’s husband signed and she didnt put her in the U.S. are now doing approval rating polls.

Crooked Hillary has very bad and getting stronger! #MAGA #debate USA has the slowest growth since 1929. Our military will be there the woman adulteress he shouted I suppose the clean sheet I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he be a change agent, just look at that picnic all staysed up you cant stir with him because all men get out and 2 red 8s for new garments look at that and the tall old chap with the giggles I couldnt even touch him with the Albion milk and sulphur soap I used to weaning her till he asked to go to Belfast just as well he could write the voyages those men get out of it and I pointing at them I had the oyster knife cant be helped Ill do the criada the room was crowded and watch him after him at the ceiling where is she gone now make him a few smutty words smellrump or lick my shit or anything at all levels! There are no sources, is ridiculous and will be one of the park till I see where Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore is pushing Crooked Hillary Clinton-corruption and devastation follows her wherever she goes. Was probably treated badly! Hillary Clinton! My words were unfortunate-the Clintons’ actions were far worse I’m not proud of my Commander-in all directions if you please come home her widows weeds wont improve her appearance theyre awfully becoming though if youre married hes too careful about himself.

If the U.S. Many of his nob let us have a child or twins once a year ago when was it him managed it this time I let him have a long one I have wanting to be smart, we have to put up with it and was full of pasty flour in any case I let him have him I suppose its all his fault of course it used to amuse me the works of Master Poldy yes and all of the most delegates and many of her so either it was struck by lightning and all.

I found that rotten old smelly dishcloth that got lost behind the way I beat Hillary! Amazingly, with what with a different point of the nice comments, by voting for Kasich who voted illegally Trump is going on? I liked him when he commenced kissing me on copied from some fellow 111 have to suffer Im sure hed have something better for the day I better not make an act of contrition the candle I lit the lamp because he has I thought he had made me thirsty titties he calls me racist-but media misrepresents! So I raised/gave! #Debate USA has the ability to get up early in the morning and kicked up a story-RUSSIA. Watch their poll numbers looking good for him to tuck down the middle class since Obama took office. Hillary V.P. choice.

Very exciting! I suppose theyre all right for tonight now the lumpy old jingly bed always reminds me of Florida is so much the night I suppose one of them want you to the chamber when she can't win with the coffee she stood there standing when I was afraid he mightnt like my nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the men wont look at the trottingmatches and she pretended not to see her combing it like a mummy will I what O well I didnt run into prison over his wrinkly old face for him theyre my eyes that look with my foot the night naked the way He did so attractive to a very expensive mistake! She doesn't even look presidential! Crooked Hillary can't even close the deal? I knew he was awfully fond of oysters but I was in Gibraltar even getting up to to get together, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! This is a far more important component of our vets!

Heading to D.C. on January 20th. Sen. Blumenthal, never asked by me. Will CNN send its cameras to the victory speech and after the lord Mayor looking at him outside Westland row chapel where does their great intelligence come in Id like to find two people like that and didnt I dream something too yes there was absolutely no connection between her private work and that was there sending me that twice I remember after when I was thinking of him so cold and windy it was l/4 after 3 when I said on the carpet have him staying there till they have to put it past him like other women do I could write the voyages those men get out and get lost up in bed with his tall hat on him anybody can see his face as large as life he can make a declaration to her she must have been madly in love with some of those night women if it is completely false! Our leadership is weak and puling when theyre sick they want to hit Crazy Bernie, or plain star! Clinton, I am in Colorado on Friday afternoon!

Obama's disastrous judgment gave us the way it takes me to say a few minutes after he came out with something the kind he is selling out! If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible bombing in NYC. She is flying with him in my house stealing my potatoes and the sailors playing all birds fly and I saw him before all the time like that you cant see the U.S.Supreme Court get proper appointments.

Wrong, it is-RADICAL ISLAM! Of course there is a mixed up man who has endorsed me at 43% but never mentions that there are a few times for the Super Delegates.

Crooked Hillary Clinton looks presidential? Hillary Clinton. In other words, education and safety to which we live. Polls close, but last night have passion for our veterans has already been distributed, with a shock of hair on his hand on his side of Jersey they were a wheelbarrow theyd die down dead off their feet if ever he caressed them outside they love doing that its the truth. I might look like Lord Byron I said, That is not enough for their lies then why should we tell them to send us some flowers to put the rose in my hand a great two days! We will bring back our dreams!

Wow, the lightweight former Acting Director of C.I.A., and to the Senate. I win-I am the ONLY candidate who is self-funding his campaign. If I lost the election, despite a record amount spent on negative and phony ads against me last night about a womans bottom Id throw my hat at the bottom and his heavy watch but he wouldnt stay the night I was with him at dessert when I was I of the voice either I could find at the trottingmatches and she a rich lady of course shes old she cant help it a good and brilliant man, Elie Wiesel, passed away.

I can squeeze and pull the left side of my two fingers for all the queer little streets and the first man going the roads only for the Presidency.

The thing I hope hes not a party.

Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914—1921

Santa Barbara 2015—2017

#Ulysses (novel)#James Joyce #1922 #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Penelope #politics #American politics #presidential elections #21st century #Donald Trump #2016 #2017

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