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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months

Text

Drew Sheneman, Newark Star-Ledger

* * * *

What is it about Republicans and Russian spies?

LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV

FEB 21, 2024

Guess what: A Russian spy has been spreading lies about the Democratic candidate for president through his connections with senior Republican officials. Oh, my goodness, can that be true? Where did I put my fainting couch?

This time the Russian spy is Alexander Smirnov, a serial liar and fabricator who has been making up stories on behalf of Russian intelligence about Democrats, chiefly Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and feeding them to senior Republican Party government officials. Last week, he was charged with just that – lying to the FBI that Joe Biden and his son Hunter each sought $5 million bribes from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma to fix an investigation into the company by Ukraine’s corrupt prosecutor general.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that this tired lie about the Bidens and Burisma and bribes was shopped around way back in 2018 and 2019 in the run-up to the 2020 election. Those were the days when the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Konstantin Kilimnik and Dmytro Firtash were running around trying to get “dirt” on the Bidens, and the infamous “perfect phone call” was made to Volodymyr Zelenskyy when Donald Trump, then the President of the United States, tried to extort the Ukrainian president into opening an investigation into the very thing that Smirnov is charged with lying about these five or six years later.

Oh goodness, I’m barely three paragraphs into this piece about what happened with Russian spies just yesterday and already I’m spinning down a rabbit hole we’ve been going down ever since a certain New York real estate magnate decided he would run for president as a Republican in 2015.

Here’s a handy-dandy flashback with a few of the players we’ve met along the way:

Remember Marina Butina? She was the Russian FSG bombshell who infiltrated the National Rifle Association on behalf of Russian intelligence and spread money around and had a wild affair with a Republican political operative named Paul Erikson and took a bunch of NRA officials and Republican politicians to Moscow to meet with her phony “gun rights” organization called “Right to Bear Arms” that she established in a country where there is no right to bear arms.

Remember George Papadopoulos? He was the Trump campaign “foreign policy adviser” who was running around London in 2016 meeting with a Russian intelligence agent named Joseph Mifsud, who was setting him up with meetings with another Russian intelligence agent, Leonid Reshetnikov, who ran some kind of Russian intelligence front called the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies. Mifsud, who disappeared and has never been seen or heard from again, was the guy that Papadopoulos met in Rome, or somewhere, who out of the blue told him that Russian intelligence had “dirt” on Hilary Clinton, including “thousands of emails” that belonged to her.

The name Konstantin Kilimnik ring a bell? I know it gets confusing, because I already mentioned him about the whole Burisma thing, but Konstantin was the Russian intelligence guy who had worked with Paul Manafort in Ukraine when Manafort was running campaigns for Ukraine’s pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, who after being deposed by the 2014 Ukrainian revolution fled back to – you guessed it – Russia. Anyway, Konstantin was the guy connected to a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, to whom Manafort owed something like $14 million. The minute Manafort was appointed manager of Trump’s campaign, he emailed his pal Konstantin asking him how they could use the Trump campaign to “get whole” with Deripaska. So, Manafort ends up meeting with Konstantin in New York City while he was running Trump’s campaign and shared campaign information and polling data with him. Why Manafort was giving this highly secret political information to a Russian intelligence agent, well, that was never explained, but it does kind of bring up what “get whole” could have meant. Manafort went on to be indicted for various financial crimes, for which Trump pardoned him. Konstantin was indicted for obstruction of justice, and hell, even little honey-pot Marina Butina was indicted and spent a year behind bars in the U.S. before she was deported back to Russia and greeted as a returning hero by Russian intelligence.

That’s just a smattering of Russian intelligence agents with connections to prominent Republicans over the last eight to ten years, and what do you know? Here comes Alexander Smirnov peddling tired old lies about the Bidens and Burisma, and this time who’s listening to him? Oh, nobody but the two House Republican goofs in charge of the so-called impeachment investigation of President Biden, James Comer and Jim Jordan. And what are they investigating Biden for? Oh, let’s see…taking bribes from Burisma!

Now, having read all that history about the other Russian spies Republicans were listening to, involved with, giving information to, getting information from, and committing financial crimes with, what kind of a guy is Smirnov? Let’s just let the DOJ motion tell us in their explanation to the court in Nevada about why Smirnov needs to be in pretrial detention:

“First, he claims to have contacts with multiple foreign intelligence agencies and had plans to leave the United States two days after he was arrested last week for a months-long, multi-country foreign trip. During this trip, the defendant claimed to be meeting with foreign intelligence contacts. Those foreign intelligence agencies could resettle Smirnov outside the United States if he were released.”

Oh, by the way, Smirnov was arrested as he got off the flight from his multi-country trip “meeting with foreign intelligence contacts.”

But it gets better. Smirnov has lived in Las Vegas but has no business there. “Instead, he claims to have a ‘security business,’ that is registered in California,” according to the DOJ memo. He lives with a girlfriend “who does not appear to even know what he does.” What does he do for money? His bank records do not “reflect that he is in the ‘security business,’ as he claims.” Instead, his bank records “show large wire transfers from what appear to be venture capital firms and individuals.”

That gives him enough money to escape the country any time he wants to, according to the DOJ. How much money, you may ask? Oh, not too much. Smirnov “has access to more than $2.9 million, and his wife/girlfriend (he refers to her both ways) (hereafter “DL”) has access to more than $3.8 million.” According to the DOJ, those “funds are available to him because most of the money in DL’s account originated with Smirnov and she pays his personal expenses out of her account.”

Because most guys running around making international trips to multiple countries who have no visible means of support besides large money transfers from “venture capital firms and individuals” have millions of dollars in bank accounts in their names and in the names of their wife/girlfriends.

Are you able to follow this insane narrative? This is the guy the House Republicans have been relying on as their chief source of information about supposed $5 million bribes to both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. This is the crap they want to impeach Biden for? Smirnov, the star of his own private season of “Get Smart,” has been telling Comer and his buddies that Hunter Biden was taped making phone calls about the bribes in a hotel in Kyiv that was “wired” by Russian intelligence and “under control of the Russians.”

Only one problem: Hunter Biden not only has never been in that hotel, he has never been in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Prosecutors told the judge in Nevada that Russian intelligence is still using the Kyiv hotel to record “prominent Americans” in order to provide “kompromat” in the 2024 election. “Thus, Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues,” the DOJ memo concludes.

Ummmmm…isn’t this the kind of stuff that was happening back in 2016 in London and Rome and even Moscow when “operatives” for Trump’s campaign were meeting with Russian intelligence agents who were peddling “dirt” on Hillary Clinton? And Marina Butina was gamboling around with NRA officers and escorting them to Moscow and shacking up with Republican campaign operatives while she was employed as “special assistant” to Aleksandr Torshin, who was Acting Chairman of the Senate of the Russian Federation and a close pal of Putin.

With all the Russians and all the intelligence agents and all the meetings with Republican officials of one kind or another and all the secrets and lies passed between them all the way up to and including the campaign chairman of the Republican nominee for president, here is a simple way to understand it.

It’s the same playbook Trump has used his entire life. Get caught doing something, anything, and immediately accuse your opponents of the same thing or worse. Charge after charge of sexual harassment and assault? Hmmm, let’s see…how about a Pizza joint where pedophile Democrats are trafficking children out of the basement? In business up to your neck with Russians and taking money from foreign governments? Find some goofball with two or three foreign passports and bank accounts full of funny money traveling around the world meeting with Russian intelligence officials and get him to accuse the Bidens of taking bribes.

What Donald Trump has always called the “Russia hoax” was never a hoax at all. It was real, and it is continuing, and it now reaches into the United States Congress and is driving the movement there to impeach President Biden for things he never did, but ironically, for stuff Republicans have been doing for at least a decade.

So where is the big Biden impeachment investigation right now, after the fourth or fifth witness they’ve advertised as “the one” falls apart in a spectacular hail of indictments and DOJ memos alleging all kinds of Russian hanky-panky? Well, Comer and Jordan have their committee staffers purging the name “Smirnov” from anything with their fingerprints on it. Seems like they’ve got their work cut out for them.

#Useful Idiots #Drew Sheneman #Newark Star-Ledger #political cartoons #putin wing of the GOP #Lucian Truscott Newsletter #Russians #Russian disinformation #Putin Republicans #national security #Konstantin Kilimnik #Burisma #George Papadopoulos #Manafort #Marina Butina

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farewell-happy-fields · 4 years

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Disillusionment

An election day reflection on Labour, history repeating itself and being disappointed but not surprised.

‘If I lived then I would have stood up against the regime. I would have made a difference. I would have made a change.’

It’s hard, to come to terms with the fact that, in fact, I am doing none of the above. The most recent election has felt like such a big shadow hanging over many in our generation. Sometimes less like a shadow and more like a pigeon, flying over us, constantly threatening to shit all over us. And it feels like this time it has.

It seems that Labour have always had to fight harder than Conservatives to gain power anyway. Even in 1964 when Harold Wilson came to power, had 900 voters in 8 key constituencies voted Tory not Labour (or simply not voted) then Conservatives would have won. Despite the increasing unpopularity of the Tories in the lead up to the election- it followed a series of damaging scandals for the Tories (such as the Profumo Affair or the Vassal Affair), increasing economic problems, (such as unemployment reaching 800,000) and a rejection from the EEC (which ironically, was at the time seen as a testament to how weak Britain was as a country for the inability to join what would become the EU, how the turn tables table)- it was a closely fought election. Conservatives have also had longer runs in parliament-‘13 Wasted Years’ being the slogan for Wilson’s campaign in 1964, and then again a long lasting run from 1979-1997 under Thatcher and Major, adding up to 18 years before a Labour government would return to power under Blair and ‘New Labour’. Furthermore the times Labour have done well has been as a moderate Labour government that has expelled extreme left members in order to appeal to more of the electorate, including voters sympathetic to some Tory policies shifting the outcome to the left.

Admittedly, I write this following the Exit Poll, there are no ‘definite results’ yet, but deep down we know that’s a bit of an empty hope. And even as an eighteen year old with little political expertise, it still seems obvious to see ‘What Went Wrong’ for Labour.

Because it’s what went wrong in 1983. It’s what always goes wrong. And when it hasn’t gone wrong for Labour it has been when the exact opposite of what happened with Labour this time round has happened. It is time for Labour to understand that there is no place for a completely socialist Britain, and that the extreme left voters that they are pandering to have not got enough influence in our current political affairs. That we can still protect the NHS, still protect education, still decrease homelessness without taking on such an extreme stances that alienate many of the centre left and in many cases the centre right.

In 1983 Labour underwent a not dissimilar lurch to the extreme left under Michael Foot, who will no doubt be discussed a lot in the aftermath of this 2019 Election. The 1983 Election was the most decisive victory since 1945 when Attlee beat Churchill to become Prime Minister post-war. In this election both Foot and his policies lacked any appeal to anyone other than traditional and hardy left wing Labour voters. Moderates from the Party had split to form the Social Democratic Party two years prior to the election and the manifesto was described as the ‘Longest Suicide Note in History’ by Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman. Ultimately Labour had gone too far left to be able to present a viable and unified opposition to the Tories. Foot was forced to resign mere days following the defeat, and was succeeded, crucially, by Neil Kinnock, who went on to be Labour leader from 1983-1992.

(I’ve just got the update Blyth Valley has been won by Tories. The mining constituency. That has been Labour since 1950. Won by the Tories. It’s going to be a long night.)

Neil Kinnock was a key player for Labour’s revival by 1997. He expelled the extreme left members of the Labour party, and was focussed on moving Labour back closer to the centre, described by the BBC as being in ‘better shape than in 1983’ due to the fact he had ‘halted its leftward drift’. Kinnock recognised that it was not by being seen as The Socialist Party™ that Labour would regain electorate popularity. In fact, quite the reverse, and he laid the foundations on which Blair would build and which would see the worst defeat for the Conservatives since 1906.

Labour’s return from the extreme left saved their image and the party.

Which is why Richard Burgon, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor’s most recent tweet has done nothing but worsen any hopes for the future. ‘Johnson must continue to be fought with radical alternatives’.

To think that Labour want to continue their ‘leftward drift’ is a chilling concept. Labour won in 1997 largely down to Blair’s reform of Clause IV (Clause IV of the Party’s 1918 constitution was the clause promising to nationalise British industry and seen as very left wing, the reform reassured the British public that this ‘New Labour’ were not a socialist Party, but rather a moderate centre-left party) and the contradiction to the Tory campaign that Blair and Labour were ‘socialists in disguise’.

There needs to be a return back from the extreme left course that Corbyn has set his party on.

And so in the face of one of the biggest political moments of my country in my life to date, I am sat in my bedroom, listening to the updates as they come in, writing a blog post. Disappointed but not surprised by how it’s unfurling. Coming to terms with the fact that, living through tumultuous times isn’t nearly as fun as it seems in the films.

Because it feels as though I am not the protagonist of this unfolding times. It feels, instead, that I am Extra No. 37. As though nothing I can do will make a difference. That there is nothing more I can do, having put that cross in that box this morning.

But we can do so much. Maybe we feel like Extra No. 37 because we’re in that stage of the film where nothing’s going right. It’s probably raining and there’s sad string music as we look out of the window thinking that we’re done. That we’ve run out of options.

As if we only had two options in the first place.

It’s like climbing Snowdon. So what we missed the train up. Now it’s harder, for sure. But there are still footpaths to get to the top. This way’s just harder.

But if we really want to get to the top, see our country through these times we gotta just put one foot in front of the other.

We can’t lose hope now. Not when there’s so much to lose. Not when we have so much to fight for. Now when people need hope.

OK, it sucks. It’s desperate. But we still have a voice, even if we feel like a dragonfly trying to make a point in a meeting of dragons.

We will be heard, one day.

#uk politics #politics #election #vote #brexit #save the nhs #labour #history #britain #disillusion #uk #jeremy corbyn #boris johnson #honestly so fed up #and i know there are too many analogies but its One AM and my brain is only working in analogies

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incarnateirony · 6 years

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One more P5 post

I wanna know how much time the creators spent arguing with people on twitter, considering the comments on the Phan-Site polls. Will put behind a cut.

I mean, they hit all sides from auto-believers, internet trolls, people who are like ITS STILL ILLEGAL!!! and THIS IS THE POLICE JOB pics or it didn't happen, whatever. But my favorites are "IF UR SO JUST, SHOW UR FACE", "I bet they're crying LOL", "Shibuya's fucked", "Hang in there you guys ;w;", "WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE", "world-famous fail looool", "kill this stupid website" or whatever else. Or the timeless “so wait, who do we hate?”

QUESTION: Do you believe in the Phantom Thieves? This poll is adopted on 4/15.

0-10%

"'of hearts?' What tryhards"

"I've been waiting for this!"

"Isn't it just a prank?"

"Never even heard of them"

"Who made this site? Ridic"

"even kids aren't that dumb"

"gtfo with that shit LOL"

"is this a cult?"

"my friend says they're real!"

"sauce plz"

"viral marketing...?"

10-20%

"It's just a coincidence..."

"Petty criminals? Pointless"

"This is getting good!"

"Too elaborate for a prank"

"Vigilante justice is wrong."

"What about the pupils?"

"What's gonna happen now?"

"What's he gonna be hit w/?"

"i just can't"

"pics or it didn't happen"

"ppl really believe this? lmao"

"ppl who buy this... -_-"

"they can't catch EVERYONE"

"they're just making threats"

"thieves are the bad ones"

"was it rly a phantom thief?"

"what a joke"

QUESTION: Are the Phantom Thieves just? This poll is adopted on 6/11.

10-20%

"Akechi-kun is right!"

"Isn't it a crime?"

"It's called the law..."

"NO! justice ain't that simple"

"NO. They piss me off."

"Steal dem corrupt hearts!"

"They seem full of it, so NO"

"They're still thieves..."

"They've always been fishy..."

"This is the police's job."

"better be arrested soon"

"don't even bother with this"

"get off your high horse"

"hmm seems interesting"

"i hate Akechi, so YES???"

"if ur so just, show ur face"

"they're allies of justice."

"they're up to something"

"this has to be fake, lol"

"this is so immature."

20-30%

"Isn't it a crime?"

"Probably at least somewhat"

"They seem full of it, so NO"

"They're cool, so HECKYEAH!"

"They're still thieves..."

"get off your high horse"

"i dont buy into that stuff."

"of course not. done"

"that "justice" stuff is ehh"

"this is so immature."

30-40%

"both are crossing the line"

"fukkin hypocrites"

"get rekt, scumbags lmao"

"Hang in there you guys! ;w;"

"I bet they're crying LOL"

"Neither are just"

"Shibuya's fucked"

"they're both shit."

"What cheapass justice, lol"

60-70%

"AGAIN, YAAAAAAS!"

"Such annoying marketing"

"Their word is final."

"better than the cops"

"i bet it's worldwide news"

"justice was w/ the thieves."

"what a time to be alive"

80-90%

"Calling card! YAAAAAAS!"

"Exterminate his family too!"

"Here comes the apology rofl"

"I've been waiting for this"

"Leave everything to them~"

"Make him beg!"

"No apology yet? :["

"Ooh, a calling card! kekeke"

"SO MANY COMMENTS OMG"

"Take him out. It's an order"

"The world needs to see this!"

"They better not screw it up"

"Yeah, get that greedy CEO!"

"an apology isn't enough."

"become prime minister plz!!"

"dat okumura stock drop lol"

"destroy all evil!"

"let's hear from the workers!"

"no more big bang burg, lmao"

"stop fucking around"

"we're with you, p.thieves!"

"❤❤❤ Phantom Thieves ❤❤❤"

On 10/12, the support rate drops from the 90s to the 70s due to the death of Kunikazu Okumura.

70-80%

"Is he really dead...?"

"Now, who's next? ;)"

"Well that was disturbing..."

"die capitalist pigs!!!"

"whoa wtf"

On 10/13, the support rate drops a bit again to the 60s.

60-70%

"Awww, what a waste"

"Evil has perished."

"Gotta break a few eggs"

"So, whodunnit?"

"Were we deceived?"

"do we know how they do it?"

"eh, good riddance"

"killing ppl's a no-no"

"omg, the comments hahaha"

"omg, they went overboard lol"

"they got carried away..."

"what about his daughter?"

Over the next week, the support rates drops to the 50s, 30s, and then 20s.

""justice" sounds hollow now"

"—DELETED BY ADMIN—"

"Are the calling cards fake?"

"Blame the politicians too."

"Bloodthirsty killers!!!"

"Enough is enough!!!"

"Even Akechi's lost it"

"False charges happen, but..."

"Hurry and arrest them"

"Hurry up and execute them!"

"I dare to support them."

"I kiiinda sympathize..."

"I reported this website."

"I told you so..."

"I'm scared to go outside..."

"Is the admin an accomplice?"

"No hate-slinging, please!" (a message from the admin, Mishima)

"Officer, look!"

"Oh how far they've fallen"

"Pls don't kill me ;_;"

"Police were negligent too."

"Shut this site down!!!"

"That was traumatizing..."

"They must be punished."

"They need to be executed"

"They were screwing with us."

"They're assassins."

"Ugh. We were fooled."

"We can't leave them be"

"What about the politicians?"

"awful, they betrayed us"

"bring on the breakdowns~!"

"cant say w/o evidence"

"cmon, just kill everyone!"

"didnt expect much anyway"

"got anything better to do?"

"he had it coming, amirite?"

"id bet money on the rest"

"its just coincidence, yep"

"just turn yourselves in pls"

"lel, regret backin em yet?"

"lol dont be fooled so easy"

"lol, ppl still like them?"

"low expectations, ho!"

"media's garbage as expected"

"overhyped imo"

"p quick to switch sides lol"

"support went to shit lmao"

"tbh i just wanna troll, lol"

"their fans are guilty too"

"they even steal LIVES???"

"they're just suspects..."

"throw em in the slammer!"

"trash talking feels risky..."

"typical bandwagon, gg"

"uhh, yea they're evil"

"waste of tax money imo"

"wat do they want, anyway?"

"world-famous fail loool"

QUESTION: Are the Phantom Thieves innocent? This poll is adopted on 10/29.

Around 20%

"—DELETED BY ADMIN—"

"30 million yen OMG XD"

"Akechi-kun, save us!"

"Enough is enough!!!"

"False charges happen, but..."

"Is the admin an accomplice?"

"Oh how far they've fallen"

"Record-breaking evil"

"They gotta be arrested now"

"can't know w/o a trial"

"id bet money on the arrest"

"if ur innocent, show yourself"

"lol this place went to shit"

"ppl still stand by them?"

"that freaked me out omg"

"they're def guilty"

"they're freaking out hahaha"

"they're running loose rn..."

"this site pisses me off"

"waste of tax money imo"

"what if they are LOL"

"who cares either way?"

After the protagonist fakes his death, and approval drops to 0.3%.

"Akechi got the last laugh!"

"AKECHI IS BAE!!!"

"A worthy end for a villain"

"c'mon, leak his name!"

"Evil is destined to perish."

"he went down easy"

"hope things are safer now"

"Justice with Akechi!"

"Just like Akechi-kun said!"

"kid had it coming, lol"

"So did he do it or not!?"

"so he HAS to be guilty"

"The truth's lost to the void"

"We'll finally have peace"

"we do need a new authority..."

QUESTION: Do you support the Phantom Thieves? This poll is adopted on 12/7.

Around 0.8%

"a lil too late tho"

"dat comeback looool"

"I'd never support them"

"I'm getting confused..."

"I can't believe anybody..."

"i don't really care"

"Is Shido gonna apologize?"

"It's happening again..."

"just typical slander imo"

"lol no way i'd support them"

"may just be election shit"

"moar like phantom GRIEF"

"Must be tough for Shido-san"

"My scandal sense's tingling!"

"no one wants you thieves"

"phantom thieves WIN PLX!!!"

"political attack, REALLY???"

"ppl still defend them? lmao"

"Shido, just take the win"

"Shouldn't Shido explain?"

"Show yourself, Akechi!"

"smear campaigns are gross"

"So he didn't die..."

"srsly, a tv hijack?"

"Stay strong, Shido-san!"

"stop makin such a big deal"

"talk about election drama"

"they're still criminals"

"they can't take a hint"

"this country is effed up"

"this is a murder warning..."

"This isn't debunked yet?"

"this site's still up? :o"

"TV hijacking is terrorism!"

"was it the others? :o"

"was that statement a lie?"

"what about the election?"

"what a comeback..."

"Why isn't this on the news?"

"wow, ppl are desperate..."

QUESTION: Do the Phantom Thieves really exist? This poll is adopted on 12/19.

Around 19%

"And then, there were none"

"can't someone just fix it?"

"cmon thieves, say something"

"Enjoy prison, Mr. Shido~"

"even shido... FAIL"

"everyone, just disappear"

"Everyone was shameless"

"—GAME OVER—"

"go ahead & celebrate, idiots"

"I feel like an empty husk"

"im just like... so what"

"In the end, who's to blame?"

"i shoulda known better..."

"ive lost my will to live..."

"just destroy this country"

"kill this stupid website"

"my support was a waste"

"Next person please!"

"nobody asked for this"

"no thanks to those thieves"

"nothing changed. boringggg"

"Someone do something!"

"soooo is shido alive?"

"so wait, who do we hate?"

"so what WERE they??"

"The election was a farce."

"the future's screwed LOL"

"they're harshin my mellow"

"They better settle things"

"thinking hurts my brain"

"this country's done for"

"This is a stain on history"

"this is fucked up..."

"this is going nowhere"

"useless scum"

"we need answers"

"What's with this question?"

"who cares abt the election?"

"why'd we even bother"

"why this. even now???"

Then the dramatic final cut where everybody believes in them and it’s like # OF FANS ---> FAN POWER LEVELS ---> FIGHT Q( ‘-’Q )

#not spn #persona

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jessefferguson · 6 years

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My Double Life: 5 Years And Going

It’s been a LONG TIME since I wrote one of these, so I figured now was as good a point as any.

Words, spoken out loud, are funny. They can mean very different things.

Try this one:

I am still here.

and

I am still here.

Both of those are the best summary I can think of for how I feel today since today, May 21, is the 5th anniversary of when I was diagnosed with cancer. Five years ago, I sat in a sweltering doctors office in Washington, D.C. as he told me the results of my first biopsy. Five years later, I still have it.

After 5 years, I have two conflicting emotions: I’m still here (thank God) and I’m still (only) here. Five years later, not much has really changed but, also, everything has.

Over the 5 years, I’ve sort of lived a double life – that of a cancer patient and that of a political operative. Sometimes they overlap but, more often than not, they’re separate worlds.

By my best count, over the 5 years, I’ve had 4 surgeries, 33 days of radiation, upwards of 60 rounds of either chemotherapy or targeted therapy, about 75 blood tests, and 150 doctors’ appointments. And over the same 5 years, I’ve worked on 191 television ads, 311 polls, thousands of press releases and speeches, spent over $100 million (of other people’s money), and sent over 40,000 of my own tweets.

I continue to believe the same thing I did – and wrote about - 5 years ago, there are three keys to getting through this sort of thing: (1) Your family and friends; (2) Doctors who are the best; (3) Doing something with your time that you love to do. Even on the worst days of work, the fact that I was doing the work I wanted to do made it that much more possible to fight a disease I did not want to deal with.

WHAT’S THE LATEST WITH ME

I’m living and working from Brooklyn, still. I decided to stay here after the Clinton campaign ended rather than move back to D.C. for a bunch of reasons – closer to my doctors at Sloan Kettering and further from Trump at the WH. Both sounded like good ideas.

For just under a year, I’ve been on a clinical trail and it’s getting some pretty good results. It’s a targeted therapy drug and I’m one of the first to apply it to my unique disease. It’s unlikely to result in me being “cured” or “cancer free” but it’s definitely shrunk the disease in my skin tissue and throughout my head, neck and chest. It’s also brought down the swelling. The swelling issues are far from gone, but they’re better. The best case is that it continues shrinking things; the next best case is it stops anything from getting worse again. Either way, it’s turned my condition to a chronic one, for now. I’ll take it.

Every three weeks I do the same routine. I book a someone to come clean my house for that morning and I take a car down to Sloan Kettering. I take a blood test. The doctor and I talk about medical stuff for a few minutes and politics for a few minutes and then he sends me for treatment. He’s not from America and has a healthy interest in all the crazy things in our politics.

It takes them about 2 hours to prepare the drug, so I have found a corner in the hospital that is usually empty for work — open the laptop, put on the head set and get to work. It’s my own cancer-center-based mobile-office. I have edited TV scripts and polls, held conference calls, did a radio interview and even convinced a donor to contribute – all from a table in a hospital waiting room. Last week’s discussion was about the placement of a media buy. It’s amazing what you can pull of when people don’t really know where you are.

The drug I’m on is an easy one – targeted therapy. It’s like a smart bomb of chemo that only goes to the cells that have the disease. The worst part is the IV, which I barely notice anymore and after 30 minutes, I’m out. On the road home to a clean house with the mild side effect of an uneasy stomach for a few days. Compared to the other drugs I’ve been on, this is like a piece of cake took a walk in a park.

How long will I stay on it? No clue. But it has made this condition chronic. If you offered me a deal today — get this treatment every 3 weeks for 30 minutes and the disease stays under control, I’d sign in a minute. I’d sign it for the next 10 years. For now, I’ll stay on it unless or until it stops working – then I’ll try something else.

WHAT HAPPENED SINCE 2016

As you may remember from my last blog post, just before election 2016, I had spent the previous 6 months working while dealing with the return of my disease.

On election night 2016, I did venture out. It wasn’t something I did often but I wanted to be with the team that night at the Javits Center in Manhattan. I could, now, try to pretend that I had doubts about the outcome of that night to try to make myself look extra smart, but that would be bullshit. I didn’t; I thought we’d win.

The beginning of that afternoon and evening were great. We were monitoring voting and doing the work we needed to do and I was also seeing some good friends who I had been away from while I worked the last few months from home.

Then, the results started and the mood changed. My heart started to sink, but I kept hoping. Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and others poured in. We knew we needed to hold Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to make it work.

While we waited for those results, I got up to go to the bathroom. As I stood at the urinal, a friend who had better sense for numbers and data than I do, approached the stall next to me. We looked at each other with the same forlorn look of despair as if our confidence was waning. He said “I just looked at the latest data from Michigan; it’s gone.” And with that, I found out we had lost in a way befitting the occasion -- standing at a urinal.

Whether you believe we lost because of a mission from Russia or a miss in Michigan, or any other reason, one thing was clear: we lost the electoral college. It was over. And while I stared at my peers and colleagues – friends who had hired me and friends who I had hired – I couldn’t stop thinking, “What’s next?”

Despite what you might see or hear, the group who I worked with on that campaign were some of the smartest, most talented and most committed people I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. As I stared at all of them, I wonder what was next for them. As I thought about it more, I worried what was next for me.

At one point, I wandered away and ended up sitting in the middle of the massive loading dock in the Javits Center with 4 senior staff from the campaign. There where shipping boxes, fork lifts, and one table with a few plastic chairs in the middle. We all just kind of stared at each other. Someone would say something about what we should do or what we should say and we’d all agree but, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you today what anyone said.

As the night ended, I was one of the last ones to leave. I’m not really sure why, I just couldn’t. I kept finding someone else to talk to. I was trying to be a bit of team cheerleader – as best as was possible at that moment.

At around 4:30am that night, I left the Javits center along side two reporters I had gotten to know. We walked for a bit and then they got into cabs and drove off. I just started walking. And walking. I was thinking about what had happened and what it meant for the country. And, if I’m honest, what it meant for me. I had cancer and had just devoted two years of my life to trying to win the presidency – and had failed. I just kept thinking, maybe even crying a bit, and walking.

When I looked up, it was 6 am and the sun was rising. I had walked from the Javits Center at 36th street down almost to the World Trade Center. Much like I did while wandering around the streets of Washington on May 21, 2013, I had done lots of thinking. But now it was November 9, 2016, and it was time to go back to work. I took a cab home, slept for a few hours, and opened my laptop.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING SINCE

Since the campaign ended in 2016, I’ve been “consulting.” I’m still not sure what “consulting” means but it’s what I’m doing. I’m working on my own for a variety of political projects on a variety of important issues, trying to lend my experience to things where I think I can do something interesting and make a difference in the insane moment we’re in right now.

My work has ranged from the fight over the tax plan and some new digital campaign innovations, to a new polling project and an advertising campaign and others. It’s all kept me busy and kept my mind going – in the fight and doing what I love to do. The work is good cause it’s meaningful, it’s the work I want to be doing, and the variety of projects appeals to my attention-span-of-a-fruit-fly-nature.

It’s also allowed me to speak up a bit more about what I think, which has been quite a change. For the last 15+ years, I’ve always represented someone else – the DCCC Chairman, Secretary Clinton, etc. Now I’m speaking more and writing more in my own voice.

I still feel somewhat like a hermit. I live and work in my Brooklyn apartment. I get out more now than I used to, but, nothing like I did when I was healthy. When you’ve been dealing with this as long as I have, you start to lose track of what looking, feeling and being normal would be like. I get to the deli almost every morning and they know to make my eggs and have my iced coffee ready. Others around know me too. Life is easy and that’s important for me right now. One of these days, I’ll be up for making it harder again – but not yet.

THE HEALTH CARE ISSUE

The first project I took on was to help some friends with the coalition fighting the Obamacare repeal legislation. It’s been a hard-waged battle over the last 16 months to improve health care for people instead of letting it get dismantled.

But it’s also been the first time my double lives overlapped a bit. When the Affordable Care Act passed Congress, I was at my office near capitol hill, celebrating with everyone else. But it didn’t really mean anything to me. It was a good thing, but it wasn’t personal.

Seven years later, when repeal of it failed – repeal that would undercut protections for people with pre-existing conditions like I have – it was a very different moment. In fact, when the first repeal plan was pulled from the House floor, I was actually sitting at Sloan Kettering getting my chemo. I was on the phone talking with someone working with me while in the hospital room getting treated as a news alert came across my computer screen.

I don’t often invoke my own personal health care situation while working on the issue because it shouldn’t be about me. I’m fortunate and would be able to get the care I needed if I had to. But sitting there at age 37, with an IV bag dripping a toxic chemical designed to keep me alive into my arm, I certainly had a different perspective than I had 8 years earlier as an otherwise-healthy, overweight 29 year old who saw passage of the ACA as a good reason to go to the bar and celebrate.

FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING

Once and a while I think about what I could be doing if I was fully healthy. I get sad. Maybe I get mad. As I approach 38 years old at the end of this year, more and more of my friends are having their first or second child and I’m forced to think if my life would be different if I hadn’t gotten this diagnosis five years ago. For sure, it would be. But, in the end, you play the cards your dealt and make damn well sure it’s a game you enjoy. You could win big or you could lose your shirt, but either outcome has to be worth it.

Five years ago I was diagnosed with a disease that probably should have killed me. Five years later, I’m still here. When I put it that way, it actually brings a smile to my face. I know talking about having cancer isn’t something that normally is joyful but being able to do what I love while living with the disease sure beats the alternative.

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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How Did Republicans Do In The Primaries

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How Did Republicans Do In The Primaries

Allegations Of Inciting Violence

Inside Texas Politics: What did Texas Republicans, Democrats do right this election cycle?

Research suggests Trump’s rhetoric caused an increased incidence of hate crimes. During his 2016 campaign, he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters. Since then, some defendants prosecuted for hate crimes or violent acts cited Trump’s rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive a lighter sentence. In May 2020, a nationwide review by ABC News identified at least 54 criminal cases from August 2015 to April 2020 in which Trump was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence by mostly white men against mostly members of minority groups. On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection for his actions prior to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob of his supporters who acted in his name.

Who Can Vote In A Primary

Only Democrats can vote in the Democratic Primary.

Only Republicans can vote in the Republican Primary.

The last day to register to vote before the Primary is the 4th Saturday before the Primary.

The deadline to change party affiliation before the Primary is the last Friday in May.

You can register to vote and change your party affiliation after the Primary.

Results Of The 2016 Republican Party Presidential Primaries

Donald Trump

This article contains the results of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and caucuses, the processes by which the Republican Party selected delegates to attend the 2016 Republican National Convention from July 1821. The series of primaries, caucuses, and state conventions culminated in the national convention, where the delegates cast their votes to formally select a candidate. A simple majority of the total delegate votes was required to become the party’s nominee and was achieved by the nominee, businessman Donald Trump of New York.

The process began on March 23, 2015, when Texas SenatorTed Cruz became the first presidential candidate to announce his intentions to seek the office of United StatesPresident. That summer, 17 major candidates were recognized by national and state polls, making it the largest presidential candidate field for any single political party in American history. The large field made possible the fact that the 2016 primaries were the first since 1968 in which more than three candidates won at least one state.

Recommended Reading: Should Republicans Vote In Democratic Primary

May 2016: Trump As Presumptive Nominee

142 delegates were awarded between the Indiana primary and the final primaries in June; however, with Trump the only candidate remaining, Washington, Oregon, West Virginia and Nebraska became essentially uncontested, although Cruz and Kasich remained on the ballot. Trump won handily in West Virginia, Nebraska and Oregon, although Kasich received one delegate from West Virginia and five in Oregon, while Cruz took five in Oregon as well. The next week, Trump won decisively in Washington State, taking 76% of the vote and 41 of 44 delegates, with the other three uncommitted.

May 1024 results 11%

After becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, Trump said regarding the Republican primaries: “You’ve been hearing me say it’s a rigged system, but now I don’t say it anymore because I won. It’s true. Now I don’t care.”

On May 26, 2016, the Associated Press announced that Trump had passed the threshold of 1,237 delegates required to guarantee his nomination, thanks to unbound delegates from North Dakota who declared their support for Trump.

Professional Input Checks The Power Of Billionaires And The Media

The conventional assumption that primaries are less elite than party selection overlooks the way todays primaries actually work. Thanks to court decisions such as SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, there is today no limit on the size of contributions to independent groups; the groups, in turn, are free to support and oppose candidates provided that they not coordinate their activities with the candidates and parties. In other words, todays campaign-finance rules funnel vast sums of unaccountable money to the political systems least accountable actors.

odays campaign-finance rules funnel vast sums of unaccountable money to the political systems least accountable actors.

That said, even if small donors were a perfectly representative group, they would still provide a pathway around gatekeepers, and that is a mixed blessing. True, candidates who rely on small donors are less beholden to big donors and special interests, which may make them more independent-minded; also true, they are less beholden to their political peers, party leaders, and important constituencies, which may make them more reckless and demagogic.

Then there are the media, whose power in influencing candidate choice has grown enormously since the McGovern-Fraser reforms. Writing as long ago as 1978, Jeanne Kirkpatrick tartly observed:

Things have only gotten worse in the transition from Walter Cronkite to Sean Hannity and todays bevy of extremist internet sites.

Also Check: What Major Cities Are Run By Republicans

Sen Josh Hawley Of Missouri

Though controversial, Hawley, 41, is a fundraising machine and hes quickly made a name for himself. The blowback Hawley faced for objecting to Bidens Electoral College win included a lost book deal and calls for him to resign from students at the law school where he previously taught. His mentor, former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, said that supporting Hawley was the biggest mistake Ive ever made in my life.

Still, he brought in more than $1.5 million between Jan. 1 and March 5, according to Axios, and fundraising appeals in his name from the National Republican Senatorial Committee brought in more cash than any other Republican except NRSC Chair Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. Just because youre toxic in Washington doesnt mean you cant build a meaningful base of support nationally.

One Republican strategist compared the possibility of Hawley 2024 to Cruz in 2016. Hes not especially well-liked by his colleagues , but hes built a national profile for himself and become a leading Republican voice opposed to big technology companies.

Hawley and his wife, Erin, have three children. He got his start in politics as Missouri attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2018. Hawley graduated from Stanford and Yale Law.

Statehood And Indian Removal

Defense of Florida’s northern border with the United States was minor during the second Spanish period. The region became a haven for escaped slaves and a base for Indian attacks against U.S. territories, and the U.S. pressed Spain for reform.

Americans of and began moving into northern Florida from the backwoods of and . Though technically not allowed by the Spanish authorities and the Floridan government, they were never able to effectively police the border region and the backwoods settlers from the United States would continue to immigrate into Florida unchecked. These migrants, mixing with the already present British settlers who had remained in Florida since the British period, would be the progenitors of the population known as .

These American settlers established a permanent foothold in the area and ignored Spanish authorities. The British settlers who had remained also resented Spanish rule, leading to a rebellion in 1810 and the establishment for ninety days of the so-called Free and Independent Republic of on September 23. After meetings beginning in June, rebels overcame the garrison at , and unfurled the flag of the new republic: a single white star on a blue field. This flag would later become known as the “”.

Some Seminoles remained, and the U.S. Army arrived in Florida, leading to the . Following the war, approximately 3,000 Seminole and 800 Black Seminole were removed to . A few hundred Seminole remained in Florida in the .

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Anger At Past Outside Interference

The discontent over unaffiliated voter participation in partisan primaries stems from the 2016 approval of two ballot measures allowing unaffiliated voters to select one of the two partys primary elections to cast a ballot in. Before the change, unaffiliated voters had to sit on the sidelines for primaries.

From 2010 through 2016, Republican primary voter turnout outpaced that of Democrats. But in 2018 and 2020, the first two years unaffiliated voters could participate in primaries without affiliating with one of the two major parties, participation in the Democratic primaries soared.

Meanwhile, more Coloradans are becoming unaffiliated voters, reaching 43% at the end of July, while the Republican Partys share of voters is decreasing at a faster pace than the Democratic Party.

Colorado candidates can get on the primary ballot by one of two paths. They can be nominated and go through the state caucus and assembly process, where they must get 30% of the vote, or they can gather signatures from voters.

Some GOP candidates have had trouble making the ballot in the past. In 2016 and 2018, scandals over petition signatures foiled one U.S. Senate candidate and led a gubernatorial candidate, Walker Stapleton, to go the assembly route at the 11th hour after initially gathering petition signatures.

In 2020, allegations of fraud arose out of caucuses in Weld and El Paso counties. The state GOP, however, ultimately determined nothing illegal took place in either instance.

Convention And Vp Selection

Midterm elections: Do Republicans have a chance of keeping the House?

The delegates at the Republican National Convention formally nominated Dole on August 15, 1996, as the GOP presidential candidate for the general election. Dole was the oldest first-time presidential nominee at the age of 73 years, 1 month .

Former Congressman and Cabinet secretary Jack Kemp was nominated by acclamation as Dole’s running mate the following day. Republican Party of Texas convention delegates informally nominated Alan Keyes as their preference for Vice President.

Other politicians mentioned as possible GOP V.P. nominees before Kemp was selected included:

Don’t Miss: How Many Seats Do The Republicans Control In The Senate

Just How Bad Was The 2018 Election For House Republicans

On Thursday, Democrat Jared Golden beat Maine Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, marking the 33rd seat pickup for Democrats in the 2018 election.

There are seven races in the House left uncalled all are Republican-held seats; Democrats lead in five of the seven. If they win all the races where their candidates are winning at the moment, Democrats will net 38 seats. If they lose them all which is very unlikely they will hold at a 33-seat gain.

In an interview Wednesday with the conservative Daily Caller website, President Donald Trump insisted that by his aggressive last-minute campaigning across the country he had saved House Republicans from seat losses that could have numbered into the 70s. I think I did very well, he concluded.

So did he? As compared to history?

Not really, is the answer.

Theres no question that Trump did not suffer the massive seat loss that his immediate predecessor Barack Obama did in his first midterm election in 2010. In that election, Republicans netted an astounding 63-seat gain, the largest since Democrats lost 72 House seats in the 1938 midterms.

But more broadly, the 33 seat loss by Republicans in 2018 places this election firmly in the upper echelon of House-seat losses by a presidents party in modern midterms.

Read Thursdays full edition of The Point newsletter, and to get future editions delivered to your inbox.

What Do Party Preferences Mean When Listed With Candidates’ Names On The Ballot What Are The Qualified Political Parties And Abbreviations Of Those Party Names

The term “party preference” is now used in place of the term “party affiliation.” A candidate must indicate his or her preference or lack of preference for a qualified political party. If the candidate has a qualified political party preference that qualified political party will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot. If a candidate does not have a qualified political party preference, “Party Preference: None” will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot.

Similarly, voters who were previously known as “decline-to-state” voters are now known as having “no party preference” or known as “NPP” voters.

Abbreviations for the qualified political parties are:

DEM = Democratic Party

Also Check: How Many Registered Republicans In Illinois

Civil War And Reconstruction

American settlers began to establish cotton in north Florida, which required numerous laborers, which they supplied by buying slaves in the domestic market. By 1860, Florida had only 140,424 people, of whom 44% were enslaved. There were fewer than 1,000 free before the American Civil War.

On January 10, 1861, nearly all delegates in the Florida Legislature approved an ordinance of secession, declaring Florida to be “a sovereign and independent nation”an apparent reassertion to the preamble in Florida’s Constitution of 1838, in which Florida agreed with Congress to be a “Free and Independent State.” The ordinance declared Florida’s secession from the , allowing it to become one of the founding members of the .

The Confederacy received little military help from Florida; the 15,000 troops it offered were generally sent elsewhere. Instead of troops and manufactured goods, Florida did provide salt and, more importantly, beef to feed the Confederate armies. This was particularly important after 1864, when the Confederacy lost control of the Mississippi River, thereby losing access to Texas beef. The largest engagements in the state were the , on February 20, 1864, and the , on March 6, 1865. Both were Confederate victories. The war ended in 1865.

It Was An Election For A Mini

There was some talk that Democrats may have pulled their punches in the 25th district because, after all, the special election was for the remainder of Hills term and the two candidates will meet again in a more consequential rematch where conditions may favor Smith. Over-confidence probably wasnt a problem since signs of a Garcia win were abundant going into the election.

Republicans, of course, busily spun the win into a sign of a Republican resurgence in California and possibly an omen that the GOP will retake the House even as Trump cake-walks to a second term on the strength of a rapidly rebounding economy that he championed even as Democrats pursued perpetual shutdowns. While the results may legitimately indicate that theres no continuing wave from 2018 that will crash with renewed force in favor of Democrats in November, its more likely that we are seeing a reversion to the mean rather than some new pro-Republican wave. There are enough special circumstances surrounding Garcias win to make its recurrence questionable when he appears on the ballot on Election Day with Donald Trump, who remains as unpopular as ever in California.

There is one wrinkle in Garcias special election victory worth a closer look. In 2018 a number of Republican incumbents famously led early on until later-arriving mail ballots swept Democrats into office. There were signs on Election Day that Garcias early lead might be durable, as California political observer Miriam Pawel noted:

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What Makes The 2024 Presidential Election Unique

The lead up to the 2024 presidential election is different from past years because of former President Donald Trump. Hes eligible to run for a second term, and has publicly toyed with the idea while also weighing in on other Republicans he thinks could be the future of the party. If Trump does run in 2024, hed start out with unparalleled name ID and massive support, but if he doesnt, the field could be wide open for other Republicans hoping to win over his supporters. President Joe Biden said recently he expects to run for reelection in 2024.

Golden Trump statue at CPAC 2021 was no graven image, according to the artist

This early on, wannabe candidates must raise their profiles, show their commitment to the party, and raise money, one Republican strategist said, to get on peoples radars even when your candidacy is in a holding pattern.

Some of the most visible 2024 presidential candidates will surely flame out long before the Iowa caucus, and theres always the chance that the next Republican nominee isnt yet considered a serious player . Theres a million and one things that will happen between now and then that will shape the race in ways we cant now predict, but the invisible primary that comes before any votes are cast has started.

Heres your very early guide to some of 2024s Republican presidential candidates, based on early polling, interviews with Republican donors and strategists and results from online political betting markets.

The Louisiana Primary System

The Louisiana system, sometimes called the “Cajun Primary,” eliminates the primary election altogether. Instead, all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, run on the same ballot in November. If a candidate receives more than half of the votes, that candidate is elected. If no candidate wins with a majority, the top two vote-getters face off in a December runoff election. Qualified absentee voters receive a ballot for the November election and a ranked ballot for the December runoff, so that they can vote as normal in the general election and then have their ranked ballot count for whichever runoff candidate they ranked highest in the runoff election.

Although Louisiana law refers to the election in November as the “primary” and the December runoff as the “general” election, the November election takes place on the federally mandated Election Day and most candidates win office by receiving a majority vote in that election, so it is best understood as a general election, with the December election as a contingent runoff.

The Louisiana system is sometimes mistakenly equated with the Top Two system, but holding the first election in November and electing any candidate with more than 50% of the vote in that election makes it sufficiently distinct that it should not be understood as a mere variant of Top Two.

Read Also: How Many Republicans Caucused In Iowa

Trump Election Lawsuits Have Mostly Failed Here’s What They Tried

In the Senate, Democrats have so far gained one seat, but they need three with a Biden win to take over the chamber. Democrats still have a chance of doing that with two runoff elections in Georgia. That’s seen as possible, but not likely.

It wasn’t expected to be this way. Democrats had put lots of Senate races in play, ones not expected to go their way at the beginning of the 2020 cycle, places like Kansas and Montana.

To be sure, many of the Senate races were expected to be close, perhaps with razor-thin margins, and a Democrat-controlled Senate was never an assured outcome. But when you look at the average of the polls in the last week of the election versus the ultimate result, it’s clear that Republicans were underrepresented all across the country.

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All of these races, except Colorado and Alabama, were within single digits in the polls. Colorado, a state Biden won handily, wound up pretty close to the average. Alabama, a state Trump won by a lot, was an even bigger blowout than expected.

Many of the supposedly tightest races didn’t wind up tight at all. Maine is perhaps the most stunning one. Biden won the state by 9 percentage points, but Republican incumbent Susan Collins won reelection by 9 points.

Not only was Collins down by 4 points heading into Election Day in an average of the polls in the week before the election, but she led in just one poll in all of 2020. And that was back in July. That’s one poll out of almost three dozen.

Relationship With The Press

Did The 2014 Primaries Do The GOP Any Good? | Drinking And Talking

Throughout his career, Trump has sought media attention, with a “lovehate” relationship with the press. Trump began promoting himself in the press in the 1970s. Fox News anchor and former House speaker have characterized Trump as a “” who makes controversial statements to see people’s “heads explode.”

In the 2016 campaign, Trump benefited from a record amount of free media coverage, elevating his standing in the Republican primaries.New York Times writer wrote in 2018 that Trump’s media dominance, which enthralls the public and creates “can’t miss” reality television-type coverage, was politically beneficial for him.

As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently accused the press of bias, calling it the “fake news media” and “the .” In 2018, journalist recounted Trump’s saying he intentionally demeaned and discredited the media “so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”

As president, Trump deployed the legal system to intimidate the press. In early 2020, the Trump campaign sued The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN for alleged defamation in opinion pieces about Russian election interference. Legal experts said that the lawsuits lacked merit and were not likely to succeed. By March 2021, the lawsuits against The New York Times and CNN had been dismissed.

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Garcia Was An Unusually Good Candidate

Republicans lucked into an unusually strong candidate in Garcia, a former Navy pilot running in a district with a significant defense presence, and a Latino in a district whose electorate has become one-third Latino. He managed to beat the previous Republican holder of the seat, Steve Knight, in the February primary in order to win a Top Two position opposite Smith, which was welcomed by Republican strategists. His campaign was well-financed.

Republican Party Primaries 2020

2020 Republican Party primary elections Battleground primaries Primaries by state Submit

Ballotpedia covered every Republican Party state and federal primary in 2020 to highlight the intraparty conflicts that shaped the party and the general election. This page is an overview of those primaries, with links to Ballotpedia’s coverage of all Republican U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and state-level primaries.

to read about Democratic Party primaries in 2020.

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Former Us Ambassador To The United Nations Nikki Haley

Haley, 49, stands out in the potential pool of 2024 Republican candidates by her resume. She has experience as an executive as the former governor of South Carolina and foreign policy experience from her time as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Haley was a member of the Republican Partys 2010 tea party class. A former South Carolina state representative, her long shot gubernatorial campaign saw its fortunes improve after she was endorsed by Sarah Palin. Haley rocketed from fourth to first just days after the endorsement, and she went on to clinch the nomination and become her states first female and first Indian-American governor.

As governor, she signed a bill removing the Confederate flag from the state Capitol following the white supremacist attack at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston. She left office in 2017 to join the Trump administration as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Quinnipiac poll found she was at one point the most popular member of Trumps foreign policy team.

I think that shes done a pretty masterful job in filling out her resume, said Robert Oldendick, a professor and director of graduate studies at the University of South Carolinas department of political science.

Haley criticized Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, saying she was disgusted by his conduct. Oldendick said he thought her pretty pointed criticism of the president will potentially cause some problems.

‘im Going To Be In Your Backyard’: Trump Sons Threaten Primaries For Gop Lawmakers

Fox News, which had been carrying the remarks live, dropped its feed of the rally after the expletives uttered by the president’s son aired uncensored.

Donald Trump Jr. speaks Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, at a rally in support of President Donald Trump called the “Save America Rally.” | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

01/06/2021 11:48 AM EST

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President Donald Trumps eldest sons threatened Republican lawmakers at a large rally outside the White House on Wednesday, pledging that their family would continue to dispute the results of the 2020 election just hours before Congress was set to certify President-elect Joe Bidens Electoral College victory.

To those Republicans, many of which may be voting on things in the coming hours: You have an opportunity today, Donald Trump Jr. told the crowd gathered for the Save America March on the White House Ellipse. You can be a hero, or you can be a zero. And the choice is yours. But we are all watching. The whole world is watching, folks. Choose wisely.

Several House Republicans and roughly a dozen senators have announced plans to object to individual states electoral vote counts when Congress meets for a joint session this afternoon. And though their effort to reverse the elections outcome has virtually no chance of succeeding, the president had applied increasing public pressure on Vice President Mike Pence who will preside over the proceedings to attempt to thwart Bidens win.

Recommended Reading: Are There Any Republicans For Impeachment

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statetalks · 3 years

Text

How Did Republicans Do In The Primaries

Allegations Of Inciting Violence

Inside Texas Politics: What did Texas Republicans, Democrats do right this election cycle?

Who Can Vote In A Primary

Only Democrats can vote in the Democratic Primary.

Only Republicans can vote in the Republican Primary.

The last day to register to vote before the Primary is the 4th Saturday before the Primary.

The deadline to change party affiliation before the Primary is the last Friday in May.

You can register to vote and change your party affiliation after the Primary.

Results Of The 2016 Republican Party Presidential Primaries

Donald Trump

Recommended Reading: Should Republicans Vote In Democratic Primary

May 2016: Trump As Presumptive Nominee

11%

Professional Input Checks The Power Of Billionaires And The Media

odays campaign-finance rules funnel vast sums of unaccountable money to the political systems least accountable actors.

Then there are the media, whose power in influencing candidate choice has grown enormously since the McGovern-Fraser reforms. Writing as long ago as 1978, Jeanne Kirkpatrick tartly observed:

Things have only gotten worse in the transition from Walter Cronkite to Sean Hannity and todays bevy of extremist internet sites.

Also Check: What Major Cities Are Run By Republicans

Sen Josh Hawley Of Missouri

Hawley and his wife, Erin, have three children. He got his start in politics as Missouri attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2018. Hawley graduated from Stanford and Yale Law.

Statehood And Indian Removal

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source https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-did-republicans-do-in-the-primaries/

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diocletianscabbagefarm · 6 years

Note

At the end of the 350s Julian the Apostate had been appointed Caesar by his cousin, emperor Constantius II (Caesar being the title of junior-ranking emperor, compared to the senior rank Augustus) and sent to Gaul. After campaigning agains the Germans across the Rhine, he involved himself with civil administration.

The province had a fiscal deficit (despite the frugality of Julian’s court) and the Praetorian prefect wanted to impose a supplementary tax to make up the shortfall, but Julian opposed this. He saw he needed to win the support of the local population, as the region had suffered economically from barbarian raiding. He basically said he’d rather die than impose another tax.

Hold on to your libertarian horses though, and grab your hammer and sickle!

Instead, Julian saw where the problem lay: whenever tax collectors came round the rich would make a deal with or outright bribe the collectors to defer their (large) tax payments. Every couple years “indulgences” would be issued, which cancelled unpaid taxes that people owed, and so the rich would avoid paying their taxes while the poor were forced to pay their taxes all the time - and make up the shortfall from the rich not paying theirs. Julian abolished the indulgences and forced the wealthy to pay their back-taxes. This even allowed him to lower the poll tax in Gaul from 25 to 7 gold solidi a year, while erasing the deficit.

#hashtag socialism #eat the rich #thanks for indulging my appetite for handing out roman factoids #roman history #roman ask #the-queen-of-bithynia

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indianpolsoc · 4 years

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Can we afford to leave Gandhi behind?

The following is an opinion piece by guest writer Anunay Chowdhury and does not reflect the views of the Indian Political Society.

Gandhi was a racist but fortunately his journey did not end there. He lived a life that inspired people from all over the world to struggle against the discrimination. A real learning of his story establishes him to be everything but a racist.

In my experience, every episode of manifest discrimination against the people of African descent is followed by a brief period of historical revisionism. This allows us to position ourselves where we can better understand the experiences of the people as a member of the minorities and discriminated groups. These voices are often lost in the lofty volumes of indifferent historical accounts by historians of our time. Every attempt to unearth these historical accounts only allows us to reflect and interrogate history from a different, often neglected, point of view. The George Floyd’s murder and subsequent protest in its wake has brought about the same period of revisionism. And as a consequence of that, in many places, there has been growing demand to take down statutes of persons who have had a history of abuse towards black people and minorities. These people, apart from there excellence in their respective field of profession, have had an unfitting side related to their treatment to black and minority groups in retrospect. They have exhibited either a sheer lack of sympathy or a general lack of concern to human life. For lack of a more appropriate expression, they cannot be protected by a veneer of “acceptable action by the erstwhile standards”. The argument for retrospective assessment of people for their past action is not a newfound one. The Nuremberg trials in 1946 and International Military Tribunal for Far East in 1948 are apposite examples in this case. Academic inquiry into the validity of these tribunals will reveal a spectrum of justifications and contradictions. Broadly these tribunals do establish a general principle to allow revisionist assessment of the past actions of the people by standards that evolved after their alleged actions. Key historical figures cannot escape the same scrutiny irrespective of their grandeur and significant contribution otherwise. They should be held to the same standards as the west has created for itself much later after the alleged actions in question. How do we act as a consequence of this revisionism is beyond the scope of this piece.

The above discussion brings me closer to the actual narrow subject of today. The recent desecration of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Washington DC outside the Indian Embassy and some residents demanding to bring down the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the city of Leicester UK. Their actions were motivated by past actions, rather words by Mahatma Gandhi during his early days of 21 years stay in South Africa. This was the time Mahatma Gandhi was just Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; an English- educated lawyer who had completed his studies in London’s Temple Inn, looking to earn a livelihood. The origins of bestowing the title “Mahatma” or “a great soul” is a debatable one but is popularly believed to have been given by Rabindranath Tagore, another Nobel Laureate of Indian origin (Confirmed by Gujarat High Court). Tagore gave this title to MK Gandhi much later in life at around 1915 after being deeply influenced by the thoughts and ideas of MK Gandhi. Although this title did find some opposition later during the Indian independence struggle by some of the other leaders of the time, the title remained associated with Gandhi even long after his death. Gandhi lived an extraordinary life upon returning to India from South Africa in 1915. He found his voice resonated among the middle-class and the lower-class people and was very successful in organising mass movements – for which he is renowned in modern history. But to no one’s astonishment, MK Gandhi lived a life of a common man with common goals in life and not much before he was known to be a “Mahatma”. Most of the people who study him diligently find his journey from a common man to saintly figure and leader, inspiring. The most important aspect of the life of Gandhi is not the man himself but the ideas that he propagated. He is a construct of worldly principles and thought which goes well beyond the biological template of his body. But before his transition, he led a normal life of struggling lawyer and agreed to work in South Africa for a meagre salary. The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire, a book by Ashwin Desai and Goolam H. Vahed, traces, in detail, the time spent by M. K. Gandhi during his stay in South Africa. The book also unearths, although not for the first time, MK Gandhi’s manifest disdain for the people of the Black community. M.K Gandhi contested unsuccessfully to the British authorities to treat Indian subjects in South Africa at par with the White English imperialist but most importantly above the black native population. He contested that the Indian community is intellectually and culturally superior to that of Black people. He addressed members of the black community as the “kaafirs,” a derogatory term by today’s standards.

To his defence, M.K Gandhi’s grandson – Rajmohan Gandhi, also a notable historian, spoke at the Interfaith Scholar Weekend in Fresno, California around March 22 2020 (Video available on Youtube)[1]. He said that his use of the term was a term exhibiting racial superiority, but his usage of the term belonged much to the period than to him. Kaafir was a common term which wasn’t objected by the people of the black community and Indians in the Indian subcontinent at that time. He was merely acting within the social construct of the time. Another submission to further that point is that when Jacobus Matiwane, addressed the Indian community as “Coolies,” an equally derogatory term by today’s standards. John Dube, the first president of African National Congress in 1912 in his address to Chiefs of Zululand to support the ANC, addressed Indian community as “Coolies” (See paper by Heather Hughes). It only implies that these titular addresses were reliant upon the erstwhile social vocabulary. It was a complicated period where the leaders were in cut-throat pursuit to further the well-being of their communities.

The other part of his life, which would help me establish my main argument is his flourishing practice as an attorney in the Transvaal province. In 1903, Gandhi founded the weekly magazine – Indian Opinion. He helped build an_ Ashram_ in Phoenix, Durban which was incidentally near the school of John Lagalibalele Dube. Dube’s weekly magazine called _Ilanga lase Natal _was initially printed in the press of Indian Opinion. The people from his school often visited the ashram. Remember, Africans whom he initially described as “savage,” “raw” and living a life of “indolence and nakedness,” were being helped now by Gandhi to publish the weekly magazine. This was a time when he only voyaged to help the Indian community and the treatment which was meted out to them by the ruling minority of white people. This was also the time when Gandhi supported the idea of imperialism and all the social change that it promised - to elevate the fate of humankind. Acting upon his belief, he led a small ambulance corp. in 1906 to help the establishment against the Natal militia chief- Bambatha, who rebelled against the new poll tax. This, he thought, would help in rapport- building between the Indian community and the white Europeans. The corps, which served for a little over a month, was asked to take care of the wounded and whipped Africans since no white would treat them. Seeing the brutality of the whites against the Africans was a traumatic experience for Gandhi. Nelson Mandela wrote in an article in Time magazine on December 31, 1999:

“His awakening came on the hilly terrain of the so-called Bambatha rebellion… British brutality against the Zulus roused his soul against violence as nothing had done before. He determined on that battlefield to wrest himself of all material attachments and devote himself completely and totally to eliminating violence and serving humanity.”

“Satyagraha” was the Gandhi’s most potent tool of passive resistance (passive meant espousing non-violent means. It has been often confused with non-activity. See Erik H Erikson’s Gandhi’s Truth: On the origins of militant nonviolence). It, literally, translates to “insisting truth with love” (Satya = Truth, agraha = insist). It was his time during South Africa that he was able to hone satyagraha. After serving in the rebellion from the side of the government, he realised that mere petition and deputations would not bring about the desired result. He organised a large number of Indian workers to defy the laws as a mark of protest. 50,000 Indian workers went on the strikes by 1914 with over 10,000 being put to jail. Those who were jailed were often subjected to long hours of tortures and inhumane punishments. The protests were ultimately successful. A precedent was set that would help him mobilise masses in India after his return from South Africa. Gandhi, more or less, began to transcend into his later self - A self that would inspire struggles against oppression all over the world. The immediate and local impact was when The South African Native National Congress (SANNC) Constitution, which was drawn up in 1919, had, in Chapter IV, Clause 13 emphasised “passive action” as a means to be used. It has been suggested that this “was perhaps a reflection of the impact Gandhi’s passive resistance campaigns among South African Indians had made upon African opinion” (See ES Reddy, Gandhiji’s Vision)

Although Gandhi had appreciated the efforts of local leaders in attempting to advance the interests of the natives which was duly reciprocated, The leaders of both the groups (Indians and Natives) still voiced their concerns to the white rulers on the racial lines. They believed that a joint effort would endanger the whole movement that had taken shape over the years. Gandhi, around this time, had recognised the parallel resistance propelled by the native leaders. In an address to the YMCA in 1908, he said:

“South Africa would probably be a howling wilderness without the Africans…”

“If we look into the future, is it not a heritage we have to leave to posterity that all the different races commingle and produce a civilisation that perhaps the world has not yet seen.[2]”

In an article published in Indian Opinion on October 22, 1910, He said:

“The whites… have occupied the country forcibly and appropriated it to themselves. That, of course, does not prove their right to it. A large number even from among them believe that they will have to fight again to defend their occupation. But we shall say no more about this. One will reap as one sow.[3]”

Gandhi was also able to use the work of John Tengo Jabavu, who raised the enormous sum of 50,000 pounds from Africans for establishing an educational institution, to inspire the Indian diaspora. He wrote:

_“… it is not to be wondered at that an awakening people, like the great native races of South Africa, are moved by something that has been described as being very much akin to religious fervour… British Indians in South Africa have much to learn from this example of self-sacrifice. If the natives of South Africa, with all their financial disabilities and social disadvantages, are capable of putting forth this local effort, is it not incumbent upon the British Indian community to take the lesson to heart, and press forward the matter of educational facilities with far greater energy and enthusiasm that have been used hitherto?[4]” _

On WB Rubusana’s election to the Cape Provincial Council, he commented:

_“That Dr. Rubusana can sit in the Provincial Council but not in the Union Parliament is a glaring anomaly which must disappear if South Africans are to become a real nation in the near future.[5]” _

The South African Native National Congress (SANNC) was formed as a reaction to the formation of the Union of South Africa by the British masters. Pixley ka Izaka Seme led a group of attorneys who formed the SANNC after a round of conference. John Langalibalele Dube was chosen as its first president. Dube then wrote a letter to various luminaries of the time and published it in his newspaper Ilanga lase Natal on February 2, 1912. _Indian Opinion _reproduced an extract from his letter in its issue of February 10, 1912, under the title “The Awakening of Africa.” It referred to Dube as “our friend and neighbor” and called the letter a manifesto.

Perhaps the clearest exposition of “transcended Gandhi” came in the form of an editorial. In 1913, when the Natives Land Act was passed by the Union Parliament, Gandhi was vehement in his denunciation. An editorial in Indian Opinion on August 30 1913, reported:

_ “The Natives Land Act of the Union Parliament has created consternation among the Natives. Indeed, every other question, not excluding the Indian question, pales into insignificance before the great Native question. This land is theirs by birth and this Act of confiscation – for such it is – is likely to give rise to serious consequences.[6]”_

After he departed from South Africa in 1915, he did not forget the struggle that was going on in the African continent. He regularly addressed the issues of South Africa on different forums and occasions. In referring to “South African races”, He declared in Cambridge on November 1, 1931:

“Our deliverance must mean their deliverance.[7]”

In an interview to Reverend S.S. Tema – a member of the ANC – on January 1, 1939, he said:

“The Indians are a microscopic minority. They can never be a ‘menace’ to the white population. You, on the other hand, are the sons of the soil who are being robbed of your inheritance. You are bound to resist that. Yours is a far bigger issue. It ought not to be mixed up with that of the Indian. This does not preclude the establishment of the friendliest relations between the two races. The Indians can cooperate with you in a number of ways. They can help you by always acting on the square towards you.[8]”

The influence of Gandhi did not limit to South Africa and India. The universality of the principles found a new home in the movements of the African American struggle towards equality. WEB Du Bois was one of the most prominent leaders of the American civil rights movement. He founded the Nation Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1929, Du Bois asked for a letter from Gandhi to the American Negroes, acknowledging that while Gandhi was busy struggling for the freedom of his people, “the race and color problems are worldwide, and we need your help here.” In reply Gandhi wrote:

“Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is no dishonour in being slaves. There is dishonour in being slave-owners”[9].

Du Bois saw in Gandhi a force that challenged the colour line by challenging the civilisation that created it as a force of disruption, oppression and violence, rather than a force of civilisation as it claimed to be. In his 1948 essay “Gandhi”, Du Bois writes that Gandhi was the “greatest man in the world” and the “Prince of Peace” among living leaders:

“It is singular that a man who was not a follower of the Christian religion should be in his day the best exemplification of the principles which that religion was supposed to lay down. While the Christian Church during its two thousand years of existence has been foremost in war and organised murder, Mohandas Gandhi has been foremost in exemplifying peace as a method of political progress”[10].

Interaction with Gandhi was instrumental in inspiring Howard Thurman to write his magnum opus - Jesus and the Disinherited in 1949. During his interaction with Gandhi in 1935, he was questioned as to why the blacks in America stayed Christian, and why did they not turn to Islam as it guaranteed equality between slaves and masters. Thurman comprehensibly addressed the question in his work which inspired Dr. Martin Luther King (he always kept a copy of the book on his side as he assumed leadership of the Civil Rights Movement). One of the most apparent exhibitors of the Gandhian philosophy was Dr. Martin Luther King himself. The connection was so palpable that the screenplay writers in the movie Selma 2014 did not forget to hang the portrait of Gandhi in the backgrounds of Dr. King in his workplace. In his speech “My Pilgrimage to Non-violence”, Dr. King explains how he came to a Gandhian practice of non-violence after engaging with Western philosophers from Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes, and Rauschenbausch. As he says:

“Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale. Love, for Gandhi, was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and non-violence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months. The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social-contracts theory of Hobbes, the “back to nature” optimism of Rousseau, the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the non-violent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.[11]”

The influence of the Gandhi’s principle cannot be limited to the text of this article. To be able to gauge the effects of philosophy propounded by Gandhi is a matter of separate academic discipline. Gandhi said, “My life is a message”. The journey of an ordinary man and how he dismissed his early prejudices and championed an ideology that propounds for an equal space for the unequals. Even after being given a title of “Mahatma” (Great soul) that enunciates sainthood, his greatness is not because of a contestable record of saintly life but owing to his proximity to a life of an ordinary human being. His imperfections are the only things that make him a perfect fit human to emulate. Apart from his polymathic contributions, one aspect of his life teaches us a lesson in building oneself and an ability to recreate and embrace our differences. I interpret that as the sole objective of the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement calls for a “hriday parivartan” or “change of heart” of the other side.

I deem his contribution to the philosophical underpinning of the protest movements as the most irreplaceable principle in the current struggle. “We seek to convert them, not to defeat them on the battle-field” said Mahatma Gandhi in his letter to Adolf Hitler on December 24, 1940, while describing the nature of Indian independence movement. I do not want to make an impression of castigating the whole movement because of the violence that broke in several areas during the protest. The stand here is to only appeal to subscribe to the foundations laid by Gandhi. Of Gandhi not as a man in bone and flesh but as a philosophical skeleton. It is not a time to distance us from him; It is a perfect time to revive his teachings and ideals. Let us judge a man of not what society made him but what he made of the society. In my limited understanding, the Black Lives Matter movement is not about the equal opportunity to fight with others but about the equality of respect that a human being deserves. It is a movement not about making equal boundaries between communities but to diminish all the boundaries to create a uniform space. Let us not bury our past with indifference. Let us revive it so that it could guide us in becoming a more accepting society. I do not contest the rights and wrongs of the statue vandalism that took place. I only ask a step behind and ask ourselves, do we not want everyone to be like Gandhi? An ordinary man with distasteful prejudices for the black community and who transcended into a person who ended up inspiring the most prominent of leaders of the black community over the world in their struggle against discrimination. Do we not have a perfect face to show to the world while we march to protest the systemic behaviour against the black community. By invoking Gandhi, I believe, we would not have only raised questions about the discriminatory behaviour but also provided the answers as to how to amend ourselves. To give remedy while we question injustice is the best form of protest, I believe. While I make a passionate appeal to you, I shall also leave the judgment with you.

It will be a waste of good money to spend Rs 25,000 on erecting a clay or metallic statue of the figure of a man who is himself made of clay…” Gandhi, Harijan on February 11, 1939

Dr. King reading “The Gandhi Reader”, edited by Homer A. Jack

Dr. Martin Luther King with a portrait of Gandhi in his workplace.

Anunay Chowdhary is a first-year Law student at King's College London.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwoPwPOI4m0&t=1272s

[2] See Ramchandra Guha, Gandhi Before India

[3] Indian Opinion on October 22, 1910

[4] Indian Opinion, March 17, 1906

[5] Indian Opinion, September 24, 1910

[6] Indian Opinion, August 30 1913

[7] R.K. Prabhu & U.R. Rao (Compiled_), Mind of Mahatma Gandh_i (Oxford University Press, London, 1945) 135

[8] 'Interview to S.S. Tema', H, 18 February 1939, CWMG, LXVIII

[9] Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948. Letter from M. K. Gandhi to W. E. B. Du Bois, May 1, 1929. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

[10] Prashad, V. (2009). Black Gandhi. Social Scientist, 37(1/2), 3-20. Retrieved June 20, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/27644307

[11] My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” 1 September 1958, in Papers 4:473–481)

#politics #articles

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thesugarhole · 4 years

Text

Real Lloromannic Hours Venting (and Voting)

before i lose your attention i am humbly asking that, if you don’t have a particular favorite sanrio character, make one of your 3 daily votes ENTRY 38 LLOROMANNIC

every year for the past 4 or so i have semi-religiously voted for lloromannic on the sanrio ranking polls (sometimes sb69, sometimes kuromi). i think they still get a good number of votes yearly but not enough to really make a dent?

like i legit remember being a kid, my melody on tv, and complaining i saw no merch anywhere of kuromi bc no one liked the edgy ones (turns out i saw no merch because she was brand new fresh release; 2005 JHFGJD) same thing with lloromannic- 2007

the thing is... lloromannic had a very unfortunate debut, i believe. being released in 2007 and then immediately thrown into my melody kirara, objetively the worst (and last) season might have sealed the deal.

and its just kinda weird you know, because even if they were associated with my melody, they are even more heavily associated with cinnamoroll, dare i say one of the biggest Sanrio characters, their main ace in the sleeve (its in the damn name, lloromannic lmao) so it just feels... OFF that a lot of cinnamoroll fans, the very least, dont know who lloromannic is :(

back to my merch dillema, i have hope that theres still occasional lloromannic merch in japan the issue is... its virtually impossible for me to find anything lmao. be it physically here or in online stores. i remember, a friend even suggested me a couple of stores that might carry lloromannic things and i immediately got barred from just browsing because they dont ship to where i am U_U

so thats how it is. for me, i doubt it will change even if they get a spike in popularity in this years rankings.

with that said, well, i really just want more people to acknowledge them. sanrio has a shitton of characters they dont really do anything with but i think these two are super cute with potential to be just as much of a fan favorite as kuromi was. their character information has always been pretty basic- kirara and the cinnamoroll twitter lets you infer JUST A TEENY LITTLE BIT more info about them. for example: Berry being a usamimi kamen (kamen shows in general) fan, or Cherry being a phone addict much in the same way as Retoree... little things that make my heart go :D. BUT YOU KNOW!! I BELIEVE!!! AND I WANT YOU TO BELIEVE TOO!! so even if you vote for them once and then your favorite every day thereafter ill be happy!!!!!

ive been planning since february to do some sort of campaign where i would try my best to do a daily drawing alongside the voting link, but even since then vi-me grega to plan it; quarantine, working for and writing for dissertation, as well as an article have me in a severe stress position and although i feel im always saying this i legit dont feel like i have free time anymore.

I also thought that the polls opened in may, not in april so well that caught me a bit by surprise didnnit. fdvjhbdfhbsdhj

i will try my best, but if at times i see i have to focus more on work then ill try not to beat myself too hard (because popularity and voting aside, doing a little something for characters i genuinely love just sounds like fun. yknow?)

ironically enough, gushing about them to my friends these past months without really putting campaigning effort seems to have already gained me a couple solidarity votes lol

i dont think i have much else to say... my tagline is pretty much gonna be “dont forget to vote for your favorites, of course if you dont have one consider lloromannic” because even like this i feel bad trying to force peoples hands i dunno jhbfdhbsj

i mean, how can you say no to these widdle faces?

EDIT:

the first time voting you have to fill out a form; it wont ask again and you can vote for other characters.

first section is your age.

next, your gender: 男性(male) or 女性(female) ; if you’re nb or prefer to not say, the option is 不明・その他

finally, it asks where you live. I think all the options might be japan prefectures (im unsure if it includes countries outside of jp), so i’m going a limb here and say that if you’re in japan, you can read these and choose accordingly haha. if not, your option is once again: 不明・その他

note that your vote wont count until you have filled this out!! your vote will be accepted when the character image appears again along a bunch of confetti, like so

#text #lloromannic #when was the last time i wrote a post this big on tumbler.com #sanrio #sugar.txt

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uk-news-talking-politics · 5 years

Text

Election 2019: Region-by-region guide to the most volatile election in memory

By Chaminda Jayanetti

This election is the most unpredictable in living memory. Part of the difficulty is that different parts of Britain now vote in very different ways for very different reasons. 'Uniform national swing', once psephological gospel, is dead in a ditch.

That means each region must be viewed on its own - but in each case, it's worth bearing in mind that the benchmark to use when judging this election is the 2017 vote share for each party, not how they're polling right now. Labour could have a great campaign, improve its poll ratings - and still lose a slew of seats.

Northern England

The North East, North West and Yorkshire-Humberside are not a homogenous blob. But across the board, the Tories are targeting Leave-voting ex-industrial heartlands that in many cases have never voted Tory at all. In truth, it's likely that northern core cities are out of play.

There is evidence that Brexit has lost its sheen in the North East more than in Yorkshire. So while Bishop Auckland and Stockton South are do-or-die gains for the Tories, Blyth Valley and North West Durham are harder tasks. If they take those two, they're heading for a solid majority. The midpoint is Darlington, number 47 on their national target seat list. Should the Conservatives win here, Johnson will probably stay in No.10 no matter what happens in London and Scotland.

There is an ethnic factor here. Labour's vote is potentially more secure in ethnically diverse Dewsbury than in the overwhelmingly white Workington, despite the latter having a larger Labour majority.

The Brexit Party is polling better here than elsewhere, although their only plausible seat gain across the country is Hartlepool. As Theresa May discovered to her cost, voters in these seats find it easier to vote for Nigel Farage than for the Tories. The risk of a split Leave vote is much higher here than elsewhere.

Labour will hope its campaign - focused on austerity, inequality and radical reform - will be more persuasive to traditional working class voters, white or otherwise, than the Old Etonian on the other side. Both Labour and the Tories will highlight their spending plans for 'left behind' towns. The question is whether Jeremy Corbyn's unpopularity renders all strategies moot.

Midlands and East Anglia

This is mostly solid Leave territory outside Cambridgeshire. The Midlands brought the Tories more joy in 2017 than Theresa May's much-hyped northern targets. Johnson will target his strategy on these seats. If he wins a majority, he'll get it over the line here.

The Tories' targets combine once-solid Labour heartlands and 2017 Labour gains, town seats and city seats, very white seats and ethnically diverse ones, and a smattering of Remain-voting pockets. That last group includes Warwick and Leamington, a tight marginal that ought to stay Labour based on its 58% Remain vote. The Lib Dems are nowhere here - if the Tories retake this seat, tactical voting has failed, the Remain vote has split and Johnson could be in for a good night.

But most of these seats voted Leave, and by some margin. The Tories are chasing a string of Labour-held marginals with often wafer-thin majorities and very small 2017 Lib Dem and Green votes for Labour to cannibalise. The Conservatives are building their entire campaign on winning over Labour Leave voters in Dudley North, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Peterborough and Derby North. Fifteen seats could fall to the Tories on a five percent swing from Labour - potentially neutralising their losses in London and Scotland before we even look at Wales and the North.

The rise of the Brexit Party could also have unpredictable effects. Take Lincoln. The Ukip slump in 2017 ended up helping Labour retake the seat. Could Farage's party take votes from Labour, handing the seat to the Tories? Or will it eat into the Conservatives' natural vote? Other seats like High Peak and Birmingham Northfield are also in this bracket.

Set against this, Labour's strong south Asian vote will be critical to holding onto marginals in Coventry, Birmingham and Wolverhampton - which helps explain the prominent roles the Tories have given to Sajid Javid and Priti Patel.

London

The capital is crucial to the outcome of the election - if the Tories do badly here and in Scotland, it may wipe out their gains in the North and Midlands. If they hold on here, they should stay in power.

London could also be the messiest of all England's electoral battlefields. Let's start with the known knowns. With the Brexit Party marginal in London, middle class Leave voters in the city's outskirts will most likely vote Tory, while its large BME population will strongly lean Labour.

Everyone else is up for grabs.

Working class Leavers will decide whether Dagenham turns Tory or stays Labour. If it's the former, the Tories are in for a very good night. Middle class Leavers should hold Uxbridge for Johnson, but won't be enough by themselves to save Chingford for Iain Duncan Smith. The Lib Dems should oust Zac Goldsmith in Richmond, but will need almost perfectly efficient tactical voting to retake Sutton.

And then there is the clutch of Remainy seats that could become messy three-way marginals. These are among the hardest seats to call - Wimbledon, Putney, Finchley, Chipping Barnet, Hendon, Cities of London and Westminster, Chelsea, plus Labour-held Kensington and Battersea.

Three of these seats have Jewish communities alienated from Corbyn's Labour. All of them have large middle class liberal demographics who may lean Lib Dem, but where Labour are the main rivals to the Tories from the 2017 result. Remain voters wanting to stop the Tories could struggle to decide who to back, making tactical voting inefficient and helping the Conservatives hold on with low vote shares. If YouGov's seat-by-seat MRP polling shows which party is best placed to challenge the Tories in each seat, that could have a decisive impact on the outcome.

South West

Traditionally this was a Tory-Lib Dem battleground, but now it's much harder to read. Yes, the Lib Dems have recovered - but where? Are their new voters concentrated in London and its Remainy hinterland? Or are they spread more evenly? If the latter, they could retake old seats in the Leave-voting south west - North Devon, North Cornwall, Wells. If the regional Tory-Lib Dem swing rises above ten percent, a whole slew of seats come into play - the likes of Thornbury and Yate, Yeovil and Taunton Deane. At that point, the Tories are in huge trouble, needing to win swathes of seats in the Midlands and the North.

Is it plausible? Ten percent is a big swing, but one that doesn't require the Lib Dems to get anywhere near their south west vote share from 2010. Their activists know how to campaign on local issues among Leave voters. But if their recent recovery is concentrated among Remain voters, and their outright pro-Remain stance alienates Leavers, they could be left struggling in the south west, just picking up Cheltenham and ultra-marginal St Ives.

The party may benefit from tactical pro-Remain voting, but in Cornish seats such as Camborne and Newquay, Labour came slightly ahead of the Lib Dems in 2017, making a split vote a big risk. Watch out also for East Devon, where the pro-Remain independent Claire Wright could take the seat from the Tories - but could also be undermined by the local Lib Dems' refusal to stand aside.

As for Labour, their first job will be to hold on to Plymouth Sutton, Bristol North West and Stroud from strong Tory challenges. Hefty Remain votes in the latter two seats should help them. If they can recover in the polls - not relative to their deficit against the Tories in 2017 - only then can they start targeting Conservative marginals like Camborne, Filton, and Swindon South.

Keep an eye on Jacob Rees Mogg's seat in North East Somerset. It voted 52-48 for Leave, and is a natural target for highly motivated tactical voting by Remainers. Rees Mogg's 19% majority may not be as safe as it looks.

Not many people are watching the South West. Perhaps they should be.

South East and the Home Counties

Let's start with the easy bit - Essex and Kent look like safe Tory territory.

Labour has a job on to protect Reading East, Portsmouth South and ultra-marginal Canterbury, and will need either a campaign surge or tactical voting to do so. If Corbyn can turn things around, Labour could take the ultra-marginal Leave-voting targets of Southampton Itchen and Hastings. The exodus of young graduate Remainers from London to the Home Counties could win Crawley, Worthing East, Wycombe, Reading West and the two Milton Keynes seats for Labour. Yes, they need to nail their campaign, but if they do so, tactical voters will fall into line. It just goes to show how vulnerable the Tories are to a Labour campaign recovery.

Then there's the Lib Dems. Tellingly, the party's Tory defector Sam Gyimah is quitting his Surrey seat to stand in Kensington - which tells us how the Lib Dems see their chances in Remain-heavy Surrey. The party is having a bad night if it doesn't take Guildford, but Gyimah's London parachute doesn't suggest the Tory implosion and efficient tactical voting needed to take other Surrey seats is on the cards.

Instead the party will focus on Eastleigh, Lewes, St Albans and Winchester. Taking those four seats would be a good night's work for Swinson.

Wales

With the exception of its Welsh-speaking, Plaid-voting seats, Wales politically resembles northern England - rural Conservatives, Labour core cities, and Leave-voting ex-industrial towns that have been Labour for decades but could now turn blue.

The Tories have roughly the same targets as 2017, plus Gower and Vale of Clwyd, which they carelessly lost to Labour in the Corbyn surge, and Brecon, which fell to the Lib Dems in this year's by-election.

A two percent swing across Wales from Labour to the Tories may not deliver them a single extra seat. A swing between two and four percent would take Gower, Wrexham and Vale of Clwyd, while five seats fall on a swing four-to-six percent. The Tories could gain votes without gaining seats - but past a tipping point, the seats start dropping like flies.

Labour does have Tory-held targets - but it needs to dramatically improve in the polls first. Labour beat the Welsh Tories by 15 points in 2017 - the most recent Welsh poll this month found the Tories leading Labour by four points.

There has been a lot of hype around Plaid of late, but it doesn't have legs - yet. Its one key target of Anglesey could be a three-way battle with Labour and the Tories. Barring a dramatic shift in fortunes during the campaign, any historic breakthrough will have to wait.

Scotland

Around a quarter of Scotland's 59 seats were won by fewer than a thousand votes in 2017, making it heavily laden with marginals.

Whether this election becomes a proxy referendum on Brexit or on independence, it ought to favour the SNP - support for independence has risen since 2017, while tactical voting by Remainers could win back numerous Tory-held seats. Scottish Labour is a mess and the Scottish Tories leaderless.

And yet. The SNP suffered badly from the fall in turnout between the 2015 and 2017 elections, and there's no guarantee the party can motivate those voters back to the polls. While the Tories are rudderless, they still have their Brexit USP, and some of the seats they're defending voted strongly to Leave. If Labour can get a successful national campaign going, that could also feed through north of the border, where the party could take seven SNP seats with a one percent swing.

Bet on the SNP, sure - just don't bet the house on them.

#general election

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pikapepikachuu · 5 years

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'I’m hungry to start the work': Bill Shorten's five-year journey has just weeks left to run

Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size Bill Shorten stands on a metal stairway in Australias biggest brewery and tries to convince the assembled workers that the coming election will not be an empty exercise. Whatever you do, you get a politician at the end of it, he concedes, drawing a few smiles from the crowd, but his speech is heavy with warnings about the importance of every ballot paper. How you vote has a direct effect on the laws and conditions you get at work, he says. There is a connection. If you think that everythings going up in Australia but the wages, your vote can change that. If you want to see energy bills get under control, your vote can change that. Shorten worries in private about the apathy among voters who have seen six prime ministers over a dozen years. Here, in front of about 100 workers at the Lion brewery in western Sydney, he is trying to give meaning to the election to be fought on May 11 or May 18. He seems to feel his greatest challenge is to persuade Australians that it matters.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has served two terms as Opposition Leader. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Shorten projects his voice over the conveyor belts and palletisers. He tells the workers he wants Australia to be a manufacturing nation. He knows their salaries and conditions are good but he says they may have family members in retail and hospitality where the penalty rates have been cut. He talks about Medicare, hospitals, schools, restoring penalty rates and lifting the minimum wage. He promises to force companies to hire more apprentices. The applause is polite but not effusive. Everyone can see the television cameras. They know this is merely a warm-up for the election campaign. A few want to take a selfie with the candidate, but there is none of the manic energy of the 2007 campaign, when Kevin Rudd shocked his own side with his popularity. The wariness in the audience is given voice when Shorten takes questions. One worker asks about negative gearing and gets an assurance that Labors tax increase will allow anyone with an existing rental property to keep claiming a concession. When the public questions are over, someone asks Shorten whether she can trust Labor to stop asylum seekers coming by boat. He assures her she can, but she is not convinced. An older man asks him to do more to help grandparents who have to take custody of their grandchildren but do not get as much support as foster parents. Shorten asks for the mans details so his office can respond in more detail. Advertisement There is no doubt Shorten is match fit for the election. Five-and-a-half years after he became Opposition Leader, he is tantalisingly close to becoming prime minister. To stumble now would be to lose the unloseable election, a spectre so grim he will not rest until polling day. Im hungry to start the work, he tells The Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald. Shorten has a long list of what he wants to achieve in government to deliver real progress in peoples lives. Fifteen years of education. That means genuine, universal access to preschool, he says, reeling off the first item on the list as we travel from Sydneys west to Sydney Airport.

Bill Shorten poses for a selfie during a marginal seat visit in Melbourne.Credit:AAP Weve got to tackle the challenge of dementia and aged care, weve got to help people deal with it better. In the big health fights that people have in their life, weve got to make sure they dont feel financial burden on top of the health challenge. I really want any kid from any postcode in Australia to get all the options TAFE or university, whatever dream they want to pursue. I want merit and how hard you work to be the passport, not how rich your parents are. Theres more. Advertisement Weve really got to be one of the best countries in the world at so much, he says. Why shouldnt we be the best at healthcare and education, why shouldnt we be the best at climate change? We should be an energy superpower. We should have a more independent foreign policy. We should close the gap with the first Australians. Its all about opportunity and fairness. I want every Australian to have opportunity and every Australian to receive fairness. And theyll do the rest. Loading Stone by stone, Shorten and his team have added so many promises they now have a mountain to climb if they win power. They vow to restore penalty rates, change the law to raise the minimum wage, hold a plebiscite on a republic, raise $32.1 billion over a decade from changes to negative gearing and raise $56 billion from changes to tax refunds on dividend imputation. Not least, they promise to spend billions of dollars on energy projects while cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, in a Parliament that has swung wildly on climate change over two decades. Shorten will not admit he is promising too much. He plays down the risk of a traffic jam in Parliament for his crowded agenda. Well just keep advancing. You can get things done if you want to, he says. As proof, he nominates the National Disability Insurance Scheme, an idea he backed in his earliest days on the Rudd frontbench. Advertisement Rudd, of course, took power in 2007 with a wish-list so long he had to launch dozens of reviews rather than taking immediate action. Shorten insists he can avoid that. Youve got to go in with a clear agenda, Shorten says. And were outlining it. Love us or hate us or be somewhere in between, you cant say were not working out the issues now. We havent been an opposition whos coasted on the mistakes of the government. The government clings to the hope that voters do not like Shorten, given polling that shows more voters disapprove of his performance than approve of it. While voters do not crowd around him when he walks down the main street of Burwood in the electorate of Reid a short time after the brewery visit, there is no sign of hostility. Shorten approaches workers and shoppers outside the Westfield on Burwood Road, striking up conversations and introducing them to the Labor candidate, Sam Crosby. One of the pedestrians, Hana Shahim, asks for a photo with him. Ive always voted Labor, she says. Nobody offers a stronger endorsement.

Bill and Chloe Shorten.Credit:Paul Jeffers The campaign will change this dynamic. The media pack will be bigger, the pressure on Shorten will be higher and the risk of encountering an unhappy voter will be greater. One other difference will be the presence of Chloe Shorten. While Chloe has many other calls on her time, not least family in Melbourne, Labor is hoping to have her on the campaign as often as possible, in the belief that Australians warm to her and Shorten himself campaigns better with her. Advertisement Shortens friends believe he is a stronger campaigner than Prime Minister Scott Morrison and will emerge triumphant in a matter of weeks. With a solid Labor campaign, they say, he might achieve a swing of more than a dozen seats. Helped by a bad Coalition campaign, the swing might reach 20. There are no such boasts from Shorten himself. He is careful not to look like he is taking the result for granted, even though he thinks the Coalition has become a tribe of warring clans that are incapable of running a government. His team assumes the government will rely more heavily on scare campaigns and negative advertising when the election is underway in earnest. Shorten knows how a scare campaign works. He wounded Malcolm Turnbull at the last election with the false claim that the government was privatising Medicare and will revive the health funding message at the election to come. He insists, however, that he wants to give Australians something to vote for, not just vote against. He takes this message to the Holmesglen campus in Melbourne, where he tells students he would put more money into TAFE and increase the cost of visas for skilled foreign workers.

Bill Shorten, flanked by two Labor candidates, speaks to students and teachers at Holmesglen TAFE. Credit:Erik Anderson The message about foreign workers causes unease in the crowd, given some of the students are from overseas and pay fees for their training in the hope of becoming permanent residents one day, but Shorten makes no apology for putting a priority on locals. His pledge to increase the number of apprenticeships is central to his policy platform. As in Sydney one day earlier, Shorten uses his Melbourne visit to try to motivate his audience to vote for change. Again, apathy is the enemy. Whether he is talking about wages or healthcare, he ends his sentences with three words: Your vote matters. Advertisement The fact that Shorten visits Holmesglen with two Labor candidates, Jennifer Yang in the seat of Chisholm and Fiona McLeod in Higgins, is testament to his confidence. Winning Chisholm from the Liberals is a reasonable prospect but taking Higgins would be unthinkable at any other election. Shorten believes he has been tested by his time as Opposition Leader and can be a better prime minister because of it. The contrast with Morrison and Turnbull, both elevated to the leadership from within government rather than winning an election first, is central to the way he sees himself. It is also a big reason why he believes he is ready for the campaign and the work that would come after an election victory. Ive learnt a lot, he says. In opposition thereve been some terrible days and thereve been some good days. The governments run out of steam. Thats a charitable interpretation. I think the nations looking at us to see if were stable, theyre looking to us to give them three years of continuity in government, with no surprises. No surprises? It is an impossible promise, but Shorten is nothing if not confident. And he says he is more than ready. Ive been practising for this for five and a half years. David Crowe is Chief Political Correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Most Viewed in Politics Loading https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/i-m-hungry-to-start-the-work-bill-shorten-s-five-year-journey-has-just-weeks-left-to-run-20190329-p5192d.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

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jessefferguson · 5 years

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52,560 Hours Is A Long Time

After the final episode of the VEEP aired the other night, I was wondering how long it had been on the air. I realized it was just wrapping its first season on the day in May of 2013 when I got the results of my first biopsy and confirmation about my disease.

2,190 days ago today – 6 years – I sat in a sweltering doctor’s office waiting for the results of my first biopsy. Since then, I’ve had 6 or so more biopsies, 5 surgeries, more than 75 rounds of drug therapy, 45 days of radiation and more tests than I’d like to think about. But in those 6 years, none of them is seared in my mind like that first one. I was 32 then. I’m 38 now. And, as I see 40 on the horizon, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about how life would have been different if that biopsy had been different. 72 months or 52,560 hours. No matter how you slice it, 6 years is a long time.

My Thinking

Right now, work and life are good. My health is health – it’s never good but it’s not bad, either. It is what it is.

I’m at the age where it feels like 99% of my Facebook feed is filled with the family milestones of my friends -- having kids, first steps, first days of school. Occasionally when I see those, I wonder how my life would have been different if things had gone differently 2,190 days ago. Who knows. I can’t identify a direct impact of something I did or didn’t do because of cancer. There’s no clear thing I didn’t get to do. The only thing that’s known is that it’s unknown.

My work is a huge part of my life -- as anyone who knows me can attest. I’ve never been one for ‘work life balance’ and I’m not really a stop and smell the roses type. I’m more likely to wonder how those roses would look in a candidate photo shoot or whether they’ll be around after global warming. I started working in national politics just under 10 years ago, which means that most of the people I’ve worked with in those 10 years have known me as “Jesse with Cancer” longer than as just “Jesse.” That’s weird to think about.

2018 Election

As I’ve previously written here, on election night 2016, I staggered around Manhattan for a few hours to just think. At the conclusion of it, I got home and went back to work. On election night 2018, I feel like some of the work paid off. I spent most of the last 2 years as a general consultant on a variety of projects – doing issue campaigns, ad campaigns, polling research and independent expenditures. I was very unsure what I’d be able to do after 2016 – with the loss in the election and the reality of my health. While I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted, I continue to enjoy what I do. On most days, it’s what I wake up in the morning thinking about and what I go to bed at night worried about. I still get to spend most days wearing slippers and sweatpants at a standing desk in my apartment.

Over the course of the two years, I have probably advised about $45 million in programs and groups but, most importantly, was able to do it without ever having to put a tie on. I’m glad. I hate wearing ties. That’s especially good news because I have a tube in my neck that lets me breath – so I can’t wear a tie even if I wanted to.

Not all of my work was directed at the 2018 election, but a lot of it was. When I saw Nancy Pelosi get sworn in as Speaker of the House, it definitely put a skip back in my step – restoring a bit of my faith in democracy. But, also, my faith in myself and my ability to help with things even while balancing it with my health challenges.

It felt especially good to see her get sworn in because she was the one – 6 years earlier – who had told me to get on a plane and go see the doctors at MD Anderson in Houston. Those doctors ended up saving my life.

I didn’t go down to DC for her inauguration, though. I could make up a lot of fancy excuses why I didn’t go, but, to be honest, I would have needed to wear a suit & tie. C-SPAN works just fine.

How I Ruined One Of My Favorite Shirts

Even as I work, health concerns creep up. I’ve had a tracheostomy tube since 2015 when they put it in for that pesky reason that it’s good to be able to breathe. Anyone who has had one can tell you there is occasionally some blood in it – that’s normal. It’s a foreign object that doesn’t belong there.

After the last few years, I’m not a ‘run to the hospital’ kinda guy – I’m used to most of this. But by 2 am on Sunday, January 5th, 2019, it was clear there was a problem. Throughout the day that Saturday, it had gone from a little wisp of blood to blood soaked. At one point, I coughed in my bathroom and blood splattered all over the mirror above my sink. Probably time to find a doctor.

I packed towels and tissues around my trache and jumped in an Uber. The car had nice leather seats. I was worried I’d stain them. By the time I got into a hospital gown, the flannel shirt I was wearing was blood-soaked. One of my favorite shirts went into the trash can.

Even at 2 am, the staff there mobilized to figure things out. We did some tests and cleaned some things up. It helped. Out of an abundance of caution, they changed the tracheostomy tube to one that more securely protects my airway but doesn’t let me make any sounds – I can’t speak. That’s always been my worst fear since I got the tracheostomy. I talk for a living. It’s possibly my only redeemable skill.

Over the years, I have gotten really good at working from a hospital: I know where to tell them to put the IV so that I can still bend my arm and type on my laptop. The food tray makes a great computer desk. I know how to talk on a conference call while shielding the beep-beep noise if a heart monitor makes noise. I know how to take over the visitors’ reception area on the floor in the hospital after hours and turn it into a mobile office. If the Russians ever figured out to bug my various infusion rooms and hospital beds over the years, they would have figured out quite a lot about the Democratic Party.

I was in the hospital for about 10 days. The good news is that they have a delightful short rib on the menu and pancakes for breakfast, so I was fine. Oh, and about ½ way through my stay, they changed the tracheostomy back to one where I could talk. That was good news too.

It healed up. I took an Uber home. Since then, it’s not given me any real problems.

Problems like this sometimes creep up; they’re part of everyday living. In the moment, they seem terrible but in hindsight it’s just the way of things now.

The Hardest Day (GayleNation)

I sat in the way back of the Howard Theater that weirdly cold yet sunny day in Northwest, DC. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to sit through that service so I sort of wanted to hide in the back. It was harder than I thought. Half-way through the service, as I watched friends, colleagues and even former bosses (and popular vote winner) give their eulogies, I had to walk out. I made it look like I was going to the bathroom but I really needed a few minutes of air. That was the hardest day of this last 12 months -- November 10, 2018, when we said goodbye to my friend Tyrone Gayle.

I remembered the night he called to tell me about his diagnosis. He knew what I’d been through and he asked for advice. I didn’t really have anything useful to say. We talked about whether it was a nightmare, I tried to make the case it was more like a bad dream.

I grieved the far-too-early passing a friend. I was sad to think he wouldn’t be part of my life and had only begun to reach his potential. But cancer had been the cause for this funeral – a young man taken at age 30. Many people were devastated with the news of his passing; many were as close and some even closer to him than I was. It was a hard day for a lot of people. I imagine my thoughts that day might have been a bit different than other peoples’.

I can’t believe that was six months ago. He was 8 years younger than I was when he died and he was diagnosed 3 years after I was. He had worked for me in 2013 when I was diagnosed and worked with me in 2016 when he was diagnosed. Whenever you have cancer and you hear about someone else with cancer, it’s difficult. When you hear about someone younger, it’s worse. When I heard about this – and when we lost him – it wasn’t so much a gut punch as it was a gutting.

Tyrone has passed away in late October of 2018 but they planned the memorial for after the midterm election. As the planners knew, Tyrone would never have let us take focus off the election to focus on him. A lot of tributes have been said and written more eloquently than I could about him – about his work with Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. He had an infectious optimism and an unrelenting drive. It was always weird up to look to someone who was more junior than you are, but I did.

After the service, many of the attendees got together at a local bar to continue the tribute. I saw friends from all walks of my life in Washington, but I ghosted on my plans for the rest of the night.

I sat in my hotel room that night and thought for a long time. Some thoughts were the normal ones -- how he’d be missed and what a void he’d left. But then, in my situation, the mind wanders to weird places. You start asking questions like “Why him and not me?” You think about what the differences could have been – He was younger. Did I get better treatment? Was my disease less severe? Why him and not me? You realize there isn’t a reason, that it’s fairly random. And you feel thankful and lucky because the lot didn’t fall on you. But you realize you shouldn’t think like that about the dear friend you just lost, so you push that thought as hard as you can out of your mind. But sometimes it creeps back in and you feel guilty when it does.

In the end of that night, though, I went to bed with a weird feeling. It was a feeling of jealousy – a weird kind of jealousy. If a memorial service is a tribute to how you lived and who you touched, Tyrone’s was filled with more than 750 people -- people whom he admired and people who admired him. I started wondering what mine would be like. There was no way I could match him. Anyone with cancer who tells you they don’t think about their own mortality is lying through their teeth.

Where Am I Now?

This Tuesday, May 21st, is 6 years since I was diagnosed. This Friday, May 24th, I’ll hop downtown and get my latest treatment. We know the cancer is still in me; that hasn’t changed. But, generally speaking, we have it under control. Sometimes we have to deal with an issue here or there but it’s not creating life threatening problems.

I’ve been on the same drug trial since last year. I still go down to Sloan Kettering every 3 weeks for a 30-minute drug treatment. Two hours of work from the same hidden corner of the doctor’s office while they get the drug ready. I know all the nurses who have the Friday shift and they know me. Some of them even know the best places in my arms to start an IV line. The treatment doesn’t have any particularly problematic side effects. So, I’m not healthy but I’m not currently sick. It’s really more like a chronic condition.

For so long, cancer has been either something you’re cured of or something that kills you. More and more people like me are just living with it. Interferes with life, there are ups and downs, sometimes you need an extra treatment, or you ruin a perfectly nice flannel shirt. But, you live with it and you live your life.

At the bar after Tyrone’s funeral, I ran into his wife Beth. I had seen her throughout the day but had been avoiding her cause I didn’t think I could hold it together. Spoiler alert, I didn’t hold it together.

As we talked, she told me something that I truthfully already knew. She told me if I didn’t keep fighting to keep myself healthy and keep fighting to do what I wanted to be doing, that Tyrone would have kicked my ass.

p.s. If you have interest, learn more about the memorial scholarship fund in Tyrone’s memory and make a contribution.

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