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beardedmrbean · 4 months

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A transgender woman said she was disqualified from running for a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives because she did not disclose her former name.

Vanessa Joy, 42, a real estate photographer, had hoped to run as a Democrat and represent Ohio House District 50. That hope came to a premature end when she failed to include her former name, or what’s sometimes referred to as a “deadname,” the name a trans person was given at birth and no longer uses after their gender transition.

Ohio law requires people running for political office who have changed their name within the last five years to include their former names on candidacy petitions. The law exempts people who have changed their name because of marriage, but it does not mention exemptions for trans people who have changed their names. Joy said she was unaware of the law until her disqualification.

“It’s a barrier to entry for many trans and gender-nonconforming people,” Joy told NBC News on Thursday. “Where I personally would have just bit the bullet and allowed my deadname to be on the petitions and likely on the ballot, for a lot of trans people, they don’t want their deadnames printed. It’s a safety concern for many.”

A spokesperson for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Melanie Amato, said her office was aware that a candidate was disqualified in Stark County — where Joy submitted her petition to run — and suggested the disqualification was warranted.

"The law applies to everyone," LaRose said in an email. "It is cynical and unfair to criticize the Stark County Board of Elections for their unanimous and bipartisan decision to follow Ohio law."

Joy's disqualification comes days after the state made national headlines over transgender issues.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, vetoed a GOP-backed bill last week that would have restricted both transition-related care for minors and transgender girls’ participation on school sports teams. Joy noted that her stepfather, Ohio state Rep. Bill Roemer, a Republican, voted for the legislation.

DeWine’s veto was criticized by some Republicans in the state and beyond, including former President Donald Trump.

“DeWine has fallen to the Radical Left,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “No wonder he gets loudly booed in Ohio every time I introduce him at Rallies, but I won’t be introducing him any more. I’m finished with this ‘stiff.’ What was he thinking. The bill would have stopped child mutilation, and prevented men from playing in women’s sports. Legislature will hopefully overturn. Do it FAST!!!”

The veto is expected to be challenged by Ohio lawmakers in coming weeks.

Three other transgender candidates filed to run for the state Legislature last month, according to local outlet Cleveland.com. If any of these prospective candidates were to make it to the general election and win, they’d be the first trans state lawmaker in Ohio.

Currently, there is only one trans elected official serving in the state — Dion Manley, a school board member in Gahanna, a Columbus suburb — according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, a political body that aims to elect LGBTQ to public office. There are 51 elected officials across the country who identify as trans women, trans men or trans nonbinary people, with eight serving in state legislatures and none serving at the federal level, according to the institute.

“I wanted to give millennials, Gen X and Gen Z the courage to get out and vote and to run for office themselves,” Joy said. “Because if they see a trans girl from very red Ohio running for public office, in a chamber full of people who despise me for my existence, they might have more courage to get out and vote and see that ‘maybe my vote will make a difference.’”

Joy said she filed a petition Thursday to contest her disqualification.

#nunyas news

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gduncan969 · 1 year

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Gospel Grinches

Psalm 2:1-3 “Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.”

OK, that’s it! I’ve had enough! Now that the woke crowd has labeled me and all of my white friends as racists under their Critical Race Theory, they are well on their way to taking over the world and are now pushing for all kinds of retribution and cash compensation for the racist crimes committed by our forefathers—or in their terms, fore-parents or, even better, fore-birthing people, over the last several hundred years. I’m done with it! This past week I read that the governor of California is proposing that any person of African descent whose fore-birthing people were subject to slavery, be paid the sum of $30,000+ US dollars as compensation. Of course, deciding who will get the money creates the same problem for Governor Newsom as it did for Adolf Hitler who had to decide who should be regarded as Jewish and thus marked for extermination. The woke crowd has been very busy all over the western world making sure that we, the masses, admit our guiltiness and prove our repentance by coughing up the funds to finance their new world utopia which will bring us happiness while we own nothing. Their insanity knows no bounds. A film-maker in Norway was recently charged with hate-speech for saying that trans-women (who are biological men) cannot be lesbians. In nearby Finland a Lutheran Bishop and a Finnish MP were similarly charged with hate-speech for simply quoting the biblical texts on sexual sin. The word “sin” was deemed to be a particularly hateful term. A teacher in Idaho has been forced to resign for refusing to use her students’ gender-preferred pronouns and one recent media headline asked the question, “Do Unvaccinated People Need to Be Counseled to Drive Slower?”, a question undoubtedly worthy of top priority at the United Nations. Here in Ontario, a high school teacher is showing up for work dressed as a woman and wearing gi-normous prosthetic breasts under a see-through slip while he teaches classes in workshop skills. Complaining students and parents are being told by the school board that they fully support the teacher’s right to do so! These and countless other examples like them leave me asking how long can this go on before our entire society collapses under the weight of all these new “individual rights”. A modern translation of Ecclesiastes 1:1 would be: “Insanity, insanity, all is insanity”! It amazes me how far we have fallen into this chaos of confusion but my amazement is not so much with the questions being asked as it is with the fact that such inane, insane and self-evident questions are not only being asked but worse still, willingly being discussed by normal, intelligent people who might as well spend their time debating if the earth flat or if the moon is really made of green cheese! What possible discussion is needed to refute the statement that a man cannot be a lesbian and what degree of narcissism does it take to be offended by such a viewpoint? Who among us, other than the mentally ill, is running around looking for someone to tell them how to define a woman or how men can become pregnant?

So, what can I do about all of this? For a brief moment I thought of starting a legal action against the Scottish government to seek compensation for the vast amount of Scottish land seized from my ancestor, King Duncan who was killed by Macbeth only 800 years ago—a mere blip in the chronology of the earth—and maybe I could include compensation from William Shakespeare for stealing the rights to the story for his play, “Macbeth”. Of course, I shouldn’t have to prove I’m King Duncan’s descendent because, according to the current official viewpoint, it is sufficient that it is “my truth” even if it doesn’t match anyone else’s “truth”. However, if you are in any doubt, I can offer clear proof of my claim: I was born in Scotland, so there! What other proof would you possibly need? Based on all the lawsuits going on around us these days, I suspect I might just win my case and pocket a few million dollars to boot.

How do we explain this madness? Have governments lost their collective minds and are so far into this new woke culture they cannot find their way back to common sense? Are they just too fearful of the woke crowd and its insidious hidden power to speak out against their hell-bent effort to destroy civil society and replace it with a one-world government having control of everything and everyone—except them? On second thoughts, there’s a much deeper and more insidious motive at the heart of all of this and it has nothing to do with claiming rights, whether it be the pronouns or gender of our choosing , or compensation for whatever wrongs we think we have endured or whatever rights we might invent for ourselves. The heart of this problem is plain and simple rebellion—rebellion against God and His authority as revealed in His book, the bible! God has clearly shown us what He requires of humanity in Micah 6:8 “He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?” However, the rulers of this woke world and their followers have rejected any notion that there is a God who should be recognized and glorified for who He is and they have replaced His authority with their own. Tragically, many in the churches in the west have followed them. They have mistakenly believed that being a Christian in today’s world is all about obeying the rules whether they be of God or government but they have failed to understand Jesus’ only command to us was not to obey the rules but to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). We will never succeed in obeying God’s rules until we first know Him and trust Him for who He is, our Father, our Friend and our Savior. Trying to obey rules without first having a walking, talking relationship with the Ruler leads only to sterile religiosity which in turn leads to cold-hearted legalism that knows only how to criticize and accuse others. Religious zeal for rules can never substitute for a living, breathing relationship with the Ruler, the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is able to rescue us from ourselves through the new life He gives us as we surrender to Him. So many people reject the Gospel message because they see it only as form of religious obedience to rules for good behavior rather than a vibrant relationship with a Person who loves them completely and who empowers them to love others as themselves. As one wise man once told me, being a Christian is not about what you say you believe, it’s about WHO you know! Many years ago I listened to a guest speaker at a Christian conference give a talk on Psalm 68:1 “Let God arise, Let His enemies be scattered; Let those also who hate Him flee before Him.” and then went on to ask us, “Who and where are God’s enemies?”. The answer he provided to his own question was eye-opening: “God’s enemies sit in the front rows of many churches glaring at the pastor because they hate God”. The reason they hate Him is because life has not been kind to them and they blame God for their suffering, perhaps the loss of a loved one or a divorce or an illness or a financial difficulty. The reasons are many but the result is the same: since joining the church they have tried their darndest to serve Him by obeying all His rules but never felt the warmth of His touch or saw the brilliance of His glory. God never seemingly came through for them so they continue to attend church knowing that He is God and must be obeyed but they hate Him for it! While remaining locked up in a spirit of bitterness, their sole purpose in church is to oppose any move of the Holy Spirit that seeks to destroy the traditions of men that they have become accustomed to. They have become “Gospel Grinches”, stealing the enthusiasm of God’s people for worship, deliverance and fellowship. Jesus warns all of us who have believed in His name that He is the vine and we are the branches and that without Him we can do NOTHING (John 15:5). Countless lives have been lost by those who grabbed hold of the bible’s rules for living and ran with them but forgot the relationship that alone gives us the power to obey them. The insanity we are witnessing is the result of rebellion “against the Lord, and against His Anointed” (Psalm 2:2) which has led to the decision to discard any notion that God’s rules are for our benefit, not our destruction. Verse 3 puts it this way: “Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.” In other words, let’s unstrap ourselves from all these rules that are impossible to keep and let’s do our own thing. This decision has led to the “Me Generation” where it’s all about me-my-and-mine but God in Isaiah 53:6 describes this generation this way: “All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” How sad it is to see whole denominations of the Church adopt the world’s standards of righteousness as they go about blessing same-sex marriages, homosexual behavior, mutilation of the body to change gender and medical assistance in dying even for those who are mentally ill. That’s bad enough but they are also actively opposing those who disagree with these things who are making a stand for righteousness’ sake.

Thankfully, the rest of Psalm 2 gives us reason to rejoice. God is still in control:

4 He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision. 5 Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, And distress them in His deep displeasure: 6 “Yet I have set My King On My holy hill of Zion.”

7 “I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. 8 Ask of Me, and I will give You The nations for Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth for Your possession. 9 You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’ ”

10 Now therefore, be wise, O kings; Be instructed, you judges of the earth. 11 Serve the Lord with fear, And rejoice with trembling. 12 Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, And you perish in the way, When His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him.

Are you ready to “kiss the Son”? Please know that you will not survive Christ’s return if all you have to offer is blind obedience to the rules of the faith. You must enter into fellowship with the Ruler who will give you His Holy Spirit to lead you and comfort you and best of all to empower you to live the new life God has promised you. You will also be able to pass on to others what you yourself have received just like Peter and John did at the temple gate when the crippled beggar asked for alms: “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” (Acts 3:6). Ask yourself ,“What do I have to give?” If your answer is “a bunch of rules for holy living”, then you really have nothing worth having. If you haven’t entered into this vibrant relationship with the Lord Jesus, you can simply by asking Him to forgive your past failings and fill you with His Holy Spirit. Believe that He will and He will! This could be a whole new Christmas for you as you celebrate the birth of our Savior. Have a Merry Christmas.

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jellypipemedia · 3 years

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Art Industry and Equality

The Artist Industry, an industry that lets self-expression come out in a number of mediums.

As an Artist myself, i can tell you how wonderful it has been to have a creative outlet like my multimedia. To express my ideas and watch the momentum of my work turn into something special. As many other Artists, it’s hard to find that validation and legitimacy in the industry that defines you as a professional and makes your career into more than a ‘hobby’. Some find that struggle more intense than others.

The idea that ‘All Artists have to struggle’ is a common ideology but beyond that- do all artists struggle in the same ways? Of course not. This could be combated with a number of different perspectives based off of different talent levels and different environments but commonly, artists are not given the same opportunities based off of more than just their talent. Different aspects come into play.

The Artist Industry has been known for their inclusive atmosphere and supportive community, but is it set apart from any other industry when it comes to addressing equality issues?

Misogyny/Trans-Misogyny , unequal opportunities based on gender, lack of recognition and the power struggle of legitimacy have all played their part in work industries all over- and the artist industry doesn’t escape that narrative.

A common theme that i find more than any other is women, queer, non-binary, and Fem artists struggle to find their power behind their art because they are usually dismissed, deemed illegitimate, or seen as ‘just a hobby’, or they could ‘make it a real job someday’. Their work isn’t given the credit it deserves or the recognition of legitimate work. Opportunities are missed quite often as work lays in favor of social stigmas and safe investments in uncomplicated people seem to flourish regularly.

Stewing over my thoughts on this, I reached out to my social media circle looking for more perspective on the situation. I was able to connect with a couple of people, ask them their thoughts on how these aspects of the industry have affected them on a professional level and their influence on the industry . I want to keep the dialogue going about this and would love to hear more about the perspective of women, queer, fem, non-binary artists on the industry that claims to be so inclusive.

With that being said, I had a great opportunity to talk with the Founder of ‘Siren Nation’. *

Diving into ‘Siren Nation’ media, I came across their ‘LinkedIn’ page. Their Mission Statement spoke to me and left me wanting to dig just a bit deeper into the foundation of their cause.

“Siren Nation is a unique arts organization that showcases and creates performance and exhibition opportunities for women throughout the year. We are the only women’s collective that produces an annual festival showcasing the original work of women working in music, film, performance and visual art.

Siren Nation’s mission is to inspire and empower women of all ages to create their own art and to highlight the many achievements of women in the arts.”

When I was connected with Natalia Kay O’brien, I didn’t know much about Siren Nation or where our conversation would lead too. I had an idea of where i wanted to take this project, not having much more than a foundation and urgency to keep learning more about the perspectives of women identifying, queer and non-binary.

So, I asked if she’d be willing to help me out by telling her story and giving us an insight on her perspective of the industry.

Natalia:

I'd be super happy to help! There's an amazingly rich queer music scene in Portland and the Pacific Northwest. That is a big part of the reason I moved out here!

From 1999-2010 i produced a lot of events that centered queer folx -some from out of town, some in town.

Jay:

Awesome! I appreciate that a lot about Portland and the PNW. I've grown up in Portland most of my life.

Natalia:

Lucky you!

Jay:

What are some of the events that you produced?

Natalia:

I started out doing house concerts for a spoken word artist out of NYC, then booking shows for/with traveling queer female artists i got connected with over time. I ended up doing the booking for mississippi pizza for a couple of years and got some more experience there producing shows--generally national folk acts--and booking artists. That helped me begin to get more familiar with the local music scene and get introduced to some amazing artists like Laura Gibson, long before they broke out.

My experience and frustration, with the local music scene's dearth of female and queer presence and opportunities to get the kind of exposure that festivals offer, inspired me to found Siren Nation, an organization dedicated to promoting and empowering women artists.

As a queer woman I made sure that there was a strong queer presence during my tenure. We were supposed to have ‘Gossip’ headline the first festival and 3 weeks beforehand they broke their contract!

The seven years I spent with Siren Nation exposed me to new queer artists. Unfortunately, at that time, there was no such thing (in terms of identity) as nonbinary, and we didn't put enough effort into be trans inclusive. We produced, and they still do, 2 tribute nights, one for dolly parton, one for billie holiday, that have been happening annually for something going on 15 years! and then the annual festival, in november, which i produced from 2007-2010.

Jay:

That's absolutely awesome that you contributed so much to the queer/fem community. I know how intensely hard it can be to demand that recognition and be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the world. It's no small thing. Can you give me an example of a time where you’ve experienced misogyny/trans-misogyny that directly affected your work as an artist?

Natalia:

I was tired of not seeing enough women and women-fronted acts on local festival lineups when there were SO MANY amazing female bands. My work as an artist (visual) has been almost entirely a private endeavor. however i do think there is a correlation between the fact that i considered my drawing 'doodling' and i'm a woman. I made art for years before I took on the identity and claimed it. I still squirm a little.

Jay:

I can totally understand that. I deeply feel like the accomplishments of women are often made out to be 'A nice hobby' or 'could be a job someday.'

Natalia:

Yes, exactly.

I can tell you as a booking agent for queer female artists in an industry that is heavily male, did not make for the most hospitable environment to work in. Getting club bookers to book an artist whose press kit screams 'radical feminist lesbian" let alone that she was doing spoken word which was just emerging...well, ultimately all they cared about was whether we could fill a room. There were some venues that didn't want to deal with us, in more conservative parts of the country, i.e. midwest and southeast.

I think trans-misogyny was unfortunately a little baked into Siren Nation in the sense that trans women have remained almost invisible within that space. Not enough queers involved with siren nation after I left!

So I tackled showcasing as many media as possible--music, film, visual arts and later fashion and comedy.”

Jay:

That's a powerful tool in today's world too. Being someone who is involved in a variety of media ( myself as well) is a powerful weapon to today's world of perspective. We have a lot more influence than people credit us for. Have you been affected by any people that are positive influencers in the queer community/have given inspiration to you personally?

Natalia:

The artists inspire me!! That's part of why I produced events because I truly believe in the artists and want to help them connect with a larger audience and want people to get exposed! Bands like Team Dresch, who really blazed trails for queer women punks, all around the country at a time when there was virtually no queer presence in media. Beth Ditto and Gossip, for being fearlessly brash, unashamedly fat, and a force! Women who were unafraid to be loud when it wasn't the norm yet--Sleater Kinney, Bikini Kill too!--inspired me and they were tackling issues that I cared about as a feminist in ways that I didn't see straight women doing.

I will never ever forget seeing Bikini Kill and Kathleen Hannah telling all the 'boys to go to the back'. It blew my mind having stopped moshing b/c it wasn't safe and she demanded and created that space

Jay:

I can definitely vouch for queer punk artists being a heavy influence in the queer community and causing pressure on 'social norms'! It's very empowering and the women in the scene are not a force to be reckoned with. It's still astonishing how such a positive and empowering movement got met with so much resistance.

Natalia:

Kinda like what I wanted to do with Siren Nation. Yeah, some people can't handle a strong woman especially if she is in any way not gender/hetero conforming.

Jay:

I'm sure Siren Nation impacted a lot of people to be the ferocious and powerful people they knew they were.

Natalia:

I hope so!! I know it was a space where, for example, at the tribute shows, artists got to meet and mingle backstage, and spontaneous collaborations would happen.

Jay:

That's the best part of festivals in general. Bring artists from all over and to create that opportunity for networking and creativity.

Natalia:

Right!??!

Practically every female artist who has broken out nationally performed at Siren Nation at some point and offering free workshops was an important way for us to empower and encourage women to create and make their own art.

Jay:

That's awesome! Does Siren Nation still have a website that I can reference too?

Natalia:

Yup! Sirennation.org

As an audience, I found festivals an amazing opportunity to get exposed to new artists.

Most of the language there that is about the organization, like mission statements and values, is mine.

Jay:

So why have you decided not to produce events for Siren Nation more recently? or does the organization take care of itself nowadays?

Natalia:

I left in 2010 because i was pursuing a masters degree, basically decided to pour all the hours and energy i had put into siren nation into a degree that would get me a salary for doing that kind of work. My co-founder December Carson has stayed at the helm and kept it going all these years. There are some longtime volunteers who help at events.

My dream that someday it could be a salaried job I finally realized was not going to be feasible

Jay:

That's a positive transition out of the organization tho! Did you get your master's degree?

Natalia:

Yes! It helped to know that it would carry on after I left, because it was my baby and I was very attached! It has thrived over the years due to the dedication of the board members who make it happen. New blood comes in, and then they add fashion and comedy. It's been neat to see how it has evolved over the years and yes, I got my Masters, in Public Administration.

Jay:

That's so so so good to hear Thank you so much for talking with me today- you have really been insightful and this is truly very inspirational to hear as a queer woman in the multimedia industry!

With ending our conversation, I felt like I made a breakthrough on what direction I wanted to take this project and found the encouragement to keep pushing through the media and highlight these amazing women, non-binary, and queer people.

We lack recognition for being who we are while we make it in this industry. We struggle and fight back - gaining ground and getting traction.

I’m excited to see where this project takes me and I'm glad to have you all on this journey. Stay alert for more to come!

#Art Industry #art #journalism #punk #punkscene #inequality #queer #trans #woman #women

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ravenmorganleigh · 6 years

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This is about the erasure of lesbians, which is pandemic. Lesbian erasure is global: Lesbians are being erased from every aspect of society, in both state-sponsored male violence and individuated violence. Lesbian erasure is in our families, our places of worship, our schools, our workplaces. Lesbian erasure is, increasingly, in our own LGBT community. Lesbian erasure is even, at times, within our lesbian selves.

There are many ways to erase a lesbian. As almost any lesbian can attest, that erasure begins with our families of origin telling us we aren’t really lesbians or it’s just a phase or we are really just tomboys or we are too pretty to be “dykes” or God wouldn’t approve or we’ll never have children if we hook up with women or we just haven’t met the right man or sometimes, all of the above.

The attempt to erase our lesbian identity broadens as we begin to out ourselves in the world beyond our families. That experience can be harrowing. Many lesbians become substance abusers in an effort to blunt the pain of lesbophobia and the concomitant pressures of the closet or the risk being rejected and despised from even those people we thought respected and loved us, such as friends or co-workers.

Some lesbians attempt suicide. Others attempt heterosexuality. Some transition as FtM only to transition back when they realize they were lesbians and not men, like their trans men friends.

Despite the prevalence of lesbians in heterosexual pornography as titillation for men, society has deemed lesbians best not seen, not heard, not existing. To that end, from our own families to the state, lesbians are being erased.

The literal erasure of lesbians through murder has been, especially over the past decade, statistically on the rise. Lesbians are being killed all over the world just for being lesbians. Even as you read this, the state-sponsored erasure of lesbians–the femicide of lesbians–in nearly half the countries of the world doesn’t even elicit headlines.

Which is a double erasure.

In 79 countries it is illegal to be a lesbian. Illegal to exist. Laws specific to and solely addressing lesbians and gay men are not less in 2015, they are more. In fact, as the West provides superficial acknowledgment of lesbians and gay men, mostly through changes in marriage laws, in other parts of the world harsher penalties for lesbianism and homosexuality are being created and implemented, causing terror for millions.

Not all such crimes against lesbians are state-sponsored. Many are religious and cultural in origin. Honor killings are a weapon against women in a range of Muslim nations and lesbians are among the women threatened by this practice. Even a cursory Internet search turns up dozens of articles on honor killings of lesbians or lesbians fleeing the threat of honor killing. In Gaza, which Al-Jazeera reported last March led the world in honor killings, lesbians attempt to flee into Israel to escape death at the hands of their own families. But honor killing is not just a crime perpetrated against lesbians in the Middle East. In June 2014 a black lesbian couple, Britney Cosby and Crystal Jackson, were murdered in Texas. James Cosby, Britney’s father, was arrested for the killings. The alleged motive was saving his family’s honor from the sin of the couple’s relationship. The couple was survived by their young son.

In South Africa, corrective rape of lesbians has become so common it is now considered pandemic in that country. More than half of all lesbian victims are also murdered. These rapes and killings are often at the hands of gangs and are especially gruesome. One young woman had her intestines ripped out through her cervix. Another was raped with a toilet brush which ruptured her uterus. Eudy Simelane, a lesbian soccer star in South Africa, was gang raped and beaten and stabbed to death. She had more than 100 wounds, even on the soles of her feet. Noxolo Nogwaza was raped and stabbed multiple times with glass shards. Her skull was shattered. Her eyes were reportedly gouged from their sockets.

International rights groups assert there are more than a dozen such rapes each week, though not every lesbian is killed in the process. Pearl Mali reported that when she was 12 years old, she was raped for the first time by an older man that her mother brought home from their church. He raped Pearl in her own bedroom, which he did daily until she was 16. Mali told the New York Times, “My mother didn’t want me to be gay, so she asked him to move in and be my husband. She hoped it would change me,” she said.

It only traumatized her.

Corrective rape has also become commonplace in Jamaica, one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. Keshema Tulloch, 33, a Jamaican lesbian, was attacked in Kingston last year and then shot by police for attempting to defend herself against the man beating her. She was arrested and charged with attempted murder. No charges were brought against her attacker nor the police officer who shot her but international rights groups are trying to free her.

Maria Barin, from a family originally from Iraqi Kurdistan, was murdered in Lanskrona, in southern Sweden, stabbed to death by her brother in an honor killing because she refused to marry a man to help her family financially.

Lesbians are being stoned to death in Saudi Arabia, burned at the stake in several African nations, beaten to death in India, raped and hanged in Cameroon, raped and set on fire in Nigeria.

The first time a lesbian is reported to law enforcement for lesbianism in Sudan, she is given 1,000 lashes in public. One thousand. The lashings often result in death.

In Russia, lesbians are imprisoned for “defiling” Russian culture where some mysteriously die.

Kygyzstan is implementing a new and highly repressive law aimed at lesbians and gay men which begins with imprisonment. The same thing is happening in Egypt where being a lesbian or gay man is now illegal.

All this violent erasure yet lesbians do not make the news. There is no “Lesbian Day of Remembrance.” Even the word lesbian is erased from a majority of news outlets which use “gay” as inclusive of gay men as well as lesbians. Among the major websites using this language are even the left-leaning Think Progress.

Violence against lesbians is on the rise, but news reports of it are rare. Last week a young lesbian couple in Ireland, Roisin Prendergast and her girlfriend Ciara Murphy were left bleeding and unconscious following an unprovoked attack in Limerick. The only comments on this crime I saw on Twitter were my own.

Lesbians seem only to become news when we object to our own erasure.

For nearly two years I have been writing about Aderonke Apata, a native Nigerian who has been fighting to remain in the U.K., requesting asylum, because she fears death in her native country. This is a not unreasonable fear, as she has explained to me in several interviews for Curve magazine, because lesbians are killed for being lesbians in Nigeria. And in the 11 years Aderonke has been in the U.K., members of her family have been killed and other lesbians seeking–and denied–asylum have been returned only to die.

Jackie Nanyonjo died in Uganda on 8 March 2013 after being deported from the infamous Yarl’s Wood detention center where Aderonke herself, along with many other lesbians seeking asylum, has been detained. Another Ugandan lesbian, Prossie N, was seriously ill at the time of her deportation in December 2013. Prossie N has been in hiding in Kampala ever since her deportation while activists attempt to get her back to the U.K.

Now it is Aderonke fighting for her life.

On March 3 Aderonke appeared in London’s High Court to challenge the Home Office’s refusal to grant her asylum. As she had explained to me in an interview last year, she was forced to submit what she considered pornographic videotape of her having sex with her fianceé, Happiness Agboro.

But the London Home Office, which has been denying that lesbians are lesbians for decades, has determined that Aderonke can’t be a lesbian because she has had children–like at least a third of all lesbians.

As Aderonke explained to me, the fight to stay in the U.K., which she now considers both her home and the place where she feels safe from persecution, despite the treatment she has received at the hands of the Home Office, has left her physically and mentally fragile. She has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress (the circumstances of her fleeing Nigeria where her former partner was killed are harrowing). In 2005 she attempted suicide.

The argument the Home Office is making against Aderonke is that she can’t be both lesbian and heterosexual. But as she explained to me, she has always been a lesbian. Like many women, however, compulsory heterosexuality was imposed on her by the state as well as the culture in which she lived in Nigeria. Which is why she fled.

There will be a ruling by the end of the month on her case at which point, if the Court does not find in her favor, she will be deported to certain death in the place she no longer considers home and which has enacted even more stringent anti-lesbian laws since she fled more than a decade ago.

The outrage I feel over Aderonke’s case–her voice is calm and lilting when she talks, but the frisson of fear is there, understandably–is far from singular. Last week lesbians were arrested in Russia and tossed into jail. Word of their condition has not been forthcoming. Last month a local lesbian activist in my city, Kim Jones, was killed in broad daylight while waiting for a bus. Her killer came up behind her and shot her in the head at point blank range.

I could list case after case after case of horrifying attacks on lesbians and murders of lesbians. But why do I have to? Why must I plead for an end to lesbian erasure and a recognition of our status–or lack of status–in the world?

A recent furore erupted on social media between some lesbians and Owen Jones, a columnist for The Guardian UK. Jones had been opposed to the letter calling for an end to the no-platforming of lesbians that had appeared in The Guardian and been widely discussed and debated on social media and which I previously wrote about here.

Jones had written a column which many objected to in which he basically re-wrote gay and lesbian history to put trans women at the forefront of the Stonewall Rebellion, erasing the lesbians who were actually at the forefront as well as the gay men, all of whom risked their lives in the days of that battle.

In the volleys that followed on Twitter between U.K. lesbians and straight feminists, the canard that lesbians are transphobic if lesbians don’t consider trans women as sexual partners was tossed into the mix by Jones, who seemed to have blocked every lesbian in the U.K. who has a presence on social media calling each “obsessively transphobic” as he tweeted on the morning of March 4.

On March 3, I witnessed an exchange between him, Helen Lewis, deputy editor of the New Statesman, a British actress I know and a de-transitioning trans man. The exchange consisted of Jones calling my friend a homophobe and his totally ignoring the comments of the former trans man who actually could speak to the issue of dating gay men as a trans man.

The debate was over whether Jones, a gay man, would perform cunnilingus on a trans man, which, not surprisingly, appalled him as gay men are not sexually interested in women. (Just like lesbians are not sexually interested in men.)

I personally find this whole debate over who gets to play with the bodies of lesbians (and gay men) intrusive and have since it was first raised several years ago as an issue being forced upon lesbians. But perhaps Jones should have considered that fraught history when he told lesbians that if they didn’t accept trans women into their beds, they were transphobic. (And I will note here that there are women and men who are happy to be partnered with trans women and I know several. But that’s not the issue under discussion–lesbian sexual autonomy is the issue.)

When the tables were turned and Jones, as a gay man, was asked to accept trans men into his bed, Jones cried “homophobe” at the lesbians asking him to embrace what he had previously proclaimed was the moral and political duty of all lesbians everywhere to accept. Their autonomy be damned.

Goose/gander, pot/kettle, ultimately, hypocrite. If Jones cringes at the thought of opening the trousers of a bearded trans man to find a vagina, then perhaps he should understand this might be the same response of a lesbian unveiling a penis where she expected a vagina.

Gay men, while still suffering the very real threats imposed by actual homophobia (which was not what the U.K. lesbians of Twitter have any ability to impose, even if that were their intent, which it is not) are not under any of the same proscriptions as lesbians because they are not female. Oppression is not a contest–despite some wanting to make it so–but from within the confines of the LGBT community, it is beyond offensive to accuse lesbians of anything other than choice for their sexual desires or lack of same.

This is where erasure comes into play.

Lesbian sexual identity and choice is being eroded, erased and elided. This is being done by the literal obliteration of lesbians by state-sponsored violence, by the “corrective rape of lesbians” (imagine the 12 year old Pearl Mali being given the worst sort of reparative therapy by her very own mother), by the harassment and violence, by the firings (lesbians face more job discrimination than any other group within the LGBT alliance), by the enforced and compulsory heterosexuality of every society on earth. Aderonke Apata has been forced, by men, to provide not just spoken testimony and a pending marriage license, but also a sex tape of her having sexual relations with her partner to “prove” her lesbianism to the men who want to erase that aspect of her identity–the very identity that puts her and millions of other lesbians at risk of imprisonment and/or death.

If Jones is crying homophobia at being asked to accept a trans man as male, how is he not transphobic when he insists, as do many, that a lesbian who says she does not want a penis in her bed is transphobic?

Lesbian sexuality should be off limits from men–straight, gay or undecided–under any and all circumstances. It is the one thing–our own beds, our own bodies–that we have been able to keep sacrosanct from an outside world that either tells us we think we are men if we are butch or tells us we really are straight if we are femme and tells us what we can and cannot do with our lives and our loves every second of every day in every place on earth.

When you–be you straight, gay, bi, trans, queer, questioning–tell a lesbian what she should do with her body, you are no different from the presidents and prime ministers who want to wipe lesbians off the face of the earth for choosing women over men, choosing ourselves over what others would have us do.

In February the Lesbian Helpline in Chennai, India, was opened to offer support and services for lesbians who are nearly invisible in India. The helpline was established following the suicide pact of two married women from Chennai who set themselves on fire rather than be separated. The Indian Community Welfare Organisation which runs the helpline says many women are still afraid to come out as gay because of the violence they might face from either their families or Indian society.

But increasingly the problem at the helpline is that men are calling looking for the phone numbers of lesbians. For sex.

This is what lesbians face. This is what erasure looks like–the endless effort of men, either deliberately and maliciously, as arbiters of the state, or simply ignorantly, like Jones with his Twitter tirade against all lesbians.

Lesbians are being no-platformed out of our very existence, whether through the insidiousness of silencing or the oppressive demands of compulsory heterosexuality or through violence that at best leaves us shattered and at worst, dead. Lesbians deserve the same level of autonomy as any other group, be it minority or majority. If you aren’t supporting that autonomy, then you are inadvertently or directly a participant in the erasure that is perhaps slowly but very definitely steadily, wiping us off the face of the earth.

Victoria A. Brownworth is an award-winning journalist, editor and writer and the author and editor of nearly 30 books. She has won the NLGJA and the Society of Professional Journalists awards, the Lambda Literary Award and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She won the 2013 SPJ Award for Enterprise Reporting in May 2014. She is a regular contributor to The Advocate and SheWired, a blogger for Huffington Post and a columnist and contributing editor for Curve magazine and Lambda Literary Review. Her reporting and commentary has appeared in the New York Times, Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and Philadelphia Inquirer. Her book, From Where We Sit: Black Writers Write Black Youth won the 2012 Moonbeam Award for cultural&historical fiction. Her novel about violence against women, Ordinary Mayhem, was published in February 2015. Her book on lesbian erasure will be published in 2016. @VABVOX

#corrective rape #homophobia #lesbian erasure #lesbians #owen jones

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Labyrinth: the Unsettling Second Character Played by David Bowie

https://ift.tt/3A2oNto

Not everything we enjoy is good for us. A chocolate-filled doughnut, for instance, can be delicious even while it crams our arteries with trans fat. The simple fact of knowing that something is unhealthy doesn’t stop it from being fun, which is to say that it’s still okay to love Jim Henson’s 1986 cult kids’ film Labyrinth while acknowledging that its sexual subtext is creepier than a drunk uncle on a camping trip.

It’s not as if nobody noticed the vibe between lead characters Sarah and Jareth at the time, or in repeated viewings since. Like Bowie’s codpiece, it stares you in the face all the way through the film. Jareth’s a 300-year-old Goblin King (played by a 38-year-old pop star) who wants to live within 15-year-old Sarah. Jareth spies on Sarah, comes into her bedroom, drugs her, dances with her, and promises to be her slave if she’ll love him, fear him and do as he says. Their dynamic is wrong in every size and colour, and – depending on whether you’ve spotted the other character Bowie plays in the film – could be about to get a little bit more wrong.

Sarah’s scrapbook in Labyrinth (1986)

The events of Labyrinth are a fantasy that takes place in Sarah’s mind. Using the childhood dolls, stories and ornaments spotted around her bedroom in the early scenes (Hoggle and Ludo toys, a Goblin King statue, a wooden labyrinth game, storybooks from Snow White to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland…), Sarah invents a scenario in which she’s a put-upon fairy tale hero who saves her baby brother. It’s a coming-of-age fantasy that teaches Sarah to leave her childhood behind, recognise her inner power and step into the adult world. The film starts with her dressed as a princess and play-acting, and ends with her literally clearing her room of toys and games, and symbolically passing on her beloved teddy bear Lancelot to her little brother Toby.

If Labyrinth were a ‘real’ fairy tale, then Sarah’s absent mother (the girl lives with her father, stepmother and new stepbrother) would be dead. She isn’t, as we can see from recent photos around Sarah’s mirror and the scrapbook of press clippings Sarah keeps about her, decorated with hearts, the word “mom”. Sarah’s mother Linda Williams is a theatre actor who’s famous enough for her love life to be written about in the papers. Several of the newspaper articles in the scrapbook show her mother pictured with another actor, topped by a headline about their on-again-off-again romance. The other actor in those photos is played by David Bowie. That means that when Sarah was dream-casting the much older lead in her personal coming-of-age fantasy, she gave that role to… her mother’s boyfriend. Therapists of the world, start your engines.

A.C.H. Smith’s 1986 novelisation of Labyrinth was written with input from Jim Henson and screenwriter Terry Jones. In this 2018 podcast interview, Smith explains that Henson gave him over 20 pages of feedback about the draft manuscript and invited him to visit the set and watch several days’ filming. Jones also spent an afternoon with Smith and gave him permission to use an abandoned boneyard scene in the novelisation which had been originally written for the film. The novelisation is canon, is the point. It bears the official stamp. And the novelisation gives us more on the characters of Linda Williams and her actor boyfriend Jeremy. Here, it describes Sarah’s bedroom press clippings:

Sarah’s mother and her co-star, Jeremy, were cheek to cheek, their arms around each other, smiling confidently. The photographer had lit the pair beautifully, showing her to be so pretty, he so handsome, with his blond hair and a golden chain around his neck.

Novelisation-Sarah clearly has a thing for Jeremy, who comes over in the book as louche and flirtatious. Smith describes Sarah as being thrilled by Jeremy’s French-speaking sophistication. She’s impressed by his language and mockery of others, and keeps repeating an actorly phrase she’s heard him say about “finding a way into the part.”

Sarah’s bedroom mirror in Labyrinth (1986)

In one scene from the book, Sarah remembers celebrating her 15th birthday with Jeremy and her mother. The novelisation describes them giggling poolside at Jeremy’s members’ club before receiving his gift of “an evening gown in pale blue” (her mother gets her a music box, so the evening gown is a Jeremy-only deal). Sarah wears the dress that night to a musical, after which Jeremy takes them all to a dimly lit restaurant:

Jeremy had danced with Sarah, smiling down at her. He kidded her that a flashbulb meant that they’d be all over the gossip columns next morning, and all the way home he drove fast, to shake off the photographers, he claimed, grinning.

That’s not the only time Sarah dances with Jeremy/Jareth. Film audiences will remember the masked ball part of Sarah’s labyrinth fantasy, a hallucinatory scene that plays out in the feature as romantic yet sinister, but which is made explicitly sexual in the book. In this Sam Downie interview, Smith says of the novelisation’s dance scene, “It gets quite sexy when she is in the bubble and dancing with Jareth and so forth. I made a little more of that in the book because I felt the book needed that, it needed that extra little emotional kick at that point.”

Movies

Labyrinth: David Bowie in an ’80s Fantasy Classic

By Louisa Mellor

Culture

Labyrinth Conceptual Designer Brian Froud Talks David Bowie, Dark Crystal, and Sequels

By Louisa Mellor

The book scene has Sarah being perved at by a stranger who “relished her face, then her white shoulders, her breasts, hips, and legs,” and sidled up to tell her that she was remarkably beautiful. Dancing with Jareth, the 15-year-old is described as feeling like “the loveliest woman at the ball” and finding “the touch of his hands on her body thrilling.”

When he told her that she was beautiful, she felt confused.

“I feel … I feel like … I — don’t know what I feel.”

He was amused. “Don’t you?”

“I feel like … I’m in a dream, but I don’t remember ever dreaming anything like this!”

He pulled back to look at her and laughed, but fondly. “You’ll have to find your way into the part,” he said, and whirled her on around the room.

Jeremy’s catchphrase, there. In the book, fantasy-Jeremy/Jareth then tries to kiss Sarah, when she realises that the whole room is watching them and laughing:

“Jareth seemed to be unperturbed, but she turned her face sharply away from his, horrified. He held her more tightly, and insistently sought her lips with his. Suffused with disgust, she wrenched herself free of him.”

This is supposedly Sarah’s fantasy. She’s the one in whose imagination all this is happening. In 2016, the film’s conceptual designer Brian Froud explained the thinking to Empire. Sarah, says Froud, is approaching the age of sexual awakening, and so has created Jareth as a composite image of the kind of men who turn her on. “We’re not looking at reality, we’re inside this girl’s head.” Jareth’s costumes were designed to reference “a leather boy”, the armour of a German knight, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, and male ballet dancers. “He’s an amalgam of the inner fantasies of this girl. Everyone always talks about Bowie’s perv pants, but there was a reason for it all! It has a surface that’s fairly light, but then every so often you go, ‘Oh, my God! How did we get away with that?!’”

Telling a children’s story about a girl’s veiled sexualised fantasies of her mother’s boyfriend is getting away with a fair bit. There’s more to the film of course, and ultimately, Sarah vanquishes Jareth by rejecting his sinister allure and asserting her own power. Her attraction to him though, especially in the novelisation, is undeniable. What makes this uncomfortable isn’t the fact that Labyrinth is in part a story about adolescent female sexual awakening, but that its vision of that awakening was dreamt up by grown men and shows an underage girl drawn to a man of their age. Thought of that way and it’s less sure that Sarah’s is the fantasy we’re watching.

It was a different time, though, the 1980s. All this stuff was much more mainstream back then. 16-year-old Samantha Fox could be photographed topless for Page Three of national newspaper The Sun. Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones could openly ‘date’ a child. The charts regularly featured songs about adult men heroically wrestling with their sexual attraction to schoolgirls. And the 83-year-old writer of a children’s film novelisation could reminisce about how thrilling it was to have danced with the film’s young star at the wrap party, and laugh at how much more thrilling it might have been if only her mother hadn’t insisted on staying so close to her “very beautiful 14-year-old daughter” all night. A different time. (Except, that last anecdote was recounted in 2018. Perhaps the time isn’t quite as different as it should be.)

Don’t let any of this put you off though. Like a chocolate-filled doughnut, Labyrinth remains a sweet childhood treat… with a slightly sickening centre.

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Labyrinth celebrates its 35th anniversary in the US on June 27th.

The post Labyrinth: the Unsettling Second Character Played by David Bowie appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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stormhavenmedia · 4 years

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It is hard now for some to remember that short months ago we were free peoples living in Democratic countries. We have been locked in our houses and muzzled over a Virus with an Actual morbidity rate possibly less than the seasonal flu once the deceptive accounting is removed. Lets take a non exhaustive look at how we got here because in that understanding lies Key to our freedom.

Before we dive into the opening act of our global paranoia play, let us set the stage with a series of simple facts.

At 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 30, 1938 an enterprising young radio jockey named Orson Welles managed to convince a huge segment of the population that Martians were landing at Grovers Mill New Jersey. He accomplished this with a single broadcast on one radio station of a the adaptation of a book that had been in print for 40 years. Our entertainment media has churned out a literally endless series of movies and TV based on Viral outbreaks, the sheer volume of the zombie genre alone is stupefying. One random example example of the type;

In the film a Virus emanating from China and threatening the world is confronted by a heroic team from the World Health Organization led by Lawrence Fishburn. he almost looks familiar..but I digress.

(L-r) LAURENCE FISHBURNE as Dr. Ellis Cheever and SANJAY GUPTA, MD as himself in the thriller CONTAGION a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

Our education system has replaced critical thinking with critical race theory. A basic understanding of science is pushed aside in favor of an ideological program broadly refereed to as Identity Politics. Gender Theory advances the idea that government approved “human health” dogma should take precedence at all times over objective reality. And that to fail to strictly adhere to the ideological norms in any way “endangers marginalized people” and is indeed a form of”violence”. Privilege theory advances the idea that the basic rights we have fought for generations are a unearned “privilege” that we should be prepared to surrender for what our technocratic betters tell us is the greater good.

When coupled with the new electronic public square these concepts were used to advance the idea that anyone who disagrees or questions should be demonized and “cancelled”. Any group or individual that questions is “alt right” Nazi” “racist” “something phobic”. Speakers are banned from public venues if their ideas are deemed “problematic”. Only certain facts are permissible. Any deviation from the accepted ideology can result in loss of everything, job social standing. A University of Alberta was recently fired for stating that “People should be able to express their gender in whatever manner they wish (but) I don’t agree with biological sex being irrelevant,” she said. “I think treating biological sex as irrelevant has some really serious policy implications. As an example, housing trans-identified men in women’s prisons is not fair to women prisoners and I think it puts women at risk.”

A UBC Board member was forced to resign for simply “liking” a tweet condemning massive random violence and murder being committed by the self designated Antifa

https://twitter.com/ubc_students/status/1273663974735675393?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1273663977021562880%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubyssey.ca%2Fnews%2Fubc-board-chair-backlash-tweets%2F

Objective reality no longer exists , everything is partisan narrative relative to the position of the observer. This has all been completely normalized in the last decade and by design or happy accident it made whats happening around you now now possible.

Scene one, China

The First rumors and fragmentary reports of a Virus outbreak in China surfaced in the first days of January. We were told a seafood market had been closed. The messaging at that time in the West and from the WHO was, Don’t worry, and if you are worried your probably a racist.

Within days a WECHAT video message from a Chinese doctor, Li Wenliang reportedly an Ophthalmologist working in Wuhan Central Hospital surfaced in the West. The message discuses a dangerous SARS type Virus that was capable of human to human transmission. Reports then circulated through the West that the Doctor had been punished by the draconian CCP for being the worlds “whistle-blower”. These reports were strangely detailed given the absolute control of information exercised by the CCP. Li Wenliang is reported to have died, variously on either the 5th 6th or 7th of February 2020 bravely fighting the SARS-Cov2 Virus, he thoughtfully gave us one last picture helpfully confirming his identity.

It is alleged that 5 of his colleagues died as well. Now this in itself is strange. Li is reported to have been 34 and in excellent health. So he would be a massive statistical anomaly. Why 5 of his colleagues would also die given that their are few credible reports of health care workers dying in other jurisdictions.It is also strange that all of this would be know in the West given that posting the wrong comment on the CCP controlled version of Facebook can land you in Jail or restrict your ability to work or travel.

What this act did was loose the idea that there was a highly contagious Virus and that the Chinese Government was lying about it.

At around the same time videos started surfacing all over social media purporting to show the swift and deadly action of this mystery Virus. People dropping in their tracks was a popular theme. This is of course not at all what happens to those afflicted with SARS-COV2, but it was brilliant at nurturing the Viral dread spreading in the West.

Next we were treated to film of the Chinese regime building huge emergency hospitals working day and night desperately trying to beat the massive outbreak we were told was inevitably coming. It is unclear weather these buildings were actually completed after they had fulfilled there propaganda purpose there is no evidence that they were used.

Scene 2 Iran

At this point Iran had recorded 429 deaths from Covid. Mass graves for 429 people in a country with daily mortality in the country in the thousands. Mass graves in a country that 4 decades ago managed to individually bury thousands of soldiers killed in a single day on the battle field during its brutal war with Iraq. But do put a pin in this , mass graves will pop up later in our play, in the context of Iran they were never mentioned again, the purpose having been served.

Strangely there exists online a report from a website called Iran News dated December 3rd 2019, one month before the supposed patient zero in China “A senior Iranian Health Ministry official said that an ongoing flu epidemic has claimed the lives of 56 people since its outbreak more than a couple of months ago….Due to influenza, 273 individuals have been hospitalized and 19 have lost their lives” in the past week alone, said Alireza Raisi, the deputy health minister as reported by Press TV.”..

https://irannewsdaily.com/2019/12/flu-epidemic-claims-lives-in-iran/

According to the CDC itself with an average annual Influenza mortality rate of 17.23 for every 100k Iran has about 14 000 influenza deaths at time of posting the total deaths from corona stand at 18 000. Like many jurisdictions Iran has recorded a record low number of deaths from Tuberculosis and all other respiratory diseases this year.

Scene 3 Europe

Next up was the outbreaks in the West. Italy and Spain were the main protagonists. We were treated to tales of overflowing hospitals with bodies in the corridors

Hundreds of matching headlines appeared daily across the MSM spectrum. Repeated 10 times a day on the cable news channels.

The message was reinforced on social media by a Viral Facebook Post from an account purportedly of an American woman living in Bergamo Italy, epicenter of the apocalypse

This post was then used to spin of a hundred msm articles

So lets pause and have a look at Ms Christina Higgins. Despite her happy family photo banner and profile pics you will find not one candid family photo, no photos of her apparent children not one photo of work, or dinner, or jokes or any of the other things most FB profiles contain. After the viral post of March 10th the profile posts again regularly about the apocalypse until the 23rd of March when it shares one more dire prediction about Bergamo. The account then goes completely silent until June 3rd, right after career criminal George Floyd is killed by apparent police misconduct in Minneapolis with a rambling post about Anti Black racism being the new pandemic, sound familiar. Since then it has posted BLM agit-prop.

None of the dire warning from Italy and Spain was ever true. Not the overflowing hospitals with patients left to die

“The system is holding up, I absolutely deny a selection of patients to be treated», says the regional health councilor Giulio Gallera interviewed by Radio 24 answering the question about a possible choice of patients to be treated during triage .

“We have many hospitals in situations of extraordinary pressure – he explains – but the system is holding up”. “If in some hospitals there are no places available – the Councilor underlines – the regional system intervenes and the choice is made on who to intubate first and who to move and intubate in another hospital”. «Ours is a race against daily time – he adds – which so far fortunately we are winning. The number of places we make available manages to be greater than needs, but it is increasingly difficult ».

Giulio Gallera Regional Health Director

Not the staggering death count

“The way Italy registers deaths explains their increased coronavirus case/fatality ratio, according to one expert and a report from Italy’s National Institute of Health (ISS).

Citing this report (in English here), Professor Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to Italy’s minister of health said:

“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus […] On re-evaluation by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus, while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity – many had two or three,”

https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/23/italy-only-12-of-covid19-deaths-list-covid19-as-cause/?fbclid=IwAR34LheKR8UYx7PTNFCdO0bAk3Q1QvlEziLMK_lkaIwL-X6ex-iNym8-Xg8

The other fact the media went out of its way not to cover was the massive physical connection of these countries and Iran to China through the Belt and Road

What is notable from this exact time period in March is the fact that we were already being sold the “Great Reset”

Scene 3 North America

So we had a replay of our Iranian Mass Graves in New York

“The city has used the location as a public cemetery for over 150 years, burying unclaimed people and those whose loved ones can’t afford private burials. ”

Politifact

Then we had some more Hospital scenes,

It was actually reused footage from Italy, now that’s environmentally conscious

We had more sweaty videos of serious faced medical personal talking about swamped hospitals and the doom to come

“Some hospitals in the biggest city in New York state have been so overrun with dying patients that they’ve brought in refrigerated trucks to handle the bodies.”

Well that is worrying so RT set up live feeds outside these devastated Hospitals, prepare yourself for the worlds most stunningly boring disaster movies ever made

youtube

The deception is ongoing.

Many “Public Health” agencies have already admitted to grossly inflating the actual numbers of people that have died from Covid by using what could euphemistically be called creative accounting

Scientists raised the alarm after discovering anyone who tests positive and later dies is currently included in the Public Health England numbers – even if they are hit by a bus months later.

Every time you hear of a the rise in New Cases of Covid19 you are being deceived. The number you are being given is the number of people who have tested positive, using questionable tests, for the presence of the Virus, this is not a Case of anything. You can have the Virus without having the disease. All of us would test positive for the presence of many and varied Viruses, we would not be said to have a case of the diseases associated with them

Case Epidemiology; A countable instance in the population or study group of a particular disease Disease [dĭ-zēz´] a definite pathological process having a characteristic set of signs and symptoms.

Asymptomatic people are not Cases.

Resistance to the draconian lockdowns is demonized and minimized, although they cant even seem to agree with themselves any more

actual number +50k

They will not stop until we stop them. This is an information war so lets inform our fellow citizens in a calm rational matter. Many of the patently unreasonable and unconstitutional and unscientific restrictions they have placed on us cannot be legally upheld so get into the courts and defeat them. REFUSE to wear a mask, boycott any merchant that enforces their own mask policy and support all who refuse to comply with the government mandated ones.

Free your mind and your ass will follow

William Ray

Manufacturing COVID-19, How Fear Conquered the West It is hard now for some to remember that short months ago we were free peoples living in Democratic countries.

#lockdowncanada #Controla virus #Covid pandemic #covid-19 Canada #End the lockdowns #lockdowns Masks #NoMask

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braveboldbasra · 4 years

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don’t look away

It’s a paralyzing, sickening fear. Like a pit in the button of your stomach. It pulls at every nerve in your body and doesn’t let go. You know you never did anything wrong, but it feels like it. It feels like you’re wrong. As a first generation black woman in America, I grew up not wanting to say it. I was scared to call out the jokes, the slips, the so-called “little things”, but nothing is little when it comes to racism. Nothing is little when it comes to injustice. There’s a point in which silence is no longer an option because when you give injustice an inch, it takes a life. It reaches a point where it’s okay for someone to kneel on someone’s neck for eight minutes and have no one help them. It makes it okay for someone to barge into someone else’s home and rip dozens of bullets. It makes it okay to mock the unjust death as a social media challenge. To use a national call to justice to loot, attack, and consume the lives of millions. And what does that prove? That we are “the land of the free”? Because if that were true, we wouldn't be calling out and chanting the names of lives lost in the middle of a pandemic. Wouldn’t have to march.

We are at a point in history that depends on real social change, but the only way to get to the other side is to not look away. Don’t look away. Don’t be silent. Don’t be neutral. Hiding behind ignorance is no longer an option. Because there’s always something to do. I’m a black woman who has the privilege of having education, a home, a family, a job. I’m using what I have to do something.

I have a phone, so I am bringing awareness to the peaceful protest that has little coverage on the national media circuit.

I have a job, so I am donating what I can to funds and shopping at black small business. I have time to sign petitions and share them with people.

I have a voice so I am using it to speak up now.

Today, June 5, Breonna Taylor would have been 27 years old today. She was killed in her home when police officers barged into her home on a no-knock warrant. No criminal charges have been brought and the civil suit has garnered little to no attention. Her family had a hard time trying to find funeral homes because the police referred to her as a “suspect”. She was an EMT who loved to work in the healthcare field because she cared about people. She never wanted to hurt anyone. She is one of hundreds upon thousands of lives than were taken and ignored. But no more. Say her name. Say his name. Say their names. These are no hashtags or headlines, these are people.

This is a constant cycle of ignorance when the pure evidence of racism and white privilege exist that goes ignored. If we look away, who knows if we can ever reach another side.

Black Men Lives Matter

Black Women Lives Matter

Black Trans Lives Matter

Black Queer Lives Matter

Black Immigrant Lives Matter

Black Incarcerated Lives Matter

Black Disabled Lives Matter

BLACK LIVES MATTER

And we know “all lives matter”, but how can “all lives matter”, when so any of them are being taken?

Below I’ve linked various resources to help to fight for injustice against police brutality, violence, and injustice persecution of black people. We all need to fight because we are all human.

Resources

Changing Womxn Collective Resources Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Gwl9omY8l5dUCkK4Y2llKAsfx5asES9zWn4Tr27QhTU/mobilebasic

Black Lives Matter Official Website: https://blacklivesmatter.com/

Mutual Aid Document: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/12y7-Wa4gi8HUeFTv17gPcbMGuVX5cqIudLJmhOrq1-k/mobilebasic

Black Lives Matter Resources Toolkit:https://blacklivesmatter.com/resources/

Resources for Black Healing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Eg2S10NPYhAVEMKwicHn2SHpT6KKW0aP/view?fbclid=IwAR0Or8vEP9gdWJxxKEde0sVUidwih0glHg1SJ2IPido1Ikor33_rWNJDk_E

How to Help Back Owned Business in your Area: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/success/consumers-support-black-owned-small-businesses/index.html

These are not all the resources that exist. If you have resources to help support black communities, PLEASE comment them below and I’ll be reposting them in another post.

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 7 years

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A theory.

Wacky comic book theory but here we go.

One way or another we all talk about representation these days and the ways in which it can be done well or badly, etc.

And when those discussions happen more broadly usually they boil down to representing 4 groups.

Females, People of Colour and queer/non-homosexual people, and trans people. Of course there are others too. Gender fluid could be counted as it’s own thing and frankly I see not much talk as far as disabled representation is concerned, be it physical or mental. But for the sake of argument let’s stick to those four.

As far as comic books are concerned female and characters and poc (especially black and Asian) characters are comparatively the best covered whereas queer characters ain’t. It doesn’t help that sometimes creators forget some characters aren’t straight or else the fact that they aren’t is such a minor point that people honestly don’t know (see Felicia Hardy).

But as poorly represented as queer characters are (off the top of my head, and I’m sure I’m forgetting people, Harley Quinn, Deadpool, Ice Man and America Chavez are just about the only queer characters headlining their own series right now), trans characters really are non-existent.

Which brings me to those pictures of Superman, Wonder Woman and Black Panther up there.

See I have a theory that for certain under represented groups in comic books (at least superhero comic books) what is needed is a sort of ambassador character, specifically one in the form of a stone cold power fantasy.

Now you could argue ALL superheroes are power fantasies to one degree or another, but if you think about those three characters they are taking the notion of being power fantasies almost as their core concepts.

I don’t buy Superman or most superheroes as on some level inherently MALE power fantasies for various reasons, but Superman was certainly a potent HUMANIST power fantasy.

Human beings are animals and as such we innately have a drive to survive which takes the form of self preservation and preservation of our species. Preservation mostly boils down to ensuring our bodies can function properly and also avoiding injury.

If you look at the myths and legends of cultures across the world and all eras of history you find figures that speak to these innate instincts. You find human or human like figures who have abilities beyond those of mere mortals. In Western culture the most famous examples of these types of figures are of course the Greco-Roman Heroes like Herakles/Hercules. A man with God’s blood in his veins who’s strength, stamina and resistance to injury dwarfs normal people. And he uses that to slay monsters to plague the land or perform feats that kick the natural order of nature in the ass like descending into the Underworld and emerging unscathed, or surviving terrible poisonous injuries for days and days or moving mountains, fighting off Titans from the Realm of the Gods themselves.

Superman though maybe not intentionally came from EXACTLY the same innate human instincts to be more powerful than we are s we can survive threats and protect our fellow species. He’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall building in a single bound, he can survive ten exploding shells and later he can even defy gravity itself. And he uses those powers to protect the innocent and take down the bad guys who’d hurt them. Replace gangsters and citizens with the Hydra and the village folks and you essentially have the same thing as Hercules.

And we all know how Superman consequently ushered in...well literally the entire superhero genre.

Superman was a gateway character who opened the door to everything else and he did it in large part because he inherently embodied an indulgent wish fulfillment fantasy.

And Wonder Woman did the same thing except instead of being a humanist power fantasy she was an indulgent FEMALE power fantasy. Put aside how its a matter of record that her creator was deliberately aiming for that end goal, just look at her character. She comes from an island exclusively of women. That society is morally and technologically superior to the rest of the world, the rest of the world labelled as ‘man’s world’ which by default makes Paradise Island ‘woman’s world’ if you like. The Amazons were created and guided by the GodDESS Aphrodite, who is associated with (rightly or wrongly) stereo typically female qualities like love and beauty and elegance, traits she then gives to her Amazons. There’s a lot more to dive into but I won’t for now.

Wonder Woman opened the door to ALL consequent female characters after her. But it wasn’t MERELY because she happened to be female and come first. She did it an managed to endure into the silver age revival of superheroes when most of her peers didn’t BECAUSE she had substance to her and that substance stemmed from her being explicitly a power fantasy for a specific group of people.

And then Black Panther did the same thing, except instead of being a humanist or a female power fantasy he was an indulgent BLACK power fantasy. Sure he didn’t get launched as a headliner but that wound up working in his favour as he showed up and kicked the asses of (at the time) THE premiere Marvel superheroes. Obviously that will that automatically convey this guy as powerful just in general, but that isn’t really what made T’Challa resonate, nor was it merely the fact that he happened to be black.

For T’Challa being black was as vital to his character as being female was to Diana’s. He was someone ethnically native to the AFRICAN continent. He came from a country in Africa that had NEVER been colonized by anyone and was 100% autonomous, not answering to any larger organization nor in a submissive alliance with a more powerful nation. He drew his powers from traditions native to his African nation, which were tied up with an animal that was literally black and also native to the African continent. Shit, he even had BLACK in his name.

Those traditions co-existed with a civilized and technologically proficient society. In fact it was MORE technologically advanced than America and the citizens (at first glance anyway) seemed far more content and at well provided for than America with it’s variety of social problems. It’s technological advancement came from a special natural resource EXCLUSIVE to T’Challa’s nation, no one else had it or had managed to take it from them. In fact when one evil white guy (dressed in stereotypically colonial clothes) TRIED to take it he was defeated. And if all that wasn’t enough Black Panther was not just a superhero who could own the F4 and came from this fantastic African nation...he was straight up it’s KING.

As much of a black power fantasy as Luke Cage was/is...T’Challa was on a whole other level pretty much from day one.

And whilst there had been black characters before him, T’Challa was the guy who really cemented the idea of black (and other poc) superheroes as being legitimately a thing. No T’Challa no Luke Cage, Miles Morales, Blade, Jon Stewart, Storm, etc.

So what’s my overall point with this?

If Marvel and DC really want to make queer and trans heroes a thing like female and poc heroes are then they NEED to present a legitimate queer and trans power fantasy.

I’m not saying introduce a new gay hero or trans hero who can instantely own all the Avengers or anything. Even the Fantastic Four rallies around and managed to defeat T’Challa, and he was shown to have to really plan ahead to get as far as he did.

But I am saying introduce for example a trans character who exudes physical power and confidence and is a formidable fighter, not a hero in training learning the ropes. Somone who shows up on the scene already knowing how to kick ass. Then in ways I am not really qualified to speak to, make being trans inherent to not just their general life and personality, but their core concept, the source of their awesome powers. Make them someone who comes from a fantastical advanced, society where being trans isn’t merely accepted it’s the inherent norm and part of the societal structure.

But do it in a way that isn’t on the nose condemnatory towards cis people. Black Panther wasn’t ever implying white people are inherently bad or inferior to black people, hence why the Fantastic Four and Black Panther quickly become close friends and allies. Wonder Woman wasn’t explicitly saying men are bad or American society was bad. Steve Trevor and other male characters were portrayed as good guys and Diana herself as a patriotic ally to America, in fact in the stories America was held up as a bastion for women and their rights. Now...that was bullshit of course and I’m saying you have to go that far at all. But I guess make the story and series celebrate being trans without playing it as a put down to cis people or else something intended to directly challenge their thoughts about society.

That’s something to be done down the line once the wider audience has accepted a trans superhero character. If this hypothetical trans character is T’Challa then down the line you can pull out a Luke Cage type of character who does more directly challenge that sort of stuff and critically is FROM America, not a black power fantasy country.

Whilst you can say we already have queer characters, their success rate is spotty at best and a lot of them were originally intended to be straight. So I think gay, bisexual, etc characters would benefit from this approach as well.

And the best part (especially as far as trans characters are concerned) is that this is legitimately untapped potential. Marvel and DC can both grab the the MASSIVE historic claim of creating the first (major) trans superhero ever and make some real money off of it. Everyone’s a winner.

Bottomline: Create ambassador power fantasy characters for various groups if you want to make them stick around.

#Superman #Wonder Woman #Black Panther #T'Challa #Diana Prince #Clark Kent #DC #DC Comics #Marvel #marvel comics #fantastic four #fantastic 4

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the-rivers-sad-gift · 4 years

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Lilly Wachowski coming out in a statement to press of her choice after having her and her sister’s entire livelihoods threatened by the media.

This is her statement, I’ll provide a link to the article.

“

‘SEX CHANGE SHOCKER—WACHOWSKI BROTHERS NOW SISTERS!!!’

There's the headline I've been waiting for this past year. Up until now with dread and/or eye rolling exasperation. The "news" has almost come out a couple of times. Each was preceded by an ominous email from my agent—reporters have been asking for statements regarding the "Andy Wachowski gender transition" story they were about to publish. In response to this threatened public outing against my will, I had a prepared a statement that was one part piss, one part vinegar and 12 parts gasoline.

It had a lot of politically relevant insights regarding the dangers of outing trans people, and the statistical horrors of transgender suicide and murder rates. Not to mention a slightly sarcastic wrap-up that "revealed" my father had injected praying mantis blood into his paternal ball-sac before conceiving each of his children to produce a brood of super women, hellbent on female domination. Okay, mega sarcastic.

But it didn't happen. The editors of these publications didn't print a story that was only salacious in substance and could possibly have a potentially fatal effect. And being the optimist that I am, I was happy to chalk it up to progress.

Then last night while getting ready to go out for dinner my doorbell rang. Standing on my front porch was a man I did not recognize.

"This might be a little awkward," he said in an English accent.

I remember sighing.

Sometimes it's really tough work to be an optimist.

He proceeded to explain he was a journalist from the Daily Mail, which was the largest news service in the UK and was most definitely not a tabloid. And that I really had to sit down with him tomorrow or the next day or next week so that I could have my picture taken and tell my story which was so inspirational! And that I really didn't want to have someone from the National Enquirer following me around, did I? BTW—The Daily Mail is so definitely not a tabloid.

My sister Lana and I have largely avoided the press. I find talking about my art frustratingly tedious and talking about myself a wholly mortifying experience. I knew at some point I would have to come out publicly. You know, when you're living as an out transgender person it's … kind of difficult to hide. I just wanted—needed some time to get my head right, to feel comfortable.

But apparently I don't get to decide this.

After he had given me his card, and I closed the door it began to dawn on me where I had heard of the Daily Mail. It was the "news" organization that had played a huge part in the national public outing of Lucy Meadows, an elementary school teacher and trans woman in the UK. An editorial in the "not-a-tabloid" demonized her as a damaging influence on the children's delicate innocence and summarized "he's not only trapped in the wrong body, he's in the wrong job." The reason I knew about her wasn't because she was transgender it was because three months after the Daily Mail article came out, Lucy committed suicide.

And now here they were, at my front door, almost as if to say—

"There's another one! Let's drag 'em out in the open so we can all have a look!"

Being transgender is not easy. We live in a majority-enforced gender binary world. This means when you're transgender you have to face the hard reality of living the rest of your life in a world that is openly hostile to you.

I am one of the lucky ones. Having the support of my family and the means to afford doctors and therapists has given me the chance to actually survive this process. Transgender people without support, means and privilege do not have this luxury. And many do not survive. In 2015, the transgender murder rate hit an all-time high in this country. A horrifying disproportionate number of the victims were trans women of color. These are only the recorded homicides so, since trans people do not all fit in the tidy gender binary statistics of murder rates, it means the actual numbers are higher.

And though we have come a long way since Silence of the Lambs, we continue to be demonized and vilified in the media where attack ads portray us as potential predators to keep us from even using the goddamn bathroom. The so-called bathroom bills that are popping up all over this country do not keep children safe, they force trans people into using bathrooms where they can be beaten and or murdered. We are not predators, we are prey.

So yeah, I'm transgender.

And yeah, I've transitioned.

I'm out to my friends and family. Most people at work know too. Everyone is cool with it. Yes, thanks to my fabulous sister they've done it before, but also because they're fantastic people. Without the love and support of my wife and friends and family I would not be where I am today.

But these words, "transgender" and "transitioned" are hard for me because they both have lost their complexity in their assimilation into the mainstream. There is a lack of nuance of time and space. To be transgender is something largely understood as existing within the dogmatic terminus of male or female. And to "transition" imparts a sense of immediacy, a before and after from one terminus to another. But the reality, my reality is that I've been transitioning and will continue to transition all of my life, through the infinite that exists between male and female as it does in the infinite between the binary of zero and one. We need to elevate the dialogue beyond the simplicity of binary. Binary is a false idol.

Now, gender theory and queer theory hurt my tiny brain. The combinations of words, like freeform jazz, clang disjointed and discordant in my ears. I long for understanding of queer and gender theory but it's a struggle as is the struggle for understanding of my own identity. I have a quote in my office though by Jose Muñoz given to me by a good friend. I stare at it in contemplation sometimes trying to decipher its meaning but the last sentence resonates:

‘Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality for another world.’

So I will continue to be an optimist adding my shoulder to the Sisyphean struggle of progress and in my very being, be an example of the potentiality of another world.”

Lilly Wachowski

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/m/APPredirect.php?AID=54509

In case you didn’t know, the Wachowski siblings are the extremely artistic writers and directors behind such films as The Matrix, V for Vendetta, and Cloud Atlas. Once rumors of their true gender identity were clawed out by the vulture media they were slowly but surely forced out of their own lives. The last time mass media, and certainly America, had either of the sisters in mind was when the press was dragging both of them through the mud. Making jokes for the whole world to laugh at, at the expense Lilly and Lana Wachowski.

With all the LGBTQ alphabet soup positivity that’s supposedly shoved down our throats now, all the ‘movements’ that make people think anything is going to be different, it’s pretty fucking sad how little has changed in all of history for trans women.

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myinformationforyouworld · 5 years

Link

Congressional Democrats responded to a spate of state laws aimed at restricting abortion on Thursday by reintroducing the Women’s Health Protection Act.The measure wouldn’t merely prohibit states such as Georgia and Alabama from banning abortion early in pregnancy if Roe v. Wade were overturned. It would also invalidate most state laws limiting late-term abortion, including Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit, under which notorious abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted in 2013 for killing 21 infants in utero (in addition to his conviction for murdering three infants with scissors after they had been born). Indeed, it would wipe almost all state limits on abortion, including mandatory waiting period and ultrasound requirements, off the books.Essentially, congressional Democrats seek to take the standard for late-term abortion proposed earlier this year in Virginia — and shelved after the bill’s chief sponsor Kathy Tran acknowledged it would allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy if a lone doctor asserted it was necessary for mental-health reasons — and impose it on every state that provides greater protection for unborn children late in pregnancy.The federal legislation would require states to permit abortion after an unborn child is viable (that is, old enough to survive outside the womb) if a single doctor asserts that an abortion is necessary to protect the mother’s “health.” The text of the bill explicitly instructs the courts to “liberally” interpret the legislation, and the bill “doesn’t distinguish” between physical and mental health, as its chief sponsor Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut has said.Earlier this week in the Capitol building, I asked Blumenthal why it should ever be legal for a physically healthy baby to be aborted when the mother is physically healthy.> National Review: Is there any reason abortion should ever be legal on a healthy fetus/healthy mother — physically [healthy], that is — after viability?> > Blumenthal: I’m not sure what you mean.> > NR: Is there any reason [late-term] abortion should be legal when the mother is physically healthy, and the fetus is physically healthy?> > Blumenthal: I’m really not going to deal with hypotheticals. We’re reintroducing the Women’s Health Protection Act.> > NR: That’s a real situation though. Is there any reason why that should be legal?> > Blumenthal: I’m not sure I even know what you mean.> > NR: At 23 weeks into pregnancy, should abortion ever be legal if the baby’s healthy and the mother is healthy?> > Blumenthal: You know, I just can’t engage in speculation.> > NR: I mean, there are studies that say that does happen.> > Blumenthal: Send me those studies and I’d be glad to comment.I sent Blumenthal’s office this 2013 study, conducted by professors at University of California at San Francisco, of women who got abortions later than 20 weeks into pregnancy. According to the study, “data suggest most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” The study points, for example, to one “woman from Illinois discovered she was 23 weeks pregnant and had her abortion the same week.” Given ample time to comment, Blumenthal’s office has not replied.Every Senate Democrat running for president has endorsed the Women’s Health Protection Act. When Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren were asked this week if abortion should ever be illegal, both 2020 presidential candidates dodged the question. Booker told me he’d like to “codify Roe v. Wade,” but when I asked him if any abortion should ever be illegal, he went silent. “You’re a very good, dastardly good, guy,” Booker finally said with a smile when I asked him if his silence should be interpreted as a “no.” Warren simply stuck to her talking point that she wanted to make Roe v. Wade a federal statute when she was asked if any late-term abortion should ever be illegal.Here’s how their colleague Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island responded to a question about elective abortions 23 weeks into pregnancy: “Most of these decisions should be made by doctors, and I don’t know many doctors who are into — what do the extremists call it — infanticide? Never met a doctor who’s for that — never once.”But doctors do perform elective late-term abortions. Dr. LeRoy Carhart was caught on tape saying he’d perform “purely elective” abortions up until 28 weeks into pregnancy. Another doctor named James Pendergraft has said he’d perform even later abortions under an “anxiety and stress” health exception. Dr. Cesare Santangelo said he would let an infant born alive at 24 weeks after an attempted abortion suffocate to death. Dr. Steve Brigham kept a freezer full of aborted babies, one as old as 36 weeks. Some infants born at 22 weeks grow up to be healthy children and adults.And of course there was Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who had likely murdered hundreds of infants born alive, in addition to the three murders for which there was enough evidence to convict him.What’s the moral difference between what Kermit Gosnell did to babies born alive and a legal abortion at 23 weeks? That’s a question Nancy Pelosi could not answer after Gosnell was convicted in 2013. Cecile Richards, then president of Planned Parenthood, defended late-term abortion when the child is suffering from a severe abnormality. But what about when the child and mother are physically healthy? Richards went silent.This isn’t a gotcha question. It’s a question about fundamental human rights. There are likely thousands of elective abortions performed later than 20 weeks into pregnancy each year. If leading Democrats and advocates of a right to abortion are unwilling or unable to defend a right to abort healthy infants late in pregnancy, then why are they so committed to maintaining America’s status as one of seven countries in the world that allows it?

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://yhoo.it/2QnDdhC

#Blogger

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mgtowquotes · 5 years

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No more passes for Joe Biden

Democrat Lucy Flores was preparing to give one of her final stump speeches in a race for lieutenant governor in Nevada when she felt two hands on her shoulders. She froze. “Why is the vice-president of the United States touching me?” Flores wondered. Flores recounts her experience with Joe Biden in a first-person essay for New York Magazine, describing an incident in 2014 where Biden came up behind her, leaned in, smelled her hair, and kissed the back of her head. “Biden was the second-most powerful man in the country and, arguably, one of the most powerful men in the world. He was there to promote me as the right person for the lieutenant governor job. Instead, he made me feel uneasy, gross, and confused.” New York Magazine reached out to a Biden spokesperson, who declined to comment. After the story ran, a Biden spokesman Bill Russo said the vice president and his staff do not recall the incident Flores described. Flores’s experience isn’t unique. It is no secret in Washington that Biden has touched numerous women inappropriately in public. It’s just never been treated as a serious issue by the mainstream press. Biden’s been caught on camera embracing a female reporter from behind and gripping her above her waist, just below her bust. At a swearing-in ceremony for Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Biden put his hands on the shoulders of Stephanie Carter, Carter’s wife, and then leaned in and whispered into her ear. (He’s whispered into many women’s ears.) He’s also touched women’s faces and necks during other photo ops. Once at a swearing-in ceremony for a US senator, he held the upper arm of the senator’s preteen daughter, leaned down and whispered into her ear, as she became visibly uncomfortable. Then he kissed the side of her forehead, a gesture that made the girl flinch. It’s all out in the open. News outlets wrote about these incidents. But the stories ran under light-hearted headlines like, “Photo of famously friendly Joe Biden goes viral” or “Here’s Joe Biden being Joe Biden with Ash Carter’s wife” or “Joe Biden: Sex symbol?,” a piece that I edited and now regret. Ideological media outlets did write some critical pieces during the Obama era. At the Federalist, Mollie Hemingway questioned whether liberals would tolerate the same conduct from a conservative. At Talking Points Memo, Alana Levinson criticized liberals for giving him a pass. But, overall, Biden got a pass from the political media. Times have changed. Reporters now would look twice at a new politician who is handsy on camera. They’d ask questions about it and likely look into his private conduct. And women like Flores are taking big risks and speaking out. Biden avoided scrutiny in the past, but if he wants to be the next president he’ll face pressure to account for his actions. Joe being Joe The Onion satirized Biden in 2009 in a viral article that cemented Biden’s image of a lovable everyman. Real Biden remembers his working-class Scranton roots. Onion Biden washes his Trans Am on the White House lawn. Real Biden is handsy with women. Onion Biden is a womanizer: ‘Hey, hot stuff, looking good,’ [Onion] Biden told a passing aide. ‘Would you know where I could get a little bucket and sponge action? My mean machine needs to be cleaned.’ The images bled together over the years into the persona of Uncle Joe. When he dropped an F-bomb on a live mic, it was a classic Joe moment. When he made one of his many gaffes, it got added to numerous lists written in good fun. And when he did kind of creepy things to women at public events, well, that was just Joe being Joe, too. All of those frames made appealing pitches just a few years ago. Editors would be happy to get a “lovable Uncle Joe strikes again” story. The environment is not the same now. Certainly the media is not nearly perfect when it comes to covering gender and power. But in the era of #MeToo, there is far less appetite for a story that makes light of a candidate behaving badly toward women. As Flores writes, this conduct matters. “I’m not suggesting that Biden broke any laws, but the transgressions that society deems minor (or doesn’t even see as transgressions) often feel considerable to the person on the receiving end. That imbalance of power and attention is the whole point — and the whole problem.” This is especially true in a context where Biden will be running against several women as well as defending a decades-long record of policymaking that’s involved past positions at odds with current Democratic Party orthodoxy. Biden once said a woman should not have the “sole right to say what should happen to her body” Biden, 76, arrived in Washington at the age of 30. His substantial public record includes a mixed history on women’s issues, a legacy that makes his in-person conduct even more worthy of discussion. Lisa Lerer unpacked his history on abortion for the New York Times, reporting that Biden, who is now pro-abortion rights, has not been a solid liberal on the issue for his whole career. In the Reagan era, Biden voted for a bill in committee that the National Abortion Rights Action League called “the most devastating attack yet on abortion rights.” Biden, who is Catholic, said at the time: “I’m probably a victim, or a product, however you want to phrase it, of my background.” He called the decision “the single most difficult vote I’ve cast as a U.S. senator.” Biden also held the opinion that the Supreme Court went “too far” in deciding Roe v. Wade. In an interview in 1974, he said he did not think a woman should have the “sole right to say what should happen to her body.” Biden declined to speak with Lerer for her article, so we don’t know exactly how and why he evolved on Roe. A spokesperson for Biden did not respond to an email asking for comment. In his years in Washington, though, Biden has voted for pro-abortion rights bills. He’s championed the Violence Against Women Act. And he’s spoken forcefully about the problem of sexual violence. Democrats need to figure out whether they want to clean house If Biden runs, he’ll occupy a lane in the Democratic primary as the “normal” candidate — a likable white guy who won’t lose it on Twitter, or pander to Russia, or throw children in cages at the border. As Democrats grapple with the intense desire to beat Trump in 2020, many are anxious that a woman will have a tough time beating him because of sexist attitudes still held by some voters. Perhaps, the thinking goes, it’s better to go with the kind of leader that Americans are used to. Biden, who was in office for eight years under Obama, could fit that bill. But Biden would still have to present a clear contrast to Trump. While Biden has not been accused of sexual assault (as Trump has a dozen times) and there are no tapes of Biden on the Internet joking about grabbing women by the genitals, there are tapes of Biden behaving inappropriately. One man’s behavior is far worse, but that doesn’t excuse the other. Democrats are conflicted about what to do about this category of behavior. It’s not the same as what other men of the #MeToo movement have bee accused of, but it’s also not what liberals want to endorse. Sen. Al Franken’s resignation is still controversial for this reason. Some Democrats feel the party is putting itself at a disadvantage against Republicans, who let the president get away with far worse than any accusation Franken faced. Flores confronts the issue of whether some bad behavior is okay, forcing us to consider what these seemingly small incidents are really like. “The vice-president of the United States of America had just touched me in an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners — and I felt powerless to do anything about it.” The Democratic Party is more than half women. More women than ever in history ran as Democrats in the 2018 elections — and won. They outperformed their male peers. They were central to Democrats retaking the House. Women are leading the sustained resistance to Trump. The party should be committed to making sure that women and girls participate in government and politics to their fullest potential. The party needs them. The question is whether the party needs a president who disrespects them. Source from http://mensrightsboard.blogspot.com/2019/03/no-more-passes-for-joe-biden.html

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adambstingus · 5 years

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Steve Bannon: Trump is ‘maniacally focused’ on executing promises

Chief White House strategist pushes economic nationalist agenda at CPAC and continues relentless attacks on media, vowing: Every day is going to be a fight

Steve Bannon, the man seen as the power behind Donald Trumps throne, has declared that the president will take the US back from a corporatist, globalist media that opposes his brand of economic nationalism.

Trump is maniacally focused on fulfilling his campaign pledges, Bannon warned, predicting a daily fight against the media he has branded as the opposition party.

The mainstream media ought to understand something: all those promises are going to be implemented, Bannon told a gathering of thousands of conservatives near Washington on Thursday, who feted him and White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus.

Bannon is a liberal bete noire whose confrontational, populist brand of Republican politics also upends decades of conservative orthodoxy. He has emerged as Trumps most powerful aide and been dubbed Trumps Rasputin or, in Twitter speak, #PresidentBannon. On Thursday, he stepped out of the shadows to make rare public remarks.

He painted a picture of the White House at war with vested interests in the media. The corporatist, globalist media are adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda that Donald Trump has.

Hes going to continue to press his agenda and as economic conditions get better, as more jobs get better, theyre going to continue to fight..

Watch the full video of Steve Bannons appearance at CPAC 2017

Every day is going to be a fight. That is the promise of Donald Trump … All the people whove came in and said youve got to moderate. Every day in the Oval Office he tells Reince and I: I committed this to the American people, I promised this when I ran, and Im going to deliver on this. The crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) erupted in cheers and applause, with some delegates standing and punching the air.

Bannon, 63, cut a casual figure with a dark open-necked shirt and light beige trousers on stage alongside Priebus, in a more traditional suit and tie, as the pair made their latest attempt to bury reports of discord. Were basically together from 6.30 in the morning to 11 at night, Priebus said.

But Bannon, who described his own West Wing office as the war room, soon launched into his attacks on the media. If you look at the opposition party and how they portrayed the campaign, how they portrayed the transition, how they portrayed the administration, its always wrong.

Priebus, seeking to explain Trumps win, said: What we were starving for was somebody real, somebody genuine, somebody who actually was who he said he was.

Bannon gave a clear insight into the way the Trump team is approaching its rightwing agenda, setting out three verticals: national security and sovereignty; economic nationalism; and deconstruction of the administrative state.

He added: One of the most pivotal moments of modern American history was his immediate withdrawal from TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership].

Bannon is a near-constant presence every time cameras cover a Trump press conference or follow the president into the Oval Office. He has gained a place on the principals committee of the National Security Council, elevating him above the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of national intelligence.

Kellyanne Conway at CPAC: Women dont like women in power

Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said: It seems like we are getting his ideas coming out of Donald Trumps mouth to a great extent.

Crucially, Cassino argues, Bannon determines what media Trump consumes and shapes his worldview. The information flow seems to be going through Breitbart and Fox News rather than through the national security apparatus. Thats troubling.

CPAC, which draws more than 10,000 conservative activists each year, has not traditionally been natural Trump turf. He was booed when he appeared in 2011.

On the equivalent opening morning last year, speaker after speaker studiously avoided mentioning Trump, who at that time was busy upending the Republican primary race. He was well behind Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in a straw poll of delegates and pulled out of his scheduled speech, anticipating a hostile crowd.

The president is due to address CPAC on Friday in wholly different circumstances. Well, I think by tomorrow this will be TPAC, said Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump.

A few Make America Great Again caps were visible among the attendees but establishment Republican senators, congressmen and governors were relatively scarce.

The pro-Trump Breitbart News was prominent. The tone was triumphant and aggressive, championing gun ownership rights and tough law enforcement while criticising and mocking liberals.

But tensions were clear as Dan Schneider, leader of the American Conservative Union, took the stage to denounce the alt-right, the rebranding of the far right that has been accused of racism, Islamophobia and neo-Nazism. There is a sinister organization that is trying to worm its way into our ranks and we must not be duped, he told the audience.

That term alt-right it had been used for a long time in a very good and normal way, but this group has hijacked it.

A short distance away, outside the main hall, the prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer, wearing a general admission badge, told reporters that he coined the term alt-right and rejected Schneiders criticism.

He didnt even do basic research on what the alt-right is and he denounced it, Spencer complained. Thats pretty pathetic. … He just called us names.

Asked if he feels he now has an ally in the White House, Spencer said: In terms of Donald Trump, I would say that its not so much that hes alt-right, its that hes a nationalist and a populist and so hes connected to us on that basic level. He doesnt articulate our ideas hes not an identarian but his arrow points in our direction.

Challenged about a salute he gave last November, he said: Heil Trump! was a moment of exuberance. It was an ironical statement.

As Spencer talked to a large group of reporters, a delegate who gave his name as Grizzly Joe, wearing a stars and stripes shirt, confronted him angrily: Get the fuck out of here. You dont represent us. Youre a piece of shit. I hope everybody got that. Youre a fucking piece of shit. Hes a fucking white supremacist piece of shit.

Spencer was escorted out by security soon after. He posted a video online saying he was politely asked to leave.

Vice-president Mike Pence closed out the first day of the conference on Thursday evening to a rapturous reception from the crowd, which often rose to its feet amid the former Indiana governors remarks.

Pences speech echoed the themes he took to the campaign trail sharing in his bosss pledge to Make America Great Again but offering little in the way of specifics. Pence, like Trump, also gloated about how their insurgent campaign had succeeded despite being written off by opponents.

President Trump turned the blue wall red, Pence said of Trumps success in the so-called Rust Belt states that were long a stronghold of Democrats.

You know what? The establishment never saw it coming.

His remarks were characteristic of the Trump administrations continuance of the campaign. Last week, Trump returned to the stump with a rally in Florida.

And on Thursday, Pence played the role of Trumps dutiful lieutenant, furthering the narrative that the president was already succeeding even as a new CBS poll found that six in 10 Americans did not feel Trump understood the complicated problems a president must face.

Thursdays speakers also included Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, Texas senator Ted Cruz, and education secretary Betsy DeVos. Breakout sessions included such topics as Fake climate news camouflaging an anti-capitalist agenda and what President Trump plans to do about it.

CPAC also means merchandise. This year the products include The Deporables Guide and Godless America, and T-shirts with slogans including Border wall construction and God is great, beer is good & liberals are crazy.

Meanwhile, Americas deep divisions were laid bare in a powerful article published by the Atlantic magazine under the headline I was a Muslim in Trumps White House. In it, Rumana Ahmed says she was the only hijab-wearing Muslim woman in the West Wing under the Obama administration and always felt welcome and included.

But when she continued to work for the national security council under Trump, the new staff looked at her with cold surprise, she recalls. The diverse White House I had worked in became a monochromatic and male bastion.

This was not typical Republican leadership, or even that of a businessman. It was a chaotic attempt at authoritarianism.

Ahmed quit after just eight days. When Trump issued a ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all Syrian refugees, I knew I could no longer stay and work for an administration that saw me and people like me not as fellow citizens, but as a threat.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/steve-bannon-trump-is-maniacally-focused-on-executing-promises/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/181369637022

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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An unspoken assumption of most political punditry is that the political positions taken by, and the policies supported and enacted by, politicians play a significant, perhaps decisive role in determining the outcomes of elections.

This is the premise of basically every piece of commentary about, for example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise victory in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th District. To fellow democratic socialists, Ocasio-Cortez’s victory is evidence that ideas like Medicare-for-all or a job guarantee aren’t just popular in opinion surveys: They can win elections. Even radical-sounding ideas like abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement might fly! To conservatives and squishy moderates, Ocasio-Cortez’s defeat of a 10-term incumbent is proof that Democrats are willing to commit electoral suicide for the sake of ideological purity.

Each of these arguments has specific problems. But all of them share one big issue: They dramatically overestimate how much the actual issue positioning of candidates matters for how people vote.

What I want to propose is a null hypothesis for political punditry: Outside of truly extreme proposals, there’s basically no plausible position a politician or political party can endorse or enact that will have a meaningful impact on their likelihood of retaking political power. The US has for decades had a stable system where liberal and conservative policy coalitions (which have sorted out under the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively) semi-regularly alternate in power, with long periods of divided rule and gridlock in the middle. Dramatic shifts in the ideological makeup of both parties during that same period did not upset that alternation of power. It continued apace.

The upshot of this phenomenon is that parties should be a little less nervous about sticking to their guns and arguing for what they believe, whether or not it polls well. Call it, if you like, the “do what you want” theory of politics.

It’s possible to push the “do what you want” theory to ridiculous extremes. Obviously if the Democratic presidential candidate were to suddenly start calling for dissolving Congress in favor of decentralized rule by workers’ soviets, that would probably hurt them. And on certain issues, particularly race, American voters’ baseline apathy tends to fade. There’s a reason even the most left-wing Democrats don’t tend to emphasize the need to integrate public schools through busing anymore. That’s something that white voters will wake up to stop.

But as a baseline position, I think assuming a null effect is a more reasonable guess than assuming that voter preferences are heavily influenced by candidates’ issue statements. We just have too much evidence that this isn’t how voters really make their decisions.

Instead, we see evidence that Democrats and Republicans exchange power at regular intervals, in spite of massive changes in the beliefs of those parties’ elected representatives. Maybe it’s time to argue that parties should adopt positions by arguing for those positions on the merits, not because they’re electorally useful or mandatory.

My basic mental model is that the typical American voter thinks about national politics and elections with roughly the frequency I think about professional football (I’m borrowing a bit here from the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein).

I have a football team that I root for; I maybe check in on standings two or three times throughout a season. I watch the Super Bowl. But I don’t typically watch other games, I couldn’t name many players (even on the Seahawks), and if you asked specific questions about football strategy, about which players should be traded or whether the Seahawks should focus more on developing their wide receivers or their running backs, I wouldn’t really be prepared to give you an answer.

And that’s fine! I have other stuff going on that it turns out I’d prefer to spend my time on. And while the stakes of electoral politics feel startlingly real if you’re a naturalized citizen facing a vociferously anti-immigrant government, or a black family in Flint, Michigan, whose water has been poisoned, or a trans woman forced by a state government to use men’s restrooms, for Americans outside marginalized communities, politics can feel like a game to which you can be indifferent.

Tufts University political scientist Eitan Hersh has described much political activism in 21st-century America as a kind of hobby. “The stakes in political activity can sometimes seem low. In a large republic, an individual’s contribution is almost always non-pivotal. Policy in the U.S. often changes very slowly,” Hersh writes. But that’s what makes it an ideal hobby for some people: “Low stakes are what make hobbies restorative … they are a release from the pressures of work and other obligations.”

A natural corollary of something being treated as a hobby is that other people can simply choose to not have that hobby. This is the camp into which most American voters seem to fall, and if you’re in this category, then you’re not going to be obsessively watching to see if, say, a candidate supports abolishing ICE or Medicare-for-all or what have you. You just don’t care enough. It’s not your hobby.

“Most people have strong feelings on few if any of the issues the government needs to address and would much prefer to spend their time in nonpolitical pursuits,” University of Nebraska political scientists John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse write in their book Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs About How Government Should Work. “The people as a whole tend to be quite indifferent to policies and therefore are not eager to hold government accountable for the policies it produces.”

There’s tons of research reaffirming this finding. The University of Michigan’s Donald Kinder and Louisiana State’s Nathan Kalmoe show in their book Neither Liberal nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public that most Americans don’t really have stable ideologies in a way that matters. This isn’t an original insight of theirs; they view themselves as replicating the work of Philip Converse, who laid out a similar argument in 1964.

American voters aren’t down-the-line liberals or conservatives the way the people they elect are. Astonishingly, what a respondent said their ideology was — liberal, conservative, moderate, etc. — had “little influence over opinion on immigration, affirmative action, capital punishment, gun control, Social Security, health insurance, the deficit, foreign aid, tax reform, and the war on terrorism.” Ideology seemed to matter on LGBTQ rights and abortion, but even that went away after they controlled for religion.

Kinder and Kalmoe looked at a study that asked the same people questions about politics in 2000 and 2002. The finding was even more astonishing. “If you asked an average voter in 2000 whether they were liberal, moderate, conservative, or none of the above, their answer was only 63 percent predictive of what they’d tell you two years later,” my colleague Ezra Klein summarizes. That’s wild. That’s a two-year period — if people have durable political beliefs, you should expect 90-plus percent of them to say they’re liberal in 2002 if they said they were liberal in 2000. That’s not what happens.

Berkeley political scientists Sean Freeder, Gabriel Lenz, and Shad Turney conducted a related study measuring stability in views on individual policy questions, and examining whether voters were able to correctly match policies with politicians. They find that only 20 to 40 percent of Americans “hold stable preferences on salient economic public policies.” In one mid-’90s survey they review, only 19 percent of respondents could correctly answer five simple questions about where the parties stand on abortion, defense spending, government services/spending, guaranteed jobs, and whether the parties were liberal or conservative. Another 18 percent got four of the five right. Most respondents, however, were fairly ignorant.

This perspective is not unanimous among political scientists; UChicago’s Anthony Fowler has issued a forceful paper arguing that policy voting — people holding coherent opinions about what policies they want and voting based on those opinions — is more common than the above research indicates. But the weight of the evidence suggests, to me, that voter ignorance is the norm and that relatively few voters have the kind of stable policy views you’d need to have to vote on the basis of candidates’ issue statements and voting record.

“Numerous studies have demonstrated that most residents of democratic countries have little interest in politics and do not follow news of public affairs beyond browsing the headlines,” Vanderbilt’s Larry Bartels and Princeton’s Christopher Achen conclude in their 2016 book Democracy for Realists. “They do not know the details of even salient policy debates, they do not have a firm understanding of what the political parties stand for, and they often vote for parties whose long-standing issue positions are at odds with their own.”

The finding that most voters don’t have stable opinions on policy questions is not, on its own, enough to prove that politicians can hold whatever policy opinions they want without any electoral consequences. It could be the case that the 20 to 40 percent of people who do have stable opinions on economic issues are swing voters who use those preferences to determine the outcomes of many elections.

But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening. Michigan State professor Corwin Smidt has shown that the share of “floating voters” — voters who switch their party allegiance from one election to another — has plummeted in recent decades. In 2012, only 5.2 percent of Americans voted for a different major-party presidential nominee than they had in 2008; from 1952 to 1980, the average rate was 12 percent, indicating that swing voting has fallen by more than half (Smidt’s study predates the 2016 election, when there appears to have been a greater number of swing voters). Smidt doesn’t find that rates of floating voters were higher among the politically ignorant, but it’s still a quite small group, and the share of it that is highly informed and has stable preferences is smaller still.

The best evidence I’ve seen that a critical mass of policy-sensitive voters exists, such that parties would be making a huge mistake by ignoring their candidates’ policy positions, comes from Stanford political scientist Andrew Hall. In two papers, one solo-authored and the other with Stanford’s Dan Thompson, Hall looked at a number of different closely contested primaries for US House elections, in the first paper from 1980 to 2010 and the second from 2006 to 2014. He specifically analyzed “coin flip” elections, where the moderate candidate barely defeated the extremist or vice versa.

His big finding was that a party picking the extreme candidate hurts that party — a lot. In the 1980-2010 study, he found that nominating an extremist cost the party about 9 to 13 percentage points of the vote, and reduces the odds of victory by 35 to 54 percentage points. “These,” Hall writes with almost hilarious understatement, “are large effects.” His study with Thompson clarifies that this seems to happen not because swing voters are turned off by a candidate’s extreme positions, but because that candidate’s presence mobilizes the other party’s base more than it mobilizes that of the extreme candidate.

These are extremely well-designed studies, and I learned a lot from them. But I’m not sure they prove that extreme positions on specific issues themselves hurt candidates. Hall estimates ideology by using candidates’ donors, assuming that candidates with similar donors have similar viewpoints. This is a clever methodology, pioneered by Stanford’s Adam Bonica, but it has its limits.

As Hall and Thompson discuss, this measure doesn’t correlate perfectly, or even particularly well, with actual roll-call voting in Congress. The donor-based ideology measures might tell you something about which faction of donors are backing a candidate — whether, say, a Dem is getting Wall Street backing rather than union backing, or a Republican is getting Tea Party-linked money or more traditional business interest money — but that doesn’t always tell you precisely how they’re going to vote. That makes the data less than determinative when you’re trying to figure out if taking individual positions, of the kind that show up on roll-call votes, hurts or helps candidates.

“The goal is not to isolate the ‘causal effect’ of candidate positions, themselves,” Hall and Thompson write. “In fact, it is not even clear that there is such a thing as a causal effect of candidate positions.”

Moreover, these are studies about contested primaries. The finding that an extremist narrowly winning endangers a party in a general election jibes with examples like, say, Tea Party activist Christine O’Donnell defeating moderate Rep. Mike Castle in the 2010 Republican primary for Joe Biden’s Senate seat in Delaware. Given polling showing that Castle would almost certainly win if nominated, it makes sense to think that nominating O’Donnell caused the party’s defeat.

But much current discussion concerns, instead, the choice of incumbents such as Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to come out for controversial policies like a job guarantee or abolition of ICE or single-payer health care. It’s not clear to me that in the absence of a primary campaign that causes voters to learn to view such positions as “extreme,” such moves would have much of any electoral effect at all. Indeed, the micro evidence on voter behavior makes me guess there’d be little to no impact.

It’s less precise evidence than that limned above, but arguably the best case for the “do what you want” theory of politics is the mere fact of alternation of power.

“In well-functioning democratic systems, parties that win office are inevitably defeated at a subsequent election,” Bartels and Achen write. “Moreover, voters seem increasingly likely to reject the incumbent party the longer it has held office, reinforcing the tendency for governmental power to change hands.”

There are some exceptions to this rule, in which a party becomes dominant for extremely long periods in otherwise democratic countries — the longstanding dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, the Social Democrats’ rule of Sweden from 1936 to 1976, the Conservative Party’s 1979-’97 period of control in the UK — but in the US, no party since World War II has ever held the White House, or even won the popular vote, for more than three terms in a row.

That is despite the fact that from 1945 to the present, the Democratic Party underwent a dramatic shift toward a more egalitarian stance on race issues, shedding its Dixiecrat base in the process; that it largely abandoned traditional labor politics after the 1984 election; that the Republican Party moved right on race and very far right on economic issues toward a more stridently laissez-faire stance; and that the electorate itself has changed its composition dramatically in demographic terms.

All that — the whole history of post-World War II American politics and the grand ideological shifts of parties it included — was not enough to disrupt the basic fact of power alternating hands. Even when the House was firmly under Democratic control, the presence of conservative Democrats meant that Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan could pass their agendas. That implies that parties can undertake rather large ideological shifts without jeopardizing their chance of one day, eventually, taking over again.

In a world where this is the reality, and where the public is largely indifferent to public policy, mass politics and attempts to affect public opinion become a lot less important. Instead, the main lever of influence is lobbying of party elites. Those elites might mistakenly believe that public opinion matters and so public opinion polls become a compelling way to lobby them, but ultimately, if you want to abolish ICE, you don’t need to persuade the American people. You need to persuade Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Shifting public opinion might help with that, but it’s only a means to an end.

Conversely, if you want to dramatically cut taxes on corporations, you don’t need the American people on your side — and by God, the Republican Party did not have the American people on their side when they cut corporate taxes in 2017. Insofar as Americans cared, they hated the idea of giving big companies a tax break. But Republicans did it anyway. Convincing Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to give it a go was, it turned out, enough for corporate tax cut advocates.

Ryan and McConnell might or might not have thought that the cuts would be popular. They might not have cared at all. They probably knew that majority parties are always doomed in the midterms, and decided to do what they wanted anyway, since their time in power would be brief. Democrats could learn a lot from that example.

Original Source -> The “do what you want” theory of politics

via The Conservative Brief

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getyourgossip0-blog · 6 years

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Caitlyn Jenner Becoming MMA Fighter?

New Post has been published on http://getyourgossip.xyz/caitlyn-jenner-becoming-mma-fighter/

Caitlyn Jenner Becoming MMA Fighter?

(Getty Images)

Is Caitlyn Jenner really becoming an MMA fighter? That’s the premise of a story from the tabloids. Gossip Cop, however, can bust it.

“Bullied Caitlyn Is Roaring For A Cage Match,” reads a headline in the National Enquirer. According to the accompanying story, the former Olympian is “going to the mat to win back some respect.” It’s specifically alleged she “wants to take up mixed martial arts to get people to quit picking on her.”

A so-called “source” points out to the magazine that Jenner has been “criticized by her own family, isolated from her kids and trolled by everyone in the world online.” As a result, the outlet’s supposed snitch contends she “wants the world to know she’s not going to take any more abuse lying down.” By embracing MMA as a transgender athlete, it’s claimed Jenner “hopes to set an example that they’re not to be pushed around.”

“Cait wants to show the world she can be a strong woman,” asserts the alleged tipster. And to that end, the purported snitch claims she has “begged” Fallon Fox, the first openly transgender MMA fighter, to “coach her.” The publication’s questionable “source” concludes, “Cait admires Fallon and wants to learn from the best. She may not be Bruce Jenner anymore, but she’ll always be a world-class athlete.”

Yes, Jenner’s gold medal win in the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics ensures her place as one of the best athletes of all time. But her interest in extremely physical sports has waned over the decades. Jenner has made clear that her sport of choice these days is golf, and she also regularly shows an interest in racing and flying. All three hobbies often make appearances on Jenner’s Instagram account. Never has she ever expressed any interest in mixed martial arts.

Furthermore, the idea that Jenner wants to become a MMA fighter to stop bullying and address “hate crimes,” as alleged in the story, doesn’t make much sense. By publicly taking up the sport, she would just be opening herself up to more scrutiny. And Fox hasn’t had the easiest time trying to gain acceptance in the MMA world. Even Ronda Rousey has sparked controversy by questioning whether it’s fair to compete against a trans fighter.

Gossip Cop also checked in with a rep for Jenner, who calls the report “hilarious” because it’s so off-base. The spokesperson confirms it’s “not true” she wants to learn mixed martial arts, with or without Fox’s help. The National Enquirer also falsely claimed last December that Jenner was likely to do the all-athletes edition of “Dancing with the Stars.” Gossip Cop busted that report at the time, and we were proven right when the “DWTS” cast announcement did not include her. Time will show that she doesn’t start participating in MMA either.

Sources

Gleeson, Scott. “Caitlyn Jenner a Force on the Golf Course.” USA Today, 13 June 2017.

Jenner, Caitlyn. “Caitlyn Jenner on Instagram: ‘Really Excited to See @KurtBusch Tear It up @NASCAR #AutoClub400! If You’re Not Here You Should Definitely Watch…” Instagram, 18 Mar. 2018.

Brekke, Kira. “Ronda Rousey: I Never Refused To Fight A Trans Athlete.” The Huffington Post, 14 May 2015.

Alan Nierob, Spokesperson for Caitlyn Jenner. 20 June 2018.

Weiss, Shari. “Caitlyn Jenner Doing ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Athletes Edition?” Gossip Cop, 7 Dec. 2017.

“Dancing with the Stars Spring 2018 Cast Has Been Revealed! | Dancing with the Stars.” ABC, 13 Apr. 2018.

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gossipgirl2019-blog · 6 years

Text

Caitlyn Jenner Becoming MMA Fighter?

New Post has been published on http://gr8gossip.xyz/caitlyn-jenner-becoming-mma-fighter/

Caitlyn Jenner Becoming MMA Fighter?

(Getty Images)

Is Caitlyn Jenner really becoming an MMA fighter? That’s the premise of a story from the tabloids. Gossip Cop, however, can bust it.

Sources

Gleeson, Scott. “Caitlyn Jenner a Force on the Golf Course.” USA Today, 13 June 2017.

Jenner, Caitlyn. “Caitlyn Jenner on Instagram: ‘Really Excited to See @KurtBusch Tear It up @NASCAR #AutoClub400! If You’re Not Here You Should Definitely Watch…” Instagram, 18 Mar. 2018.

Brekke, Kira. “Ronda Rousey: I Never Refused To Fight A Trans Athlete.” The Huffington Post, 14 May 2015.

Alan Nierob, Spokesperson for Caitlyn Jenner. 20 June 2018.

Weiss, Shari. “Caitlyn Jenner Doing ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Athletes Edition?” Gossip Cop, 7 Dec. 2017.

“Dancing with the Stars Spring 2018 Cast Has Been Revealed! | Dancing with the Stars.” ABC, 13 Apr. 2018.

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