#Supreme Leader's allies are only pawns to be moved around

[randomnameless]

"We need our vassals to believe the Empire will always come to their aid. Always." This is actually kinda interesting, considering Edelgard's ideals amount to "people need to rely on their own strength rather than relying on others." There's a case here that she's keeping that from her vassals, and by them relying on her they're ultimately seen as lacking merit in her eyes and giving her room to dismiss them. Then there's the Hubert/Shez support saying that she's coddling the nobility while oppressing the commoners, and her reforms attracting nobles from the Kingdom opposed to Dimitri's pro-commoner reforms while Hubert and Monica's makes it out that she's going to free the nobility from their responsibilities to do whatever they please. Hopes is just another flavor of Safflower. In Safflower, she needed to rely on the Agarthans for her war, but had made them dance to her tune according to the Japanese text before ultimately disposing of them. In Blaze, she relies on the nobility for support, but her support ultimately gives her grounds to strip them of their power after the war. It's the same Edelgard, just working with a different group of scumbags.

Tbf,

Idk if the devs bought their own lie or something like this with Supreme Leader, but damn if sometimes her writing - and the reaction to her actions - is completely different whether you think about this "PR" mindset, or not.

I could even compare this to the fandom surrounding her, you have the very devoted fans thinking #griffithdidnothingwrong because Supreme Leader wondered once in an anonymous ask what to do with Rhea if she refuses to surrender, and "turn her in shiny double axes" wasn't an option, just like her asking Rhea'n'all to surrender in the last chapter of Tru Piss...

And yet, she also has her lines where she congratulates herself and Billy for getting the world of those pesky pointy ears, saying as early as chapter 12 to motivate her troops that her path leads to Rhea's death and telling to Billy, before the "plz surrender" speech that she wants to eliminate the evil lizard lady so...

We can see the same about her parents' romance in Garreg Mach - debunked by a nameless who says no imperial heir has attended in recent ages - Aegir being responsible for the experiments when Hubert says it was Thales, or even, "Willy's sekrit history"... Are we supposed to buy Supreme Leader's words - as she is known to lie to her allies "Rhea so BaD she launched nukes in Arianrhod!", or at times are completely wrong/misguided "the church divided Adrestia Fodlan in three entities to control them" when we Know Loog's rebellion was supported by Agartha and Rhea only acted the end of the War because the Emperor of that time lost against the barbarian and Faerghus was independant in all but in name?

Jerry, as much as I like the guy, says it best : Supreme Leader's words are meaningless.

In an usual setting/VG, people would judge her for her various actions... but Flamey is forgotten by the plot because the "slapping my ass" cipher card had to be sold, characters become vapid and moan about "uwu IdEaLs" when no one notices that, uh, any ideal that goes "you are from race B you cannot rule over race A" sucks no matter what...

So what is the "real" Supreme Leader (Watsonian wise, of course, Doylist wise, she's Fodlan's resident waifu)? #griffithdidnothingwrong or, what we've been saying since day 15, someone who, just like Arvis and arguably Ashnard, manipulates people by creating/seizing opportunities to further her own agenda?

I love Gustadolph and I love Arvis, but if their games treated them with the same kiddy gloves they used for Supreme Leader, aka not having anyone call them out on their actions and slobber over the "IdEaLs" regardless of the means and immediately backing off when they could actively discuss about those "IdEaLs", I would like them... less, I guess.

Supreme Leader's PR "line/plans" here reveals her cunning - even if there is the "only one supply line" issue - because she is actively working to "build" an image of a leader whose people/vassals will be loyal to, at the same time, she is fully aware it is nothing but an image because she just has to pretend to care, not care for real, but it also reveales what she thinks of "chivalry" in general and all those notions of mutual help/assistance.

As you pointed out, for someone who's all "might makes right" + "bootstraps", Lonato goofing the plan they devised is just a moron who's going to run to his own death. Let he be a vassal or ally of circumstance, she doesn't really care about his death, aka, about the death of the people who bought her flag and are now on her side.

What bothers her more is the reputation Adrestia will have if it doesn't pretend to "assist" one of their vassals when they need help.

(Compare this to the Kingdom and the Church always helping, when they can, their allies and Rhea's doctrine being to help whoever needs help, regardless of their background, religion or whatnot!)

Imo, it's as cynical as Ashnard trashtalking Bryce in FE9, save that Lonato isn't here, like Bryce, to hear what his "Lord" really thinks of him :

Supreme Leader mocks and loathes "chivalry" and the idea of "people supporting each other" - which we can see more clearly when we slaughter Baron Dominic in Supreme Bullshit - thinking the Dominics felt pressured to protect their lands, people and loved ones when, uh, they just, don't want to see the people they love die? And want to help and save them?

In a way I'm glad I found this line, for my morning salt because it hurts again to even imagine what Fodlan could have been if Supreme Leader wasn't designed as the mascot whales/target audience was supposed to simp for and buy nightgown cipher cards, but also for the confirmation bias (i know i'm petty) that Supreme Leader is indeed closer to Ashnard and Oldvis than fandom!Griffith, and again as another window in Adrestia's decadence and fall.

I mean, how could a country founded by Rhea herself, with close ties to what she is still preaching aka "help everyone!" fall so low to the point where assisting those who need help if frowned upon, and only to be done if it leads to something useful, like, good PR - saving the bozo who's rushing to his death though? I'd say it's much like Monica's rescue in Nopes - kill two birds with one stone, but well, one bird was prioritised while the other just, kind of, died on its own which happens to be a good thing for us, I guess?

-> Which gives us the magical ending of Supreme Bullshit, the two birds killed each other!

[theunvanquishedzims]

Calming my post-election anxiety with sweet sweet logic

So Trump is a wannabe dictator with crazy screaming fans who are headed toward violent armed meltdowns. What’s to stop him from going full dictator and refusing to leave office?

I’m glad you asked!

You see, the major difference between wannabe dictators and actual dictators is ALLIES. Dictators are surrounded with tight security, aided by the military, cheered on by media that they control, and are either helped, encouraged, or just ignored by other countries with the power to stop them.

Trump has charged the Secret Service money for the privilege of protecting him and his family since day one. You remember the first year, when his wife and son refused to move to the White House so the Secret Service had to RENT FLOORS in TRUMP’S BUILDING to be close to them? And how his extended family went globetrotting and the Secret Service had to accompany them? And when Trump himself insisted on hosting people at his golf club, he made the Secret Service RENT GOLF CARTS from TRUMP’S CLUB to follow him while he went golfing?

The end result was that halfway through the first year of his presidency, the Secret Service could not pay their own wages. Because half their yearly budget had gone straight to Trump’s pockets. And that’s just financially. I think we all remember how the White House came down with Covid and Trump still insisted on Secret Service agents driving him around to wave at people. He has not been kind to the people who are sworn to protect him. These people have had a front-row seat to his circus since 2016. When the time comes from Trump to leave the White House and Biden to take over, I doubt they’ll betray the country out of loyalty to Trump. If anything, they’ll be the ones to drag him out.

As for the military, Trump insulted and fired four generals from his administration staff. He said on multiple occasions that soldiers who get captured or killed are suckers and losers. He refused to visit a cemetery to honor the dead because it was raining. He tries to pander to the military by massive increases in defense spending, but that money goes to capitalists who make weapons and war technology, not the soldiers or veterans. (He also hypocritically accused military officials of being in bed with those same companies.) In a poll of 1000 service members 50% said they disliked Trump. Overall, he doesn’t act like a leader, and the way he skirts responsibility (like taking charge during the pandemic) doesn’t appeal to a group that functions on trust in their leadership.

A proper dictator would have spent the last four years cozying up to his generals and making sure they knew the financial and social benefits of answering to him personally, not the office of the President. And while Trump did adhere to the adage “find a foreign foe” to unite people against, he badly misjudged what most US citizens consider “foreign.” He hasn’t found a villain that we would root for the military taking down, and the people he targets (Latinx, Blacks, immigrants, and people in countries our military has already devastated) are not a minority he can turn the majority of the country against, especially with how many of the former two serve in the military themselves. When the time comes for him to leave office, the military might be the first to cut ties with the wannabe Dictator-in-Chief.

Now, the media. They’ve been treating him like a joke candidate since day one, but after he was actually elected and took office they’ve started to take him more seriously. He’s gotten his catchphrase “fake news!” to catch on, but that doesn’t change the fact that under his administration news reporters have been harassed, illegally arrested, and generally poorly treated by Trump, especially if they’re women. He’s trashed talked everyone, with Fox News being the last bastion of semi-legitimate news that openly supports him (and their credibility has taken a big hit over it.)

Despite this support, in recently months Trump has been increasingly dumping on Fox, even throwing the mediator they provided for the debate under the bus, and risking alienating them in the process. If his supporters listen to him and start considering Fox part of Big Fake News, it might possibly be the death of Fox, leaving most of his supporters adrift and isolated from their source of right-wing news, and sending the more extreme fringes into the arms of conspiracy theory websites. (I’m not saying this is bad, being cut off from Fox and its toxic stream of “information” can actually help rehabilitate the right.)

Honestly, I don’t think Trump ever had a shot at controlling the media like a dictator would, mainly because of social media. He’s in love with attention, and Twitter has provided him a nonstop stream of it. No other President has threatened, insulted, promoted, or hinted at war over social media the way Trump has, and he gets so much direct feedback and interaction with the public and the world as a result. He could have leveraged that by buying the company (through a shell corporation, obviously) and setting it up as The One True Source of Information, manipulating public perception of him and his administration by keeping a tight grip on what information he let out.

But he’s just. Not. That. Clever. He blurts out everything that crosses his mind, leaving his administration to play clean-up on his messes, put out fires he keeps pouring gasoline on, and claim he’s joking when everyone knows he’s testing the limits on what he can get away with saying. He took advantage of the direct communication with legions of supporters, but seemed to forget that his detractors had equal access and would absolutely call him out on things he definitely said, it’s right there on his Twitter account, they have the Tweet pulled up on their phone right now. Instead of operating a single state-run media outlet while crushing all free press and limiting internet access like other dictators, he’s mooned the world’s cameras and acted surprised when they put his saggy butt on tv. “Fake news! That’s not my butt! THIS is my butt! [image attached]” he tweets. “Twitter is so biased, they haven’t censored any of Sleepy Joe’s photos!” he later tweets.

And lastly. The key to a dictatorship’s success. To prevent outside intervention, the country a dictator runs must be unimportant and ignored, wealthy and well-connected, or scary and well-armed. Minor warlords are the former, Putin is the latter, Trump might have weaseled his way into being the middle. But at the end of the day, America’s whole thing is new leadership every four years. It was revolutionary to replace a lineage of kings and queens stretching generations with a non-royal elected leader who only held office for four to eight years, but we’ve stuck to that for 200 years and everyone’s used to it by now. It would take a charismatic and powerful person to move the American people towards abolishing such a basic tenant of our democracy, and despite the mob mentality that lead a small portion of his supporters to chant “sixteen more years!” in the heat of the moment, Trump is not that charismatic. He’s not that smart. He’s not that well-connected. He’s not that savvy. He’s not that good at politics. And he’s not that powerful.

(I was going to say something here about him being the laughingstock of the world’s leaders and shouldn’t expect any outsiders to help him stay in power, especially since his tax returns came out and showed he owes people a ton of money that he doesn’t have, but this post is long enough so let’s cut to the chase.)

Trump is a greedy, small-minded man that has clung to power by appealing to the worst in humanity and scraping away at the best. But he hasn’t succeeded. He’s a sad old man who will say anything to be loved, and I don’t think he even knows what love is, so he’ll settle for attention. He doesn’t have money, he doesn’t have an army, and the only allies he has are using him as a political pawn to further their own interests. They will cut him loose the minute he stops being useful.

Now, the bad part: crazy screaming fans. Fringe groups on the internet. Mobs chanting “sixteen more years!” Men with guns and bombs and kidnapping plots, men trying to get into voting centers to destroy the election, men driving trucks with black flags that say FUCK YOUR FEELINGS, TRUMP 2020 (available on Amazon for $11.99, I wish I was joking.) I have no idea how many people in this country genuinely love Trump. It is hopefully significantly less than voted for him. There are some big issues in this country that are make-or-break, and unfortunately by reason of running Republican Trump has aligned himself with some of them.

There are people who hate everything about Trump, but he put a pro-life judge on the Supreme Court so they’re voting for him. There are people who are uncomfortable with Trump, but they’ve forgiven their grandpa for saying worse at Thanksgiving dinner, so they’ll vote for him. There are people who don’t know a single thing about Donald Trump, but they see (Republican) next to his name on the ballot, so they vote for him. None of that means those people will side with him if he tries to make a move towards dictatorship.

Now there are people who love Trump. They’ve heard and seen the vile things he’s said and done, and are genuinely okay with it, because they are full of hate and rage and want to change the world to put themselves on top. I do not know how many of these people there are. I know they exist all over the country, not just in red states. I know some of them have guns and want a reason to use them, because they’ve been talking about it for decades. I don’t know if we can trust the police to side with us over them if fights start breaking out. (And I pray pray PRAY people de-escalate any fights, because monkey see monkey do, and one news report of a MAGA extremist shooting someone can inspire a hundred copycats can lead to full-on civil war like we've never seen.) I know we need to be careful the next few months, to take care of ourselves and watch out for the more vulnerable in our communities.

And above all, I know this: Trump is not going to keep this country. He got it through trickery and deceit and foreign influence and national indifference and people not taking him seriously. We’ve learned. We’ve grown. We’re taking him seriously now, and we will not let him take what we’ve already told him he can’t have. The election is over. He’s a loser. He’d better start packing his bags. Because he’s not staying in office.

[cosleia]

You decide what it would specifically be, but I want one where Hux gets to decide how Kylo will do it

The Deaths of Allegiant General Pryde, Part I: Special Consideration

(Content warnings: choking, asphyxiation, a bit of graphic violence/gore at the end)

“I’ve seen your mind, Allegiant General,” Kylo Ren said lowly, his voice dark and terrifying through his newly repaired mask. In Ren’s Force-hold, Enric Pryde tried not to struggle and failed, limbs shaking and body twitching as his airway constricted further and further.

Enric had never considered himself capable of desperation. He was strong. Controlled. Steadfast, like his ship. And Kylo Ren had never frightened him; Enric had always known what he was, how he fit into the plan. He was a mere pawn, to be used and then sacrificed for the glory of the Empire.

Despite all this, when Enric answered Ren, his voice sounded wild, frightened, too high in pitch. “I have only ever been loyal—” he tried to say, but Ren cut him off with a sharp tightening of his fist.

“To Emperor Palpatine. Darth Sidious. Not to the First Order. Not to me.”

Spots floated in the periphery of Enric’s vision, and the scene before him—Supreme Leader Kylo Ren standing with his arm outstretched, hand clenched as he crushed Enric’s throat—began to fade, to go black. Distantly, Enric registered a sickening crunching sound as he felt his windpipe collapse.

“Not yet.” The voice floated into Enric’s consciousness, haughty and indulgent and wrong. He shouldn’t be hearing that voice, but he couldn’t remember why.

Suddenly Enric’s airway popped open, and the vise-like invisible grip was no longer suspending him above the floor of the throne room. He fell, landing hard on his knees and then collapsing forward, sucking in air as best he could through his rattling throat. His vision slowly started to return; he could make out the toes of Ren’s boots on the ice-blue carpeting in front of him as the Supreme Leader stepped closer.

He had thought it strange that Ren had summoned him to the Supremacy, had been surprised to see that it was being repaired and recommissioned instead of scuttled as he’d originally been told. And he hadn’t expected to be brought by the Knights of Ren to Snoke’s old throne room. This was a stage for a performance that was over now. There was no use for any of it; the puppet’s strings had been cut. But a new stage had been set: no curtains blocked the giant viewports, and the carpet leading from the lift to the throne had been replaced, and there was more technology here now, consoles and holoprojectors and what looked like a workbench. The throne was changed, too. Whereas Snoke’s throne had been somewhat modeled after Palpatine’s on Exegol, jutting up in the shape of a beheaded isosceles triangle, this throne was lower, wider, with a reclined back, and when he’d entered Kylo Ren had been sprawled there, leaning his helmeted head on one hand.

“When?” Ren asked now, sounding impatient. Enric blinked slowly, tried to raise his head, but he found that he could not move. He was being pressed into the floor by the same energy that had strangled him. He tried to shift and he couldn’t, tried to take a deeper breath and found his lungs couldn’t expand past a certain point. His chest was so tight it hurt; his heart felt heavier than a stone.

“We must make certain he knows why first,” that familiar voice said again, and now that Enric could breathe again he recognized it instantly. General Hux, the disgraced commander of the lost Finalizer and Starkiller Base. That was why it had felt wrong. There was no reason for someone of such low status to be here, in a meeting between the highest-ranking general of the Final Order and the Supreme Leader of the First Order, no matter how meaningless the latter title was.

A distorted chuckle sounded from Ren’s vocoder. “He thinks you low status, even now. And he thinks the title of ‘Supreme Leader’ is meaningless.”

Enric could feel his own heartbeat pounding in his wrists and neck. His breath quickened. He was in danger. He had to survive this, had to see Palpatine take the throne that ruled the galaxy once again. “I mean no disrespect,” he managed to whisper.

Swift footsteps marched close, one, two, three, and then something pointed—the toe of a boot—drove into Enric’s side. The pain was sharp and shocking and Enric let out a gasping whimper. “Of course you mean disrespect,” he heard General Hux say as he came around to stand next to Ren. “You have never respected either of us.”

“And so you’ll kill me?” Enric forced out. “You’ll kill the emperor’s right-hand man, one of your greatest allies, because I hurt your feelings?”

“That is reason enough,” Hux said, ignoring the insult. “However, you might have remained useful for a time. If only you hadn’t decided to kill me.”

At that, Enric’s body was in the air again, and he could finally see the two of them, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren in his mask and what Enric now realized was a new costume of sweeping black robes, and General Hux—except that wasn’t a general’s uniform, that was something else, white and crisp and edged in gold, and there was a circlet resting in Hux’s bright red hair.

“You were the spy,” Enric blurted, confused and outraged. “A traitor.”

“You’re the traitor,” Ren growled, and the hairs at the back of Enric’s neck stood up.

“He’s right, though, Ren,” Hux said. “I was the spy.”

Ren sighed, which through his mask sounded like electrical failure, and Enric couldn’t hold back a hysterical giggle. Then Ren let go of him again, turning toward Hux, and Enric crumpled painfully to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Ren said, the words piercing the dim veil of pain and shocking Enric’s eyes wide. “How many times do I have to say it?”

“It doesn’t count when you have that bucket on,” Hux said.

Ren sighed again, then removed his helmet, tossing his head so that his hair shook out.

“There,” Hux said, sounding nauseatingly pleased. He stepped close to Ren, far closer than propriety allowed. “Now, what was that?”

A smile—a smile!—pulled at the corner of Ren’s mouth. He tipped his head even closer to Hux, so that their noses practically touched, and gazed into his eyes. “I’m sorry, Armitage,” he said, so soft Enric could barely hear. “I took you for granted. I didn’t listen to you. I hurt you, and I drove you away. I love you. I need you. I’m sorry.”

Hux’s face went red. “Yes. Well. Good,” he stammered, and if Enric weren’t lying broken on the floor at his feet, it might have been gratifying to see him so flustered. When Hux put his arms around Ren’s neck and kissed him solidly on the mouth, though, all Enric could do was fight down bile. “I love you too,” Hux murmured breathlessly. Then he said, “You can kill him now.”

Freezing panic sluiced through Enric’s veins. Ren’s smile broadened. “Any requests?” he asked.

Hux let out a thoughtful hmm. “A friend of Brendol’s deserves special consideration. We don’t have any of those beetles, unfortunately, but perhaps something similar. Could you pull him apart? Slowly?”

“I could do that,” Ren said. He kissed Hux again. They kissed for so long Enric considered trying to crawl for the door, but as soon as the thought came to him Ren’s hand shot out and fixed him in place with the Force. “Shall we?” Ren asked, and he put his other hand at the small of Hux’s back and they moved to the throne together, like they were a single unit, like—

Enric had underestimated them. He saw it now, too late. Together, they were too powerful.

He should have killed Hux.

“He still thinks he should have killed you,” Ren crooned, settling back into the throne and pulling Hux into his lap. “Fool.”

Hux draped his arms around Ren’s shoulders and turned at the waist to look at Enric, lying in a pathetic heap below the throne. “He's so eager for his punishment,” Hux said. “Let’s not keep the man waiting.”

Smirking, Ren raised his hand toward Enric once again, and Enric shuddered in horror and then in agony as skin and tendons and bone and cartilage and veins and organs and all the other bits and pieces that made him a whole being began to separate, to break away from each other—as he was slowly, inexorably, torturously disassembled.

Allegiant General Enric Pryde’s last thought as he lay screaming at the feet of the new rulers of the galaxy was that he didn’t understand how any of this had happened.

Then he knew nothing but blinding, infinite pain.

And after that, he knew nothing at all.

~

Send your request for Pryde’s manner of death to my ask!

Also posted to The Deaths of Allegiant General Pryde series on AO3.

If you enjoyed this, you may also like my The Deaths of Supreme Leader Snoke series.

[phroyd]

Joe Manchin is shouting in the middle of a job fair. It’s in an exhibition space at a community college in Parkersburg, West Virginia, an industrial town on the Ohio river. He is going booth to booth to booth, making conversation and taking selfies.

Manchin has come to one table that provides office workers to companies on a provisional basis and is convinced that someone he just met is a perfect fit. He starts asking his staffers to find the young man who was looking for an accounting job and direct him over to the booth.

The Democratic senator could have come out of a lab for politicians. The 71-year-old Manchin has salt and pepper hair and just the right amount of twang. He comes across as one of God’s natural retail politicians, treats every voter like a friend. Most return the adoration, although there are a few rolled eyes. High schoolers ask him to come to their football game and grown men excitedly pile next to him to pose for a photograph.

However, less than 24 hours after Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate judiciary committee, he kept getting asked about Brett Kavanaugh – the conservative supreme court pick whom Manchin would eventually vote for.

West Virginia was a traditionally Democratic state for generations. However, it has pivoted on a dime. A former bastion of blue-collar New Deal Democrats it has become a Republican stronghold based on issues like guns, abortion and the “war on coal”. Although West Virginia has long been economically populist, it is socially conservative and the coal industry occupies a key place in the state’s psyche.

West Virginia is one of two races – alongside one in Tennessee – that are crucial to the Democrats’ chances of winning back the Senate in next month’s midterm elections. Democrats probably need to win in both West Virginia and Tennessee to have a chance of flipping the slim 51-49 Republican majority in the Senate. Democratic control of the upper chamber would mean that they could block not just legislation but Trump appointees to office, including the courts, as well.

Manchin and Bredesen are both willing to embrace Trump at times and practice a Clintonian brand of politics

Thus Democratic fortunes in the Senate rest on the unlikely shoulders of two septuagenarian white men in states that Donald Trump won overwhelmingly. These two older white men are a world away from the slate of diverse candidates that the Democrats are running across America for the House.

Although much has been made of the so-called “blue wave” that Democrats are counting on in the midterms to win control of the House of Representatives, their task in taking back the Senate is a much stiffer challenge. And in the centre of that challenge are Manchin in West Virginia and Phil Bredesen in Tennessee.

These two candidates differ markedly from the new slate of Democratic candidates who are rushing to embrace progressive causes like Medicare for All, a $15-an-hour minimum wage and flirt with the concept of abolishing Ice (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Manchin and Bredesen are from a different school of centrist Democrats. They are also both willing to embrace Trump at times and practice a Clintonian brand of politics where they look at both political parties in Washington and proclaim “a plague upon both your houses”.

Both men supported the confirmation of Kavanaugh to the supreme court – the two most prominent Democrats to do so.

A clear sign of why Manchin eventually backed Kavanaugh was evident in Parkersburg where attendees were invariably coming up to Manchin to urge him to support the embattled nominee – while the West Virginia senator was staying perched precariously on the fence. To one woman, he simply laid out the recent history of judicial nomination fights on Capitol Hill. He said Democratic anger on the issue was rooted in the showdown over Merrick Garland that Republicans “wouldn’t even meet him and that’s what makes ’em mad”. Manchin went on to point to fault on “both sides” and insisted “we want to get everyone back together”.

Speaking to the Guardian afterwards in a public park before a veterans event, Manchin pointed out “there’s still more Democrats than there are anything else in West Virginia. The bottom line is they got upset after it got to the point that the Washington Democrats forgot about the rural Democrats.” Manchin, who is the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, instead tried to emphasize his independence. “I don’t care whether [you’re a Democrat or a Republican] … it’s about West Virginia first and that’s where I’ve always been.”

His Republican opponent, Patrick Morrisey, is almost the antithesis of Manchin. While Manchin is a native West Virginian who grew up as the star high school quarterback, Morrisey is a New Jersey native who worked as staffer and lobbyist on Capitol Hill before moving to the Mountain State and beating a five-term incumbent to become the first Republican state attorney general since before the New Deal.

The Republican regularly branded his opponent as “dishonest Washington liberal” and painted him as a pawn of the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer. Trump has appeared regularly with Morrisey and the West Virginia Republican could not name one area of disagreement with him.

“I want to emphasize my areas of commonality with the president because the body of his work has been very impressive for the people of West Virginia,” insisted the Republican Senate candidate. “No one is an ideological twin of another person. President Trump has been a strong ally for West Virginia and we’re going to keep emphasizing that.”

The message may not be cutting through in polls. Manchin has maintained a steady lead in West Virginia and has consistently been hitting Morrisey on his past as a pharmaceutical lobbyist, an important issue in a state that has been devastated by the opioid epidemic as well on the Republican’s opposition to Obamacare and the effect that would have on West Virginians with pre-existing conditions.

However, while that message and approach may be working for Manchin in West Virginia, it may not be as successful in Tennessee.

As a fellow centrist Democrat, or blue dog, Bredesen is running a similar race to Manchin. However, although his Republican opponent, Marsha Blackburn, is just as ardent a Trump fan as Morrisey, the state has surprisingly little in common with West Virginia save the Appalachian mountains and a blowout margin for Trump in 2016.

Tennessee is divided into three parts by the swoop of the Tennessee river, which rises in the eastern part of the state, descends into Alabama before emerging to flow northward into the Ohio river in Paducah, Kentucky. The key battlefield is middle Tennessee, the central part of the state penned inside the river.

Centered around Nashville, the region is economically thriving. Nashville is a tourist hub that has attracted Fortune 500 companies and the population of the metro area has doubled since 1990. One of the key figures in this process was Bredesen. First as mayor of Nashville and then as Tennessee’s governor, the 74-year-old played a key role in reviving the city, attracting pro sports teams and reviving Tennessee’s once sleepy capital city.

A wealthy former CEO of a healthcare company and transplant from the north, Bredesen long cut an almost disconcertingly moderate figure in the state.

He has tried to run a campaign that avoids national politics as much as possible. In one television ad, Bredesen looks squarely at the camera and says: “Look, I’m not running against Donald Trump.” Instead, he paints himself as a bipartisan problem solver and deflects any talk of the Democrats taking control of the Senate. “The chances of my party of being in the majority are minuscule,” he said in a debate.

Instead of making it about party labels or national figures, Bredesen has tried to keep things local in a state that has been strongly Republican in recent decades. In an interview with Politico, the former governor said if the race is about, “‘do you want to send a Democrat or Republican to Washington?’ I would lose. If it’s, ‘Do you want to send Phil Bredesen or Marsha Blackburn to Washington?’ I think I can win that.”

In contrast, his opponent Marsha Blackburn, a 16-year-veteran of Capitol Hill, is fully embracing Trump. Blackburn, who uses the masculine title ofcongressman, is a bomb thrower who long irritated many establishment Republicans in Tennessee dating back to her time in the state legislature.

Blackburn, who has been a frequent cable television presence, is a fervent social conservative. She has been an implacable opponent of abortion and even co-sponsored legislation, prompted by conspiracy theories about then President Barack Obama, to force presidential candidates to disclose their birth certificates.

During the campaign, she has consistently echoed Trump’s rhetoric. On television, she slams Bredesen for opposing the Trump travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries and for his skepticism about the efficacy of a wall on the US-Mexico border.

Blackburn’s hard-right policies even prompted an intervention by Taylor Swift, a Tennessee resident in the race. Swift endorsed Bredesen in an Instagram post and cited the Republican’s record on gay rights and women’s issues in doing so

However, demographic changes in the state and not its pop singers represent her key vulnerability. Her home base, the well-to-do Nashville suburb of Williamson, was one of only four in the state where Hillary Clinton did better than Barack Obama in the general election and was the sole holdout from Trump in the primary, when it went for Marco Rubio.

Although Nashville suburbs are still solidly Republican, that is starting to change ever so modestly and in the long term are trending towards Democrats. This combined with Blackburn’s weak personal poll numbers has given Democrats hope.

Scott Golden, the chair of the Tennessee Republican party told the Guardian, “there are no moderates left in Washington DC … it is a partisan team sport.” He cited the divisive vote over Kavanaugh.

In recent weeks Tennessee voters have seen the race through the same lens. In the aftermath of the Kavanaugh confirmation fight, Blackburn has surged while before the showdown, Bredesen held a narrow lead.

For Republicans, the hope is these highly charged and highly partisan national issues can trump the brands carefully built by both Bredesen and Manchin over decades in public office. The two men both came out in support of Kavanaugh’s nomination, trying to thwart one potential line of attack and cool the partisan enthusiasm of the Trump voters whom they will be relying on in November. The result was that one major Democratic Super Pac, Priorities USA, announced that it would no longer be supporting the two Senate candidates in November. The decision is simply another indication that their politics as moderate, red state Democrats may increasingly be outliers in a party that is moving leftwards.

Many liberal activists have argued that leftwing candidates in diverse states like Andrew Gillum in Florida or Beto O’Rourke in Texas are their party’s future. But for now, in a Senate map that is tilted towards red states, Democrats have no other options but to embrace throwbacks to a moderate past if they have any hopes of regaining the majority.

Phroyd

[glittergummicandypeach]

Lying in the Name of the War Lord: Jane Roe’s Fake ‘Conversion’ is a Feature Not a Bug of the Extreme Christian Right | Religion Dispatches

The late Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, is back in the news, thanks to the report of her “death bed confession.” In a new documentary about her life, McCorvey, the plaintiff in the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, admitted that her 1995 conversion to evangelical Christianity was not only fraudulent, but that she was paid by antiabortion leader Rev. Phillip “Flip” Benham with the complicity of others. 

“I was the big fish,” she said. “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say, and that’s what I’d say.” The documentary reports that in the years following her “conversion” and during her role as an antiabortion pawn, she received at least $456,911 from the anti-abortion movement. Rev. Flip Benham of Operation Save America, who led McCorvey’s conversion, denied paying her (although the documentary surfaced financial documents that his organization did). But Benham also said, “…but she chose to be used. That’s called work. That’s what you’re paid to be doing!” Former Benham associate Rev. Rob Schenk admits to the camera, “the jig is up.”

But this story is about more than grift. It’s about how, when the history is written, it may record that what we call the culture war wasn’t just a metaphor or a handy term for a set of contemporary issues du jour. In fact, various expressions of conservative evangelicalism and Roman Catholicism are allied in a long-term war with everyone else. And in this war, lies are a feature, not a bug. 

The theorist-in-chief of this war is 20th century theologian, R.J. Rushdoony whose influence on the development and the eschatology of the evangelical wing of the Christian Right makes him a figure of historical consequence. His school of thought is called Christian Reconstructionism and the wider movement he principally engendered is generally called Dominionism. Most avatars of this theocratic vision of the Kingdom of God on Earth see themselves as engaged in a kind of low-intensity religious war, not only against sin and proponents of other religions, but against such foundational U.S. constitutional values as religious freedom, pluralism, and separation of church and state. 

While mendacity is hardly new in politics, lying still seems hypocritical coming from religious leaders who profess a higher standard. But for the leaders for whom politics is actually part of the low-intensity religious war that’s been underway for at least a half century, there’s nothing hypocritical about it. And for many of them, the biblical story of Rahab provides the justification for lies like McCorvey’s—lies foisted on the world by a cabal of theocratic anti-abortion campaigners who in turn tell us that Rahab is a model of righteousness.

In my book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, I discuss Rushdoony’s rationale for the righteous lie. Rahab is a lauded figure in much of the Jewish and Christian tradition. She hid two Israelite military spies in her home during the siege of the Canaanite city of Jericho by the army of Joshua—and lied to Canaanite soldiers who were searching for the spies. For her service, she and her family were spared when Joshua sacked the city and massacred everyone in it. There are a variety of understandings of the meaning of Rahab’s acts—like just about any other biblical figure. But Rushdoony’s interpretation is foundational for the contemporary Christian Right.

Rushdoony rationalizes Rahab’s lies as having saved the lives of “Godly men.” He further argues that the Christian requirement to tell the truth under normal circumstances “does not apply to acts of war. Spying is legitimate, as are deceptive acts in warfare.” Since, in Rushdoony’s view, Christianity is in a permanent state of war with the rest of society, lies are not only justifiable but are by definition a Christian requirement and a necessity. Fellow Christian Reconstructionist theorist Gary North agrees, calling Rahab a “righteous revolutionary” against “Satan’s kingdom.” 

Thus, it’s not surprising that lies in pursuit of the contemporary theocratic goals of the Christian Right are legion. A more recent example, from earlier this year, was when pastor and State Representative Timothy Ginter (R-Ohio) lied to reporter Jessica Glantz from The Guardian that he had “no knowledge” of the Christian Right state legislative campaign Project Blitz when, in fact, he was its Ohio co-chair. Project Blitz had been trying to lay low in the face of public opposition and unwanted press coverage. Both the founders and the state leaders of Project Blitz are explicit about the Dominionist and Christian Nationalist goals that drive their legislative actions.

Will a Gideon or a Rahab please stand?

David Lane of the influential Christian Right political organization, American Renewal Project is also a Rahab fan. The organization, an affiliate of the Mississippi-based American Family Association, plays a quiet role in organizing and indoctrinating conservative clergy, especially in election years. They provide all-expense-paid trips for thousands of clergy and spouses to hear from the likes of Dominionist and Christian Nationalist author David Barton, and senior Republican office holders and candidates for state and federal office.

Like Rushdoony, Lane looks to Rahab as a role model for righteous revolutionaries. In June 2013 Lane published an essay titled, “Wage War to Restore a Christian Nation.” It was so controversial that the far right news site that published it, World Net Daily quickly took it down (though it appears to have been quietly reposted at some point). 

In it, Lane expressed doubts about the ability of the Christian Right to establish theocratic governance via the tools of democracy alone and thus suggested that violence and elections are not mutually exclusive, and that horrific confrontations, including acts of Christian martyrdom, lie ahead. 

“You ask, ‘What is our goal?’ To wage war to restore America to our Judeo-Christian heritage with all of our might and strength that God will give us. You ask, ‘What is our aim?’ One word only: victory, in spite of all intimidation and terror.”

Lane’s call for religious war ended with his signature refrain: “Will a Gideon or Rahab the Harlot please stand?” (Gideon, of course, is the Biblical figure who leads an Israelite army in an ethnic cleansing of the Midianites who were oppressors and worshiped false gods.) 

In another World Net Daily essay with the same refrain, Lane quotes Christian Reconstructionist theologian, Peter J. Leithart: 

“Until American churches actually function as outposts of Jesus’ heavenly empire rather than as cheerleaders for America—until the churches produce martyrs rather than patriots—the political witness of Christians will continue to be diluted and co-opted.” 

All of which brings us back to Flip Benham and Norma McCorvey.

Burning for Jesus

In 1995, Flip Benham and Operation Save America (formerly called Operation Rescue) moved into an office next to the Dallas clinic where McCorvey was working. Eventually, after Benham led her conversion to evangelical Christianity, McCorvey left her job at the clinic and became a fixture of anti-abortion public life

And this public life was not limited to the politics of abortion. Being on the Operation Save America payroll, meant participating in the wider war.

To that end, Benham staged at least two Qur’an burnings. The first may have been his 2004 “Burning of the Abominations” demonstration at the Columbus, Ohio City Hall. There, he both tore and burned the Qur’an, the Rainbow Flag, and the Roe v. Wade decision. The United States, he said, is defying “the God of our forefathers” by embracing “false religions and gods.” 

He attempted another one in 2006 at the Mississippi state capitol. After the cops thwarted Benham’s attempt to torch the Qur’an, the Rainbow flag, and Supreme Court decisions that he considered violative of God’s laws, he ripped them up and declared, according to Operation Save America’s own report (which was subsequently scrubbed from the website): “we have three choices with Muslims, kill them, be killed by them, or convert them. Which is your choice?”  

“While not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorist [sic] are Muslims,” he continued. “We destroy the Koran, not to desecrate their religion, but to set them free.”

Benham, according to a report by Michelle Goldberg, then a staff writer at Salon, reconvened his group at the Making Jesus Real Church in the nearby town of Pearl where they once again burned a Qu’ran, a rainbow flag, and Supreme Court decisions, including, in addition to Roe, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Lawrence v. Texas, and Everson v. Board of Education. In his Everson decision Justice Hugo Black wrote, “In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between Church and State.” 

“The Operation Save America members put the grill in the church parking lot,” Goldberg wrote. “McCorvey struck the match that burned the shredded symbols.” According to Goldberg, Benham had a couple of dozen kids gather around the grill. “There’s coming a time when it might cost you your life to stand up for King Jesus,” Benham told the children. “It is our prayer that if you go down, you go down standing up in the name of Jesus.”

Rushdoony saw that Rahabian lies would be needed in order to lay siege to the bastions of the non-Christian (or insufficiently Christian) world, including the democratic institutions and values of the government of the United States, which remain an obstacle to their theocratic goals, as the burnings staged by Benham and McCorvey make clear. Many such sieges in the religious war for the world are well underway. And, as Rob Schenk so eloquently put it, the jig is up. 

This content was originally published here.

[xivu-arath]

spent some time talking about my sith warrior with a friend and ended up rambling about her personal values vs imperial ones and related societal stuff and I liked it so! might as well Preserve It

Storm-Today at 3:05 PM

to bring up a topic I don't tire of........  it's interesting bc rkorya actually does 100% think she's a good person, it's just that sith morals, and imperial morals as a whole, are a whole different set of values than... the republic/general galaxy/earth's values

Princet-Today at 3:06 PM

yet another way shes healthier than him,

Storm-Today at 3:06 PM

TRUE

that she kills people and enjoys it, that she wants to go out fighting and is 100% fine killing helpless enemies on an opposing side... those aren't bad things to her???? and then to make it more complicated some of her personal values differ from the empire's cultural ones

Princet-Today at 3:07 PM

yeah tho like...given her Culture of course she has different ethical standards

and deviating from that some is deff also an interesting thing

Storm-Today at 3:08 PM

it's also why clashes with their opposing faction often get tense bc they'll go "you're a monster for killing those people" and it comes out of nowhere to her bc killing people doesn't immediately translate to something bad at all

and like... she has Personal Feelings on betrayal and abandoning people she's sworn to even tho imperials value standing on your own as an ultimate goal and thus turning on someone as soon as they're no longer necessary or useful is p much expected?

and... on occasion providing more support than strictly necessary even tho imperial culture is just bootstraps to the max. small things mostly that came around from her experiences with baras and bad v aaaand for example vette talking about her life and being a slave. sometimes you get stuck with a shittier hand than you can escape from on your own and needing help from that situation doesn't mean you're weaker for it...

Princet-Today at 3:14 PM

but bootstraps >___>

man tho yeah and i can see how that would like

contribute to her bonds with her crew being so good tbh

Storm-Today at 3:14 PM

yeah!!!

and like... it doesn't contradict for her bc isn't like. finding a force-sensitive person and sending them to ziost and korriban helping them along instead of... demanding they learn to be sith on some random forsaken rock??? helping people is just. on occasion giving them the right resources or situation for them to rise to their potential

that's... kind of a theme with her crew actually bc vette is supremely talented and has a ton of experience with the underworld but. is a slave that's just gotten captured again. quinn's career was sidelined and he was stuck under a leader making worse and worse decisions until baras bailed him out. pierce was taken off of black ops and split apart from his team and was just going to be cannon fodder for fighting the resistance

jaesa... was actually in a good enough place with a master who cared for her but arguably dark!jaesa was put into a place where she could realize her penchant for killing all the people

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

broonmark... was a bloodthirsty killer in a society of nonbloodthirsty nonkillers

rkorya barging in on their lives gave them the place and freedom and resources to become more in various ways

even if "more" just means "more opportunities to kill people"

it's okay broonmark u r awful and I love u for it

but when u value personal strength and proving that strength and when your society only respects those strong enough to earn their way to the top... the intrinsic value of someone's life just. on their own goes down...

murdering another of your general status is still illegal but it's basically "don't get caught"

Princet-Today at 3:21 PM

maaaan i love houw much thought you put into like

tying plot stuff in with rkorya 's mindset and sense of personal morality

Storm-Today at 3:21 PM

jshgksruhgurhsg tHANKS

that means a lot ;; As Always

rkorya had no... personal or ethical struggles with like. killing baras' master. or killing baras. or killing baras' apprentices

that they were all sith meant they were Equals and thus worthy opponents, and that she couldn't just stroll into dromund kaas going "hey who killed darth vengean??? it was me (:<" bc that'd be Disrespectful and Dumb and both things are punishable

if she could kill them, it just meant the values of their lives were inferior to her own??? and then laying low and not like. going on a spree meant that this was a political move and a power play and not... mass slaughter by a sith that's decided to fuck up the system

the empire can adapt and adjust to and is built to be fine with half your elite getting cut down by the other half

tho the winnowing out of the weak or the villainous bc of the sith classes is still kind of absurd and is part of why the empire doesn't do well once the war starts stretching on

but to compare, she felt a bit bad with having to kill one of vowrawn's apprentices bc it wasn't necessary and he was defending his master who she had... also shown up to defend. it was weakening the empire's efforts to kill him and she tried to talk him down first

and... if someone had told her to kill vowrawn or marr she would have been offended and likely outed the speaker as a traitor or just killed them herself. it never would have crossed her mind to do so bc they're allies and she doesn't want their spots and bc they're both extremely necessary members of the dark council. that she's stronger than them and could possibly take them out is a fact but just bc she can doesn't mean she should and it'd be a really bad move to do so

also like by the time she fites baras for real her v real grudge against him was almost secondary to this horrified realization that baras had like

jumped off the deep end

he was sabotaging the war and weakening them and so what if he ruled bc there'd be not much to rule over at this rate

so killing him became more than just the usual hatefest and revenge but also just... something that had to be done for the good of the empire and latching on to that and realizing it as her primary purpose was what... v much shaped rkorya's attitude and identity from then on and was like. a pivotal maturing thing

and probs why marr was willing to trust her with makeb and all of shadow of revan's stuff instead of just seeing her as bad v's pawn

Princet-Today at 3:39 PM

ohhhh man

Storm-Today at 3:42 PM

in a sad way this... increases her general isolation? bc she doesn't have to work with apprentices or even lords if she doesn't want to and spends most of her time dealing with big menacing threats or doing stuff not many other people can handle so while sith aren't already v sociable, she's... v much distanced and without many contacts amongst her own people

which might be a factor in how quickly - at least for her standards - she bonded with lana, and why her crew are So Important

Princet-Today at 3:43 PM

god yeah that makes sense

Storm-Today at 3:44 PM

she wouldn't call herself lonely bc friendship and bonds and feeling welcomed aren't... a thing she considers important. if she talked about makeb or yavin iv, that she enjoyed working with a team all focused on one goal would come up but... at the same time, saying she'd want teamwork would be foreign to her

Princet-Today at 3:45 PM

thats sad wtf

Storm-Today at 3:46 PM

(:<

Princet-Today at 3:47 PM

Let Rkorya Make Friends

Storm-Today at 3:47 PM

that's one reason I like having her on denny...... she gets the chance for having close relationships

Princet-Today at 3:48 PM

yessss good

Storm-Today at 3:49 PM

and tbh I could imagine other established sith being v... wary of her, bc either they disagree with the emperor or just don't want his literal executioner hanging out with them, or she's too new and unknown and powerful a factor, or they distrust having someone with so much power and freedom around. thus they don't know her leads into giving them no chances to know her and just inevitably.... no sith hangouts for the most part except with the dark council who Assuredly Remember how she killed baras and don't want to be next.

so p much no wonder she regularly hangs out with vowrawn and they go out to kill stuff and have tea together

[studentofrhetoric-blog]

Part 1, Tuesday, April 25th, 2017

International News:

--- "Turkey's military said it killed around 70 militants in operations on Tuesday in Iraq's Sinjar and northern Syria, as it stepped up a campaign against groups affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The military made the announcement in an official statement. Differences over Syria policy have caused friction between the United States and Ankara. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters, part of a militia backed by Washington in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, to be a terrorist organization."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-iraq-military-idUSKBN17R27Z?il=0

--- "A man was shot dead on Tuesday at a political demonstration in Venezuela's western state of Lara, bringing to 26 the number of deaths since protests against the socialist government began a month ago. The state prosecutor's office said Orlando Medina, 23, died immediately from a gunshot to the head on a street in the town of El Tocuyo in the early hours during a protest. In a month of chaos since Venezuela's opposition began protests against President Nicolas Maduro, 15 people have died in violence around demonstrations and 11 others in night-time lootings, the state prosecutor's office said. Political activists and Venezuelan media have reported more deaths, but those have not been confirmed. With near-daily demonstrations by both opponents and supporters of Maduro, there have been fatalities on both sides, as well as one National Guard sergeant killed during a protest. The prosecutor's office did not specify the political allegiance of Tuesday's victim, though media in Lara said he was an opposition sympathizer. "Any death hurts, government or opposition," chief state prosecutor Luisa Ortega said in a speech. He said that four fatalities were adolescents and 437 people had also been injured...Nearly 1,500 people have been arrested, with 801 still detained as of Tuesday, rights group Penal Forum said."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-idUSKBN17R1VR?il=0

--- "Two foundations tied to Germany’s ruling coalition parties were attacked by the same cyber spy group that targeted the campaign of French presidential favorite Emmanuel Macron, a leading cyber security expert said on Tuesday. The group, dubbed "Pawn Storm" by security firm Trend Micro, used email phishing tricks and attempted to install malware at think tanks tied to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Feike Hacquebord said. Hacquebord and other experts said the attacks, which took place in March and April, suggest Pawn Storm is seeking to influence the national elections in the two European Union powerhouses. "I am not sure whether those foundations are the actual target. It could be that they used it as a stepping stone to target, for example, the CDU or the SPD," Hacquebord said. The mysterious cyber spying group, also known as Fancy Bear and APT 28, was behind data breaches of U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Merkel’s party last year, Hacquebord said. Other security experts and former U.S. government officials link it to the Russian military intelligence directorate GRU. Hacquebord and Trend Micro have stopped short of making that connection. Russia has denied any involvement in the cyber attacks."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-election-cyber-idUSKBN17R273?il=0

--- "Iran's supreme leader called on presidential candidates on Tuesday to champion economic self-sufficiency, further distancing himself from Hassan Rouhani's policy of opening to the West and seeking foreign investment. Allies of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who aim to reclaim the presidency for their hardline faction, hope voters will punish the pragmatist President Rouhani for the slow pace of economic recovery despite the lifting of sanctions under a nuclear deal, the hallmark of his first term. "The candidates should promise to focus on national capabilities and domestic capacities to resolve the economic issues ... rather than looking abroad," Khamenei was quoted as saying by state TV as saying on Monday. Rouhani's main hardline rival in the May 19 election, influential cleric Ebrahim Raisi, has promised to create over 1.5 million jobs a year if elected. Another candidate, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, has promised to create 5 million jobs per year. "We should bring manufacturing enterprises back to production ... and for this we do not need to look to foreigners," Raisi, a close ally of Khamenei, said in the city of Birjand."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-election-khamenei-idUSKBN17R1V7?il=0

--- "Pope Francis made a surprise appearance at a TED talk conference on Tuesday, urging powerful leaders "to act humbly" and said he hoped technological innovation would not leave people behind. The 18-minute video was filmed in Vatican City and broadcast to the audience at the annual TED 2017 conference in Vancouver. "The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly," said the pontiff, while seated at a desk. "If you don't, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other." The comments echoed Francis' frequent themes to not ignore the plight of immigrants, the poor and other vulnerable people. Speaking in Italian with subtitles, Francis urged solidarity to overcome a "culture of waste" that had affected not only food but people cast aside by economic systems that rely increasingly on automation."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-canada-tedtalk-idUSKBN17S08Z?il=0

--- "The U.S. military started moving parts of its controversial THAAD anti-missile defense system to a deployment site in South Korea on Wednesday amid high tensions over North Korea's missile and nuclear programs. The earlier-than-expected move prompted protests by hundreds of local residents and was denounced by the frontrunner in South Korea's presidential election on May 9.  A spokesman for Moon Jae-in said the decision "ignored public opinion and due process" and demanded the deployment be suspended until the next administration was in place and had made its policy decision. The United States and South Korea last year agreed to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to counter the threat of missile launches by North Korea. However the move has angered China, which says the advanced system will do little to deter the North while destabilizing the regional security balance. South Korea's defense ministry said some elements of THAAD were moved to the site on what had been a golf course in the south of the country. "South Korea and the United States have been working to secure an early operational capability of the THAAD system in response to North Korea's advancing nuclear and missile threat," the ministry said in a statement. The battery is expected to be operational by the end of the year, it added."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-usa-thaad-idUSKBN17R2VA?il=0

Domestic & International News:

--- "A Chinese court on Tuesday sentenced a U.S. citizen to three-years and six-months in prison for espionage but then ordered she be deported, her lawyer said, in a case that has added to U.S.-China tension. Sandy Phan-Gillis, who has Chinese ancestry and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested in March 2015 while about to leave mainland China for the Chinese-ruled, former Portuguese colony of Macau, and had been held without charges since then. She had plead guilty during a trial in the southwestern city of Nanning and was not planning to appeal, lawyer Shang Baojun told Reuters. "She will probably be exported to the U.S. soon, but we do not know the exact date yet," Shang said, adding that she was being held in a police station in the meantime."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-usa-rights-idUSKBN17R1LV?il=0

--- "Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn likely broke the law by failing to get permission to be paid for a trip to Russia in 2015, the leaders of a House of Representatives committee said on Tuesday. During the visit, Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who advised Donald Trump's presidential campaign, dined with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "General Flynn had a duty and an obligation to seek and obtain permission to receive money from foreign governments," Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters. "It does not appear to us that that was ever sought, nor did he ever get that permission." The oversight panel is looking into whether Flynn fully disclosed payments from Russian, Turkish or other foreign sources...Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the oversight panel, said it also appeared as if Flynn had not fully disclosed the payments after the fact as required, saying a failure to do so would be a felony."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-flynn-idUSKBN17R2B0?il=0

--- "Mexico's government on Tuesday said it would fight any measures in a U.S. tax overhaul that broke international trade rules, and threatened to review cross-border cooperation on migration and security if upcoming negotiations founder. Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said Mexico was watching to see if plans by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to shake up taxation included a levy on remittances sent home by Mexican workers or the imposition of tariffs on Mexican goods. "If they are put forward, we'll have to act with absolute firmness, using all the political, diplomatic and obviously legal means at our disposal," he told a session of the foreign relations committee of the lower house of Congress."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-politics-idUSKBN17R2CD?il=0

Domestic News:

--- "The threat of a U.S. government shutdown this weekend appeared to recede on Tuesday after President Donald Trump backed away from a demand that Congress include funding for his planned border wall with Mexico in a spending bill. In remarks to conservative news media outlets that were confirmed by the White House, Trump said on Monday evening he may wait until Republicans begin drafting the budget blueprint for the fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1 to seek funds for the wall. Trump's fellow Republicans control both chambers of Congress but the current funding bill, which has to be passed by Friday night, will need 60 votes to clear the 100-member Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats and so will have to get some Democratic support. Democratic leaders had said it would not get it if funds for the wall were included. The news about Trump's comments helped fuel a rise in U.S. Treasury debt yields. Even if the fight over wall funding is over, Republicans and Democrats still have some difficult issues to resolve over the next day or two. With his demand for the inclusion of wall funding, Trump had been running the risk of being blamed by Democrats for a partial shutdown of the government that would start on Saturday. The president, whose approval ratings have slid since he took office, will be marking 100 days in the job on that day."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-budget-idUSKBN17R27T?il=0

--- "Two former U.S. officials, intelligence director James Clapper and deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, will testify next month in a Senate investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Senate Judiciary Committee said on Tuesday. Four congressional committees are investigating the issue after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered hacking of the Democratic political groups to try to sway the election toward Republican Donald Trump. Moscow has denied any such meddling. Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and Yates, the former deputy attorney general, will testify on May 8 before the subcommittee on crime and terrorism, Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley said in a statement."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-idUSKBN17R1JQ?il=0

--- "The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday approved President Donald Trump's choice for U.S. Trade Representative, bringing Robert Lighthizer a step closer to taking office as U.S. trade disputes with Canada and Mexico heat up. The panel also voted to approve a legal waiver for Lighthizer from a 1995 law that prohibits people who did work on behalf of foreign governments from serving as the top U.S. trade negotiator. Lighthizer did work on behalf of the Brazilian agriculture agency in the late 1980s and assisted a colleague with work for a Chinese electronics industry group in 1991. Lighthizer's nomination now moves to the full U.S. Senate for approval. If confirmed, he will represent the Trump administration in its planned renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday announced 20 percent anti-subsidy duties on Canadian softwood lumber imports amid a long-running unresolved trade dispute between the United States and its second-largest trade partner."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-lighthizer-idUSKBN17R20S?il=0

--- "More than a dozen state prosecutors urged President Donald Trump in a letter on Tuesday not to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which commits the United States, along with 200 other countries, to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions in an attempt to slow global warming. With the letter, attorneys general from 12 states as well as the District of Columbia and American Samoa have joined a chorus of voices, including major fossil fuel energy companies as well as environmental advocates, condemning the idea of exiting the agreement, which the Republican president has criticized in the past. "Climate change, if left unchecked, will lead to global environmental dislocation and disaster on a scale we likely cannot imagine," the prosecutors wrote, urging the president to "maintain and reconfirm the United States' commitment to this groundbreaking agreement."...Tuesday's letter was signed by top prosecutors from Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-environment-paris-accord-idUSKBN17R2RU?il=0

--- "U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday will order a review of national monuments created over the past 20 years with an aim toward rescinding or resizing some of them - part of a broader push to reopen areas to drilling, mining and other development. The move comes as Trump seeks to reverse a slew of environmental protections ushered in by former President Barack Obama that he said were hobbling economic growth - an agenda that is cheering industry but enraging conservationists. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told reporters on Tuesday Trump's executive order would require him to conduct the review of around 30 national monuments and recommend which designations should be lifted or resized over the coming months. He said he would seek feedback from Congressional delegations, governors and local stakeholders before making his recommendations. "I am not going to predispose what the outcome is going to be," Zinke said. Rescinding or altering a national monument designation would be new ground for the government, he said. "It is untested, as you know, whether the president can do that," Zinke said. The monuments covered by the review will range from the Grand Staircase in Utah created by President Bill Clinton in 1996 to the Bears Ears monuments created by President Barack Obama in December 2016 in the same state, covering millions of acres of land overlying minerals, oil and gas."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-monuments-idUSKBN17S03N?il=0

--- "U.S. President Donald Trump will not agree to a Democratic demand that subsidies for Obamacare be included in a must-pass spending bill in Congress, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said on Tuesday. Asked in an interview on CNN if Trump would back putting the Obamacare payments in the legislation to the keep the government open past Friday, Mulvaney said: "No." He said the White House had offered to include the Obamacare subsidies if Democrats agreed to funding for a wall on the border with Mexico. "We made it very clear early on that yeah, OK if you want to talk about those payments to the insurance companies, we'll trade you a dollar for dollar on bricks and mortar for the wall, but they said no to that and we agreed to put that off for another day ...," he said."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-budget-obamacare-idUSKBN17S05Z?il=0

--- "Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday said the top U.S. telecommunications regulator will launch a "comprehensive review" of regulations that restrict consolidation among media companies, potentially opening the door to a new wave of deals among broadcasters and newspapers. At a speech to broadcasters in Las Vegas, the FCC chief said the commission will vote on May 18 to start the review. He noted that close to 1,000 pages of media regulations are on the books. He vowed to "aggressively" modernize the FCC’s rules and "cut unnecessary red tape and give broadcasters more flexibility." He said the review will include revising the government's' media ownership rules, "including one dating back to 1975," adding that the review will cover rules pertaining to traditional broadcasters, newspapers and cable and satellite carriers. Pai said the ownership review will be a "much more fact-based discussion." Revising or ending a cross-ownership ban could be a big win for newspaper companies and broadcasters. Many Democrats strongly oppose relaxing the rules, saying it would lead to major companies controlling a growing number of media outlets."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fcc-media-idUSKBN17R2W7?il=0

--- "U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Tuesday that trade disputes with Canada over lumber and dairy products illustrate a need to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. Asked at a White House news briefing if he thought the disputes showed a need to rework NAFTA, he said, "I think it does because ... if NAFTA were functioning properly, you wouldn't be having these kinds of ... very unfortunate developments back-to-back, so in that sense it shows that NAFTA has not worked as well as it should."Ross said imposition of anti-subsidy duties on Canadian softwood lumber imports announced on Monday would raise the costs of new U.S. houses by a small amount."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-canada-trade-ross-idUSKBN17R2J0?il=0

--- "The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue as secretary of agriculture, leaving all but one of President Donald Trump's Cabinet positions filled. Lawmakers voted 87 to 11 in favor of Perdue, who takes office as the agricultural community grapples with the key issues of trade and immigration. The nomination earlier passed the Senate Agriculture Committee with only one vote in opposition, although some Midwestern senators raised concerns that Perdue was not from a major agricultural production stay. Trump nominated Perdue, 70, in January but progress on his confirmation was slow, with media reports suggesting that undoing his various business entanglements caused delays in the ethics filings. Trade is seen as critical to reviving a moribund farm economy, where incomes have been falling with lower grain prices. Farm incomes in 2016 are expected to have hit their lowest levels since 2009." Perdue did not file his disclosure forms until mid-March, and the Senate panel backed him later that month."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-perdue-idUSKBN17Q2BS?il=0

--- "The United States on Tuesday expressed "deep concern" over Turkish air strikes against Kurdish fighters in Syria and Iraq and said they were not authorized by the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.The raids in Iraq's Sinjar region and northeast Syria killed at least 20 in a campaign against groups linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against Turkey for Kurdish autonomy. Turkey is part of the U.S.-led military coalition fighting militants in Syria."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-usa-idUSKBN17R2H2?il=0