#After Roe: What’s Our Job Now?

[bleuberrygliscor]

are you implying that italians are not white on that jan 6th olive garden post

That I think they arent? absolutely not! but white supremacists play fast and loose with who is the "acceptable" white and who isnt. For a long while Italians werent the "right kind of white" and were shunned next to any other non-white minority as a "to be removed" item. up until relatively recently (around the early 1900's or so) they were ignored, until it became clear that the white population was being "outnumbered" and they needed to make a call on how to deal with that. their decision was to expand the idea of the "pure white race" to italians and irish people, rather begrudgingly, because the actual definition of whiteness is really silly and arbitrary and just comes down to how pale you are in the end, so you can totally recruit anyone to your cause by lying to them and pretending you wont backstab them when you will, just later on down the line.

As of now, Italians are clear in their eyes, since the New PM is extremely conservative and a woman, easy to play identity politics with and try to undermine progressive ideals with "BuT FEMiniSM???"

I just found it extremely ironic that a group of hard right conservatives would choose to dine at an Italian restaurant, given how extremely anti-Italian most folks like that are, especially since Italians are sterotyped to be Catholic and we all know how Evangelicals feel about Any Other Form of Christianity.

[andvys]

I'm begging for you to take my hand | E.M.

Warnings: reader is a single!mom and was dumped by her previous boyfriend, mentions of pregnancy, mentions of heartbreak, Eddie being a bit of a grump but this is pure fluff

Pairing: Older!Eddie Munson x fem!single mom!reader

Word count: 4k

Summary: It's a hot summer afternoon when Eddie's life changes for the better, and two very special people step into his life.

Author's note: this little oneshot was based on this reuqest. and I once again have to thank my bestieee @hellfire--cult for helping me out. I worked on this idea back in July and then just abandoned it cause I didn't like the way I wrote it, but Roe threw her amazing ideas at me and helped me out, thank you bby!

main masterlist

⭐︎

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, Def Leppard is playing on the stereo, the bottle of beer is cold in his hand as he lies out in the sun, enjoying his free afternoon – life couldn’t be better.

While all his friends are living their ‘perfect’ white picket fence lives that aren't as perfect as they once thought it’d be, Eddie is enjoying his life in utter bliss and peace, with no one disrupting his sleep or his precious free time. 

He is still writing songs, still performing at The Hideout, still living his life while everyone else is busy with their wives and their kids – something that Eddie never saw himself having. He wasn’t cut out for this life and he is content with what he has now. 

He has a good job that allowed him to leave the Trailer park behind, he now lives in a small house in a quiet neighborhood with no kids screaming through the streets and irritating him, at least until now. 

A small giggle disrupts his peace, he squints his eyes open after taking his sunglasses off only to see a little kid running into his backyard, laughing loudly as he escapes the young woman who is running after him. There’s no doubt in him that you’re some incapable babysitter, the distressed look on your face gives it away. 

“Jamie, get your ass back here! This is not our house and you’re naked!” 

“The fuck,” Eddie grumbles, getting up from the lounger he was enjoying the sun on, he puts the bottle down and makes his way over to the boy who runs through the grass in only his blue swim trunks, his curls bouncing as he giggles even louder when the woman gets closer, he isn’t looking where he’s going, and runs straight towards Eddie, who bends down and picks up the boy from underneath his armpits before he can escape further.

A small gasp escapes the boy’s mouth but he then continues his giggling when his eyes find Eddie’s, who is holding him up now, with a distance and an angry look on his face as he stares at the boy who just looks like a copy of him with the long brown curls, and his brown eyes. 

He looks over his shoulder, seeing you from up close now as you rush over to the two of them. He can’t even stop himself from ogling you in your little skirt that barely covers anything and your skimpy bikini top. Your hair is a mess on your head and your sunglasses barely stay in place, you look flustered but so very beautiful and hot. 

And way too young for him and his thirty eight. You can’t be a day over twenty.

“Mommy! He has the same hair as me!” The boy laughs.

Eddie’s eyes almost bulge out of his head at the words mommy. You look way too young to be a mommy, especially for a kid who’s definitely over the age of four. 

You’re not some incapable babysitter, just a stressed mom. 

The kid is squirming in his hold but he reaches out to him, grabbing his curls with his tiny hands, he tugs at it causing Eddie to scrunch his nose up. 

“Hey! Don’t do that, shithead!” 

Jamie keeps going, not caring about the grumpy tone in Eddie’s voice or the angry look on his face, he continues laughing. 

You pant like crazy as you finally halt in front of them, trying to catch your breath. Your chest is heaving up and down, and despite the squirmy kid in his hands, he can’t help but look you up and down, once again. 

“I-I am.. shit..” 

“Mommy!” Jamie exclaims.

You fan your face with your hand, rolling your eyes at your boy. 

“Jamie.. shut up.. for a second,” you mumble, already knowing that you will feel guilty for saying these words to him later on, despite the giggle that falls from his lips. “I-I’m so sorry.. We are – I’m not used to running like this anymore, oh my god.”

“Mommy said a bad word, sir.”

“I heard,” Eddie mumbles. 

You breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that he could’ve gotten away further if it wasn’t for this… kind neighbor. It takes you a moment to catch your breath, but when you finally do and you raise your head to look at the man who is still holding your kid, your breath gets knocked out of you again. Not only are you met with the most handsome face you have ever seen, he was also blessed with the prettiest eyes and hair, his pale and toned body is covered in tattoos and you almost drool over the beautiful stranger.

Your eyes move down his body, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by Eddie. His lips tug into the smallest smirk and he steps towards you, meeting your wide eyes when you raise your head to look at him with your flustered face. 

You blink, breaking eye contact as you take your kid from his hands. Jamie instantly wraps his arms around your neck but his eyes are glued on Eddie, just like yours are. 

“Say sorry to our new neighbor,” you whisper through your embarrassment. 

“Eddie,” he nods, revealing his name to you. 

Eddie. You repeat in your head, as though you could ever forget his name. 

“Sowwy Eddie!”

Eddie chuckles a little, but shakes his head, raising his eyebrows at you, “new neighbor?” 

“Oh yeah! We moved in yesterday. Sorry if the trucks made a lot of noise…” You say shyly. 

He waves his hand at you, “oh no, I might have been at work at that time, so trust me, I didn’t hear anything, darling.”

Your eyes widen at the nickname, cheeks burning underneath his gaze. You swallow harshly.

Eddie looks down at your hand, instinctively looking for a ring on your finger only to find none. 

“Oh uh, this is Jamie, by the way,” you chuckle softly as you pinch your son’s cheek, before you introduce yourself to him, giving him your name with a shy smile on your lips. 

He repeats your name, making you blush even more when it rolls off his tongue so… prettily. 

“I-I uh.. we’ll get going,” you murmur as you take a step back, looking down at Jamie who is still staring at Eddie, “I’m sorry again, we’ll see you around.” 

You give him a shy smile before you turn around and walk away, unaware of your son waving at Eddie with a grin on his small face. 

Eddie sighs, begrudgingly raising his hand to wave back. 

He already knows that it won’t be the last he will see of him… or you. 

-

A few days had gone by since he met his new neighbors, and he hasn’t seen you or your boy since then but he heard music from the open living room window the other day and the smell of cookies lingered in the air when he came from work earlier today. 

Eddie is enjoying a peaceful evening out on the porch, playing around with his acoustic guitar as he enjoys the last rays of the sun, the fresh breeze kissing his skin. 

The bushes that divide his backyard from yours rustle, and from the corner of his eyes, he sees the mop of curls. He stops playing and leans back in his chair as he glances at the little audience – the little boy that peeks over the bushes, watching him. 

Eddie can’t help but groan in annoyance. 

“Watcha doin, Eddie?” His soft and small voice cracks Eddie a little, almost feeling guilty for the groan that just escaped him. 

“Playing guitar,” he grumbles. 

Jamie sighs, still staring at the man with his big brown eyes. 

“Can I watch?” He asks, giving him the best puppy dog eyes he has ever seen.

How could Eddie ever say no to someone so adorable? 

“Sure, just stay over there.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eddie continues playing, closing his eyes again and goes back to what he was doing – enjoying his evening. He doesn’t realize that after the second song, Jamie starts getting closer and closer, ignoring what Eddie said to him earlier. The little boy sits down on the porch steps, staring at Eddie and the way he plays the song so easily, he watches with awe in his eyes and a bright smile. 

Only when Eddie stops playing and the soft clapping pulls him out of his thoughts, does he open his eyes to find the boy so close. He almost chuckles, of course he didn’t listen.

“Do you know the barney song?” Jamie asks, tilting his head in a cute way. 

“Barney?” Eddie mumbles.

“Yeah!”

Eddie furrows his brows, shaking his head slowly, “I don’t think so, bud.” 

The little boy sighs, frowning and looking down at his hands with a dejected look on his face, one that fills Eddie with the slightest amount of guilt. 

With a sigh, he starts playing a different song, one that he remembers from his childhood. The theme from Ducktales. 

Jamie perks up, he looks at him with wide eyes and a smile on his face, clapping his small hands together again. 

“Life is like a hurricane here in duckberg–” 

Eddie’s eyes widen in surprise when he starts singing, a smile tugs at his lips as he continues playing, nodding at him to keep singing.

His heart soars a little watching that kid – not that he would ever admit. But watching the way his eyes shine with happiness and dimples appear in his cheeks as he smiles even wider fills his chest with a warmth he had never felt before – is that adoration the grump feels? 

“I didn’t think you’d know that song. The cartoon is very old,” Eddie says when he finishes playing the song, he puts his guitar down and places his elbows on his knees, looking down at the curly haired boy. 

“Well, my mom is very old!” 

Eddie chuckles, shaking his head in amusement. 

You are very far from old, he still isn’t sure about your age, but he is convinced that you’re in your twenties. 

“I know the song too, does that make me old too?”

“Yes!” He nods, his curls bouncing wildly. 

“Jamie!” 

Both Eddie and Jamie perk up at the sound of your voice, they both watch you rushing over just like you did a couple of days back. 

Eddie chuckles when he sees you rolling your eyes but sighing in relief at the sight of your kid. 

“Jamie, stop bothering our neighbor!” You groan, softly as you throw an apologetic look at Eddie. 

“But he’s so cool!”

Eddie chuckles, and this time you do too. You stop in front of them where he can see you better – his breathing stutters a little when he sees you properly. Your hair is up in a bun, your glossy lips glowing beneath the evening sun, you have flour on your cheek and your hair, it’s clear that you were busy in the kitchen when Jamie made his escape, Eddie would’ve snickered at the look on your face if he wasn’t so awestruck by your beauty. 

“I’m really sorry, Eddie,” you mumble, trying to smile at him as you take your son’s hand. 

“It’s fine, sweetheart,” he smiles, ignoring the way his stomach fluttered when you said his name. 

When you say your goodbyes and you walk away with your son, Eddie can’t help but stare at the two of you, a soft smile resting in his features. 

“Is he my daddy?” Jamie asks, a little too loudly. 

Eddie’s eyes widen and he almost laughs at the gasp that falls from your lips, followed by a loud ‘Jamie!’ He watches the way you turn around, as though to check if he heard it but Eddie quickly averts his gaze to save you from the embarrassment. 

He stares down at his guitar, pressing his lips together. 

The slight fluttering in his stomach that’s already been there when he saw you the first time, now feeling even stronger than before. 

You’re single, you clearly don’t have a husband or a boyfriend. And somehow that makes him feel… relieved. 

That night wasn’t the last he saw of you or your kid. Jamie keeps showing up in his backyard whenever Eddie is outside, whether he’s just lounging in the garden, playing guitar or trying to write a song, the boy comes over all the time, melting Eddie’s heart more and more and sneaking his way into his life, pulling you along, as well. And Eddie can’t help but grow protective over the little boy, enjoying his company and yours. 

While he was annoyed the first few times, he now feels excitement every time the boy shows up with his toothy grin and the curly hair that resembles his. 

Over time, he learned more about you – Jamie’s dad was a drummer in some rock band that Eddie had never heard of, he wanted nothing to do with his child or you when you found out you were pregnant. He broke your heart, dumped you and left you to go through it all by yourself. You were only twenty and you had no one, you were all alone. It’s something that left Eddie seething in anger when he found out, how could anyone do this to you? How could anyone neglect their child? How could anyone not want you and this sweet boy around?

Because he does, he wants you around after only a few weeks of knowing the two of you.

He couldn’t even blink before you both sneaked your way into his heart.

-

It’s a Friday night when the doorbell rings, the sound pulling him away from the book he was reading. He throws it on the couch and gets up, walking over through the long hallway that leads to the front door. He doesn’t expect to find you on the other side when he opens the door, but it’s always a welcoming sight. 

“Hi,” you say softly, blessing him with that beautiful smile of yours, filling his heart with warmth. 

“Hey sweetheart,” he smiles at you before his eyes fall on Jamie who seems to be shying away from him today, hiding behind you. He reaches his hand out to him, ruffling his curls, “hey bud, feeling a little shy today?”

“Jamie wanted to ask you something.” 

Eddie raises his brows, leaning against the doorframe, he crosses his arms over his chest, “oh?” 

Jamie hides even further, peeking out from behind you though as he looks at the man through his bangs. 

You giggle, eyes flashing with amusement. 

Eddie’s heart flutters at that sound and he can’t help but stare at you.

“Come on, bug.. ask him, the worst he can say is no and we’ll get someone else,” you say softly, smiling down at him as you squeeze his hand. 

“No!” He protests, giving you a pout, “I want Eddie to teach me!” 

Eddie tilts his head in curiosity, looking between you and your kid.

“Mommy got me a guitar…” Jamie says shyly. 

“He’s been hooked since he heard you play,” you smile at Eddie.

Eddie’s eyes soften at your words, he looks down at your boy, bending down to his eye level. 

“And what did you want to ask me, bud?”

Jamie slowly steps out from behind you, revealing a band shirt to the older man that instantly lightens up his eyes, the boy takes another step forward. 

“If you… If you can teach me,” he whispers shyly. 

Eddie is stunned and surprised that a small kid likes him in this manner. Eddie is grumpy, a little cold and distant most of the time, something that scares away all the other kids but this little boy took a liking towards him, he wants to be like him, like a mini him. And Eddie’s heart soars at that, he feels pride rushing through him. 

“Alright, I’ll teach you.”

His big eyes widen in excitement and this time, he can’t even hold back, he jumps up and down in excitement before he throws his arms around Eddie’s neck, hugging him tightly as he giggles into his ear – melting the grumpy man’s heart completely. 

And you, you’re a little perplexed that Eddie willingly wants to spend time with him, you always worried that he bothered him too much already, but Eddie seems to be excited, just as excited as your boy is. 

Eddie wraps his arms around his small body, patting his back as he laughs a little. Your heart flutters at the sight of the two of them. 

“Let’s go!” Jamie giggles excitedly, reaching for Eddie’s hand when he pulls away from the hug, pulling the man out of his house, “you need to see my guitar!” 

“Jamie, maybe he’s busy right now–”

“No, no sweets,” Eddie shakes his head, reaching for the keys on the counter before he shuts the door. He keeps holding Jamie's hand as he steps towards you, surprising you by lifting his arm up and pressing his palm against your back, “I wanna see his metal guitar.”

Your breathing stutters and your eyes widen once again when he pulls you closer, making you feel comfortable and safe in his embrace. He squeezes your shoulder when you step closer to him, throwing a smile at him that almost has him weak in the knees. 

Jamie begins to ramble from all the excitement in him and Eddie, he squeezes his hand, smiling down at the boy with a fond look on his face. 

His hand moves down your side and he slowly reaches for your hand, not knowing that this innocent little touch makes your insides tingle with something. He presses his palm against yours, waiting for you to intertwine your fingers with his, and when you do, he squeezes your hand, making his own heart flutter with the action. 

And as Eddie feels your touch like this for the very first time and the tiny hand that tugs at his fingers, he finds himself understanding what his friends meant when they shared their dreams of a white picket fence and a family. 

Because suddenly, as he walks down the street with the two of you, he feels something he had never felt before, comfort and the want and need to protect and care for the people who came into his life and blessed him with… happiness. 

And he becomes a part of your life, like the two of you became a part of his. 

What starts with guitar lessons turns into something more – movie nights, game nights, breakfast at the diner, afternoons at the lake. 

You and Eddie get closer and closer, the pull between the two of you becoming stronger as well. Though you never cross over that line. Not yet. 

Your touches are innocent, so are the glances you throw at each other, but you crave him and he craves you and you show each other just how much weeks later at Jamie's birthday party. Eddie was invited as his best friend. 

The backyard is filled with kids and their parents who all came to the party as well, laughter and chatter could be heard all the way to the kitchen, where you prepare the snacks with Eddie by your side. His arm is brushing against yours, and you keep biting back the smile as you sneak glances at him, watching the way he cuts the fruit with a concentrated look on his face. 

You put down the knife after throwing the fruit into the bowl. 

Eddie was so determined to help you out in the kitchen, he didn’t even let you protest against it.

He doesn’t have to do this. 

He could be out there chatting with Steve who came here with his kids, but he chose to be here with you. 

“Hey Eddie?”

“Yes, sweets?” 

You take a deep breath and walk over to the sink, putting the cutting board and the knife down, you hold onto the edge of the counter. 

“Thank you for being so nice with Jamie… and well, with me too. The sink is fixed again thanks to you,” you giggle nervously, glancing over your shoulder at him to see him walking towards you with a smile on his face, biting his bottom lip. 

“Yeah, well... it’s impossible not to like the little devil… you know what I like the most about him?” 

Your cheeks almost hurt from how much you want to smile when you feel him coming up behind you, he wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you back against him. 

“His mom.”

You start blushing furiously, turning around in his arms to stare at him, despite the flustered look on your face. 

The look in his eyes and the fond smile on his face doesn’t help either, it makes you even weaker. 

“So… a kid is not a turn off for you I suppose?” You ask, looking at him through hooded eyes. 

He tilts his head, “it was before… but then I met my little mini me and you,” he says with his husky voice, pulling you closer against him as his hand moves up your side, playing with the thin material of your dress, “it’s an absolute turn on to see you in momma bear mode.”

You grow even more flustered now, slapping his chest lightly but it only makes him chuckle more and he pulls you flush against him as his face inches closer to yours. He looks down at your lips, he feels the heat of your body against his and god… even that feels perfect enough, he won’t know what to do with himself when he actually gets to kiss you and feel your lips against his for the first time.

“Hmm… Well then you’re lucky that I’m into rockstars.”

His heart skips a beat when you move closer this time, but before your lips could even brush against his, loud footsteps echo through the hallway and Jamie comes running into the kitchen with a plastic sword in his hand and wearing a pirate costume. 

“Mommy! I’m a pirate!” 

Eddie pulls away with a soft groan and you giggle when you’re forced to pull away from each other. 

He looks down at your little boy, a grin taking over his face. 

“You know who I am, bud?” 

Jamie’s curious brown eyes squint at him, “who?”

Eddie grabs the spatula that was laying on the kitchen counter, stepping towards Jamie and going into a fighting stance, putting on his best mean face, “the most terrible and scary pirate in all the seven seas, matey!” He speaks with a deep, dramatic voice. 

Jamie laughs as he runs away with Eddie chasing after him. And you watch smiling fondly, the sight in front of you pulling at your heart strings. 

And you aren’t the only one who’s watching him, Steve is watching him too, amused and a little surprised to see him like that. Eddie had been his friend for almost twenty years now, and not once has he seen him so happy with a woman by his side, let alone a kid. 

He can’t even bite his tongue when he gets a moment alone with him. 

“So… what was that of not wanting kids?” Steve asks him later that night, smirking at Eddie who can’t keep his eyes off you while you’re talking to Steve’s wife. 

“Uh,” Eddie chuckles, scratching the back of his neck, “at least the baby part is done with…” He trails off with doubt as he watches you, the way you smile, the way you laugh, the way you look so happy, the way your eyes light up when they meet his briefly. His eyes then move down to your stomach, and suddenly he can’t stop himself from imagining you with a baby bump that carries his own child, his heart flutters at the thought. “But maybe…”

Steve raises his eyebrows in surprise when he sees the lovesick look in his best friend’s eyes. 

“Oh boy…” 

[mbappebby]

Stargirl || Four

Ivy Carter (OC) x f1 grid

Summary: The media just isn’t going to leave Ivy alone, until they get answers from her…

Requested: Yes, by anonymous: Loving Stargirl series!! Can I request one where the media & fans just won’t leave Ivy alone after what happened with her parents. All the drivers become protective and stand up for her as it’s getting too much, thank u x

Series

Taglist: @myluvtaeil @eugene-emt-roe @itsjustkhaos

Ivy knew that what happened at the last race weekend, the media wouldn’t let her live it down and want answers from her.

Ivy walked into the paddock and was immediately meet by cameras and reporters trying to get any type of answer from her. Ivy tried to ignore it all but the all the questions that were being asked weren’t helping at all.

“Did your parents ever physically hurt you?”

“How do you feel about getting disowned?”

“Where are your brothers?”

“How did you cope of having no family here?”

“Do you think you deserve what has happened to you?”

Ivy was quite close to tears as she continued to try and free herself from all the cameras and reporters, this caught the attention of a lot of the drivers.

“HEY! Leave her alone, there’s a reason why she doesn’t want to answer these questions!” George shouted. “It’s disrespectful to ask those questions!” Alex added. “Respect her fucking boundaries!” Max said as the three and more drivers continue to talk all the media.

Ivy eventually got away from the crowd and ran to a secure area of the paddock. She sat down on the floor with her head in arms and knees up, trying to control her breathing to avoid having a panic attack.

She could hear some drivers getting closer to her, while others were still talking to the media. “Never knew this place existed” Carlos said. “It’s Vee secret area” Alex replied as they found the young girl.

“Vee! Shit, c’mon breathe for us lil sis” George said as he kneeled down next to her pulling his teammate into his embrace. “Just focus on George’s breathing, Vi” Alex added softly.

Soon enough a lot of the other drivers had approached the three, they gave sad looks over to the young girl. “I can’t believe they would ask questions like that, she 18 for fuck sake” Max said.

“It’s disrespectful as Vee said that she’s not comfortable yet to talk about everything” Lando added. “I hate seeing her like this..” Oscar mumbled. “It happened in F2 as well?” Charles asked.

“The panic attacks did..” Logan replied as they all looked over at Ivy, who has now eventually had calmed down. “There you go Vee,” George said softly. “I’m sorry..” Ivy whispered.

“Hey, it’s not your fault Vee it’s those people who can’t accept your boundaries” Alex told her as he hugged her before George helped her up, this was when Ivy seen all the drivers there.

“Why you all here?” Ivy questioned. “Needed to see that you were alright!” Charles replied. “May have almost got into fights with the reporters..” Oscar mumbled as Ivy’s eyes widen.

“You muppet! You didn’t have to say anything!” Lando said. “She was bound to fine out! It’s all over social media!” Oscar replied. “They deserve to be punched” Max said.

“Let’s not think about that now, c’mon Vee let’s get you back to the garage” George said. “Thanks for being here and sticking up for me” Ivy told them. “It’s our job to, Vi!” Logan added.

“Always been her for you, Vi!” Carlos said. “Now, who wants to join to have another friendly chat to all these reporters!” Max joked making Ivy giggle before all of them made their way towards their respective garages.

//

“You okay, sweetheart?” Susie asked. “As good as I could be..” Ivy said as Susie pulled her into her embrace. “It’s going to be okay, you have all the drivers on your side and many others as well” Susie told her.

“Yeah, I know. I knew this would happen, just didn’t expect it to be that crazy” Ivy replied. “We pulled you out of all interviews for today” Toto added as he walked into the room.

“Thank you” Ivy said softly as George walked in. “How you feeling?” George asked. “I’ll be fine” Ivy said as she stood up. “I just want to be alone for a bit,” Ivy mumbled as she walked out the room and making her way to her drivers room.

The three watched sadly as she left the room. “It’s just best we leave her for a bit” Susie said. “I hate seeing her like that, wish the media would just leave her alone” George replied.

“She’s changed a lot as well, like not being her normal self anymore..” George added. “It’s just the effect of all the comments and everything, which has made an impact on her..” Susie said.

“Our Vee will be back soon” Toto told them.

//

“How she doing?” Alex asked. “I really don’t know mate, she’s been alone in her drivers room for a couple of hours. She wants to be alone..” George told him.

“Not doing any media today, then?” Alex added. “No and I think it’s just for the best” George replied as the pair made their way to the press conference.

George and Alex were the first ones there, just before Max, Lando and Charles entered the room after them and the press conference started.

“George, obviously we seen what happened to Ivy earlier on, can you give us anything about how she is?”

“Yeah, I mean all Vi just wanted was some privacy and people just couldn’t listen to that. It’s awful what questions people were asking her earlier, it was out of order. Vee just wants to have some time alone, but she’s doing alright” George said.

“Do you think the way you reacted was right?”

“Ivy is like a little sister to me, if people want to think the way me and others reacted was wrong that’s their option. From the way I seen it was that people were not respecting Ivy’s boundaries and it went too far” George replied.

“Does anyone else have anything to add to that?”

“Alex?”

“Well, as George has said, what happened to Vee was just taken too far. If people actually do think the way we reacted wasn’t right, just think about it like being your sister or someone close to you in the position Ivy was” Alex added.

“Lando, anything to add?”

“I mean, like Alex and George has said. What happened to Ivy was just disrespecting and people not respecting her boundaries. Also, of people do have a problem of the way we reacted they should just keep it to themselves, we were defending someone who means a lot to basically the whole grid” Lando said.

“Charles, want to add something?”

“Yeah, it’s just not something that should happen to anyone when walking into the paddock, especially when Vee told them she wasn’t comfortable about talking about. The way we reacted isn’t something people should have their main concern on, Ivy’s boundaries wasn’t respected and she could have got hurt” Charles replied.

“Max, thoughts?”

“Vi means a lot to basically the whole grid, seeing someone’s boundaries not being respected and going as far as it did is just not acceptable. If people really are complaining about the way we reacted, I really don’t care and they should keep it to themselves” Max added.

“Thank you, now any other questions?”

Ivy smiled as she was watching the press conference, she was glad that she has so many people on her side and think her as a little sister.

Ivy eventually made her way back into the garage, after being in her drivers room for the majority of the day. Toto and Susie smiled at her as she seen her leave the garage and walked into the paddock.

“That’s our Ivy,” Toto said with a smile. “It sure is” Susie added as they watched her on the screen messing and playing around with Roscoe.

//

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ivycarter

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ivycarter: My favourite four-legged friend💗

tagged: roscoelovescoco

comments have been limited

lewishamilton Can I have my dog back now?

ivycarter Nope❤️

georgerussell63 You have other 4-legged friends?

alex_albon Vi! What about my pets?!

charlesleclerc Leo ain’t your favourite? :(

ivycarter um..well…

landonorris You really need to get a pet..

lewishamilton Vi! Bring him back to Ferrari!

ivycarter But he misses his home at Merc💔

maxverstappen1 What about Sassy & Jimmy?

ivycarter …no comment..

[velandvithestarlightgullwings]

While everyone who is refusing to vote for Biden because of Gaza and his poor debate, Trump is calling people Palestinian as a slur.

Like...Everyone is fair to judge Biden on his lackluster response to Gaza (as I do), but look at this! All undecided and "Vote Third party because of 'Genocide Joe'" Trump has actively told Israel to "finish the job" while also doing this and talking about how Russia, North Korea, and China (something he accused Biden of being a puppet of) are our allies! Why aren't people talking about this? Why are people so willing to let this monster get away with lying and being racist and supporting other regimes to the point that they will throw away their vote by voting third party or not voting at all?!

Aren't they seeing what they are potentially letting back into the White House all because Biden is not the perfect guy? I get that Democrats are a mish-mash of ideologies but look at what we're doing being at each other's throat over someone who is at least trying to help us.

Trump is not going to help Gaza. He's going to destroy it while also destroying America with Project 2025, which may I add, is already getting the show on the road by gutting a ton of stuff yesterday.

AND DO I NEED TO TALK ABOUT ROE VS WADE?

And don't give me that "Biden needs to step down" because how the hell can that be pulled off in 4 months without pissing off the delegates that wanted him while trying to swiftly bring the mish-mash of Dems to try and vote for them in 4 MONTHS? Not only that, no one is credible at the moment.

Sanders is older than Biden and Orange Man.

Newsom is disliked in Cali.

Whitmer (who I would vote for in a heartbeat) is an unknown to the country and a woman

No one likes Harris not only due to her policies with the police but we all know she has a uphill battle because she is a POC and a woman.

AOC (who I would vote for in a heartbeat) also has the same issue as Harris being a POC and a woman.

Crockett (who I would also vote for in a heartbeat) is both an unknown, a POC and a woman.

And do I even need to bring up Hillary and the demonization she's STILL going through even after being vindicated.

And I bring this up for third parties as well. Who do we have in that list?

Jill Stein is actively a shill for Putin and was seen dining with him.

Cornell West has been on his bullshit for years now.

And RFK Jr? Someone I've seen people asking to vote for. The man who is anti-vax, anti-science, someone who his family isn't rooting for, and had a worm in his brain. And keep in mind, I left out some stuff.

So third party voters, how will you rally around one of these three or someone else in 4 MONTHS?!

We don't have time for all this division. We need to band together to defeat Trump and give America a fighting chance because if we don't, POCs, LGBTQ+, the Disabled, women, the homeless, anyone who cares about climate change, and fucking everyone that isn't rich, white, Christian males will be in danger by this wanna-be dictator.

In order to help Gaza, we need to be able to help ourselves and stop the fascism breathing down our neck.

Give us a fighting chance, please, and vote pure blue

[mythica-ithaca]

I've decided to stop typing out the same responses to the same braindead US Liberal questions so I'm making this post in order to save time.

•"But Kamala has called for a ceasefire!"

She has called for a temporary humanitarian pause, which she and Biden have worked tirelessly for months to completely rebrand into a call for "ceasefire". If they truly wanted a permanent ceasefire they wouldn't have just sent Israel $20+ billion in financial aid and weapons. Use your brains. That is not something that someone who opposes more violence would do. Empty words mean nothing. She has not taken any actions so far that actually demonstrate a work towards a permanent ceasefire, in fact all her actions have been in complete opposite to her calls for one. She is lying to you and telling you what you want to hear in order to get elected. And you are letting her by falling it and not demanding any sort of results. And just because she wont spell it out for you like Trump will, her "ironclad support" for Israel translates to her allowing them to "finish the job" should it come down to it as well. There is no other way to interpret that.

•Trump can't be reasoned with but Kamala can be convinced/pushed left after we vote her in!

You people said this about Biden as well and look how well that worked out. Around 200k Palestinians are dead, and so is Roe v Wade, which they had the opportunity to codify and they didn't. His own staff were protesting in front of the white house and he didn't budge an inch. Neither will Kamala. You are deluding yourselves into believing that after you give these people all the power in the world that you have any sway over them whatsoever. Our votes are our leverage, and you are throwing yours away by voting for words over actions. You get exactly what you vote for, there is no putting in the work afterwards. And a vote for Kamala at this point is a vote for Genocide.

•"Why are you protesting Kamala and not Trump?!"

First of all. Do you people think he can be reasoned with or not? What is the point of going to his rallies with his violent supporters if you think he can't be swayed anyways? Cause if he's not going to change his position and he's not going to drop out, what exactly do you think it would accomplish?

Second of all, Trump isn't the one committing genocide right now. The democrats are in power. They are the ones responsible for this and the ones with the power to stop it. They deserve to be protested.

Third of all, we aren't voting for Trump regardless. Kamala is the one who needs to change her position and show actual results in order to earn our votes. If you think you can "push them left" then prove it and stop bitching when people actually start pushing instead of sitting around in complacency just because the dems are in charge. Supporting a genocide hurts her prospects way more than having anti genocide protestors at her rallies does. She wants to be president of the united states, she deserves constant pressure and criticism.

•"Trump will be even worse for Palestine! Vote for the lesser evil!"

This is incredibly callous, cruel and dismissive of what is happening to Palestine under the democrats right now. Gaza is completely destroyed already. Families are torn apart. Thousands of babies and children and men and women are literally being torn apart every. single. day. And every single day Kamala and Biden wake up and decide not to stop it. To not even condemn it. Their administration actively lies about it. We are far past the point of it getting worse. There is nothing worse than hell on earth. Would you ever tell a jewish person that the holocaust "could have been worse", simply because not every single jew was wiped out? By saying it can always get worse, you are ignoring and tolerating how catastrophic things are right now.

This is what voting for the "lesser" evil and voting blue no matter who has come to. There is no option that doesn't result in continued genocide. There is no lesser evil anymore. Only one that you will personally benefit from more than the other. You cannot look at what is happening in Palestine and Sudan and Congo and begin to tell me that the democrats are in any way "less" evil. You are downplaying the severity and suffering of these conflicts by implying that, and it's disgusting.

You need to realize that this line of thinking is enabling you to tolerate and excuse certain levels of depravity and that is unacceptable. In no world is the a "less evil" form of genocide.

•"What you expect Kamala to do about it right now? Shes not even president yet!"

This is probably the most pathetic attempt to absolve her of any responsibility. She is the fucking Vice President. She is not just there for show, she has power and influence. She is 100% able to disagree with and speak out against policy. She could have even resigned in protest if she was truly disgusted by Bidens actions. She acts his advisor and is currently not giving any push back to Biden on his policies. Biden can't just fire her and she's already the nominee.

•"We need to save ourselves first in order to help others!"

We are in a sinking ship and you are pushing peoples heads underwater and drowning them in order to get yourselves to a lifeboat, all while promising that once you're safe you'll help pull others up. But by the time you save yourselves everyone else is already dead and you're stranded all alone.

Nobody wants your fucking help. They want you to stop giving power to people fundamentally indifferent to human life so you can live just a bit more comfortably at the expense of everyone else's suffering. Stop trying to play the saviors of the world. They know that you will always have an excuse as to why it's not the right time for you to help anyways. They know you will never put anyone or anything before yourselves. And you all know it too.

•"There's never going to be a perfect candidate! Get over it!"

In what world is demanding someone be against genocide equal to demanding a perfect candidate? I'm aware that I am not going to ever agree with a politician, or anyone really, on every single issue. I'm absolutely willing to make sacrifices in certain areas. Genocide is a red line. Just like I wouldn't vote for anyone who was against abortion or lgbt rights, I'm not voting for anyone who is fundamentally indifferent to human rights.

•"So you want to just sacrifice (insert any vulnerable group in America)?"

No. It is a myth that you can sacrifice one group to liberate another. You can't sacrifice Palestinians in order to save your own rights. Ask yourselves why you should even have to. There are better ways to secure rights like abortion and healthcare than voting blue no matter who. Stop letting the democrats dangle abortion right over your heads in order to scare you into silence. Our rights and Palestinian live are not mutually exclusive, you are allowed to demand both. You are not allowed to act like our lives are somehow more important than theirs. What are you going to do when it's abortion, lgbt, disabled, or bipoc rights that have to be sacrificed to save democracy? Because it will eventually come to that if we let this "lesser evil" shit continue and refuse to fight for our rights and just keep giving more of them up in order to preserve others just a little longer.

•"You want a revolution and yet you haven't firebombed a Walmart??"

I mean. Considering that you all insist you can just sit back vote your way out of fascism by backing whatever candidate they decide to throw at you without making a single demand. Yeah, you're right, it's starting to look more likely that violence will be the only solution to this problem. But we aren't there yet. Because far too many of you are too comfortable living the way we do at the expense of people suffering all over the world. Until a significant amount of you become actually uncomfortable with the way things are, instead of just saying that you are and then continuing to reap the benefits of living in the empire, there won't be a revolution. Violent or otherwise. Because you're all content to play this rigged game. You are just comfortable enough with the way things are to be more scared of losing what little you have than fighting for what we deserve. A better world is still too inconvenient for you to do more than cast a vote every four years.

RIP to Aaron Bushnell btw. He lit himself on fire in order to protest Americas role in all this. I'd say that's braver than firebombing a walmart.

•"So you want us to just not vote at all then!?"

I want you to stop voting for empty words and demand action before throwing away your leverage. There is no pushing them left after you give them all the power in the world. You get exactly what you vote for. You say that voting third party is throwing your vote away, but what the hell do you call voting for empty promises over and over again? Bullshitting harm reduction? Because I don't think constant school shootings and police brutality is harm reduction.

The democrats have been promising $15 minimum wage for so long that it isn't even sufficient anymore. Promised to codify Roe. Didn't deliver. Promised assault rifle bans. Didn't deliver. Haven't abolished ICE. Haven't defunded or reformed the police. Haven't guaranteed parental leave or child care. Students are still drowning in debt. Kamala has stated that she will not push for medicare for all. How is it that they've been incapable of any of these things for years after having majority multiple times, and yet somehow the republicans are supposed to be able to pass project 2025 with ease?

I am telling you to demand that these people start earning your votes. Because you have made them entirely too comfortable by telling them to their faces that you will vote for them no matter what their policies are by chanting, 'vote blue no matter who'. Every single time you do that, you sacrifice something else instead of gaining anything for the vulnerable people you say you care about.

•"Democracy is on the ballot! We have to save democracy!"

You mean the democracy in which we have two choices, except one choice will be the end of democracy, so we really only have one choice, and that choice was chosen for us because the current president refused to step down until after the primaries, where his party made sure he had no real opponent in the first place, so they just went with his right hand man as a replacement? The democracy currently forcing you choose the annihilation of an entire people in order to maybe secure some of your own rights for just a little longer? That democracy? Does that sound like a system worth saving anymore in the first place?

You will not save democracy by committing genocide in front of the entire fucking world. And if you could, it wouldn't be worth saving.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Elections are about the future. That’s why I am excited about Vice President Kamala Harris. She represents a fresh start for American politics. She can offer a hopeful, unifying vision. She is talented, experienced and ready to be president. And I know she can defeat Donald Trump. There is now an even sharper, clearer choice in this election. On one side is a convicted criminal who cares only about himself and is trying to turn back the clock on our rights and our country. On the other is a savvy former prosecutor and successful vice president who embodies our faith that America’s best days are still ahead. It’s old grievances versus new solutions. Ms. Harris’s record and character will be distorted and disparaged by a flood of disinformation and the kind of ugly prejudice we’re already hearing from MAGA mouthpieces. She and the campaign will have to cut through the noise, and all of us as voters must be thoughtful about what we read, believe and share. I know a thing or two about how hard it can be for strong women candidates to fight through the sexism and double standards of American politics. I’ve been called a witch, a “nasty woman” and much worse. I was even burned in effigy. As a candidate, I sometimes shied away from talking about making history. I wasn’t sure voters were ready for that. And I wasn’t running to break a barrier; I was running because I thought I was the most qualified to do the job. While it still pains me that I couldn’t break that highest, hardest glass ceiling, I’m proud that my two presidential campaigns made it seem normal to have a woman at the top of the ticket. Ms. Harris will face unique additional challenges as the first Black and South Asian woman to be at the top of a major party’s ticket. That’s real, but we shouldn’t be afraid. It is a trap to believe that progress is impossible. After all, I won the national popular vote by nearly three million in 2016, and it’s not so long ago that Americans overwhelmingly elected our first Black president. As we saw in the 2022 midterms, abortion bans and attacks on democracy are galvanizing women voters like never before. With Ms. Harris at the top of the ticket leading the way, this movement may become an unstoppable wave. [...] Ms. Harris is chronically underestimated, as are so many women in politics, but she is well prepared for this moment. As a prosecutor and attorney general in California, she took on drug traffickers, polluters and predatory lenders. As a U.S. senator, she rigorously questioned squirming Trump administration officials and nominees and was inspiring to watch. As vice president, Ms. Harris has sat with the president in the Situation Room, helping make the hardest decisions a leader can make. And when the extremist Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she became the administration’s most passionate and effective advocate for restoring women’s reproductive rights.

Hillary Clinton for The New York Times detailing the sexism and double standards for women in politics face in regards to her 2016 Presidential run and Kamala Harris's 2024 Presidential run (07.23.2024).

Former First Lady and 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton wrote an excellent opinion column in The New York Times detailing the sexism and double standards for women in politics face, particularly in regards to her 2016 Presidential race and Kamala Harris’s 2024 Presidential race.

The sexism and misogyny-laden attacks against Harris will make the ones aimed at Clinton look like a minor league baseball game, because Harris is Black and South Asian.

Let this be a reminder that we need to elect a Momala and not a fascist felon!

[antidrumpfs]

Here is the list of the biggest lies Trump told during his debate with President Biden on Thursday:

1. "We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have never done so well, and everybody was amazed by it."

2. "The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they’re bounced back from the COVID."

3. "[10% universal tariff proposal is] not going to drive [prices] higher.”

4. “[Tariff proposal is] just going to just force [other countries] to pay us a lot of money.”

5. “I gave you the largest tax cut in history.”

6. "I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we're getting out with dignity, with strength, with power.”

7. “The tax cuts spurred the greatest economy that we've ever seen.”

8. “Now, when we cut the taxes…we took in more revenue with much less tax.”

9. “We had largely fixed [COVID].”

10. “Throughout the entire world, we're no longer respected as a country. They don't respect our leadership. They don't respect the United States anymore. We're like a third world nation.”

11. “He allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails, and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.”

12. “He's destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in.”

13. “The Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill.”

14. “Every legal scholar throughout the world, the most respected, wanted [abortion] brought back to the states.”

15. “They’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth. After birth, if you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this. He said, we'll put the baby aside, I will determine what we do with the baby, meaning will kill the baby.”

16. “Under Roe v. Wade, you have late term abortion. You can do whatever you want depending on the state. You can do whatever you want.”

17. “He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists.”

18. “He didn't need legislation because I didn't have legislation. I said close the border.”

19. “[Migrants are] living in luxury hotels in New York City and other places.”

20. “He doesn't care about our veterans. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t like the military at all, and he doesn't care about our veterans.”

21. “I had the highest approval rating for veterans taking care of the VA. He has the worst. He's gotten rid of all the things that I approved.”

22. “First of all, that was a made-up quote, ‘suckers and losers.’ They made it up.”

23. “Our veterans and our soldiers can't stand this guy. They can't stand him. They think he’s the worst Commander in Chief, if that’s what you call him, that we’ve ever had.”

24. “He did nothing to stop [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine]. In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from going in.”

25. "Iran was broke with me. I wouldn't let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke.”

26. “You had no terror at all during my administration.”

27. “Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago, on tape to her daughter, who's a documentary filmmaker they say, but she's saying, ‘Oh, no, it's my responsibility. I was responsible for this’ because I offered them 10,000 soldiers or National Guard. And she turned them down.”

28. “The unselect committee, which is basically two horrible Republicans that are all gone now, out of office, and Democrats, all Democrats, they destroyed and deleted all the information they found because they found out we were right. We were right. And they deleted and destroyed all of the information.”

29. “Telling the Ukrainian people that we're going to want a billion dollars or you change the prosecutor, otherwise you're not getting a billion dollars. If I ever said that, that's quid pro quo.”

30. “I didn't have sex with a porn star.”

31. “He basically went after his political opponent because he thought it was going to damage me.”

32. “He made up the Charlottesville story.”

33. “He caused the inflation and it's killing Black families and Hispanic families.”

34. “They can’t buy groceries anymore, they can't, you look at the cost of food where it's doubled and tripled and quadrupled. They can’t live, they’re not living anymore.”

35. “[European countries] don’t want anything that we have.”

36. “Almost every police group in the nation from every state is supporting Donald J. Trump. Almost every police group.”

37. “And what he's done to the black population is horrible, including the fact that for ten years he called them super-predators.”

38. “And yet during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever.”

39. “The Paris accord was going to cost us $1 trillion and China nothing and Russia, nothing, and India nothing. It was a rip off of the United States and I ended it because I didn't want to waste that money because they treated us horribly…. Nobody else was paying into it and it was, it was a disaster.”

40. “I'm the one that got the insulin down for the seniors. I took care of the seniors.”

41. On migrants: “They're taking over our schools our hospitals, and they're going to be taking over our schools or hospitals, and they're going to be taking over Social Security.”

42. “But Social Security - he's destroying it because millions of people are pouring into our country and they are putting them onto Social Security. They’re putting them onto Medicare, Medicaid. They’re putting them in our hospitals.”

43. “He wants open borders. He wants our country to either be destroyed, or he wants to pick up those people as voters.”

44. "He wants the Trump tax cuts to expire.”

45. “He wants to raise your taxes by four times. He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times.”

46. “We now have the largest [trade] deficit in the history of our country under this guy. We have the largest deficit with China.”

47. “He gets paid by China. He's a Manchurian candidate. He gets money from China. So I think he’s afraid to deal with them.”

48. “We had two cases, we paid $6 billion for five people.”

49. “They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol, and in many cases were ushered in by the police.”

50. “I would have much rather accepted these [election results in 2020], but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.”

[beardedmrbean]

Jayden Camarena, in Northern California, is contemplating blowing off the 2024 presidential election. Evan McKenzie, in battleground Wisconsin, is looking for any other candidate than the current front-runners. In Philadelphia, Pru Carmichael isn’t even convinced this race matters.

These young voters live in different cities, work different jobs and have varying political beliefs. But among the things they have in common: They voted for Joe Biden in 2020 — and now say the president can’t count on their support in 2024.

“I genuinely could not live with myself if I voted for someone who’s made the decisions that Biden has,” said McKenzie, a 23-year-old working at Starbucks and as a union organizer in Madison, Wisconsin. “I didn’t even feel great about" voting for Biden in 2020, he said.

The feeling helps illustrate why Biden’s ratings and support among young voters have dipped noticeably in recent polling. In November, NBC News’ latest national poll showed Biden locked in close competition with former President Donald Trump at the moment for voters ages 18-34, a sharp drop from the margins Biden enjoyed over Trump in the 2020 election, according to exit polling.

“We’ve been seeing this in our data and focus groups actually since May,” said Ashley Aylward, a senior researcher at the Democratic polling firm HIT Strategies. “And to me, it’s because the 2024 campaign season for Democrats hasn’t started yet.”

Polling a year out from an election is a snapshot in time, and Biden and his party have time to bring young voters back into the fold. But Aylward and others said it will take work.

“This is the alarm bell that we needed to make sure that not only the Biden campaign, but every other Democratic operative out there and all the campaigns down the ballot — state and local — actually invest in young people, because we know how much they can change the outcome,” Aylward said.

NBC News spoke with voters who responded to the poll, as well as other voters 18-34 who supported Biden in 2020, but who now say he hasn’t earned their vote for next year, to get a clearer picture of why they are unhappy with Biden and what they want to see him do to earn their support back.

“It’s so complicated, because it almost feels like if I were to give my vote for Biden, I will be showing the Democratic Party that what they are putting out is enough, which is the bare minimum in my opinion,” said Camarena, a 24-year-old living outside the Bay Area.

Voters cited a number of policy areas that disappointed them, including insufficient moves to address climate change and Biden’s inability to fully cancel student loan debt or codify Roe v. Wade, as the president deals with a closely divided Congress. However, Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war may be having the greatest effect on his relationship with this voter bloc.

The NBC News national poll, conducted more than a month after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, shows 70% of voters under 35 disapproving of Biden’s handling of the war.

McKenzie cast his first presidential ballot three years ago for Biden, when the Democratic candidate carried Wisconsin narrowly, in part thanks to young voters like McKenzie. He said he urged his friends to vote for Biden then, telling them, “You’ve got to do this.”

He now says he won’t be having those conversations this election cycle. He’s angry at the president for his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, and the threat of losing the White House to the Republican Party has done little to win over his vote.

“I want to show the Democratic Party as a young person that you still need to earn our vote and if you don’t, the consequences will be your career,” McKenzie said. “A Republican getting elected isn’t the end. It is the beginning of a much larger fight.”

Big promises unfulfilled

In 2020, Biden carried young voters by more than 20 points against Trump, but some of that support appears to have been tepid — and tied to enormous campaign promises from Biden that he has not been able to deliver as president of a closely divided nation.

“I mean, he made a lot of really big promises in his campaign and virtually none of them were followed through on,” said Austin Kapp, a 25-year-old living in Castle Rock, Colorado. “I mean, he could have codified Roe v. Wade, he could have stood up for the rights of people all over the country, he could have done a lot of things, but he didn’t.” ________________

While Biden and Democrats pushed to codify the protections of Roe at the federal level, congressional realities made legislative efforts impossible. A vote to codify Roe in May 2022 failed in the Senate, with Biden lashing out at Republicans afterward and urging voters to “elect more pro-choice senators this November, and return a pro-choice majority to the House.” Democrats kept the Senate but lost the House in November 2022.

Biden also backed a rules change to the Senate filibuster, which would have allowed legislation to pass by simple majority instead of a higher, 60-vote threshold, but the change was blocked in a bipartisan vote.

Biden wasn’t Kapp’s first choice as a candidate in the last election, and this year he plans to vote third party if the contest is a Biden-Trump rematch. He graduated from school just last spring carrying both private and federal student loans.

When asked how he felt about his loan repayments beginning soon, Kapp groaned: “Oh, yeah, that was another thing.”

“It’s kind of sad to see that the quote unquote lesser of two evils that we were all promised, is this,” Kapp said of Biden.

Camarena agrees. Though she is vehemently against Trump, she says she only supported Biden in 2020 reluctantly.

“It was more of a well, [Biden]’s better than Trump, you know?” she said.

Camarena’s feelings toward Biden now are worse. She works for CalFire and is passionate about addressing climate change. She says she was “turned off” when the Biden administration approved the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.

“It made me really angry,” she said. “He painted himself as, you know, trying to advance or improve climate change.”

When she talks to other voters her age about Biden, she says, the sentiment is similar and discouraging. “It feels like the best option that we have isn’t good enough,” Camarena said with a sigh, adding, “It can feel really powerless.”

Worried voters cite higher prices

Sentiments like these among a constituency Democrats rely on to win elections mean campaigning in 2024 will be critical, maybe even more so than in previous elections, said Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute.

“I think on some level, you can say that the Biden-Harris team have not been as aggressively pitching their accomplishments to voters and maybe that they don’t feel like they’re in campaign mode yet,” he said. “You certainly see this with the economy, which the sort of macroeconomic indicators have been positive for quite a while and keep surprising analysts that things seem to be doing much better than folks thought they would.”

While the economy is performing stronger than when Biden first took office, Olivia Thompson, a 26-year-old mother in Elko, Nevada, says she doesn’t feel those improvements.

“Not even a little bit, and I’m living it firsthand,” Thompson said.

Her family of five lives paycheck to paycheck. She says Biden earned her vote last election based on promises for a more prosperous future.

“I was more excited about the fact that he was saying that he was gonna fix the economy and get everything back on track and then everything just skyrocketed,” she complained. “All of like our grocery bills and gas — it just never went back down.”

Thompson plans to vote for a third-party candidate in November.

Some of the economic anxiety voters have may be because they’re not hitting the same economic milestones that their parents did, said Aylward, the Democratic opinion researcher.

“I think it would do Biden wonders if he came out with a really, really clear plan for that to help these young people’s anxiety,” she said. Millennials and Generation Z voters "are seeing just how far out of reach buying a home is or saving money and, of course, student loans are really the first barrier and piece to that.”

Several voters said they supported Biden on the expectation he would tackle the student debt crisis. The administration successfully erased $127 billion in student debt — more than any president in history, but after the Supreme Court ruled against his original plans to cancel up to $400 billion in student debt, that failure became the lasting headline.

“Whether you like it or not, Biden has done a number of things, but young people are just far less likely to give him credit, good or bad, on anything that he’s done,” Cox said.

McKenzie, who graduated in the spring, said he remains unimpressed by the accomplishments of the administration.

“I’m glad it’s the most ever" canceled student debt, he said. "It’s still not even close to what was promised,” he added. “And I think that that’s sort of what I’m going into this campaign feeling, like broken promises all around.”

Combating that sentiment will be crucial to winning back support.

Cox said he thinks the Biden campaign "is in deep trouble at this stage.” He said, “There’s still plenty of time, but the trajectory is not good for him.”

Camarena is one voter leaving the door open for her mind to be changed.

“I think that there is a chance” of Biden winning back her support, she said, adding that she expects the president to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.

“If he would do that, that would make me reconsider. Though, she said, she would "still be a bit skeptical.”

Another voter said it’s already too late.

Carmichael, of Philadelphia, hoped the Biden administration would remind her of the Obama days. She says she is disappointed by both Biden and Trump and wants to spend her time focusing on local community care and voting in local elections.

“I don’t think the presidency has too much of an effect on what happens in my day-to-day life,” she said.

Carmichael won’t be supporting Biden in November. If the choices next fall are Biden and Trump, she says, she will likely leave those boxes empty.

“I gave him one shot and it was not worth it,” she said.

[izooks]

Scott Galloway - NO MERCY / NO MALICE

Florida is now one of the most restrictive states in the country for abortion rights: The state’s supreme court reversed its own precedents on April 1 and upheld a ban on abortions after six weeks. Women in Florida, as in many states after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, now face harsh limits on their fundamental rights.

The same day, the court also allowed a proposal enshrining abortion rights in Florida’s constitution to appear on the ballot this November. There is a good chance it will pass, but it will be close — 60% will have to approve the amendment, and last fall, a poll found 62% of voters planned to vote for it. Nationwide, between 60% and 80% of Americans support a woman’s right to choose, depending on how the question is asked. The rest of the world is expanding the right of women to decide when and how they get pregnant and give birth. Yet in many states, a minority of Americans continue to impose their views on the rest of us. I say “us” because while this right is unique to women, it affects all of us. The right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy changed the course of my life, and my mother’s, even though I didn’t understand it at the time.

“D and What?”

On a late summer afternoon, between my junior and senior years of high school, I was in the passenger seat of my mom’s lime-green Opel Manta on the way home from work. Mom had secured me a job in the mailroom of her employer, the Southwestern School of Law, where she managed the secretarial pool, and we carpooled back and forth. Headed west on I-10 (the Santa Monica Freeway), between the La Brea and Fairfax exits, she told me about her plans for later in the week.

“I’m having a procedure called a D&C on Wednesday and won’t be home that night. Are you fine to stay alone?”

I was 16, and only really heard the part of her question suggesting I wasn’t old enough to spend the night solo in our condo. “Yeah, sure.” I didn’t ask what a D&C was, but I had the sense it had something to do with the great unknown, women’s health, and didn’t ask for details. My mom likely wanted to have a meaningful conversation with me, but that didn’t happen. Meaningful dialogue with teenage boys happens … just not when you expect. The question must have found some purchase in my consciousness, as I remember exactly what I was wearing: brown Levi’s corduroys, a Bruce Springsteen concert T-shirt, and top-siders. Not Sperry top-siders, but knockoffs. A pair of real Sperrys cost $32.

I was 16, my mom 46. I loved her because she loved me, completely. But that’s not what this post is about. I also loved the U.S. because it, too, loved us — me and my mom — completely. My mother was a single immigrant raising her son on a secretary’s salary. But this isn’t a sob story. We had good lives. Sure, money was definitely a thing, but we lived in a nice place and took vacations to Niagara Falls and San Francisco, ate at Junior’s Deli every Sunday night, and went some weekends to the beach in Santa Monica, where parking was $2 for the whole day, just behind lifeguard station No. 9.

Our nation welcomed my mother with open arms. Despite her having no education or money, we helped her out in between jobs and loaned her money so she could go to night school and become a stenographer. The state of California loved her son: The vision and generosity of the regents of UCLA and California’s taxpayers gave her unremarkable son (this isn’t a humblebrag, I was seriously unimpressive) a remarkable opportunity. I received a world-class education at little cost: UCLA (my B.A.) and UC Berkeley (an MBA) for a total cost (tuition) of $7,000 for all seven years.

More than just affordable, it was accessible: UCLA had a 76% admissions rate when I applied, and Berkeley’s Haas School of Business accepted me with an undergraduate GPA of (no joke) 2.27. America is about the opportunities it provides the unremarkable, not the manufacture of a superclass of billionaires from the pool of preordained remarkables.

But the ultimate expression of our nation’s empathy and love for a single mother, in my view, was to grant, and protect, her domain over her reproductive system. In the U.S., 59% of women getting abortions are already moms. Twenty-four percent are Catholic, 17% mainline Protestant, 13% evangelical Protestant. Over a third of pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended.

Men and women create unwanted pregnancies. However, it’s often men’s lack of manhood that’s behind abortions. Half of women seeking an abortion cite the lack of a reliable partner as a reason for their choice. In many cases the partner is abusive. Among all abortion patients, 95% report that abortion was a good choice — they remain relieved several months after the procedure. Violence toward women declines precipitously after an abortion, because they can break ties with their abusers. The leading cause of death for women who are pregnant or have just given birth, by a factor of 2x, is homicide.

Alt Control

What is going on here? In my view, it has nothing to do with “life,” as the most staunch advocates of the “pro-life” movement are the first to advocate for cutting the child tax credit, executing criminals, or putting a pregnant woman in danger when a pregnancy becomes a health risk. Many argue that these folks are not obsessed with life, but birth. This also misses the mark — the same groups do not favor economic policies that would encourage people to have children. This is about control or, more specifically, retaking control and power back from women.

I write a lot about how far young men have fallen in America over the past several decades. Even more striking is the ascent of women, globally, over the same period. Women now outnumber men in tertiary education enrollment worldwide; and the number of women elected to parliamentary positions has doubled since 1990. Women’s wealth is growing faster than overall wealth. A static feature of a modern economy is women outpacing men in education and income growth.

However, this has stirred the ghoul that haunts the world … posing a greater threat to society than any autocrat or virus: extremism. The parabolic progress of women over the past several decades has inspired a gag reflex among the most conservative wings of many religions. The radical wings of Christian, Islamic, and Jewish sects have weaponized politics and blurred the lines between religion and legislation. In America, where there used to be a sharp distinction, as outlined in the Constitution, we’ve witnessed a first: the rollback of citizens’ rights with the overturn of Roe.

The backlash among Christian nationalists has been speedballed by the other great threat: loneliness. Two-thirds of women under the age of 30 have a romantic partner vs. just one-third of men the same age. Men have fewer friends than they once did. Unfortunately, men’s loneliness can turn toxic, as they have weaker social networks and consequent guardrails. Lonely young men are more prone to conspiracy theories, nationalism, and misogynistic content. In sum, they risk becoming shitty citizens. The most striking, and frightening, data re the abortion debate is the group that registers the least support for a women’s right to choose: Gen Z men (age 12 to 27). Do you think this reflects their love for the unborn, or resentment of the living (women) … who they feel shunned by? It’s simple: Radicalized and lonely American men want uppity women to sit down.

The weapon of choice among these groups is economic warfare. To deny someone bodily autonomy is analogous to defunding them; they lose power. The Turnaway Study followed 1,000 women who sought abortions (some successfully, some not), compiling over 8,000 interviews over five years. The women in the study who were denied an abortion on average had higher debt and a greater risk of bankruptcy, and they were more likely to be in poverty years after giving birth.

2nd Order

How did you get to where you are now? People tell themselves a story that credits their character and grit for success, while blaming outside forces for their failures. But small twists of fate, errant decisions, and sheer randomness put you in this place, at this moment. I’m in tech because I fell in love with a woman and followed her to the Haas School of Business — I’d initially enrolled at the University of Texas. It’s more likely, graduating in 1992 Austin, I would have ended up in the energy sector or back in banking vs. the clear and present choice of tech in (wait for it) Silicon Valley.

But going further back, if my mom, at 46, hadn’t had access to affordable family planning, our lives would have been changed dramatically. Not only did we lack the funds or connections to figure it out (a rich friend who knew a doctor or the resources to travel far and have the procedure), but we also didn’t have the confidence. Just as I didn’t apply to out-of-state colleges — only rich kids did that. A lower-middle-class household headed by a single parent, neither remarkable, puts both of you on your heels instead of your toes.

If Roe v. Wade hadn’t been the law of the land, things could have been much different for me and my mom. An unwanted child at 46 would have been financially ruinous for our household. There was no maternity leave for secretaries in the eighties. I likely would have done what my father and mother did when their families were in financial distress, and left school to help out. I wouldn’t have enrolled at UCLA. Instead, I would have stayed in the job my father had secured for me after high school, installing shelving at $18/hour — a lot of money for us at the time.

Without my mom having that choice, there would have been no UCLA, no Berkeley grad school, no tech startups, no tens of millions in taxes paid, and … fewer children. I have always been worried about money and did not especially want kids. There’s no way I’d have opted for kids, later in life, if financially strained. We see evidence of this today, as a younger generation is having fewer children because they can’t afford them. My mom’s right to choose not to have a child she couldn’t afford gave me the choice to have children I could. All unbeknownst to me, at 16 years of age.

America is a mix of opportunity and acceptance, each being a force multiplier for the other. The reversal of Roe is about extremists and people who feel shunned trying to recapture control from a group that’s increasingly less suppliant to religion or men. The result is a lack of prosperity and a dangerous regression in the U.S., which used to illuminate a path forward for other nations. The suppression of abortion rights is yet another transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich — no child of a private equity partner is going to lose her right to choose. The economic assault against women, specifically poor women and their families, cripples opportunity and acceptance. It is wrong and un-American.

Life is so rich,

Scott Galloway

[shayne-the-sage]

Biden isn’t cutting ties with Israel in the same way he isn’t reinstating Roe v. Wade. It isn’t his choice.

If the president was allowed to do whatever they felt was right, Biden would’ve reinstated Roe v. Wade. He would’ve implemented massive gun control laws. I suspect he would be cutting ties with Israel, especially considering how he supports Ukraine and how fast he’s trying to move us away from oil.

But this isn’t how this conservative-run country works. If you’re a democrat, and you piss off the fascists by doing something they don’t like, they kick you out of your position and replace you with a fascist leader and up their oligarchy plans to 100%.

Israel is the fascists’ and corporations’ best friend. If Biden cuts ties with Israel, the fascists and corporations would 100% take him out and replace him with a fascist and start a new Nazi regime ASAP. If Biden so much as suggests cutting ties with Israel, they would come after him and gain the power to take over the world.

Biden is doing as much as he can without jeopardizing the survival of the entire world. And he’s telling the people to keep protesting for what they believe in. (Though he’s obligated by his job requirements to condemn “violent protests”.) Boycotting and fighting for divestments is the best we can do right now, so that’s where we should be focusing, as well as donations for aid.

If Biden’s plans to move the hell away from our oil dependency and his plans to centralize the economy around Made in the USA products over imported products are successful, we could quickly reach a future where we could cut ties with Israel without there being severe repercussions. But in the meantime, we have to vote for the future and use our own power to inspire others to free Palestine.

[killed-by-choice]

Harjit Kaur, 30 (Australia 2024)

Harjit with her four-year-old and two-year-old, who she loved dearly

Harjit Kaur had so much to look forward to. Thanks to her hard work, she had just gotten a new job and she and her husband Sukhjinder Singh were about to buy a new home where they would raise their children. The future looked bright.

Harjit already had a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. When she found out she was pregnant with her third child, she didn’t feel ready. Harjit underwent a “consultation” where she was told surgical abortion was “very safe” and that “she would be able to go home in a couple of hours.”

First-trimester surgical abortion is not as safe as she was led to believe. The uterus, cervix, the intestines, bladder, and nearby blood vessels are at risk of being torn. Risks include hemorrhage, infection, organ perforation, embolism and death. A few of the other women and girls killed by “safe and routine” first-trimester legal abortion include Kenniah Epps, Ruth Montero, Maria Gomez, Sandra Williams, Luz Maria Rodriguez, Elise Kalat, 17-year-old Chivon Williams, Erika Charlotte Wullschleger, Tia Archeiva Parks, 19-year-old Lisa Marie Hoefener, Pamela Colson, Maria Leho, Jennifer Hallner, Louchrisser Jackson, Regina Johnson, “Audrey Roe,” “Betty Roe,” “Dawn Roe,” “Evie Roe,” “Dorothy Roe,” “Vanessa Roe,” “Saanvi Roe,” and “Roxanne Roe.”

On January 12, 2024, Harjit went to the Hampton Park Women's Health abortion facility in Melbourne. She had told this was “safe” and a “routine procedure,” and she believed it. She was headed to the operating room at 12:57, when she messaged her husband and said she would call him after the abortion. That was the last time her family ever heard from her.

Abortionist Rudolph “Rudy” Lopes called Sukhjinder later that day to tell him what happened. Moments after the abortion was over, Harjit was being moved to another room when it was discovered that her heart had stopped. An ambulance was called and CPR administered for 45 minutes. Despite all this, Lopes described the abortion as “successful.”

Sukhjinder immediately drove to the facility, but when he arrived the staff refused to let him see Harjit. He was kept out of the ward entirely. He described the horrible day to news sources later:

“Five minutes later the doctor came to me and said, "Sorry your wife is dead".

“I was dead then. My life destroyed in a second.”

Staff finally let Sukhjinder into the room where Harjit’s body lay. “I begged her to come back for our little kids,” he said.

An investigation is now underway, with police and the coroner involved in the case.

Sukhjinder is devastated and doesn’t understand how Harjit, who was perfectly healthy, was killed by something they were repeatedly told was “safe and routine.” He struggles to comprehend what his future will look like without her and has described her needless death as unacceptable.

Harjit did not have to die. It is unacceptable that she was not warned of the potential dangers of the operation that killed her. More support should also be made available for families who are unsure if they are ready to care for a new baby. Resources to help her and Sukhjinder care for the new baby or for adoption could have helped. She and her baby should both be alive. Harjit deserved better than to be collateral damage of an industry that has already killed so many.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help the family. (Please consider donating to help them if you can.) https://www.gofundme.com/f/for-my-wifes-funeral-and-kids-support

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/shock-as-melbourne-motheroftwo-dies-at-hampton-park-medical-clinic/news-story/d41ffb636ea8173bc75fb741f39ed541

[see-arcane]

Dead Dove Venting below, Do Not Read

I'm aging another decade every time I see any update on the state of things at this point.

Winter as a season is melting into nonexistence. Within a decade we'll likely be past the point of no return. Corporate pollution continues pumping up into the air, boiling away the future and drowning the generations to come.

Devices are being made to slot in people's brains or to lock around a head to filter company training and duties into you as you sleep.

AI is eating people's art and work and faces and shitting them out in corporations' desperation to excise human involvement from creation just to pinch another penny.

American education is sliding down the toilet between book bans, strangled sex ed, and 'history' lessons edited to erase the reality of human atrocity and variety.

Bodily autonomy has became a joke since Roe v Wade was stabbed in the back. A Texan woman--a mother already--a mother-to-be who was heartbroken to discover the guaranteed painful death of her unborn child and whose full term 'birth' would only mean agony for the newborn before its end and a risk to herself and future attempts at carrying a child--who met every possible exception set forth by Texas' abortion ban, jumped through every legal hoop, and finally was told she could go through with the abortion...only to have the state's attorney general declare she couldn't do it. She had to flee--flee--her own home state to get a life-saving procedure because the 'pro-life' movement showed its full colors to her and the country as it wiped its ass with hers (and every other person with a womb's) human rights.

Pro-life is not about preserving life. Not when its supporters are so rabid as to demand a woman risk her life for a fetus destined to die within moments of exiting the womb.

Pro-life is about forced birth and always has been. For the sake of making cattle of women and adding numbers to the population, willingly or otherwise.

And in that vein, of course child labor is making a resurgence. Now your 14-year-old kid can serve in the grease trap or bar of their choice, dishing out food full of microplastics and booze full of bad decisions to grown adults ready to wink at a high schooler and ask what they're doing after work. Heartwarming! 12-year-old is mowing lawns for the chance to save up for college where they'll get into loan debt for a degree that won't get them a job because every position in their field requires ten years' experience! Gets a new mower donated to the cause!!

Artificial inflation, price gouging, and wage stagnation have eaten the promise of independence out from under an entire generation, their little siblings, the next generation to come. We're living in cars, in sardine-packed apartments, under our parents' roofs. Probably until the day we die, ancient and hobbling inside Walmart's sliding doors as greeters and cashiers, at least until the jobs get taken by smiling hotel bots and self checkouts. Retirement no longer exists as a concept.

Genocides on top of genocides, funded by vulture governments, against their citizens' will, using money that has magically appeared to funnel aid and weapons to the mass murderers slaughtering innocent people with a brutality of such scale and evil that it cracks the mind to try and measure. A shame that money wasn't around to help the tax payers or the people in need at home. Guess how many people go hungry in America, the Greatest Nation. Or don't guess! Look.

Nausea and shame and bile.

Bile bile bile at the thought of this country, with its masturbatory obsession with World War II, with its endless marathon of 'war hero' films showing the plights and heroics of our brave soldiers sent to fight for our rights!

(Because they were drafted. Because they were poor. Because they were lied to with myths of glory and valor. Because they would be killing and dying for the Greater Good.)

All this. All this. When we are living through the proof-positive that if Pearl Harbor hadn't happened, kicking the self-absorbed hornet nest of our government into frenzy, the good ol' U.S. of A. would absolutely have jumped on Adolf's dick and applauded the Holocaust start to finish. Hell, we might have handed them every killing tool but the nukes.

Now here comes 2024.

Voting Day looms. And of course, Joe's poll numbers are shitting the bed the way Trump is shitting himself in the various court battles still chewing on him like spray-tanned cud.

In 2020, we had the vigor of the country shouting as one: VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO. Because we were living in a different, far more intense, borderline fascist state. We felt the pressure of the stakes of a second term with the despotic Cheeto.

But now as more blood spills and our blood boils, there are, of course, people clamoring again about how voting is a sham. What kind of sucker is still convinced that voting red or blue, no matter who, is anything but giving candy to a genocidal joke? Both parties have proven they're corrupt. Complicit. Why fucking bother? We need to do more!

And we do.

We absolutely do need to do more.

But for the love of every god I no longer fucking believe in, do it after voting for whoever Is Not the Republican Candidate. You don't want to vote for Joe? For any of the potential Democratic candidates? For whoever is blue, no matter who?

Fine! Fuck it! Stick to your guns! Vote for fucking no one! Play chicken with the top office of the entire country all over again! 2016 the Sequel!

And when every MAGA shithead votes in Trump or one of his sycophants and plunges us into Diet Tyrant Rule 2.0, at least you can wear a little badge of pride--but no actual pride badges, ha ha, DeSantis has already declared rainbows ~too gay~ for Florida schools ha ha ha--that says, 'Well, Both Candidates Were Shit, So I Did the Morally Spotless Thing and Voted for Neither! Surely This Will Earn Me a Good Grade in Martyrdom.'

I hope I'm just making too many assumptions about how literal some people are being about 'why bother' and 'hold your vote hostage' kind of talk. I hope I'm reading too much into hyperbole and not seeing the rise of a new wave of bots, undercover right-wingers, and genuinely self-sabotaging moralists who think not making time to go click a button to Participate in the One (1) Guaranteed Expression of Power We Have as Citizens short of en masse protest and/or outright civil war.

I want there to be a magic switch to flip to unfuck all of this. Half of it. Even a fraction. Every day I wake up and things are worse. Even here, on the one website I regularly dip into to try and escape into silliness and personal passions, there's no avoiding the realities of the world as they get worse and worse and worse and fucking worse.

This is as close to cosmic horror as I think we can get short of Cthulhu finally getting out of bed and wiping us out.

Everything is getting worse.

All the 2024 vote has to offer at this point is a choice between Current Bullshit (Democrat) and Exponentially Worse Bullshit with a Side of THIS CANDIDATE WILL TRY TO BECOME THE FOREVER-KING OF 'MURRICA AND WILL BE EQUALLY MONSTROUS (IF NOT MORESO) IN THE GENOCIDE GAME (Republican).

But I will still drag myself into the booth. I will still vote blue, no matter who. And I will still support Palestine, still protest against evil, still raise my voice. And I'll do so in a country that won't be run by people who want to double down on regressing society to the Dark Ages with a crossover between The Handmaid's Tale and Orwell's nightmares. Who will take dissent as an offense worthy of violence and violation. Who will take every scrap of progress made by the left or by the citizens themselves and set it all on fire.

I'm tired. I'm afraid. More tired under that.

There's such bliss in the idea of flipping the bird and then flipping the table when it comes to the small important steps we can still make as people in our society. It all feels insignificant. Lackluster compared to the bombastic moves of on-the-ground protest. But you can do the small and the big steps. And we need to.

This is not Mad Max. This isn't a comic book or an action movie. There is no utopia waiting on the other side of dismissing elections as ~not worth the bother~ when it was an election that put Trump in power and another that kicked him out.

If anyone out there has a magic switch to flip that will unfuck this country? That will unfuck the entire planet's degradation? Flip it. Right now. Hammer it until it breaks and all the withheld Grace and Sanity pours over everything like a miracle tide and we can all wake up from this group night terror.

But if that switch doesn't exist?

Inch along. Do what you can. Vote in every election, big and small. Act. Support. Boycott. Scream. Fight. Do not shrug and sink into apathy. Little steps to big steps and all the intermediates in-between.

We're not in Hell, despite the weather. Sweating in December. Another massacre per minute. No, not Hell.

Hell has justice.

All we have is this.

[roadtogracelandx45]

Courage Under Fire| Currahee part 2

@marycorleone

masterlist

Wattpad

ao3

August -September 1942

Camp Toccoa 

Lieutenant Hebert Sobel wasn't happy, at all, he had gone to Colonel Sink to try and get rid of the nurses before he had even met them, the medic, Roe, he thought his name was, and another medic that was being placed there would be good enough for Easy Company. But Sink shut him down saying that this was coming from General Taylor and General Forbes of the Army Nursing Corp directly and what they said went.

So now on top of these men, and he used that term very loosely, he also had to deal with women who shouldn't even be in uniform, they should be at home with children. Shaking his head he rounded the corner where Easy Company was lined up, his dark beady eyes going from Lieutenants Winters and Nixon to where the head nurse was standing. "You people are at the position of attention." He barked before he went towards the nurse missing out Nixon, Winters and several of the other boys tensed up.

"Relax." Bobby hissed, "Olivia can handle this." During the summertime, instead of going to camps like Bill did where he learned about the Army. The Stewart kids were sent to the family summer home outside of Columbia, South Carolina and the boys had it beat into their heads military training, and once they figured out that Olivia was watching, she was included in it. She could handle a CO yelling in her face, this one she just couldn't sass after everything was said and done with.

Sobel came to a stop in front of Olivia, letting his eyes flick over her body, "Lieutenant Stewart." He started waiting for her to recoil away from him, like other women in his presence had, instead she held his gaze.

Almost confidently.

Good, this meant he was going to have a challenge, he liked having a challenge. 

"Sir." She returned, she had already been told stories by her brother, Bill, Lewis, and Dick about Sobel and how more or less how useless he was. She tried not to judge him before she actually met him in person but it was looking like they were right. He looked at her last name then over to where Bobby was standing with Bill and Joe Toye, another Pennsylvania boy she had been introduced to in a rush the night before.

"Are you two related?" 

"Yes, sir, that's my twin brother." She returned, knowing it was better to tell the truth than to lie. Especially when Bobby would want to defend her if he thought she was being threatened. "Us being in the same company isn't going to do a darn thing. We are both here to do our jobs. And I assure you, sir, Colonel Sink knew of our familial ties and placed me in your company." That part was a fib on her part, she didn't know if Sink knew the truth or not.

And if he really cared if he did.

'And no amount of complaining will get him to approve of me leaving Easy for another company.'

"That's my girl," Lewis muttered loud enough for Dick to hear, causing a half smile to appear on his face. They both had been taunt and ready to defend Olivia but Bobby had been right about her being able to defend herself. 

"And honestly, sir, if I were to be completely honest. Having me here for my brother and Guarnere is for the best. They tend not to get into trouble if I am around." 

 That was a bold-faced lie, even Adele and Amber who had been the last two to be introduced to the two men knew that they got into trouble and a lot of the time dragged Olivia in with them, the punishment was usually a lot less when she was involved. "If you want to prove you are the best and that you know what you are doing. Leave me and the girls here."

Olivia was going to be forever thankful that she was filled in on Sobel's shortcomings so she could learn how to twist and turn him to see things how she wanted to see if need be. But that was something that she was going to keep close to her chest and only use when she needed it.

He flicked his eyes over her shoulder to the other girls and then looked back at her, "You are beautiful and smart. I like that.' 

"Thank you, sir." Her statement came out more like a question than an air of confidence, like her previous statements. She knew that she and the girls were extremely pretty and for the most part extremely smart and they were picked for the Nursing Corp and for the Paratroopers for that reason and she had been told for years that she was beautiful, most recently by Joe Liebgott that morning when he stopped her at the counter in the mess hall. But hearing it from Sobel made her extremely uncomfortable. So much so that she wanted to go take a shower and scrub herself clean.

He finally broke his gaze away from her and went back towards the boys who now had newcomers in there. There were several new boys who had joined that hadn't been introduced fully to Sobel.

Olivia once he was away from her took a step back and visibly cringed. "You good Liv?" Adele asked keeping her voice low so Sobel didn't round back on them. "No, I need a drink and a shower." She returned glancing over her shoulder at her friend. "I don't blame you at all. Though I do feel bad for Don and the others."

 Don was Donald Malarkey, one of the new guys that had been assigned to Easy after getting out of W company and it already seemed like he was going to be a target for Sobel along with Smokey Gordon, another newbie, and Frank Procente, one of the first members of the company.

"Yeah, me too.' She agreed, twisting a bit to see what was going on. Sobel was prowling up and down the rows of the three platoons looking for something to dig them for. A happening, Olivia was assured, happened quite often and if more than one man was dinged then the weekend passes were revoked. It happened once already in the short two weeks they had been there, Lewis had been sure that it was going to happen more and more.

"Change into PT gear, we are running Currahee.' Sobel ordered, "Ladies included."

 The girls' training for the medic stuff was normally in the afternoons with Eugene Roe and Ralph Spina the two medics assigned to Easy Company. 

"You heard him ladies, fall out," Olivia ordered as she met her brother's eyes and nodded, assuring him she was okay. 

**

Amber was quiet as she pulled off the ugly green uniform that had been issued for them to wear, after meeting Sobel, an idea had formed in her head. If Harding was unwilling to get Olivia kicked out of the program for faradization then maybe Sobel would. She was just going to have to find a way to get him alone and talk to him. If Olivia could sleep with Lewis and from what she had seen Dick, then she should be okay to be with Sobel.

"You handled that so much better than I would have." Betsy commented, shaking Amber out of her thoughts, "him being all up in my personal space like that." 

"A lot of practice before Lewis came down from Yale, I was going to have to go to the Deb ball with my Uncle Finn's nephew Joshua and he was three times as bad as Sobel. He was all hands and no class.' 

"And Nixon isn't?" Alice teased, she, Amber, and Betsy had seen how he got with Olivia on weekend passes and how often they ended up in a hotel together for a full 48 hours. 

"Nah, Lew is different, he is all class, hands, and dick." She returned, her mouth curving into a smile.

"Olivia!" Lily scolded from where she was standing by her bunk, Dog Company was going to the obstacle course while Easy ran Currahee. "Sorry, Lil, it's true. Just like Bill is all dick and hands and no class.'

"That is true.' Evie agreed with a laugh, "And that in and of itself is a talent." She had figured that Bill had slept with Olivia once or twice when she came back from Charleston, she had seen the nail marks on his back and the dark purple love bit on his neck and she couldn't get mad at it. They weren't together and it seemed to her that it was fair that it happened.

"I couldn't share a man like you two have." Mary threw in finally, normally when the girls talked, she stayed silent, not wanting to be included in the conversations or to make friends. She saw Olivia as a rival for Liebgott's attention and she didn't want to see the charm like the others did. "We don't share." Both girls said at the same time. "Liv was with him first, they dated for what two years?" Olivia nodded her head as she fastened a bobby pin into her braid to keep the strands in place, "But then she slept with him behind my back before I slept with him." Mary shook her head, she couldn't do it, let alone be friendly to the girl who slept with the man she supposedly loved.

"Let's go, ladies, PT formation." Carwood Lipton called as he opened the door to their barracks, out of the Sargents they had in Easy Company, he was the most respectful of the women and their space. Floyd Talbert was standing just behind Lipton and offered the girls a smile as they passed. "Olivia, my darling." He commented once she was out onto the pathway. 

"What do you want, Floyd, sugar?" She returned glancing up at him out of the corner of her eye knowing that he was flirting with her. Bobby had quickly filled her in on his friends the night before about how both Talbert and Liebgott were both ladies' men and how she should stay away from them. 

"What? I can't check on you?" Lipton's laugh from behind them made her think that she was on the right path. "You don't know me well enough to check on me." "Then let me get to know you." He knew it wasn't fair to Liebgott to do this when he had made his interest in the younger Stewart twin known to him and to Chuck Grant. But he also had Mary on a back burner as well.

Floyd didn't.

"You have to earn the right to get to know me." She returned before raising herself up on her toes to press a kiss against his cheek before going to join the rest of the girls in the group.

"Careful Tab," Lipton warned, "You don't know what you are getting yourself into." 

Joe who had seen the exchange was angry, he had thought he had made it clear that he was interested in Olivia and that should've been enough to stop him from approaching Olivia. But it wasn't, now he was going to make his own interest clear and that was the last thing that he wanted to do, Tab had forced his hand.

To try and see if he could weed out the weaker girls, Sobel separated them throughout the platoons. Olivia and Adele in the first platoon with Lipton, Talbert, and Liebgott, Amber and Evie in the second platoon with Bill, Bobby, and Joe Toye, and Betsy in the third platoon with Grant, Johnny Martin, Bull Randleman, and Mary.

“Hey ya Princess.’ Liebgott greeted as he joined Olivia and Talbert. “Liebgott.” She returned, “I thought I told you not to call me that.” “I would prefer you to call me Joe.”  Everyone called him by his last name or a shortened version of his last name.  But to prove a point that he was serious to Tab and to an extent her, that he was serious about his pursuit of her. 

“You know, Bobby warned me about both of you.’ She started low enough for them to hear her, Sobel was already roaming up and down the platoons and she didn’t want to be the reason why the boys got into trouble because of her. She didn’t even like it when Bobby got into trouble for her and he was her flesh and blood.              

“What did he say?” Tab was curious, he knew the night before after Bobby saw Liebgott talking to his sister, took her aside, and talked to her about things. “Said y'all were man whores. And that I should stay away from you both.” 

“Of course he did,” Talbert muttered, as Sobel called out for them to start running, saving them from saying anything. In a way either one of them blamed Bobby for telling his sister how they were, if their sisters were there, they would have done the same thing. 

Joe would have done the same thing with his sister and she was thrown into a situation like Olivia was. He glanced down at the girl and found that her eyes were on Sobel studying him, with an intense dislike. 

“What is it?” 

“He looks like a demonic swan.” She answered after a heartbeat, finally looking back at him. “She ain’t wrong.” Pat Christensen said through heavy breaths from behind them causing her to smile victoriously  

Sobel was now running back and forth between the groups throwing his arms around, yelling things that Olivia was thankful that she could barely make out. Something about the Japanese, High-Ho-Silver, and a bunch of other nonsense that she wasn’t ready to deal with yet.   It was like trying to mourn her brothers, uncle and great great grandfather’s death. She couldn’t handle it right then and the best way she knew how to was to bottle it up and let it simmer until it was enough. And Sobel was going to be the same way it felt like. 

[persephone-the-witch]

My story:

I'm 40 years old. I was told a decade ago that I wasn't able to have kids. I have Endometriosis, and it's around my cervix. My ex-husband and I tired and tired for a baby, even had IVF. Nothing worked. We ended up getting a divorce because of the after effects and the stress.

I had come to terms that I'd never be a mom, and I was finally content and happy with my life. Going back to college, have a great job. Being a great aunt to my sisters kids. I was happy with my life and where it was going.

I had missed a period, no big deal. I have endometriosis and getting closer to menopause. I thought it was one of those. I was hoping I was finally in menopause. Endometriosis sucks!!! But I thought it was odd, even with those things I should have started my period. I know my body so well, I decided to take a test just to make sure. I've never gotten a positive pregnancy test for a many years as I had tired. It was mainly a ruling out things so I could make a plan for menopause, finally. I didn't think much about it when I was peeing on that stick waiting for it to tell me it's negative. So I didn't think much about it. When I looked at the test it said it was positive!!! I stood in the bathroom for I don't know how long, just in complete and utter shock. This shouldn't be happening. This isn't supposed to happen. I was told I'd never get pregnant. So many thoughts started spinning around in my head. What do I do?! What's happening right now? I couldn't make sense of anything at the time. Everything was coming at me so fast. I think at the time I instantly went numb. Trying to think about what to do, if this was really real.

Called my boyfriend and told him it was positive, he was silent for awhile, just like I was. This was unexpected for him too. Had we known it was a possibility we would have used protection. It wasn't supposed to be a possibility at all. So what happened?

We went and took a test at a clinic after I had taken another test to be sure. Sure enough both mine and the doctors test were all positive. So what do we do next? So swimming thoughts and choices needed to be made. I already knew my choice. I made that choice years ago. It's not like it couldn't have happened when I wanted a baby so badly it hurt.

So, now what? Where do I go? What do I do? Roe vs Wade has been overturned. It's now illegal to get an abortion, I could go to prison. So many thoughts in my head. Knowing we couldn't tell anyone what we were doing. That in of itself is terrifying and trying to keep this life changing decision a secret.

Couldn't drive to a clinic, they were all far away. Looked up the information and cost for medical abortions. I could buy them and have them shipped to me. And that what we did. We waited for the pills to come and made a plan for when they did. I was gonna spend that weekend together. We made his place comfortable and calming. The night I took the first pill, we had a nice dinner and watched a movie. And just spent time together. Just a super chill night together. Knowing what was to come.

We went to bed, snuggled up together. Letting the pill do it's job. Considering everything it was a peaceful sleep. That morning I had went to the bathroom and noticed blood. Ok, so the process has started. It wasn't time yet to take the other pills. So while we were still in the calm before the storm we just enjoyed our time together. Getting everything prepared for our journey.

I was extremely nervous, not knowing what to expect. I had read different options on the pain level. How was I going to feel after this was over. If our relationship could survive this. How was he doing in all this. Being my rock has its own consequences and trauma. Just add it to my list of traumas.

Pain meds, heading pad at the ready. It was time to take the other meds. After I had taken the last of the meds, it wasn't even two hours later, the fight of my bodies life had started. Terrified, angry, sad about the state of the country and women's health-care. That we have to be forced back into the shadows. No woman should ever have to go through that. Alone and sad.

This was my decision, doesn't stop the pain though. The hurt, the sadness, the anger and rage I felt about this situation.

The cramps came, the contractions. That was painful, the tears and anger that poured out of me was unreal. It was like I was having an outer body experience. I was there but wasn't. I distanced myself from it. I would deal with the feelings and things after. Right then I was just trying to survive. I was in so much pain it was hard to move, to walk, do much of anything. Ended up having to almost be carried to the bathroom and back. It was that bad. Moaning in pain on the couch, breathing to help try and control the situation since I had none at the time.

It took until about that evening when the pain was at its highest that I felt our baby leave my body. I knew in that moment that I was no longer pregnant. Relief spread through me at that moment. Sadness wasn't far behind. Second guessing what we did is normal. Doesn't help at the time.

Letting my body do what it needed to do and just be with that knowing you're ok and you did the right thing. Just trying to survive the weekend without completely losing it was a feat in itself.

Weeks after, up to my first period was bleeding, cramps and clots. I'm on my second period and I'm still waiting for my body to do back to normal. The hormones were insane. The hormones finally went away and got a negative pregnancy test at least. I hadn't realized that it felt like I couldn't breathe for months. That weight I was holding finally dropped. I could think and see clearly again. Coming out of the shadows and into my truth,learning and healing are my next adventures.

Almost 10 weeks post abortion. It's time to start healing. ❤️

[mrsgojosatoru]

And I knew, I fully KNEW that after Trump was elected democrats would swing hard to the right and implode. And that is what is happening.

can u expand on this? why would they behave this way when youth and poc were enthusiastic for bernie in 2020

Because ALL politicians serve at the behest of our ruling class. For democrats it's not about winning the youth vote and people of color, it's not even about winning at all -- they fund raise better as losers -- it's about making sure the wealthy keep as much of their wealth as they can.

Republicans get in office, do a bunch of tax cuts, increase military spending, get rid of public goods and to get their votes cut rights to minorities. Unlike democrats Republicans work best as winners. And unlike democrats they LOVE fulfilling their campaign promises.

Then after our country has been decimated, there's no money to support community needs, and people have been stripped of their rights democrats come in and go "you NEED us." Then they dangle protecting our rights like a carrot. They go "you don't want .... [insert x fear tactic here. Project 2025. National abortion ban. Rolling back same sex marriage]. Then they fundraise and run on that. You can note that Biden is REALLY short on campaign promises as a winner. He doesn't know what to sell you other than fear mongering. Vote for him he's not Donald Trump.

When democrats get in office they don't actually .... do anything. They just make liberals feel okay about violence against people of color at home and globally, and do ... nothing. Like ask yourself, really ask yourself. Liberals were all up in arms over Trump but did they care about any of the following?

Do people care about those kids in cages now? Because the kids are still cages. Did they care about border patrol agents whipping people at the border? Did they push Obama to follow through on his campaign promise to codify Roe v Wade? Did they get up in arms over Biden wanting to pass the most draconian immigration reform in the past thirty years? Wanting to continue the border wall? Funding for the genocide of the Palestinians? Drone striking Yemen for their blockade of their own waters?

Nope! In fact they tell you to keep voting for Biden because he's the lesser of two evils when ... is he? I'm not saying he hasn't done anything, but I am saying that like ... he could do a lot more. For democrats our rights and equality isn't actually something to be protected they are something to dangle over our heads and threaten us with. Vote for us or else. Then do nothing meaningful about protecting them.

Because at the end of the day our ruling class just cares about staying wealthy. Lower taxes, lower wages, more shoes to fill their thankless minimum wage jobs. So they get politicians who will keep us beat down fighting to be seen as people, and we can never move forward in class equity.

The democratic party winning and surviving doesn't matter to them. If they implode under fascism they don't care. So long as the rich can stay rich. It's why they saw some enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders, collapsed the establishment immediately behind Clinton and Biden and pushed us straight towards this exact situation.

The ruling class would kill us all to hold on to their money and power a little longer, and that is at the root of everything.

[sheydim]

major cw for being a major downer lol

not to be depressing. but it's hard to see a point in living given the state of things right now. they just keep getting worse and worse and people burn out and get apathetic REAL quick

so many people dying in palestine and.. the needle is absolutely moving on that!! but not quickly enough. we have to keep pushing regardless. but it's hard to feel hope. and what about all the suffering everywhere else in the world?? sudan. the congo. if this number of people starving and being blown up isn't enough to move enough hearts, what is?

if covid's mass death and disabling wasn't (isn't!) enough to make enough people give a shit, what the fuck Would be? covid alone destroyed a lot of my faith in others. most of us apparently will not look out for each other. even when it's easy.

everyone on my dash is poor and crowdfunding. disaster after disaster and never enough aid to truly get out of the hole. if this amount of poverty and homelessness isn't enough -- what is?

democracy as we know it in the states is truly on the verge of cracking, if we're at risk of an actual dictatorship -- and if we look at the supreme court and the overturning of roe v. wade, too. uhhhhhh shit is really, really bad. and on the fast-track to getting worse. and it's that or genocide joe??? and either way the bombs drop abroad and the rights get eroded here and we're all in debt?

anddd labor sucks right now! we don't have jobs or we get paid near nothing. the working class is divided and a lot of people are persuaded that siding with bigotry will solve their problems. and we all know most of us are not going to have anything to retire on. if we even live til then. if we're not all climate refugees by then. because there's not even winter anymore?? every summer there is now horrible air quality, and where i live, there are biblical storms.

oh, and being trans also sucks ass right now. i made it a decade in. and i am really proud of that! but we're surrounded by enemies, hurting each other on the regular, and the petty (and critical) pains of everyday transphobia never stop.

oh... and being jewish sucks right now. enough said. the pain is unspeakable.

every other fucking thing that sucks. the enshittification and privatization of the internet that we all rely on, and KOSA and mastercard etc. mass misinfo that gets worse and worse thanks to misuse of AI. deepfakes. police brutality and pipelines. gentrification -- and the fact that where i live, a lot of the gentrifiers came here bc they got priced out of their original area. the price of everything!! the idea that somehow i will have to get money together to care for my aging parents, when the time comes.

sigh.

i really struggle not to be a doomer. i believe we don't need to feel hope to keep acting as though there is. but while i'm alive for love and for spite, i don't really want to be, a lot of the time.

i don't know how long i can keep trying to live for the ocean, and the hope of an eventual cat and garden, and the perfect cup of matcha, and even the joy of waking up next to my favorite person on earth every day. i'm trying to enjoy these things while fearing they may be taken away at any time. it feels like pure denial just trying to survive each week.

it's so bad right now. and what if this is the good part?... what if someday when i'm old, this is a paradise compared to where we all end up?

how do y'all keep going to work every day? oh yeah. bc we die if we don't. bc our loved ones can't pay the rent if we die.

y'all, i'm so tired.

could i actually improve any of this? could enough of us do that? or should i start planning ahead in case i need to "check out".