#and that would have a higher success rate than any other harassment campaign

[catgirltoes]

Actually I think the next Tumblr Mass Harassment Campaign should be against people from Ontario. I have a blocklist ready.

[dyoung312portfolio]

Writing Sample 1

Is Television still Sexist?

In a world where working women with full time jobs still earn only 77% of what their male counterparts make, we are still a long time away from true equality between sexes. We are in a current TV climate where activist movements like “#MeToo” and The Women’s March exist and have worked to progress change. Often times art imitates life. Does the gap between men and women still exist today in television?

Some believe it still exists on the screen. An article from cracked.com written by Nathan Murphy references the portrayal of women, their issues, their livelihoods and their natural processes as sexism that still exists on television. He states that, “Hollywood prides itself on being progressive. It's always ready to hand out awards to shows and movies that address once-taboo topics like transgender-ism and gay rights. But when it comes to female sexuality, TV is still bizarrely old-fashioned. Female characters seem far more likely to be brutally raped than to initiate and enjoy casual sex ... as if we're more comfortable with the former.”

Murphy’s point is accurate, while there are casual sensual scenes in some shows it is more likely that a woman’s sexuality is only shown when she is won by the male counterpart or initiated in sexual violence. The idea that it is normal for women to casually enjoy or initiate sex is a foreign concept to many writers as they compose from the male perspective.

Women are equally just as hormonally driven as men are and they should have a say in how their sexuality is portrayed on television.

Another way people believe that sexism still exists on tv screens is in advertising. According to an article by the Atlantic one form of sexism that is still prominent in many ads is Boomerang sexism.

Boomerang sexism is when men fight against emasculation and domestication as if it is processes that are not meant for them. Some examples of boomerang sexism are campaigns that mock men for not acting manly enough or campaigns that use or degrade women to persuade men into action.

Ads that appeal to the male masculinity only display the lack of equal respect that women still fight for. The activist group, “#WomenNotObjects” highlight the many ways companies use the female body as a way to promote their products.

Whether that is using cleavage to sell a burger or beautiful women to sell body spray, the portrayal of women as objects or trophies to be won still point out the sexism of ads ran on television.

According to their official website #WomenNotObjects found that, objectifying women had a majorly negative effect on their consumer’s intent to purchase a product. They also found that objectification also has a “massively negative impact,” on brand reputation. With these findings one can make the case that ads that objectify women do more harm to a company than good.

While the company may reach or gain some specific audiences that fall for the oversexualization of women in ads, they are more likely to lose a lot more of their audience by doing so.

One could also argue that by having women on their shows and ads in a respectful manner could actually benefit a tv show or company. Last year, shows where women held a main role or strong lead dominated in television awards and nominations. Shows like “Big Little Lies” which held four equally strong female leads or “The Handmaids Tale,” which has a strong female lead each won five Emmy’s last year and had major accomplishments in viewership.

There a great number of women nowadays who, due to the work of trailblazing actresses who came before them, hold acting jobs that were only meant for men back in the day and they are excelling at them. By giving women the opportunity to display their talents in television and not just exploiting their looks for sales or viewership you can actually be successful.

Some may argue against sexism saying that women have already broken the barrier that exists between them and men because of the opportunity and acclaim that some women in tv have already received.

Charlize Theron had something to say about this to Variety Magazine in which she stated, “I am ashamed I'm part of an industry that has never allowed a woman to work with a budget higher than what the budget has been on Wonder Woman". The actress disregarded the way the "cave man like" industry does not capitalize on the successes of female driven work.”

One actress believes that sexism doesn’t exist at all in Hollywood and denied the need for feminism in the industry. Marion Cottillard, a French actress, stated in an interview with Porter Magazine that, “Film-making is not about gender. You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men. For me it doesn't create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I don't qualify myself as a feminist. We need to fight for women's rights, but I don't want to separate women from men. We're separated already because we're not made the same and it's the difference that creates this energy in creation and love." This was according to an article from Roganproductions.com

What Cottillard didn’t realize was that the separation had already existed between men and women when men decided to use their female counterparts on television in the way that they do. From being underpaid to being oversexualized women in the media face many obstacles when trying to break into a industry that was not meant for them.

The fact that women have even broken into the overly male dominated television industry is a testament to all the women who faced the brunt of sexism back before activist movements ever existed.

In some tv industries the female presence has grown even stronger and added a different voice to issues that affect us all as people. Women who work in news rooms are now more prevalent than ever. This was especially apparent during the election run two years ago.

According to an article from Variety.com, “The prevalence of female journalists on the campaign trail didn’t happen overnight — it reflects the steady progress of women taking on beats that had been previously reserved for men, from the White House and Congress to the Pentagon and the Supreme Court to the front lines of global conflicts.”

They also went on to state that, “As much as news pros sought to take a gender-blind approach to covering the campaign, questions about gender bias among voters, sexual harassment, and Donald Trump’s treatment of women were unavoidable.”

The 2016 Presidential campaign which opened so many doors for Women journalists and broadcasters also was hard to endure for the many women that covered it. So even when they received an opportunity the women who work in these highly coveted jobs, still had to overcome sexism.

These women were brave enough to face the challenge and some did with flying colors. Rachel Maddow, a CSNBC correspondent with her own show openly criticized the President and other officials for their offensive or sexist remarks or actions that would happen during the news cycle. This in turn, caused Maddow’s ratings to soar beating out her male FOX counterpart Bill O’Reilly in ratings during that time period.

There are some women who have found success in the industry and have found a way to reflect truly what the female perspective is. There are also still women who suffer from not being able to be compensated as much as their male counterpart for the same amount of work or who don’t receive jobs because of males in positions of power who are the gatekeepers of the industry.

So, while art imitates life, there is still much work to be done in the art of television and the reality of life to end the existence of sexism. The ways to do that are to not oversexualize women to sell products or use them or degrade them in any manner. Another way is to provide them equal pay so that they receive as much as the man next to them. Lastly the best way to get rid of sexism in television is to communicate with women on better ways to provide opportunity for their perspective.

By accomplishing those things, only then will you get a foot in the door of making the world a truly equal place.

Sources:

1.     Thompson, D. (2011, November 01). Are TV Ads Getting More Sexist? Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/are-tv-ads-getting-more-sexist/247545/

2.     By. (n.d.). 5 Weird Ways You Didn't Realize TV Is Sexist. Retrieved from http://www.cracked.com/article_23090_the-5-weirdest-ways-tv-still-crazy-sexist.html

3.     Objects, W. N. (2017, October 28). Objectification PDF page. Retrieved from http://womennotobjects.com/new-page-1

4.     Littleton, C. (2017, April 20). Women Surge to Top of TV News in Face of Sexism. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2017/tv/features/women-in-tv-news-business-1202032827/

5.     Wonder Woman: Is Sexism Still Present In Film and TV? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.roganproductions.net/index.php/blog/wonder-woman-is-sexism-still-present-in-film-and-tv

6.     Team, M. (2018, November 21). 21 Facts About Gender Inequality You Need To Know Now. Retrieved from https://www.makers.com/blog/21-facts-you-never-knew-about-international-gender-inequality

[cvolx]

Paul Ferns, Best SEO Expert in Karachi, Pakistan

I want you, to take a good look at the terms below and tell me what do you see. SEO Karachi, SEO Pakistan, SEO services in Karachi, SEO agency Karachi, SEO agency in Karachi, best SEO company in Karachi, best SEO company in Pakistan, top SEO companies in Pakistan. Right, you guessed it. SEO is the acronym that stands out the most in addition to other words connected to it. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and is one of the most important processes for a website’s or businesses’ success and failure. What you have read above, are keywords that people type on Google, in order to discover what they’re looking for. And as I’m crazy about SEO and consider my name out there among other search engine optimization experts, I have decided to use similar keywords to explain where I’m getting at and what I’m trying to tell you. A little bit about me I’m writing (yea ok, typing, whatever), after a really long time. I used to be a web content writer once upon a time and that is how my digital “guru” career actually took off. I started way back in early 2015. I had recently resigned from my job in Dubai, and came back to Pakistan in December 2014. One fine lady, who is now also a long time friend gave me a chance at writing. I had read her blog and added her on FB (that was not the time when sending a friend request was considered harassment 😄). We chatted a few weeks and she found my English up to the mark for writing web content. I worked the first week for free and she corrected my tone and structure a few times. After that, she started paying me Rs. 0.5 per word. My happiness knew no bounds when I got my first deposit from her. I had actually made money off the internet. Wow! After that, it was an uphill battle trying to find work and marketing my writing skill. While being a writer I kept coming across terms like SEO, PPC, HTML, WordPress, hosting, content etc. Search engine optimization was booming here and I wanted to become an SEO expert in Karachi. I decided to start exploring these other skills as well. By the end of 2015, my writing rate increased to Rs. 1.0 per word and I was well into my journey of learning about SEO, digital marketing and web development. I also signed up to Fiverr and went to a level one seller in a few months. SEO was also one of my gigs offered in addition to content writing but I was still far from being an SEO expert in Pakistan. By the end of 2016, I had increased my content writing rates to Rs. 2 per word and had also landed a few web development projects. In the start of 2017 I actually registered my freelance digital agency as I wanted to offer the best SEO services in Pakistan and thought that I would appear more professional, and I was right. I regularly get work from clients in Dubai, US, UK, and Pakistan. Last year, one of Karachi's leading agencies signed me up as a sub-contractor, but this was for translation projects and not because I was running an upcoming SEO company in Karachi, in case you’re thinking that. By the end of 2018, my writing rates went up to Rs. 5 per word and I have been getting quality work this way. As of 2019, I have only been managing the work with my Canadian partner a team of 5 freelancers and we work with SEO, web development, graphics design, and social media management. I figure there comes a time when you think you can stop doing the actual work and manage things and this brings a great movie quote to mind (can’t remember the movie now). "The art of good business is being a good middleman." Being an SEO consultant in Pakistan, has its perks and if you are an seo service provider company in Karachi, even better. Karachi is a sprawling metropolis, housing around 200 million people from all over the country and all walks of life. Why the SEO craze? SEO solutions are the way forward for the digital world. Any brick or mortar establishment which aims to make their presence known online will have to settle for a great SEO campaign. If you happen to be a startup or a small scale business in Pakistan, it is likely that you will invest in expert seo services being offered by the best seo company in Pakistan. Mind you, top notch SEO charges in Pakistan are high and it is wise to be really sure before opting for SEO. SEO helps your business website rank higher in search results thereby enabling you to bring in more traffic and ultimately drive more conversions. Whether you are an SEO expert in usa or offer the best SEO services in UAE or you’re the best SEO agency in Pakistan, one thing is certain. You are optimizing your customers’ businesses so they get more traffic to their sites and hence, convert more leads into sales. SEO involves technical SEO where onsite SEO and offsite SEO, both matters equally. Onsite deals with how user-friendly is your website or webpage to the search engine. Are the keywords in order? Is the alt-text in the image proper? Is the content length desirable etc.? Offsite SEO steps even further, by enabling you to market that webpage, blog or even your overall brand on noticeable forums, platforms, social media and you name it! At CVOLX, one of the top seo companies in Pakistan, , we make sure we provide you with the best in best SEO in Pakistan. We can safely say, you will not find any better digital marketing services than our’s, as we are the best locally and have left our footprint globally as well. We will strategize your SEO campaign based on the size of your business as well the project or product hand because every brand’s need varies. We know that, and we strive hard to tailor our planning and execution according to your needs. CVOLX is professional SEO company in Pakistan, and has been in the business for over a decade now. In that time, we have learned by doing, our team has expanded, and our services have multiplied. Speaking of services let us fill you in on a little about our services that we offer you - our clients. Why is search engine optimization (SEO) SEO important? Search engine optimization is the way forward as everything today is becoming digital. In this day and age where every brick and mortar establishment is seeking to maintain their presence online, expert SEO services and techniques can come in real handy. The idea is to rank your business in the top 5 of any search engine results page aka (SERP). For that to happen, your website or webpage must appear at top position on (mainly) Google and Bing. At CVOLX, we help you with technical SEO practices so that search engines crawl your website effortlessly and present it to your target customers. Onsite SEO and offsite SEO are both imperative to rankings. The former will make your website search engine friendly, and the latter focuses on promotional activities to further push your business website in the online sphere. How can CVOLX SEO Services company help? SEO is not a cakewalk. It requires careful planning and timing for a campaign to be successful. Any brand or company that relies on SEO cannot simply expect results overnight. CVOLX is one of the top search engine optimization firms for small and large companies, and is well versed in the domain of ranking in Google and related services. Our SEO agency services explained SEO is not only concerned with managing your brand’s presence organically in an online world rather it is a bundle of services which supports one another. Let us take detailed look at some of these aspects. Social media The importance of social media cannot be denied. Today Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ among other social media networks are helping brands multiply their revenues and enhance user engagement. Moreover, when you engage socially with your desired audience, you are embedding an element of trust in their hearts and minds. Say Twitter, replying to a tweet from an annoyed customer can do wonders for your brand in addition to ranking organically. Email (marketing) Email is another domain. When the visitors sign up on your website, it is your duty to offer them something valuable. Asking for their email simply and not providing them anything useful is rude. That is where email marketing steps in. when a user registers on your website, in order to drive conversion, offer him a free ebook pertaining to your niche or a newsletter filling him on the latest developments in the industry. This way he does not feel left out and eventually tries out what you have to offer. Content (marketing) At every point in time, you will notice that good content is a must. No matter which channel you employ, be it social media or email, well crafted content will only bring you results. In other words, good copy is what will make your endeavours worthwhile. This can be understood in the way that when you read a tweet or view an instagram post, you notice how engaging the text is or what does the caption state beneath it, that captures your attention. This is equally true for Facebook posts as well as LinkedIn. Brands and influencers alike, leverage content to the maximum to gain followers and customers or else, a user will not bother. Web/ Website design and development CVOLX’s SEO services have made sure that your business’s online presence is covered end-to-end. And web design is at the helm of your brand management. A good web design ensures that your user stays on your website and interacts with the website. It is the web design which is responsible for seamless navigation, menus placement, page load time and speed, in addition to colors, font sizes and overall features of your website. If all these elements are properly addressed, you can expect a winning combination of website design and SEO. Paid search or PPC Just like SEO, there is paid search. As the name implies, you have to pay make your presence noticeable. While SEO takes time for your landing pages, blogs and website to rank, with paid search or pay-per click advertising you can rank these instantly. All you have to do is bid on your preferred industry keywords and the rest will be taken care of by us at our SEO service company, CVOLX. However, paid search is not for everybody especially if you are a startup or a small scale business. Medium and large business have the budgets and they can even take a hit if paid search fails or decent results fail to materialize. For any other business, it could mean a hefty hit out of their budgets. Ecommerce If your entity specializes in ecommerce, then you are in luck. At CVOLX SEO Services company, we also employ CRM platforms such as WooCommerce, Magento and Shopify to enable our clients to get the best in ecommerce website. Coupled with our prowess in SEO, your business will take off in the least possible time! So the above was a bit about what services we offer in addition to best local SEO services in Karachi for our clients. Some info on our digital marketing team Our team is comprised of seasoned digital marketers that involves content producers, social media marketers, paid search managers, SEO experts, web developers, graphic designers and animators. Rest assured, our team is what any best SEO company of the world would work with and we can confidently say that CVOLX is among the top 10 seo firms in Pakistan. The individuals pack years of experience and can handle any task assigned by our client professionally and will execute them to perfection! What do we charge? Pricing is the key element that any client prefers to go in detail. We have designed packages that will suit your needs and business size. You can have our SEO services coupled with any of our other services mentioned above. That was a little something about me and my journey to be one of the agency’s offering the best search engine optimization in Pakistan. That being said, patience and perseverance pay off in the long run. The best thing anyone can do to be successful is to always consider themselves students and keep learning while staying humble. In my time of being connected to the online field over 4 years, I have seen many fake ass gurus in all fields and they get caught sooner or later. I will also write in another article about how I was scammed by one of the top sites of the world offering one of the best SEO tools names Xrumer. Written on my phone, might edit this later. Thank you for reading. Cheers! Read the full article

[melvinfellerstuff]

Melvin Feller Discusses How You Can Become a Savvy Supporter of Your Favorite Charity

Melvin Feller Discusses How You Can Become a Savvy Supporter of Your Favorite Charity

Melvin Feller Business Group in Burkburnett Ministries and Dallas Texas and Lawton Oklahoma. Our mission is to call and equip a generation of Christian entrepreneurs to do business as ministry. We provide workshops and resources that help companies discover how to do business God’s way and provide a positive outreach as the director. When the heart of a business is service rather than self it can be transformed into a fruitful business ministry earning a profit and being of service to the community and their customers.  Melvin Feller is currently pursuing another graduate degree in business organizations.

 Be Proactive In Your Giving

 Smart givers generally do not give reactively in a knee-jerk reaction. They do not respond to the first organization that appeals for help. They take the time to identify which causes are most important to them and their families. In addition, they are specific about the change they want to affect. For example, they do not just support generic cancer charities, but instead have targeted outcome goals for their giving, such as providing mammograms to at-risk women in their community.

 Hang Up The Phone and Eliminate The Intermediary

  Informed donors recognize that for-profit fundraisers, those primarily used in charitable telemarketing campaigns, keep 25 to 95 cents of every dollar they collect. These donors never give out their personal information - like credit card accounts, social security numbers - over the phone. If they like what they hear in the pitch, they will hang up, investigate the charity on-line and send their contribution directly to the charity, thereby cutting out the intermediary and ensuring 100% of their donation reaches the charity.

  Be Careful Of Sound-Alike Names

 Uninformed donors are easily confused by charities that have strikingly similar names to others. How many of us could tell the difference between an appeal from the Children's Charity Fund and the Children's Defense Fund? Their names sound the same, but their performances are vastly different. Would you be surprised to learn that the Children's Charity Fund is a 0-star charity while the Children's Defense Fund is a 4-star charity? Informed donors take the time to uncover the difference.

 Confirm 501(c) (3) Status

 Wise donors do not drop money into canisters at the checkout counter or hand over cash to solicitors outside the supermarket. Situations like these are irresistible to defraud artists who wish to take advantage of your goodwill. If for no other reason than they want to take the tax deduction, smart givers only support groups granted tax-exempt status under section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

 Check The Charity's Commitment To Donor's Rights

  Giving to charity should not be a one-sided relationship. It should work more like a partnership. Smart donors seek out charities that want partners and not merely donors by checking if the charity has a donor privacy policy whereby the organization promises to never sell or trade the donor's contact information. Furthermore, smart donors know that in the majority of cases the onus is on the donor to 'opt-out' of having their personal information shared with other entities. To save you time, our financial ratings include an assessment of each charity's commitment to donor's rights.

  Obtain Copies Of Its Financial Records

 Savvy donors know that the financial health of a charity is a strong indicator of the charity's programmatic performance. They know that the most efficient charities spend at least 75% of their budget on their programs and services and less than 25% on fundraising and administrative fees. They understand that a charity's ability to sustain its programs over time is just as important as its short-term day-to-day spending practices. Therefore, savvy donors also seek out charities that are able to grow their revenue at least at the rate of inflation, that continue to invest in their programs and that have some money saved for a rainy day. However, when considering groups, savvy donors ask the charity for copies of its three most recently Forms 990. Not only can the donor examine the charity's finances, but also the charity's willingness to send the documents is a good way to assess its commitment to transparency.

 Review Executive Compensation

 Sophisticated donors realize that charities need to pay their top leaders a competitive salary in order to attract and retain the kind of talent needed to run a multi-million dollar organization and produce results. However, they also do not just take the CEO's compensation at face value; they benchmark it against similar-sized organizations engaged in similar work and located in the same region of the country.  In general, salaries tend to be higher in the northeast and at arts and education charities. Sophisticated donors also put the CEO's salary into context by examining the overall performance of the organization. They know it is better to contribute to a  charity with a well-paid CEO that is meeting its goals than to support a charity with an underpaid CEO that fails to deliver on its promises.

Start A Dialogue To Investigate Its Programmatic Results

 Although it takes some effort on their part to assess a charity's programmatic impact, donors who are committed to  advancing real change believe that it is worth their time. Before they contribute, they talk with the charity to learn about its accomplishments, goals and challenges. These donors are prepared to walk away from any charity that is unable or unwilling to participate in this type of conversation.

 Concentrate Your Giving

 When it comes to financial investments, diversification is the key to reducing risk. The opposite is true for philanthropic investments. If you have really taken the time to identify a well-run charity that is engaged in a cause that you are passionate about, you should then feel confident in giving it a donation. Spreading your money among multiple organizations not only results in your mail box filling up with more appeals, it also diminishes the possibility of any of those groups bringing about substantive change as each charity is wasting a large percentage of your gift on fundraising and overhead expenses.

 Share Your Intentions And Make A Long-Term Commitment

  Smart donors support their favorite charities for the long haul. Again, they see themselves as a partner in the charity's efforts to bring about change. They know that only with long-term, committed supporters can a charity be successful. In addition, they do not hesitate to tell the charity of their giving plans so that the organization knows it can rely on the donor and the charity does not have to waste resources and harass the donor by sending numerous solicitations.

 Melvin Feller Business Consultants Ministries Group in Texas and Oklahoma. Melvin Feller founded Melvin Feller Business Consultants Group and Burkburnett Ministries in the 1970s to help individuals and organizations achieve their specific Victory. Victory as defined by the individual or organization are achieving strategic objectives, exceeding goals, getting results or desired outcomes and a positive outreach with grace and as a ministries. He has extensive experience assisting businesses achieve top and bottom line results. He has broad practical experience creating WINNERS in many organizations and industries. He has hands-on experience in executive leadership, operations, logistics, sales, program management, organizational development, training, and customer service. He has coached teams to achieve results in strategic planning, business development, organizational design, sales, and customer response and business process improvement. He has prepared and presented many workshops nationally and internationally.

[udaas93]

Zayn, the target of true bigotry

Social media manager responsible for escalating this mess onto his twitter but regardless, he does not deserve to receive more racialized abuse, death threats, slurs, dehumanization, or have people sick enough to actually mock him over being an actual victim of bigotry/racism/Islamophobia. People are actually throwing the Muslim ban and actual real racism he has to deal with, in his face. People are harassing him over something problematic Gigi did while enabling the level of extremist abuse that he has been targeted with for years. People can’t distinguish problematic according to sjw extremist standards versus actual racism, prejudice, and hate crimes when it comes to Zayn or anybody linked to his brand. This groupthink lynch mob is not filled with ‘educators’ but bullies and the most ignorant and inhumane sheep hiding behind so-called cards/facades so they can feel entitled in their hate/bullying bandwagon. You can’t possibly compare the minor trangression that you are harassing Zayn with, due to Gigi’s problematic mistake to, the level of evil he has to deal with.

Muslims are dying at a higher rate than ever before. Hate crimes are at an all-time high. Mosques keep being burned down or vandalized. The president of the United States has placed bans and is enabling persecution to the extreme yet these bastards have the audacity to spread the sickest kind of hatred over a minute sjw trangression that is being blown out of proportion and feeding the media/smear campaign/his enemies with the ammunition they need to destroy him! His management and their deal knew exactly how to feed the monsters in order to destroy him to prop up their end of the bargain with several nasty people (who this site wrongly worships). He was being more successful than certain people and his great comeback had to be sabotaged yet again due to the deal his two-faced management has. These assholes who jumped on the bandwagon do not know anything about his circumstances nor do they actually care about the truth either.  You know perfectly well if it was somebody in 1D or any other celeb, this ‘incident’ would not be receiving this kind of response and there would be no firestorm of this nature.

The irony of these fake ‘wokes’ sending Zayn death threats, racist attacks,  islamophobic slurs, nasty insults, mocking him over being a victim of bigotry, and the most vile bullying remarks ( by using Gigi’s dumb mistake of imitating the buddha cookie which she did initially with no malicious intention) as an excuse.

What is even sadder and sicker is that 90% of what people demonize and wrongly condemn Zayn over, he is not directly responsible for. You have no idea about the management trap he is in and the smear campaign he has to deal with. 

[thefeministherald]

1. There Are Organizations That Will Help You Run For Office

Ali: You, yes, specifically you. A lot of representatives were there from those organizations that day. Aisha Moody-Mills of the Victory Fund, who I’ve seen before at Lesbians Who Tech, pointed out that gay candidates actually have a higher success rate than their straight counterparts. Perhaps it’s because they’ve thought and rethought and strategized before jumping in.

She acknowledges that women, the LGBT community and people of color endure a different level of scrutiny when running for public office, but that it shouldn’t stop you if you believe strongly in democracy and you think you can make a difference. She also said representation matters at every level of government, which is an opinion I share. So don’t forget your local positions. And check out the Victory Fund to find ways to get involved, donate or get some campaign training.

Raquel: Absolutely, local positions. We can rebuild this into what we want to see from the ground up. Running for office seems scary! But it’s not any scarier than trying to get anything done: what you need is knowledge, networks, and planning. It’s also a vital and powerful way to be involved in your own community, where you’re best suited to represent your community’s needs just by nature of being a part of it.

And remember: if tons and tons of mediocre white men stumble their way into it, you can too.

2. Don’t Wait to Feel Brave, Don’t See Losing as Failure

Ali: This is something I struggle with. I often wait until I feel ready to do something, whether it’s write my book or apply to graduate school or anything in my professional life ever. I am seriously considering running for local office in the near future, and I keep coming up with reasons not to do it. My internet presence is one of those reasons. My fear of failure is another. But as Christine Quinn said, “Don’t wait to feel courageous to run because it’s never going to happen.”

She also reframed failure a little—it’s not necessarily about winning, it’s about running. The simple act of your campaign could push an issue to the forefront that you care about. You can start a conversation that wasn’t happening. Sandra Fluke of Emerge California and reproductive justice advocacy fame assured us, “You’ll get called names and it doesn’t matter that much.” The bravery doesn’t matter, the backlash doesn’t matter. What matters is the service, the issue you care about.

Raq: This was huge for me as well, and I think it applies across the board. I’ve been a perfectionist my entire life, and because of that I’ve kept from doing things out of fear that I wouldn’t do them well. But the reality is, the only way to do something well is to do it really badly a lot first. If you don’t win the spot in your first run for office, you still learned a ton about how to navigate your local government, how to run a campaign, how to build networks. You’ll get to talk to people who care deeply about the same things you do, and refine your arguments against the people who want to stop you.

And when I say this applies across the board, I also want to say that this is more a statement about going for the things that matter to you and learning from whatever happens, whether that’s volunteering, activism, applying for a job that scares you. Your queer learning, and queer success—whatever that looks like—is also queer resistance.

3. Pay Attention to Your State

Ali: It wasn’t just one person that talked about this. It came up over and over and over again. We’re all paying attention to the federal government and that’s good. We can’t look away right now. But as the current administration begins to dismantle our federal government, we need to be reliant on our state policies and politicians. States will lead the country as we repair after this administration—if a single state can figure out how to implement a beneficial policy, it might trickle up, so to speak.

That’s what happened with Massachusetts and health care. Plus if we’re strengthening our politicians at a state level, we groom the future. Right now, the Democratic Party has been focusing so much on the national stage that there’s a dearth of new, young political talent. Focusing at a state level can change that.

Raq: +1000 Ali! Working at the state level will also help you cut your teeth on campaigning or activism or whatever you’re working at, figuring out the most successful ways of achieving impact on the national level without biting off more than you can chew.

As a Texan, I’ve had to learn how to fight a losing battle—battle after battle—and do it because it’s vitally important. (Thanks to my friend Hannah Smothers for saying this more eloquently here). You learn a lot from that, and it will help build you and your community up for winning the war.

4. Admit That The Other Side Is Really Good At This

Ali: This is directly from Michael Moore and I’m already starting to see this admission in my spaces. The very presence of the Indivisible Guide, which breaks down Tea Party organizational tactics for use by the Herbal Tea Party (us), is an admission that they’re winning for a reason. Now, of course, some of that reason is harassment and gerrymandering. We will not use those tactics. Nor will we farm our youth for free labor at the expense of their education. But I do often see a dismissal of the other side’s strategy as well as their bigotry and poor policy proposals.

We can both think that they’re pushing policy rooted in hatred, xenophobia and an economic fantasy land AND also learn from them and engage with them on their terms. Basically what we’ve got going on right now is the Democrats and Republicans made an agreement to sit down in a house and play a board game. The Republicans got tired of it and set fire to the house; the Democrats are still trying to play the board game while the walls burn around them. We need to look at what they’re doing and engage with it.

Raq: Yes. Advertisers know how to target people down to their chocolate preferences, and the other side used that to their advantage. Yes, we hold ourselves to a higher ethical standard, but we should also be using these technologies and techniques to mobilize, change minds, and help our people.

Also, I am so ready to annoy the hell out of every single senator and representative and alt-right leader I can get my hands on. Honestly, this took a lot of the pressure off of calling, showing up, etc.—I don’t have to worry anymore about making them like me, or about building such an eloquent, rational statement that everyone immediately changes their minds. There are places for that (like publishing on Autostraddle), but that’s not what works here! What works here is being the squeakiest wheel, and I am going to shout louder, longer, harder, and more irritatingly than every racist and homophobe and asshole in the state.

5. Use Humor

Ali: This is another one from Michael Moore, but a lot of the actors and writers echoed it as well. This administration is particularly needled by humor. We’ve seen the simple act of Melissa McCarthy portraying Sean Spicer throw the administration into a small tailspin. It’s so difficult to find the funny right now, but we gotta. That’s how horrid ideologies are fought. It’s the poets and the satirists.

Raq: I’ve been saying for awhile that satire has lost its bite for me—everything they could say has been out-absurded by the reality. But now it’s time to take that on and do it better. It’s time to take that back. Humor is so powerful. It can completely disarm a dangerous situation; it can humanize people you hadn’t thought of. It has the power to make people pause, and can deliver information, even criticism, to people and places that would never otherwise listen. There’s a reason the best courts had jesters, and the best jesters were the ones that could change a tyrannical king’s mind through a joke.

A perfect example of using humor to humanize while rebuking.

Another great point, made by Michael Moore: Trump hates being made fun of. His skin is so thin, he is distracted by almost any unfavorable portrayal. By the numbers at the inauguration. By SNL skits. By The Apprentice’s ratings. He’s so desperate to be popular, to be liked. Let’s show him just how much he isn’t, and then get shit done while he’s whining about it on Twitter.

6. Be Voracious In Your Media Consumption

Ali: Read everything from everywhere. Watch things you might not normally. Almost everyone said to be diverse and aggressive with your art, journalism and story experiences. Again, this isn’t something only one person said. But there was a media panel, and everyone agreed: reading and listening to experiences that are not you own makes you smarter and more empathetic. If you’re going to exist in the time of Trump, those are two things that we need from everyone. It’s something we especially need of those who are running for office.

Raq: I’ll be honest with y’all: I’m finding this hard right now. I’ve just about shut my media consumption down completely. But soon the time to take care of myself will end, and the time to reemerge and be vigilant will come.

Reading local papers is vital to get a truer read of a place: one woman on the media panel mentioned how the only person in her circles who wasn’t flabbergasted by Clinton’s loss was a woman reporting locally on the ground in Pennsylvania.

Reading novels and essays from the people who have done this before: I recently saw the film I Am Not Your Negro, and it made me want to read everything James Baldwin’s written.

Reading poetry, fiction, comics: fill your heart with a diversity of stories, and strengthen yourself with beauty.

7. Set Our Sights on the Hyde Amendment

Ali: We were privileged to close the day with a conversation between Ashley Judd and Representative Lee from Oakland. Lee did not attend the inauguration and chose to spend the day with us instead. One very astute woman asked, we’ve got all these people, you showed up for us, what’s one thing we can do to show up for you. And Representative Lee responded by saying she’s had the Hyde Amendment in her sights for years.

The Hyde Amendment, if you don’t know, is a legislative provision that basically bars federal funding for use in abortion, except to save the life of a woman or if the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Given the administration just reinstated the global gag rule, we might not get very far on this. But Representative Lee asked, and we should try. We should add it to our list. We should see where our own Representatives stand on it. Just because it doesn’t seem possible right now doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give it a try. First off, one never knows. Second off, supposing we have another Presidential election and this isn’t the start of a coup, this won’t last forever. We need to think short term and long term. The Hyde Amendment has got to go.

Raq: Yes, the Hyde Amendment has got to go. There’s so much going on, that it can have the effect of diverting and distracting our energies. Before we know it, things are put in place that take years to change back. Right now, everything feels like a lot of defensive parries, but we also need to be on the offense for what we need, want, and deserve.

8. Children Want to Help; Let’s Help Them

Ali: A girl, about fifth grade I’d guess, stood up and asked a question. What can us kids do, she asked, with curfews and school and limited resources. I didn’t like everyone’s response. They seemed to forget that children are really powerful. The panel in question seemed to settle on “pick your issue and get your school to make a resolution.” But honestly, children can call their representatives too, with a nice little tag line of “I will be able to vote in x number of years.”

A few of us found her after, to give our own answers. I gave her one. I told her to get really good at writing. You’d think, I said, that everyone can do it. But they can’t. A lot of people are really bad at it, actually. And being able to structure your ideas and explain them to other people, to be persuasive, is a really valuable skill when other people have more power than you. So practice writing every day, I said. Do the other things that everyone else advised, but become a good writer as well.

It was a good reminder. Our children aren’t only watching, like the campaign ads said. They’re forming their own opinions and ready to fight. And they should be encouraged, helped wherever we can. I often forget how much children pick up given that I don’t have any of my own. But time makes you bolder, children get older, etc. etc. These kids will be running the show in a decade. Let’s help them get started now.

Raq: Ali, I love that. If I start thinking about some of the most eloquent and badass people affecting culture right now, I think: Teen Vogue. Rookie Magazine. Malala Yousafzai got the Nobel prize before she’d have been able to vote.

Our resistance right now is two-fold: change the insides, and build structures of power and support on the outside. Children have voices that will be privileged by those on the inside, and they are already used to figuring out the world and making it work for themselves outside of the structures they can’t be in (yet). I think there’s something we can learn from them, too.

[inkariasacademyworld]

Harassment Of Women At Workplace

Background

The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) has been making continuous efforts to mainstream the implementation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013.

All ministries and departments under central government have to constitute Internal Complaints Committee. Complaints can be filed under the Act directly with the ministry through the SHE-Box.

​

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013:

It seeks to protect women from sexual harassment at their place of work. The Act defines sexual harassment at the workplace and creates a mechanism for redressal of complaints.

The definition of “aggrieved woman,” who will get protection under the Act, is extremely wide to cover all women, irrespective of their age or employment status and whether in the organized or unorganized sectors, public or private, and covers clients, customers and domestic workers as well.

The Act covers concepts of quid pro quo harassment and hostile work environment as forms of sexual harassment if they occur in connection with an act or behaviour of sexual harassment.

An internal complaints committee (ICC) is mandatory in every private or public organisation that has 10 or more employees.

The Internal Complaints Committee has been given powers of a civil court for summoning, discovery and production of documents etc.

Each Internal Committee requires membership from an NGO or association committed to the cause of women.

A ‘Local Complaints Committee’ is required to be constituted in every district. An additional ‘Local Complaints Committee’ shall also be constituted at the block level to address complaints in situations where the complainant does not have recourse to an Internal Complaints Committee or where the complaint is against the employer himself.

It also provides safeguards against false or malicious charges.

​

Criticism of the Act

The internal committee formed under this act has the power to decide a monetary fine which must be paid by the perpetrator, depending on their income and financial stability. This is a kind of discriminatory method, it supports and envisages inequality among different sections of the society, for example, a person earning low income would be paying a lower fine compared to a senior who earns more.

The Act does not cover the agricultural workers and armed forces.

The Act does not satisfactorily address accountability. It does not specify who is in charge of ensuring that workplaces comply with the Act.

It is not a gender-neutral legislation and protects only women from sexual harassment at workplace.

In context of this the MWCD had requested the Ministry of Corporate Affairs for making disclosure of compliance mandatory in annual reports of private companies.

​

Rationale behind the amendment in rules

The inclusion of the compliance under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act in the non-financial disclosures will ensure that the issue gets into the focus into Board of Directors of the private companies. This will cast higher responsibility on the Directors for implementation of the Act.

​

Harassment of women at workplace

Reason for harassment: The basic reason for women harassment at workplace lies in patriarchal structure of the society leading to a sense of male superiority. Apart from jealousy at work, there is general feeling of contempt and disrespect against women which is visible through sexually perverted behaviours.

Between 2014 and 2015 cases of sexual harassment within office premises more than doubled and there has also been a 51% rise in sexual harassment cases at other places related to work in 2015.

​

3.1 Reasons for failure to report safety concerns:

Lack of understanding: Most women perceive that the behavior is not serious enough for them to take the next step and complain as there is a lack of understanding of what harassment is, the laws covering women safety and what they entail.

Lack of faith: Women lack faith in the complaints process as registering a complaint can be embarrassing and the complaint process seem difficult and useless.

Fear of retaliation: The fear of retaliation by the harasser or organization also makes them silent about it.

Self-judgement: Some women consider that they can take care of the situation themselves rather than going through the entire complaints redressal procedure.

Social stigma: There is a stigma attached to sexual harassment in Indian society. Most of the time women are looked down upon if they report such a case, irrespective of who is at fault in that situation. Several incidences of shaming at social media of women who report sexual abuse have been observed.

In 2017, the National Commission for Women received an average of 1.7 complaints of sexual harassment at workplace per day.

60% of complaints received in 2017 were from five states: Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana.

In 2015 a study by FICCI titled Fostering Safe Workplaces showed that 36% of Indian companies and 25% of multinational companies had not yet constituted their ICCs. About 50% of the more than 120 companies that participated in the study admitted that their ICC members were not legally trained.

The Act imposes a penalty of upto Rs 50,000 on employers who do not implement the Act in the workplace or even fail to constitute an ICC. But, the number of employers who do not fully comply with the law indicates that there is little monitoring of their redressal machinery.

According to a survey conducted by the Indian Bar Association in 2017, 70% women did not report sexual harassment by superiors.

​

3.2. Measures which an organisation can take to enhance the safety of women at workplace

Getting women to speak up: The organisation should make the environment conducive enough for women to register complaints against any such act. The registration complaints in severe cases directed to the government should be fast-tracked.

Deploying technology: Technology such as GPS, CCTV cameras, mobile apps etc should be leveraged to create secure workplace and transportation to the women employees.

Gender sensitisation training: Corporates should conduct gender-sensitization trainings and awareness programs for both men and women across their operations.

Mandating appropriate work practices: Organisations often give more importance towards productivity than safety which gives a wrong signal to employees. The top management level should try to make safety a priority.

Instituting safe working conditions: With a growing economy, working multiple shifts and late hours at the office are quite common. The rising crimes against women limits their capabilities. Therefore, an organization may permit women to look at options such as telecommuting, leaving the office on time and catching up on unfinished work at home. Female security guards can be posted at necessary points in offices and a basic pantry inside the office premises can be provided so that women employees need not venture out for dinner when working late.

Zero tolerance policy should be adopted within code of conduct for employees to show companies' firmness against such sexual harassment.

Successful "Campaigns like #MeToo and #TimesUp have helped more and more women to come up and speak of their experiences of abuse.

​

Conclusion

Women always have to trade-off between safety and financial security which partly explains India’s low female workforce participation rate as the fear of harassment keeps many skilled women away from the workforce. This is hurting India’s productivity and economic growth, as According to World Bank estimates, India’s economic growth can rise by a full percentage point if it even manages to raise its female LFPR to the level of Bangladesh. An adequate monitoring and redressal of sexual harassment in companies can play an important role in creating an enabling environment for women.

[wetrumpfeed]

Afternoon MAGAthread: YOUR WEEKLY PRESIDENTIAL RECAP!

HAPPY SATURDAY DEPLORABLES!

This is your favorite Saturday afternoon mod here to deliver you TONS of spicy dankness from the past week! If you happened to miss any past recaps you can catch those here!

Sunday, June 9th:

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Another false report in the Failing @nytimes. We have been trying to get some of these Border Actions for a long time, as have other administrations, but were not able to get them, or get them in full, until our signed agreement with Mexico. Additionally, and for many years,.... ... .....Mexico was not being cooperative on the Border in things we had, or didn’t have, and now I have full confidence, especially after speaking to their President yesterday, that they will be very cooperative and want to get the job properly done. Importantly, some things..... ... .....not mentioned in yesterday press release, one in particular, were agreed upon. That will be announced at the appropriate time. There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades. However, if for some unknown reason... ... .....there is not, we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs - But I don’t believe that will be necessary. The Failing @nytimes, & ratings challenged @CNN, will do anything possible to see our Country fail! They are truly The Enemy of the People!

For two years all the Democrats talked about was the Mueller Report, because they knew that it was loaded up with 13 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, later increased to 18. But despite the bias, when the Report came out, the findings were No Collusion and facts that led to........ ... ....No Obstruction. The Dems were devastated - after all this time and money spent ($40,000,000), the Mueller Report was a disaster for them. But they want a Redo, or Do Over. They are even bringing in @CNN sleazebag attorney John Dean. Sorry, no Do Overs - Go back to work!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Left-wing racism is real

Mexican military begins arresting migrants riding 'The Beast' train to US border - More than 200 migrants got off the train and fled," said the director of the Digna Ochoa Human Rights Center - Many "hid in the bush, so only 25 were arrested," - Its better than our Democrats have done so far

If a straight pride parade is absurd, so is a gay pride parade. It is obviously insane to suggest that a person can only be proud of their sexuality if they are gay. Outrage over straight pride is hypocrisy on steroids.

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

How do “they” Ignore the Most Beautiful FLOTUS Ever?

Good question... how do they?

Still waiting for that apology from Adam Schiff

Old school, kick-in-the-ass presidency!

Monday, June 10th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Memorandum on Presidential Determination Pursuant to Section 303 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended

First Lady Melania Trump's Visit to the United Kingdom

President Trump Greets the 103rd Indianapolis 500 Champions: Team Penske

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Now with our new deal, Mexico is doing more for the USA on Illegal Immigration than the Democrats. In fact, the Democrats are doing NOTHING, they want Open Borders, which means Illigal Immigration, Drugs and Crime.

We have fully signed and documented another very important part of the Immigration and Security deal with Mexico, one that the U.S. has been asking about getting for many years. It will be revealed in the not too distant future and will need a vote by Mexico’s Legislative body!.. ... ....We do not anticipate a problem with the vote but, if for any reason the approval is not forthcoming, Tariffs will be reinstated!

When will the Failing New York Times admit that their front page story on the the new Mexico deal at the Border is a FRAUD and nothing more than a badly reported “hit job” on me, something that has been going on since the first day I announced for the presidency! Sick Journalism

Video

Video

Thank you @MarkLevinShow and John Eastman!

Can’t believe they are bringing in John Dean, the disgraced Nixon White House Counsel who is a paid CNN contributor. No Collusion - No Obstruction! Democrats just want a do-over which they’ll never get!

I have been briefed on the helicopter crash in New York City. Phenomenal job by our GREAT First Responders who are currently on the scene. THANK YOU for all you do 24/7/365! The Trump Administration stands ready should you need anything at all.

Congratulations to the 2019 Indianapolis 500 Winner @IMS, @SimonPagenaud and @Team_Penske! @IndyCar🏆🏁

Video

Video

#AmericaFIRST #MAGA🇺🇸

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Robert Mueller exploited cellphone GPS to track Trump associates

Uber Driver threatens passenger: She replied by saying “Tell me you don’t support Trump or I won’t finish this trip.”

Jim Acosta is a master of the self-own.

Trump: “John Dean’s been a loser for many years” ...as Dean refuses to acknowledge how much money he has been paid by CNN for accusations against the President 🤣🇺🇸

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

To all the pedes down in the trenches, I support you!

PSA: If you have a family member with disabilities, please ensure they have one of these devices to assist first responders

It’s funny because it’s accurate

It Is oN SpEcTruM

Sorry frens, but you have to go back! True frens respect the rule of law!

Tuesday, June 11th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Donald J. Trump Announces Judicial Nominees

Executive Order on Modernizing the Regulatory Framework for Agricultural Biotechnology Products

President Trump Delivers a Statement Upon Departure

President Trump Delivers Remarks on Renewable Energy

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

New book just out, “The Real Deal, My Decade Fighting Battles and Winning Wars With Trump,” is really wonderful. It is written by two people who are very smart & know me well, George Sorial & Damian Bates, as opposed to all the books where the author has no clue who I am. ENJOY!

“Jerry Nadler’s Trump Bashing Show Is A Bust.” Headline, New York Post. @foxandfriends The Greatest Witch Hunt of all time continues. All crimes were by the other side, but the Committee refuses to even take a look. Deleting 33,000 Emails is the real Obstruction - and much more!

“Mueller has spoken. He found No Collusion between the Trump Campaign and the Russians. The bottom line is what the Democrat House is doing is trying to destroy the Trump Presidency (which has been a tremendous success), and I can assure you that we’re done with the Mueller...... ... ....investigation in the Senate. They can talk to John Dean until the cows come home, we’re not doing anything in the Senate regarding the Mueller Report. We are going to harden our Infrastructure against 2020!” @LindseyGrahamSC

PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!

Sad when you think about it, but Mexico right now is doing more for the United States at the Border than the Democrats in Congress! @foxandfriends

The United States has VERY LOW INFLATION, a beautiful thing!

This is because the Euro and other currencies are devalued against the dollar, putting the U.S. at a big disadvantage. The Fed Interest rate way too high, added to ridiculous quantitative tightening! They don’t have a clue!

Maria, Dagan, Steve, Stuart V - When you are the big “piggy bank” that other countries have been ripping off for years (to a level that is not to be believed), Tariffs are a great negotiating tool, a great revenue producers and, most importantly, a powerful way to get...... ... ...Companies to come to the U.S.A and to get companies that have left us for other lands to come back home. We stupidly lost 30% of our auto business to Mexico. If the Tariffs went on at the higher level, they would all come back, and pass. But very happy with the deal I made,... ... ....If Mexico produces (which I think they will). Biggest part of deal with Mexico has not yet been revealed! China is similar, except they devalue currency and subsidize companies to lessen effect of 25% Tariff. So far, little effect to consumer. Companies will relocate to U.S.

Good day in the Stock Market. People have no idea the tremendous potential our Country has for GROWTH - and many other things!

“Why did the Democrats run if they didn’t want to do things?” @SenRickScott

On my way to Iowa - just heard nearly 1,000 agriculture groups signed a letter urging Congress to approve the USMCA. Our Patriot Farmers & rural America have spoken! Now Congress must do its job & support these great men and women by passing the bipartisan USMCA Trade Agreement!

Today, here in Iowa, we honor America’s cherished farming heritage. We salute your commitment to American Energy Independence — and we celebrate the bright future we are forging together powered by clean, affordable AMERICAN ETHANOL!

“Trump administration gives final approval for year-round E15 use”

Beautiful afternoon in Iowa. Thank you to all of our Nation’s Farmers. May God bless you, and may God Bless America!

“Someone should call Obama up. The Obama Administration spied on a rival presidential campaign using Federal Agencies. I mean, that seems like a headline to me?” @TuckerCarlson It will all start coming out, and the Witch Hunt will end. Presidential Harassment!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

The mad lad is at the Google campus in Austin, Texas](https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/bzgr6o/the_mad_lad_is_at_the_google_campus_in_austin/)

We just cracked 750k PEDES!

Nearly 1,700 Pedos Arrested Nationwide in 2 Months During DOJ Sting OP (6/11/2019)

NEW PROJECT VERITAS: Tech Insider Blows Whistle on How Pinterest Listed Top Pro-Life Site as Porn, "Bible Verses" Censored

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

This is why I love living in Texas.

❄️ Liberals Hate Glaciers Now ❄️

Or tariffs per trade deal made.

TFW you're banned from all of social media but other patriots are doing God's work spreading your message

Wednesday, June 12th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Six Nominations and Two Withdrawals Sent to the Senate

President Trump Participates in a 2:2 Bilateral Meeting with the President of Poland

President Trump Participates in a Joint Press Conference with the President of Poland

President Trump Remarks on the Opioid Crisis

President Trump Participates in a Joint Signing Ceremony with the President of Poland

President Trump and the First Lady Attend the Polish-American Reception

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

.....The Fake (Corrupt) News Media said they had a leak into polling done by my campaign which, by the way and despite the phony and never ending Witch Hunt, are the best numbers WE have ever had. They reported Fake numbers that they made up & don’t even exist. WE WILL WIN AGAIN!

Despite the Phony Witch Hunt, we will continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Thank you!!

Wow! Just got word that our June 18th, Tuesday, ANNOUNCEMENT in Orlando, Florida, already has 74,000 requests for a 20,000 seat Arena. With all of the big events that we have done, this ticket looks to be the “hottest” of them all. See you in Florida!

The Fake News has never been more dishonest than it is today. Thank goodness we can fight back on Social Media. Their new weapon of choice is Fake Polling, sometimes referred to as Suppression Polls (they suppress the numbers). Had it in 2016, but this is worse..... ... .....The Fake (Corrupt) News Media said they had a leak into polling done by my campaign which, by the way and despite the phony and never ending Witch Hunt, are the best numbers WE have ever had. They reported Fake numbers that they made up & don’t even exist. WE WILL WIN AGAIN!

It was a pleasure to host my friends President Andrzej Duda and Mrs. Agata Kornhauser-Duda of Poland at the @WhiteHouse today. U.S.-Poland ties are at an all-time high. Thank you for being such an exemplary Ally!

Michael Whatley has been with us right from the beginning. A great Leader and @NCGOP Chairman!

Thank you!

Our Farmers deserve this, they are GREAT!

Two Fantastic People! My friends from the very beginning. Thank you D&S.

is = if (Spell)! Not like Chris.

Thank you very much!

“Biden would be China’s Dream Candidate, because there would be no more Tariffs, no more demands that China stop stealing our IP, things would go back to the old days with America’s manufacturers & workers getting shafted. He has Zero Credibility!” @IngrahamAngle So true!

“It’s about peace and Prosperity, that’s how Republican Presidents get elected, and this President has delivered on the Economy and he’s delivered on keeping America Stronger & Safer. Our biggest enemy is not any one of these Democrats, it’s the Media.” John McLaughlin, pollster

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

The man who had revealed Pinterest's censorship strategies has been fired - Project Veritas

President Trump waves Mexico border deal at reporters: ‘It goes into effect when I want it to’

Obama White House Deleted Online Speeches About The Immigration Crisis Hours Before Trump Entered Office: Report

BREAKING: After Democrats Unnecessarily Rush to Contempt, President Trump Asserts Executive Privilege Over Census Documents

Michael Flynn hires Sidney Powell as new counsel

The Madlad: Crowder Hate Speech Isn’t Real Q&A

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Hey guys

Accurate Representation Of The SJW Movement

Bam! Roasted!

I wonder how many others there are like this?

Trump Derangement Syndrome Medical Journal Entry Prototype

Thursday, June 13th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

A Message from Surgeon General Jerome Adams

First Lady Melania Trump Attends 75th Anniversary Ceremony of D-Day

Historic F-35 White House Flyover

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Personnel to Key Administration Posts

President Trump Delivers Remarks on Second Chance Hiring

President Trump Has a Working Lunch with Governors on Workforce Freedom and Mobility

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

General Michael Flynn, the 33 year war hero who has served with distinction, has not retained a good lawyer, he has retained a GREAT LAWYER, Sidney Powell. Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!

Unrelated to Russia, Russia, Russia (although the Radical Left doesn’t use the name Russia anymore since the issuance of the Mueller Report), House Committee now plays the seldom used “Contempt” card on our great A.G. & Sec. of Commerce - this time on the Census. Dems play a..... ... .....much tougher game than the Republicans did when they had the House Majority. Republicans will remember! “This has already been argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, but the House doesn’t want to wait. This is a common thread between all of the Committees - do whatever you... ... ....can to embarrass the Trump Administration (and Republicans), attack the Trump Administration. This is campaigning by the Dems.” Attorney David Bruno. So true! In the meantime they are getting NO work done on Drug Pricing, Infrastructure & many other things.

“Congress cannot Impeach President Trump (did nothing wrong) because if they did they would be putting themselves above the law. The Constitution provides criteria for Impeachment - treason, bribery, high crimes & misdemeanors. Unless there is compelling evidence, Impeachment... ... ....is not Constitutionally Permissable.” Alan Dershowitz, Constitutional Lawyer

The Dems fight us at every turn - in the meantime they are accomplishing nothing for the people! They have gone absolutely “Loco,” or Unhinged, as they like to say!

I meet and talk to “foreign governments” every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Wales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about “Everything!” Should I immediately.... ... ....call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters.

When Senator @MarkWarnerVA spoke at length, and in great detail, about extremely negative information on me, with a talented entertainer purporting to be a Russian Operative, did he immediately call the FBI? NO, in fact he didn’t even tell the Senate Intelligence Committee of.... ... ....which he is a member. When @RepAdamSchiff took calls from another person, also very successfully purporting to be a Russian Operative, did he call the FBI, or even think to call the FBI? NO! The fact is that the phony Witch Hunt is a giant scam where Democrats,... ... ....and other really bad people, SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN! They even had an “insurance policy” just in case Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats lost their race for the Presidency! This is the biggest & worst political scandal in the history of the United States of America. Sad!

They’ve been wrong all along!

While I very much appreciate P.M. Abe going to Iran to meet with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, I personally feel that it is too soon to even think about making a deal. They are not ready, and neither are we!

"It is the assessment of the U.S. government that Iran is responsible for today's attacks in the Gulf of Oman...."

After 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas.... ... ....She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas - she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!

Today we announced vital new actions that we are taking to help former inmates find a job, live a crime-free life, and succeed beyond their dreams....

Thank you Jason Chaffetz! #MAGA

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

This past week, Steven Crowder and his team have seen 100,000 new subscribers, 12 million channel views, and new Mug Club members showing their support by paying full price instead of using the discount code. Vox tried to destroy Team Crowder. Instead, they made Team Crowder stronger than ever.

I am blessed and forever grateful to @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to serve and proud of everything he’s accomplished. I love the President and my job. The most important job I’ll ever have is being a mom to my kids and it’s time for us to go home. Thank you Mr. President!

Sarah Sanders tears up as GEOTUS thanks her and gives her an amazing sendoff. "I will continue to be one of the most outspoken and loyal supporters of the President and his agenda"

Project Veritas Features - Pinterest Insider Speaks Out: "The tech companies can't fight us all"

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

This is Eric Cochran. Eric gave up his cushy high paying Pinterest job to blow the whistle on their plans to silence America. Eric is awesome. Be like Eric.

Michael Flynn’s attorney posted this on Twitter. I thought you all might like it, too.

How to solve illegal immigration

White House Chef Andre “Tiny” Rush is a master ice carver, sommelier, pastry chef, chocolatier, and sugar sculptor, among other specialties. He is also a combat veteran who retired as a master sergeant after 23 years in the United States Army.

Friday, June 14th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Memorandum on Providing an Order of Succession Within the Central Intelligence Agency

Executive Order on Evaluating and Improving the Utility of Federal Advisory Committees

President Trump Speaks on Expanding Health Coverage Options for Small Businesses & Workers

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Natalie Harp, fighting Stage 2 Cancer and doing really well, was a GREAT guest on @foxandfriends. Right To Try is producing some truly spectacular results. Proud of Natalie!

I will be interviewed on @foxandfriends at 8:00 A.M. Enjoy! @FoxNews

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our GREAT @USArmy. America loves you! #ArmyBday

The Radical Left Dems are working hard, but THE PEOPLE are much smarter. Working hard, thank you!

Announcing great, expanded HRAs—big win for small employers and workers. This is a fantastic plan! My Administration has worked very hard on creating more affordable health coverage.

Thank you Senator @MarshaBlackburn for fighting obstructionist Democrats led by Cryin' Chuck Schumer. Democrats continue to look for a do-over on the Mueller Report and will stop at nothing to distract the American people from the great accomplishments of this Administration!

Thank you @senatemajldr Mitch McConnell for understanding the Democrats game of not playing it straight on the ridiculous Witch Hunt Hoax in the Senate. Cryin’ Chuck will never stop. Did Senator @MarkWarner ever report speaking to a Russian!?

Just spoke to Marillyn Hewson, CEO of @LockheedMartin, about continuing operations for the @Sikorsky in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. She will be taking it under advisement and will be making a decision soon.... ... ....While Pennsylvania is BOOMING, I don’t want there to be even a little glitch in Coatesville – every job counts. I want Lockhead to BOOM along with it!

The dishonest media will NEVER keep us from accomplishing our objectives on behalf of our GREAT AMERICAN PEOPLE! #MAGA

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

In honor of FLAG DAY: When Palm Beach Wouldn't Allow A 50-foot Flagpole at Mir-a-Lago, Trump Placed a 30-foot Flag Pole on a 20-foot Hill. USA USA USA!!!!

The idea that American embassies would ever even consider flying a pride flag on the same pole as the American flag is just absolutely ridiculous. American embassies represent America, not your sexual orientation.

We all out here celebrating Trump’s birthday in Myrtle Beach, SC

Attendees in the White House Rose Garden sing Happy Birthday to President Trump as he arrives for event on expanding health care options for small businesses.

Trump campaign plans outdoor carnival with food trucks and a party band before he announces re-election bid at Orlando rally

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Double Standards!

I heard that Gibson family won their lawsuit and was awarded $44 million dollars for being falsely smeared as racists. Here's a picture of Nick Sandmann for no reason at all.

Happy 73rd Birthday to the BEST PRESIDENT EVER!!!!

It's time for President Trump's yearly call to Ben Rhodes... He still won't say it.

Saturday, June 15th:

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

“The latest Polls find 51% of Americans approve of President Trump’s Job Performance. Last month a Democrat Pollster said President Trump’s approval rating has been the most steady of any President in history!” @OANN

“With over a 50% Approval Rating at this point in his Presidency, analysts believe re-election in 2020 looks (very) promising!” @OANN Hey, we have accomplished more than any President in the first 2 1/2 years, WHY NOT?

Despite the Greatest Presidential Harassment of all time by people that are very dishonest and want to destroy our Country, we are doing great in the Polls, even better than in 2016, and will be packed at the Tuesday Announcement Rally in Orlando, Florida. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!

All in for Senator Steve Daines as he proposes an Amendment for a strong BAN on burning our American Flag. A no brainer!

“President Trump to launch 2020 Campaign in Florida!” @foxandfriends Tuesday will be a Big Crowd and Big Day!

The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go....However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before! KEEP AMERICA GREAT

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Trump Admin Takes First Step to Demand Payback From Sponsors of Immigrants Who Use Welfare

Giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants will make New York a safer place, says worlds biggest retard.

The Left is trying to steal 2020 with Massive Voter Fraud, this must be stopped: Illegal Alien Population Booms in Red States Ahead of 2020 Election

This is pretty awesome 👏👏👏

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Whoever wrote this had a time machine.

Ah yes

2020 WE'RE FAST APPROACHING MEME WAR ROUND 2, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO - CALLING ALL 2016 MEME WAR VETERANS AT 0500 FOR TRAINING

Simpler times

WEEEEW LAD!!! SO MUCH WINNING!

Without further ado, some tunes to get you jamming through all this winning:

Country Roads

My Girl

Isn't She Lovely

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Africa

MAGA ON PATRIOTS!

submitted by /u/Ivaginaryfriend [link] [comments]

[robgrayofficial]

HAPPY SATURDAY DEPLORABLES!This is your favorite Saturday afternoon mod here to deliver you TONS of spicy dankness from the past week! If you happened to miss any past recaps you can catch those here!Sunday, June 9th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Another false report in the Failing @nytimes. We have been trying to get some of these Border Actions for a long time, as have other administrations, but were not able to get them, or get them in full, until our signed agreement with Mexico. Additionally, and for many years,.... ... .....Mexico was not being cooperative on the Border in things we had, or didn’t have, and now I have full confidence, especially after speaking to their President yesterday, that they will be very cooperative and want to get the job properly done. Importantly, some things..... ... .....not mentioned in yesterday press release, one in particular, were agreed upon. That will be announced at the appropriate time. There is now going to be great cooperation between Mexico & the USA, something that didn’t exist for decades. However, if for some unknown reason... ... .....there is not, we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs - But I don’t believe that will be necessary. The Failing @nytimes, & ratings challenged @CNN, will do anything possible to see our Country fail! They are truly The Enemy of the People!For two years all the Democrats talked about was the Mueller Report, because they knew that it was loaded up with 13 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, later increased to 18. But despite the bias, when the Report came out, the findings were No Collusion and facts that led to........ ... ....No Obstruction. The Dems were devastated - after all this time and money spent ($40,000,000), the Mueller Report was a disaster for them. But they want a Redo, or Do Over. They are even bringing in @CNN sleazebag attorney John Dean. Sorry, no Do Overs - Go back to work!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Left-wing racism is realMexican military begins arresting migrants riding 'The Beast' train to US border - More than 200 migrants got off the train and fled," said the director of the Digna Ochoa Human Rights Center - Many "hid in the bush, so only 25 were arrested," - Its better than our Democrats have done so farIf a straight pride parade is absurd, so is a gay pride parade. It is obviously insane to suggest that a person can only be proud of their sexuality if they are gay. Outrage over straight pride is hypocrisy on steroids.🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:How do “they” Ignore the Most Beautiful FLOTUS Ever?Good question... how do they?Still waiting for that apology from Adam SchiffOld school, kick-in-the-ass presidency!Monday, June 10th:TODAY'S ACTION:Memorandum on Presidential Determination Pursuant to Section 303 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amendedFirst Lady Melania Trump's Visit to the United KingdomPresident Trump Greets the 103rd Indianapolis 500 Champions: Team Penske🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Now with our new deal, Mexico is doing more for the USA on Illegal Immigration than the Democrats. In fact, the Democrats are doing NOTHING, they want Open Borders, which means Illigal Immigration, Drugs and Crime.We have fully signed and documented another very important part of the Immigration and Security deal with Mexico, one that the U.S. has been asking about getting for many years. It will be revealed in the not too distant future and will need a vote by Mexico’s Legislative body!.. ... ....We do not anticipate a problem with the vote but, if for any reason the approval is not forthcoming, Tariffs will be reinstated!When will the Failing New York Times admit that their front page story on the the new Mexico deal at the Border is a FRAUD and nothing more than a badly reported “hit job” on me, something that has been going on since the first day I announced for the presidency! Sick JournalismVideoVideoThank you @MarkLevinShow and John Eastman!Can’t believe they are bringing in John Dean, the disgraced Nixon White House Counsel who is a paid CNN contributor. No Collusion - No Obstruction! Democrats just want a do-over which they’ll never get!I have been briefed on the helicopter crash in New York City. Phenomenal job by our GREAT First Responders who are currently on the scene. THANK YOU for all you do 24/7/365! The Trump Administration stands ready should you need anything at all.Congratulations to the 2019 Indianapolis 500 Winner @IMS, @SimonPagenaud and @Team_Penske! @IndyCar🏆🏁VideoVideo#AmericaFIRST #MAGA🇺🇸SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Robert Mueller exploited cellphone GPS to track Trump associatesUber Driver threatens passenger: She replied by saying “Tell me you don’t support Trump or I won’t finish this trip.”Jim Acosta is a master of the self-own.Trump: “John Dean’s been a loser for many years” ...as Dean refuses to acknowledge how much money he has been paid by CNN for accusations against the President 🤣🇺🇸🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:To all the pedes down in the trenches, I support you!PSA: If you have a family member with disabilities, please ensure they have one of these devices to assist first respondersIt’s funny because it’s accurateIt Is oN SpEcTruMSorry frens, but you have to go back! True frens respect the rule of law!Tuesday, June 11th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Judicial NomineesExecutive Order on Modernizing the Regulatory Framework for Agricultural Biotechnology ProductsPresident Trump Delivers a Statement Upon DeparturePresident Trump Delivers Remarks on Renewable Energy🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:New book just out, “The Real Deal, My Decade Fighting Battles and Winning Wars With Trump,” is really wonderful. It is written by two people who are very smart & know me well, George Sorial & Damian Bates, as opposed to all the books where the author has no clue who I am. ENJOY!“Jerry Nadler’s Trump Bashing Show Is A Bust.” Headline, New York Post. @foxandfriends The Greatest Witch Hunt of all time continues. All crimes were by the other side, but the Committee refuses to even take a look. Deleting 33,000 Emails is the real Obstruction - and much more!“Mueller has spoken. He found No Collusion between the Trump Campaign and the Russians. The bottom line is what the Democrat House is doing is trying to destroy the Trump Presidency (which has been a tremendous success), and I can assure you that we’re done with the Mueller...... ... ....investigation in the Senate. They can talk to John Dean until the cows come home, we’re not doing anything in the Senate regarding the Mueller Report. We are going to harden our Infrastructure against 2020!” @LindseyGrahamSCPRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!Sad when you think about it, but Mexico right now is doing more for the United States at the Border than the Democrats in Congress! @foxandfriendsThe United States has VERY LOW INFLATION, a beautiful thing!This is because the Euro and other currencies are devalued against the dollar, putting the U.S. at a big disadvantage. The Fed Interest rate way too high, added to ridiculous quantitative tightening! They don’t have a clue!Maria, Dagan, Steve, Stuart V - When you are the big “piggy bank” that other countries have been ripping off for years (to a level that is not to be believed), Tariffs are a great negotiating tool, a great revenue producers and, most importantly, a powerful way to get...... ... ...Companies to come to the U.S.A and to get companies that have left us for other lands to come back home. We stupidly lost 30% of our auto business to Mexico. If the Tariffs went on at the higher level, they would all come back, and pass. But very happy with the deal I made,... ... ....If Mexico produces (which I think they will). Biggest part of deal with Mexico has not yet been revealed! China is similar, except they devalue currency and subsidize companies to lessen effect of 25% Tariff. So far, little effect to consumer. Companies will relocate to U.S.Good day in the Stock Market. People have no idea the tremendous potential our Country has for GROWTH - and many other things!“Why did the Democrats run if they didn’t want to do things?” @SenRickScottOn my way to Iowa - just heard nearly 1,000 agriculture groups signed a letter urging Congress to approve the USMCA. Our Patriot Farmers & rural America have spoken! Now Congress must do its job & support these great men and women by passing the bipartisan USMCA Trade Agreement!Today, here in Iowa, we honor America’s cherished farming heritage. We salute your commitment to American Energy Independence — and we celebrate the bright future we are forging together powered by clean, affordable AMERICAN ETHANOL!“Trump administration gives final approval for year-round E15 use”Beautiful afternoon in Iowa. Thank you to all of our Nation’s Farmers. May God bless you, and may God Bless America!“Someone should call Obama up. The Obama Administration spied on a rival presidential campaign using Federal Agencies. I mean, that seems like a headline to me?” @TuckerCarlson It will all start coming out, and the Witch Hunt will end. Presidential Harassment!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:The mad lad is at the Google campus in Austin, Texas](http://bit.ly/2IKRcuo just cracked 750k PEDES!Nearly 1,700 Pedos Arrested Nationwide in 2 Months During DOJ Sting OP (6/11/2019)NEW PROJECT VERITAS: Tech Insider Blows Whistle on How Pinterest Listed Top Pro-Life Site as Porn, "Bible Verses" Censored🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:This is why I love living in Texas.❄️ Liberals Hate Glaciers Now ❄️Or tariffs per trade deal made.TFW you're banned from all of social media but other patriots are doing God's work spreading your messageWednesday, June 12th:TODAY'S ACTION:Six Nominations and Two Withdrawals Sent to the SenatePresident Trump Participates in a 2:2 Bilateral Meeting with the President of PolandPresident Trump Participates in a Joint Press Conference with the President of PolandPresident Trump Remarks on the Opioid CrisisPresident Trump Participates in a Joint Signing Ceremony with the President of PolandPresident Trump and the First Lady Attend the Polish-American Reception🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:.....The Fake (Corrupt) News Media said they had a leak into polling done by my campaign which, by the way and despite the phony and never ending Witch Hunt, are the best numbers WE have ever had. They reported Fake numbers that they made up & don’t even exist. WE WILL WIN AGAIN!Despite the Phony Witch Hunt, we will continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Thank you!!Wow! Just got word that our June 18th, Tuesday, ANNOUNCEMENT in Orlando, Florida, already has 74,000 requests for a 20,000 seat Arena. With all of the big events that we have done, this ticket looks to be the “hottest” of them all. See you in Florida!The Fake News has never been more dishonest than it is today. Thank goodness we can fight back on Social Media. Their new weapon of choice is Fake Polling, sometimes referred to as Suppression Polls (they suppress the numbers). Had it in 2016, but this is worse..... ... .....The Fake (Corrupt) News Media said they had a leak into polling done by my campaign which, by the way and despite the phony and never ending Witch Hunt, are the best numbers WE have ever had. They reported Fake numbers that they made up & don’t even exist. WE WILL WIN AGAIN!It was a pleasure to host my friends President Andrzej Duda and Mrs. Agata Kornhauser-Duda of Poland at the @WhiteHouse today. U.S.-Poland ties are at an all-time high. Thank you for being such an exemplary Ally!Michael Whatley has been with us right from the beginning. A great Leader and @NCGOP Chairman!Thank you!Our Farmers deserve this, they are GREAT!Two Fantastic People! My friends from the very beginning. Thank you D&S.is = if (Spell)! Not like Chris.Thank you very much!“Biden would be China’s Dream Candidate, because there would be no more Tariffs, no more demands that China stop stealing our IP, things would go back to the old days with America’s manufacturers & workers getting shafted. He has Zero Credibility!” @IngrahamAngle So true!“It’s about peace and Prosperity, that’s how Republican Presidents get elected, and this President has delivered on the Economy and he’s delivered on keeping America Stronger & Safer. Our biggest enemy is not any one of these Democrats, it’s the Media.” John McLaughlin, pollsterSIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:The man who had revealed Pinterest's censorship strategies has been fired - Project VeritasPresident Trump waves Mexico border deal at reporters: ‘It goes into effect when I want it to’Obama White House Deleted Online Speeches About The Immigration Crisis Hours Before Trump Entered Office: ReportBREAKING: After Democrats Unnecessarily Rush to Contempt, President Trump Asserts Executive Privilege Over Census DocumentsMichael Flynn hires Sidney Powell as new counselThe Madlad: Crowder Hate Speech Isn’t Real Q&A🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Hey guysAccurate Representation Of The SJW MovementBam! Roasted!I wonder how many others there are like this?Trump Derangement Syndrome Medical Journal Entry PrototypeThursday, June 13th:TODAY'S ACTION:A Message from Surgeon General Jerome AdamsFirst Lady Melania Trump Attends 75th Anniversary Ceremony of D-DayHistoric F-35 White House FlyoverPresident Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Personnel to Key Administration PostsPresident Trump Delivers Remarks on Second Chance HiringPresident Trump Has a Working Lunch with Governors on Workforce Freedom and Mobility🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:General Michael Flynn, the 33 year war hero who has served with distinction, has not retained a good lawyer, he has retained a GREAT LAWYER, Sidney Powell. Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!Unrelated to Russia, Russia, Russia (although the Radical Left doesn’t use the name Russia anymore since the issuance of the Mueller Report), House Committee now plays the seldom used “Contempt” card on our great A.G. & Sec. of Commerce - this time on the Census. Dems play a..... ... .....much tougher game than the Republicans did when they had the House Majority. Republicans will remember! “This has already been argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, but the House doesn’t want to wait. This is a common thread between all of the Committees - do whatever you... ... ....can to embarrass the Trump Administration (and Republicans), attack the Trump Administration. This is campaigning by the Dems.” Attorney David Bruno. So true! In the meantime they are getting NO work done on Drug Pricing, Infrastructure & many other things.“Congress cannot Impeach President Trump (did nothing wrong) because if they did they would be putting themselves above the law. The Constitution provides criteria for Impeachment - treason, bribery, high crimes & misdemeanors. Unless there is compelling evidence, Impeachment... ... ....is not Constitutionally Permissable.” Alan Dershowitz, Constitutional LawyerThe Dems fight us at every turn - in the meantime they are accomplishing nothing for the people! They have gone absolutely “Loco,” or Unhinged, as they like to say!I meet and talk to “foreign governments” every day. I just met with the Queen of England (U.K.), the Prince of Wales, the P.M. of the United Kingdom, the P.M. of Ireland, the President of France and the President of Poland. We talked about “Everything!” Should I immediately.... ... ....call the FBI about these calls and meetings? How ridiculous! I would never be trusted again. With that being said, my full answer is rarely played by the Fake News Media. They purposely leave out the part that matters.When Senator @MarkWarnerVA spoke at length, and in great detail, about extremely negative information on me, with a talented entertainer purporting to be a Russian Operative, did he immediately call the FBI? NO, in fact he didn’t even tell the Senate Intelligence Committee of.... ... ....which he is a member. When @RepAdamSchiff took calls from another person, also very successfully purporting to be a Russian Operative, did he call the FBI, or even think to call the FBI? NO! The fact is that the phony Witch Hunt is a giant scam where Democrats,... ... ....and other really bad people, SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN! They even had an “insurance policy” just in case Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats lost their race for the Presidency! This is the biggest & worst political scandal in the history of the United States of America. Sad!They’ve been wrong all along!While I very much appreciate P.M. Abe going to Iran to meet with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, I personally feel that it is too soon to even think about making a deal. They are not ready, and neither are we!"It is the assessment of the U.S. government that Iran is responsible for today's attacks in the Gulf of Oman...."After 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas.... ... ....She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas - she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!Today we announced vital new actions that we are taking to help former inmates find a job, live a crime-free life, and succeed beyond their dreams....Thank you Jason Chaffetz! #MAGASIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:This past week, Steven Crowder and his team have seen 100,000 new subscribers, 12 million channel views, and new Mug Club members showing their support by paying full price instead of using the discount code. Vox tried to destroy Team Crowder. Instead, they made Team Crowder stronger than ever.I am blessed and forever grateful to @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to serve and proud of everything he’s accomplished. I love the President and my job. The most important job I’ll ever have is being a mom to my kids and it’s time for us to go home. Thank you Mr. President!Sarah Sanders tears up as GEOTUS thanks her and gives her an amazing sendoff. "I will continue to be one of the most outspoken and loyal supporters of the President and his agenda"Project Veritas Features - Pinterest Insider Speaks Out: "The tech companies can't fight us all"🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:This is Eric Cochran. Eric gave up his cushy high paying Pinterest job to blow the whistle on their plans to silence America. Eric is awesome. Be like Eric.Michael Flynn’s attorney posted this on Twitter. I thought you all might like it, too.How to solve illegal immigrationWhite House Chef Andre “Tiny” Rush is a master ice carver, sommelier, pastry chef, chocolatier, and sugar sculptor, among other specialties. He is also a combat veteran who retired as a master sergeant after 23 years in the United States Army.Friday, June 14th:TODAY'S ACTION:Memorandum on Providing an Order of Succession Within the Central Intelligence AgencyExecutive Order on Evaluating and Improving the Utility of Federal Advisory CommitteesPresident Trump Speaks on Expanding Health Coverage Options for Small Businesses & Workers🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Natalie Harp, fighting Stage 2 Cancer and doing really well, was a GREAT guest on @foxandfriends. Right To Try is producing some truly spectacular results. Proud of Natalie!I will be interviewed on @foxandfriends at 8:00 A.M. Enjoy! @FoxNewsHAPPY BIRTHDAY to our GREAT @USArmy. America loves you! #ArmyBdayThe Radical Left Dems are working hard, but THE PEOPLE are much smarter. Working hard, thank you!Announcing great, expanded HRAs—big win for small employers and workers. This is a fantastic plan! My Administration has worked very hard on creating more affordable health coverage.Thank you Senator @MarshaBlackburn for fighting obstructionist Democrats led by Cryin' Chuck Schumer. Democrats continue to look for a do-over on the Mueller Report and will stop at nothing to distract the American people from the great accomplishments of this Administration!Thank you @senatemajldr Mitch McConnell for understanding the Democrats game of not playing it straight on the ridiculous Witch Hunt Hoax in the Senate. Cryin’ Chuck will never stop. Did Senator @MarkWarner ever report speaking to a Russian!?Just spoke to Marillyn Hewson, CEO of @LockheedMartin, about continuing operations for the @Sikorsky in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. She will be taking it under advisement and will be making a decision soon.... ... ....While Pennsylvania is BOOMING, I don’t want there to be even a little glitch in Coatesville – every job counts. I want Lockhead to BOOM along with it!The dishonest media will NEVER keep us from accomplishing our objectives on behalf of our GREAT AMERICAN PEOPLE! #MAGASIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:In honor of FLAG DAY: When Palm Beach Wouldn't Allow A 50-foot Flagpole at Mir-a-Lago, Trump Placed a 30-foot Flag Pole on a 20-foot Hill. USA USA USA!!!!The idea that American embassies would ever even consider flying a pride flag on the same pole as the American flag is just absolutely ridiculous. American embassies represent America, not your sexual orientation.We all out here celebrating Trump’s birthday in Myrtle Beach, SCAttendees in the White House Rose Garden sing Happy Birthday to President Trump as he arrives for event on expanding health care options for small businesses.Trump campaign plans outdoor carnival with food trucks and a party band before he announces re-election bid at Orlando rally🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Double Standards!I heard that Gibson family won their lawsuit and was awarded $44 million dollars for being falsely smeared as racists. Here's a picture of Nick Sandmann for no reason at all.Happy 73rd Birthday to the BEST PRESIDENT EVER!!!!It's time for President Trump's yearly call to Ben Rhodes... He still won't say it.Saturday, June 15th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:“The latest Polls find 51% of Americans approve of President Trump’s Job Performance. Last month a Democrat Pollster said President Trump’s approval rating has been the most steady of any President in history!” @OANN“With over a 50% Approval Rating at this point in his Presidency, analysts believe re-election in 2020 looks (very) promising!” @OANN Hey, we have accomplished more than any President in the first 2 1/2 years, WHY NOT?Despite the Greatest Presidential Harassment of all time by people that are very dishonest and want to destroy our Country, we are doing great in the Polls, even better than in 2016, and will be packed at the Tuesday Announcement Rally in Orlando, Florida. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!All in for Senator Steve Daines as he proposes an Amendment for a strong BAN on burning our American Flag. A no brainer!“President Trump to launch 2020 Campaign in Florida!” @foxandfriends Tuesday will be a Big Crowd and Big Day!The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go....However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before! KEEP AMERICA GREATSIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Trump Admin Takes First Step to Demand Payback From Sponsors of Immigrants Who Use WelfareGiving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants will make New York a safer place, says worlds biggest retard.The Left is trying to steal 2020 with Massive Voter Fraud, this must be stopped: Illegal Alien Population Booms in Red States Ahead of 2020 ElectionThis is pretty awesome 👏👏👏🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Whoever wrote this had a time machine.Ah yes2020 WE'RE FAST APPROACHING MEME WAR ROUND 2, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO - CALLING ALL 2016 MEME WAR VETERANS AT 0500 FOR TRAININGSimpler timesWEEEEW LAD!!! SO MUCH WINNING!Without further ado, some tunes to get you jamming through all this winning:Country RoadsMy GirlIsn't She LovelyI Wanna Dance With SomebodyAfricaMAGA ON PATRIOTS! #robgray

[hellofastestnewsfan]

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa—Demographically and economically, Iowa isn’t actually that representative of the country as a whole. But even as the demographics and economics make it less like the rest of America, Iowa’s absurdly outsize role in picking the leader of the free world remains.

Enter two candidates, in the space of 48 hours, who both see the state as crucial: two women, two senators, two former local prosecutors, two people who had breakout moments during Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings last fall, two presidential hopefuls on their second trips to Iowa since launching their campaigns.

[Read: Amy Klobuchar for president?]

Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris need the same thing, but they need it for opposite reasons.

Literally dozens more Democrats are in or circling the race. But the dynamics between these two, both doing well in early polls, contrast familiar Midwest pragmatism with diverse Left Coast progressivism. And most important for the ultra-energized voters here: Who is best to beat Donald Trump?

[Read: Kamala Harris’s campaign strategy—don’t pick a lane]

For Klobuchar, Iowa is her neighbor to the south—“We can see it from our porch in Minnesota” is the line she uses—conveniently located in geography and order on the primary calendar. A win in the Iowa caucuses could validate her pitch that the 2020 election is calling out for someone who can link the years her grandfather spent working in a mine to the “grit” to stand in a snowstorm for her own campaign announcement two weeks ago, and connect a purported hard-nosed pragmatism to years of big wins in her home state. For Harris, the state is the essential test of whether the parts of the country far from the square in Oakland where 22,000 stood in the streets for her announcement rally last month are really ready for a half-Jamaican, half-Indian woman from California who speaks bluntly about what’s gone wrong with America.

On Thursday night, Klobuchar was at the United Auto Workers hall, the featured guest at the Ankeny County Democrats annual dinner. On Saturday night, Harris was on the other side of town at the United Steelworkers hall, keynoting the Iowa Democratic Party Black Caucus. Klobuchar, as she always does, built her speech up to a quote from Walter Mondale, talking about Jimmy Carter’s presidency: “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, we kept the peace.” Harris, as is her custom, progressed to a paraphrase of Coretta Scott King: “The fight for justice and the fight for civil rights must be fought and won with each generation.”

Afterward, I asked Klobuchar what she thought being a senator from Minnesota, compared with being a senator from California, would mean to Iowa.

“It means that for me, going south for the winter is going to Iowa. It’s easier to get here,” she said. “It’s important to have a lot of people running, but I am a candidate from the heartland, and it’s an important part of our path to success in the general election.”

[Graeme Wood: The two Amy Klobuchars]

Was she arguing that senators from the coasts—not just Harris, but Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Kirsten Gillibrand—wouldn’t be able to win?

“Senators from the coast have won in the heartland in the past. So I don’t think it’s that. It’s that my No. 1 request was to be on the Agriculture Committee. I served on that committee for 12 years. I’ve played a major role in getting the farm bill passed,” she said. “I know these issues here.”

Klobuchar likes talking about herself as an underdog, and structurally that’s how she started a campaign that many people thought she wasn’t actually going to go through with. She’s short on campaign staff, here and nationally, and arrived with just one person on her payroll and a handful of others who’d come in as volunteers. She had a surge of online fundraising after she announced, but aides have acknowledged in conversations with others that money is going to be a scramble and that her best hope is to scrape by enough to make it through Iowa, and then count on an explosion of interest if she wins to carry her over.

And so she lays it on thick, talking about the two states’ main agricultural exports, or how they both put a premium on butter-carving contests. On the list of ways the states are similar that she read from on Thursday evening: “You have the world-famous matchstick museum, and we have the only museum in the world devoted to Spam—or, as we call it, the ‘Guggen-ham.’”

But her main argument is that the country needs a pragmatic president, and that starts with making a pragmatic argument for why she should be the nominee.

“We need to win. So here’s my deal: I have won every single congressional district in the state of Minnesota, including Michele Bachmann’s, three times,” Klobuchar said, referring to the former congresswoman and 2012 Republican presidential candidate who helped popularize Tea Party politics in the run-up to a campaign that got much more attention than actual votes. With Democrats nationally nervous that Minnesota is in danger of slipping away—in a shocker, it had the smallest margin of any state Hillary Clinton won in 2016, and Trump’s campaign has been public about Minnesota being at the top of its 2020 target list—Klobuchar leaned in.

“He has said to me several times, ‘I would have won Minnesota if I went back there again,’” she said, attempting a Trump impression that leans more on making the president sound dumb than making him sound like he’s from Queens, New York.

Harris landed here after two weeks of a sublimated freak-out, churned by Republican websites, that all tracked back to her being black. Just a sampling of the stirred-up controversies: Is she black enough? What does it mean that her husband is not black, but Jewish? How does she use hot sauce? What were the circumstances when she smoked pot? How extensive and authentic is her knowledge of rap music? Did she really order chicken and waffles at a famous soul-food restaurant?

[Jemele Hill: Kamala Harris’s blackness isn’t up for debate]

Harris had only briefly passed through Iowa since making her candidacy official, popping in to do a CNN town hall on her way back to Washington after the Oakland kickoff rally. But the state is key for her too: She wants a top finish here next February that would solidify her as a front-runner and give her the momentum going into a four-week blitz around the country in which most of the delegates will be awarded. Her expectation is that there wouldn’t be enough time or money for even the best political organization to keep up with her if she racked up enough early wins to create the momentum and a sense of inevitability.

This second trip was a full weekend of town halls and local Democratic events that she kicked off by greeting Asians and Latinos at the state capitol. She was trailed everywhere by the cameras and the staff entourage that mark a candidate being thought of as a front-runner.

Already in two weeks as a candidate, Klobuchar has started wearing creases into some of the lines she keeps using. Harris, meanwhile, has been delivering the same stump speech almost verbatim since hitting the midterm trail (including here in Iowa) in October, telling the same jokes, as if each time an ad lib has just come to her, like when she mocks smooth-talking candidates for sprinkling “lovely dust.” Beyond the performance skills as a candidate that Harris is demonstrating as she continues to introduce herself to voters who’ve never seen her in person before, she notably does not vary the speech much, no matter who’s in the crowd. Some bits get cycled in more frequently when she’s in front of minority audiences, like when she hammers the wage gap for black and Latino women, or mentions the radically higher mortality rate for new mothers, but nearly every audience hears her talk about Russian interference, just like nearly every audience hears her say that parents of 12-year-old black boys shouldn’t have to sit down with their sons and have “the talk” about how police are more likely to harass them because of the color of their skin.

Everywhere, Harris keeps to her “Let’s speak some truths,” rhetorical spine, and every time, it builds up to the same one: the truth that there is more that unites Americans than divides them, despite the efforts of Trump.

“Part of our strength as a nation is we are aspirational,” she said in her opening remarks at her town hall on Saturday afternoon. “Part of our strength is we will always fight to get to that place. Let’s hold on to our nature.”

It’s a call to unite behind her, and to believe that others will unite behind her, specifically because she is different and can piece a broken nation back together.

Maybe it was that the town hall was on a college campus in Ankeny, or that no one had to pay for a seat, or maybe that Harris is already being treated as a political celebrity, but the crowd was not only bigger—it was younger and significantly more diverse. By Saturday night, when she drove through a blizzard from a soup dinner in Ames to make it to the United Steelworkers hall for the Black Caucus event in West Des Moines, the crowd wasn’t as big as Klobuchar’s sold-out dinner two nights earlier. But those in attendance responded more enthusiastically to having Harris in the room.

Based on the questions they’re getting and the conversations they’re having while shaking hands in the crowds, Klobuchar is still being treated as an interesting person voters want to get to know, while Harris is being looked at as someone people are trying to squint at and see as a nominee.

That’s how Klobuchar and Harris are putting themselves out there as well.

“I have grit,” Klobuchar said on Thursday night. “And I have friends and I have great neighbors in Iowa. And I have every reason to believe I can do this.”

“I intend to spend a lot of time in Iowa,” Harris said on Saturday afternoon, doing her best to project strength. “I intend to win.”

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2tAiRqC

[topicprinter]

I recently came across a great article on Hackernoon that has a lot of advice for people looking to get traffic with limited budget. The author spoke to online business owners and here are some of the most interesting answers they got:Larry Kim — CEO at mobilemonkey.comNiche: SAAS“Over the past year I’ve been living this exact situation — starting a business from scratch, with limited marketing budget. We’ve found our best performing marketing channel by far is chat blasting in Facebook Messenger. That’s sending out your content via push notifications to your Facebook Messenger contact list. The best thing is very few other marketers are doing this so we tend to get 70–80% open rates, and 20% click-rates, which is about 200x higher engagement than email or organic social media.”Ryan Hoover — Founder at producthunt.comNiche: UGCThe fastest growing products have distribution hooks designed into the product itself, where each user directly or indirectly attracts more users or engagement. For example, every day makers launch their latest creation on Product Hunt and subsequently share it with their audience. Some of those users are also makers that go on to launch their product on the site, bringing along their audience and more makers. And the cycle continues.Ann Smarty — Founder MyBlogU.com and ViralContentBee.comNiche: Education, Web App“The first thing I’d do is to create content that’s worth spreading. It’s not a tactic, it’s the foundation of any digital marketing campaign, old or new. So once that’s taken care of, the next thing is to submit your content to ViralContentBee.com VCB is free, so you don’t need any budget to start. It does require high-quality non-promotional content, because it’s based on authentic sharing (Users are not paid to share content: They are using VCB because it offers them carefully curated hand-picked content in a variety of categories to match your social media streams and build up your interactions). Now, simply monitor your social media shares and make sure to interact with each of them by liking, commenting and following your promoters to build up your micro-community. I published my own case study long ago and it continues working very well for me: http://www.seosmarty.com/my-viral-content-buzz-case-study-how-to-get-found-on-the-internet/”Brian D. Evans — Founder at influencive.comNiche: Media Outlet“If I was starting from scratch in 2019 with a project that I had and wanted to gain traffic, there are 3 things I would focus on. The first is networking with as many major influencers or super connector types as possible. I would go to every event even if I thought there was only a small chance of a worthwhile encounter. Note that when I say ‘networking’ I don’t mean harassing people that are more successful in your field to do things for you. In fact, I mean the opposite. Do things for them. Create real value. Show them what you are capable of. Don’t ask for anything. The second big thing I would do is scour for opportunities to invest my time to generate PR for myself. I would start with whatever platform is popular for the time; today it is Quora without a doubt. Last but not least, I’d find 10–15 ways to invest my time in creating content. I’d learn to write. Find a site like Influencive and ask them to contribute valuable content on a topic you know well. Every post I made on social media would be long form and aiming at providing value to others.”I hope this will be helpful for you guys

[luxus4me]

Webmonkey http://j.mp/2EpUYt8

Julia Baritz is having quite a week. The Austin, Texas based developer is the founder and lead architect of Pillowfort.io, a community-oriented social media blogging platform that's quietly amassed around 20,000 users in its first two and a half years. Since Monday, however, Baritz has been inundated with more than 8,000 requests from people clamoring to join her site. Traffic to Pillowfort’s homepage has been 10 times higher than average, she says.

Baritz has porn to thank for this interest. On Monday, Tumblr announced a ban on all “adult content”, and creators have been frantically searching for a new place to migrate their NSFW art and porn blogs ever since. Pillowfort emerged as a potential safe harbor via word of mouth on social media. The site allows NSFW content to be posted with few restrictions, as long as it doesn't break any laws.

“It’s funny that adult and sexual content has become the linchpin and turning point of our popularity in a way, but I’m not surprised,” says Baritz.

Sexual content has always been a part of fandom communities online, from LiveJournal to Tumblr. And communities have a history of abandoning platforms that don’t support the free expression of adult material. It was LiveJournal’s crackdown on NSFW material back in 2007 that broke community trust in the site and initiated the mass migration to Tumblr, along with the creation of fandom sites like An Archive of Our Own. Now Tumblr’s facing its own porn-related exodus, because NSFW content appears to be at odds with its business goals.

For Baritz, the experience has been head-spinning. Pillowfort is still in beta, and this kind of spotlight is a huge test for the site.

If anyone understands what Baritz has been going through, it’s Denise Paolucci. As the co-founder of Dreamwidth, a web 1.0-style blogging platform that shares Pillowfort's user-first philosophy, she has seen a similar spike on her site this week. Dreamwidth is more established—it has existed since 2008 and has 53,595 active users (and 3,453,932 total accounts)—but traffic to the site has also surged to 10 times its typical amount, she says. Many Tumblr users are tweeting about their plans to migrate to both Dreamwidth and Pillowfort.

Both sites adhere to an anti-advertising, anti-VC funding, anti-corporate model that centers user privacy, control, and freedom. That's what makes them such appealing options to many disaffected Tumblr bloggers, but the challenges they face underscore why the dream of an independent web is so hard to achieve, even when there's demand.

Microblogging Like It's 2009

Dreamwidth began as a side project after Paolucci and her co-founder Mark Smith felt that LiveJournal, their former employer, had lost its way. Paolucci worked there as a community manager, Smith as a developer. They built Dreamwidth on LiveJournal’s open source code, which was already 10 years old at the time. A decade later, they still co-run the site. “The other day I realized I’ve been working on this code base for about 20 years and I had to go lie down for a minute,” Paolucci says.

The benefit of code that old is it’s incredibly stable, has been fully patched and security-audited, and it’s efficient. This week it has handled 10 times its normal traffic smoothly. “We have designed Dreamwidth to be very expandable,” she says. “We did have a big increase in traffic when Tumblr made its announcement and no one noticed because we set up the site so it can scale in an instant.”

But what it gains in stability, it lacks in new features. Dreamwidth can barely handle images, as some Tumblr exiles have noted on Twitter, and currently has no option to upload video. GIFs should work, Paolucci says, but users get only 500 megabytes of image hosting on their accounts, at least for right now.

“Unlimited image hosting is one of those features that people have gotten used to that are VC-subsidized on most websites,” she says. “We can’t afford to offer that same kind of unlimited, endless image hosting.”

Instead, Dreamwidth is a text-based community, full of everything from fanfic to erotica to you name it. Tumblr's new ban, however, focuses on visuals, like NSFW photos, video, and GIFs; the company says written content like erotica is still allowed.

Paolucci understands that Dreamwidth may not be right for all Tumblr exiles. “We are definitely thinking of this as an opportunity for users who are fleeing Tumblr to discover our philosophy and business ethics,” she says, “but there is also a certain level of people who are used to Tumblr and Tumblr's features [and Dreamwidth] may not be what they are looking for.”

Dreamwidth has been “a good lifeboat service for a lot of people,” Paolucci says—a landing place for people who have had to leave other platforms for some reason. When beloved services are shut down or change their terms, people can lose their communities and work. “Even those who have their primary hangout elsewhere use us as a permanent redirect to wherever they're socializing most," she says, "because after ten years, people are beginning to trust that we mean it when we say we're planning to be around for the long haul.”

Not Ready for Primetime

Pillowfort, on the other hand, looks a lot like Tumblr, but it can’t yet handle the traffic that comes along with popularity.

Baritz created Pillowfort in 2016 to be exactly what disaffected Tumblr bloggers are now in search of: an open-minded site that can host images and videos; allows reblogging, commenting, and community building; encourages a strong artistic bent; and doesn’t censor NSFW content. It improves on Tumblr, in some bloggers’ opinion, by offering nimble privacy features—like allowing you to make certain posts private to certain followers, while leaving other posts public—and focusing on customization. Pillowfort's terms of service also currently prohibit posts that target or harass other users, which some bloggers may crave in a new community.

It is meant to look like Tumblr but harken back to the original LiveJournal era, a simpler time on the web, when people could create small, cohesive, and specific communities without worrying too much about arbitrary censorship or ads. Baritz says she fell in love with LiveJournal when she was in middle school, and longed for a way to combine its creative, independent ethos with more modern features.

When Tumblr bloggers looking for a new home came to Pillowfort on Monday, though, they found a site that had been offline for ten days for security maintenance after a Tumblr user posted that they had found a bug in the site’s code. Baritz and her two developers got the site up and running by the afternoon, but then the surge in traffic overloaded the servers. The site is still unstable, and Pillowfort doesn’t have the money in the coffers to just add server capacity overnight. For some Tumblr users, the experience has been frustrating.

Baritz is facing a very tricky challenge: make the most of this opportunity without bankrupting her company or betraying her conscience in the process.

“If our server costs increase by 10 times the way our overall site traffic has, then we won’t be immediately bankrupted, certainly, but it’s more expenditure than I planned for,” Baritz says.

Her plan is to approve new requests to the site in batches so that she doesn’t overload server capacity, and so that she has time to take in the money from each new user in order to pay for the server capacity to host them.

Money, Money, Money?

Both Pillowfort and Dreamwidth embrace a business model that charges users directly and aims for relatively small profits—a radical idea in a web dominated by ad revenue and data sales.

Like LiveJournal did when it first launched, Dreamwidth makes money by charging users for premium accounts, at annual rates of $35 or $50. With the paid subscriptions, you get more Dreamwidth tokens, which can be used to access perks like user icons or the ability to rename blogs.

“We’re not making a whole ton of money but we're not losing money and we have enough people who really value what we are trying to do from a business ethics standpoint that they will support us,” says Paolucci. Aside from her and Smith, the site is run by volunteers.

Premium accounts is the same business model Baritz is planning for Pillowfort. She and the team are about six months away, she estimates, from launching that pay functionality. She’s currently crowdsourcing suggestions from users about what features they want and are willing to pay for.

Until then, Pillowfort keeps the lights on by charging new users a one-time $5 sign-up fee. Baritz has also turned to crowdfunding campaigns. She raised a little more than $5,000 on Indiegogo to launch the site in 2016. This year, she quit her job as a developer at a software company to focus on Pillowfort full time, and raised around $60,000 from a successful Kickstarter in August. That money is earmarked to pay her two contractors, and to hire another full-time developer to work on scaling the company up.

“What’s central to how Pillowfort’s being planned is we’re going to be getting our money from our users. We won’t be beholden to anyone but our users, so we won’t have to worry about third parties or outside forces,” Baritz says.

Those are laudable future goals. But they don’t help right now, when suddenly 8,000 people are “knocking down my door,” as Baritz put it, and Baritz doesn’t have the money to go out and buy extra server hosting immediately.

“We have to make some sacrifices, like keeping the site relatively small right now. If we did go a corporate route then I would be nervous then we’d be under a lot more pressure to turn a profit and inevitably it would influence the way we build the site, and I don’t want to compromise on user privacy and user control,” she says.

Even without taking VC money, however, sites and platforms can still be vulnerable to outside forces, including the services they rely on to function. A number of internet infrastructure companies have taken action against users this year, from PayPal, Stripe, Joyent, and GoDaddy all kicking off Gab to PayPal cracking down on the ASMR community. Dreamwidth has had trouble with PayPal, too, when the payment processor wanted it to censor some NSFW material in 2010. And Pillowfort tweeted earlier this week that it plans to change domain names, after learning that .io domains don't support NSFW content.

And even if Baritz were willing to go the VC route, it's not a sure recipe for success. Small social media companies have raised millions from Silicon Valley in the past, only to crash and burn. Take IMZY, a site founded by ex-Redditors who wanted to create a nicer, gentler, safer version of Reddit. In 2015 IMZY raised $11 million dollars from VC firms, but after generating lots of excitement and getting thousands of users, it shuttered after less than a year. The reason the founders gave was that they couldn’t find a place in the market, but with the money they had raised they were under pressure to not just find a small niche, but to actually compete on profit with bigger companies.

IMZY was a great example, Paolucci says, of the old “underpants gnomes” business plan, a reference to a Southpark episode about the concept. (Step 1: Collect users. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit.)

She admires what Baritz is doing with Pillowfort, and hopes that the site can handle the sudden surge of interest. “I think that the web needs a lot more of the kind of sites and communities that are created with motives other than profit in mind,” says Paolucci.

More Great WIRED Stories

http://j.mp/2Ef2hmz via Webmonkey URL : http://j.mp/2wxgkOF

[thisdaynews]

Breaking News: Champions League Final: 5 key factors which could influence the game

New Post has been published on https://www.thisdaynews.net/2018/05/22/breaking-news-champions-league-final-5-key-factors-which-could-influence-the-game/

Breaking News: Champions League Final: 5 key factors which could influence the game

Taking a look at the key factors which could determine the biggest footballing war of the season

Right then ladies and gentlemen, the Champions League final is almost upon us. It’s fitting that the two most exciting teams this season clash against each other to grab the biggest trophy in club football. Liverpool vs Real Madrid, Ronaldo vs Salah, Zidane vs Klopp, Firmino Vs Ramos and what not. If this doesn’t excite you, trust me, folks, nothing ever will.

We look at the key aspects of the game which could well determine which team lays it’s hands on the trophy when Milorad Mažić blows his final whistle on the night.

#5 Liverpool’s inexperience:

Since that magical night in Istanbul, rightly called as the greatest night in the rich history of Liverpool FC, the Anfield faithful have waited for 13 long years to see their team compete in another final.

This in itself might be Liverpool’s undoing on the big night as, on nights having magnitude as big as this, it’s the players’ experience which helps in soothing the nerves, getting into stride quickly and rising to the occasion.

The fact that no one in this Liverpool squad has played a Champions League final before makes Klopp’s task all the more important as it’ll be his duty to maintain his player’s resolve, not allowing to succumb to such immense pressure et al.

These are the matches where players turn into legends; the ones that distinguish the true greats from the mere mortals. Klopp himself had to face defeat in his lone appearance in 2013 when his Robert Lewandowski-led team were comprehensively beaten by Bayern Munich, which was a perfect example of the Bavarians using their big match experience to snarl away Dortmund when Robben scored with the last kick of the game.

Madrid, on the other hand, are the most successful team in the history of this competition and will be looking forward to lifting the trophy for a record-extending 13th time. Marcelo, Ramos, Kroos, Modric and Ronaldo among the other Real players have played in numerous finals prior to this and it’ll be interesting to see if they can bring their experience to the fore one more time.

#4 Real Madrid’s shaky defence

Real Madrid’s defenders haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory this season

Real Madrid’s backline has been defensively poor throughout this season, letting in goals by the dozen. Opponents have found the back of Madrid’s net a staggering 15 times this season in the Champions League.

Keylor Navas has managed to keep just 2 clean sheets in 10 matches played this term, which pales in comparison to the competition high 6 he had managed in last year’s triumphant campaign.

The full-backs Carvajal and Marcelo have put in commendable performances going forward, but it has been their defensive showing which has left a lot to be desired. Their defensive lapses almost cost them against Juventus, who were cruelly kicked out of the competition when Ronaldo scored the last-ditch penalty.

Even in their last league game of the season, they blew a two-goal advantage, highlighting their defensive frailties. The huge acres of spaces left behind by the full backs were quite smartly exploited by all the teams, but Madrid being Madrid, survived by the skin of their teeth.

However, they’ll have to be at the top of their game in order to stop the marauding trio of Salah, Mane and Firmino. Klopp would consider himself a relieved man if the two are kept busy on the night as Real are bound to suffer going forward if the two are negated.

In the absence of Carvajal for the second leg against Bayern, Madrid were found woefully short of quality, both in defence and attack. Bobby Firmino has been the standout performer for the Reds this year and has troubled every defence with his directness and subtle movements.

Salah and Mane both use their supreme pace to run defences ragged and their combination will be fundamental to Liverpool’s chances. The center-backs Ramos and Raphael Varane will have their hands full throughout the course of the match and if they manage to come out of the battle unscathed, which quite frankly seems unlikely at the moment, this final will surely be Madrid’s for the taking.

#3 The midfield battle

Can they do it again?

Though the front three of Liverpool have rightfully gained plaudits from their fans and football pundits alike both domestically and in Europe, their midfielders have performed exceedingly well, both in attack and defence.

Their captain James Milner has registered the most assists this season (8). The captain’s armband has seemingly taken his game to a higher level and his immaculate performances on the pitch are a testament to that fact.

Jordan Henderson has been the defensive rock in the midfield three. The much-maligned England international has overcome a torrid start to the season and looks set to finish the season with a flourish.

Georgino Wijnaldum has enjoyed a breakthrough season, earning Klopp’s trust and has become an instant hit with the fans. In absence of the Ox, he’ll be the one tasked with dictating play and carrying the ball forward.

Madrid, however seemingly have the edge in this area of the pitch, thanks to the effortless style of play and insane reading of the game displayed by the midfield double pivot of Kroos and Modric.

The delicious outside-of-the-foot passes, amazing through balls, calmness on the ball and telepathic connection on the pitch has been a sight to behold. Casemiro, who has been brilliant in patches, symbolising Madrid’s year, remains Zidane’s best bet to play the role of a destroyer at the heart of Real’s midfield.

The Whites will be praying for Casemiro to churn out a repeat of last year’s final in which he was at his belligerent best and scored an absolute screamer during a critical phase to give Madrid some breathing space.

#2 Team selection, tactics and formation

Can he secure a hat-trick?

After an underwhelming end to a torrid domestic campaign on Sunday, Zidane stated that he had all the 24 players available for the big night and summarised his feelings about it by blatantly moaning that he was ‘fu**** up’.

That’s what the problem of plenty does to you more often than not. Klopp, on the contrary, might go with the traditional 4-3-3 with Wijnaldum playing behind the front three and Milner playing with Henderson in the central midfield.

Virgil Van Dijk ought to start as central defender along with Dejan Lovren while Alexander Arnold may start with Robertson as the full-backs. Bale looks set to regain his place in the starting XI given the breathtaking form he is in.

Another thought doing the rounds is that we might get to see the famed trio of ‘BBC’ back again which seems quite logical as well, but I personally feel that Benzema will have to make way for Isco given the scanty amount of game time he has had in the past few fixtures.

Also, it will be quite interesting to see will be how Klopp manages to make use of his substitutions if the game goes into extra time. That, although seems unlikely given the number of goals that will be plundered within regulation time.

Contrarily, Zidane has made a living out of his timely and tactical substitutions who have time again bailed his team out, with Marco-wonderboy-Asensio and Lucas Vazquez providing the fresh legs and width required on the pitch late in the game.

As far as tactics are concerned, the “geggenpressing” style of Klopp has stuffed the momentum out of many a side in Europe and against Madrid, the Reds will surely look to harass the Madrid players on the ball.

Casemiro, of all Madrid players, always seems a bit uncomfortable on the ball and I won’t be surprised if he’s touted as the trigger point for Klopp’s hounding boys.

A riveting off-pitch encounter awaits us, innit?

#1 Is there any stopping Mo Salah or Cristiano Ronaldo?

Who will blink first?

Both Liverpool and Real Madrid have qualified to the Final primarily due to the blistering form their respective talismans, Salah and Ronaldo.

While Cristiano has always amazed the football audiences around the world with his unparalleled consistency and a burning desire to win everything, the Egyptian king has been nothing short of a revelation in his debut season at Anfield.

Destroying defences in England and Europe alike, Salah has racked up the numbers (and trophies) at an astonishing rate this season. The Golden Boot winner scored a mind-boggling 32 goals in the Premier League this season, overtaking the record of 31 goals held by a certain Cristiano Ronaldo.

However, when it comes to the Champions League, there hasn’t been a better player than Ronaldo in its history. Even after he failed to score in two legs against Bayern Munich in the semifinals, he has already plundered 15 goals this term, 5 more than the PFA Footballer of the year.

While Salah has never reached this stage of the competition in his career, it will be the 5th time when Cristiano steps out to play the final for Madrid. He has ended up winning the trophy on four occasions and the Liverpool defence will have to defend for their lives if they are to stop the man from scoring in a competition in which he has scored 121 times.

They might follow the Bavarians’ strategy of tightly marking the Portuguese and closing out the passing lanes to him if they are to prevent him from finding the back of the net. As in Mo Salah’s case, there haven’t been many teams who have kept a lid on him.

Even if teams make a conscious effort to shut out Salah, he still manages to serve goals on a platter and that is the reason why he is so hard to defend against. For all the goals and assists which salah has against his name, he has shown this tendency to miss some easy chances as well.

Klopp would be wary that in a Champions League final against Real Madrid, there won’t be many chances on offer and he’ll require his sensational forward to be at his imperious best if Liverpool are to lift the trophy after 13 years.

When these two met last time around in an international friendly, it was the Madeira born player who hogged the limelight with his twin headers in stoppage time to overcome the deficit created by none other than Salah. Will Mo get his revenge in Kiev on the grandest of stages on Sunday night or will it be the Madrid superstar who will come out trumps again?

Your guess is as good as mine folks!

[djgblogger-blog]

Beyond #MeToo, Brazilian women rise up against racism and sexism

http://bit.ly/2AS8aku

Women’s empowerment recently got a big boost at the Golden Globes, but the United States isn’t the only place having a feminist revival.

In 2015, two years before the #MeToo campaign got Americans talking about sexual harassment, Brazilian feminists launched #MeuPrimeiroAssedio, or #MyFirstHarrassment. In its first five days, the hashtag racked up 82,000 tweets detailing the chronic sexual harassment of women in this South American nation. It soon spread across Latin America in Spanish translation as #MiPrimerAcoso.

The viral success of #MeuPrimeiroAssedio spurred a spate of social media activism in Brazil, where despite decades of feminist efforts gender inequality remains deeply entrenched.

With #MeuAmigoSecreto – #MyAnonymousFriend – women documented misogyny on the streets and at work. Tagging #MeuQueridoProfessor – #MyDearTeacher – university students outed sexism in the classroom.

And when the weekly news magazine Veja described the wife of Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, as “beautiful, modest and a housewife” in April 2016, feminists transformed that stereotype into a meme showcasing empowered women.

Temer came to power following the impeachment of Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff. Many saw Rousseff’s ouster as misogynistic. Feminists were determined that Brazilian sexism would no longer go unchecked.

Black women’s bodies

As race and gender researchers, we’ve been watching Brazil’s feminist resurgence closely to see whether it reflects the needs of Afro-Brazilian women, who make up 25 percent of the population.

Though the country has long considered itself colorblind, black and indigenous Brazilians are poorer than white Brazilians. Women of color in Brazil also experience sexual violence at much higher rates than white women.

For example, domestic workers, who are predominantly Afro-Brazilian, have been systematically harassed by their male employers. This centuries-old power play dates back to slavery.

Since both of us have recently published books – “The Biopolitics of Beauty” and “Health Equity in Brazil” – examining the impact of Brazilian medical practices on black women, we are particularly interested to see if Brazilian feminists will tackle two issues that particularly affect black women: health care and plastic surgery.

These may seem unrelated to each other and to black women’s rights, but in Brazil they are deeply intertwined. All Brazilian citizens get free medical care under the Sistema Único de Saúde, the national health care system.

Despite universal access to health services, black women do not always receive the best care. Though Brazil’s colorblind approach to health has resulted in scant documentation of differential health outcomes by race, one study found that black women are two and a half times more likely to die from an unsafe abortion than white women.

The startling discrepancy probably reflects a lack of high-quality prenatal and obstetric care for black women, which is a problem in U.S. hospitals as well. Discriminatory treatment by medical professionals, which includes a lack of attention to the specific health needs of black Brazilians, also factors in.

Black activists have also pointed out for decades that Afro-Brazilian women have higher rates of sterilization and abortion, which in Brazil is mostly illegal – and thus very risky.

Overall maternal health is also markedly worse among black women. In Brazil’s impoverished northeast, which has the country’s highest concentration of African descendants, black women are 10 to 20 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women.

The ‘negroid nose’

Medical doctors may neglect black Brazilian women, but plastic surgeons pursue them. Since the 1960s, Brazilian cosmetic surgery has been included in Brazil’s national health care system.

In Brazil, white beauty standards remain the cultural ideal. That means many Brazilian plastic surgeons operate on the basis that more European features – facial features in particular – are better.

Specifically, our research has found, they tend to target black women’s noses, which they deem a “problem feature” in lectures, publications and websites.

In conversation, some doctors even expressed their belief that the “negroid nose” is a “mistake” caused by racial mixing. Fortunately, they would add, it’s nothing a nose job can’t fix.

This occurs within a broader culture, familiar to women worldwide, of bombarding all Brazilian women with opportunities to “improve” their imperfect bodies. Brazilians are among the top consumers of plastic surgery in the world. It is estimated that more than a million cosmetic procedures are carried out every year.

Some Brazilian plastic surgeons refer to their jobs as helping women achieve “the right to beauty.” When, in 2016, a famous plastic surgeon who promoted this idea died, his obituary read like that of a national hero.

And since most plastic surgery is covered under Brazil’s public health system, our research uncovered, surgeons have found it lucrative to develop procedures targeting the entire topography of the female body.

Treatments that aren’t paid by insurance come with long-term payment plans. For the poorest patients, doctors have made plastic surgery accessible by exchanging their professional services for permission to use these operations as a teaching exercise for young medical residents.

Taking online to the ground

Historically, feminist critiques of this industry were largely subdued. But plastic surgery is now in the spotlight of Brazil’s “Women’s Spring.”

In October 2017, one of Brazil’s biggest newspapers, Folha de São Paulo, ran an article extolling the “ideal vulva” and describing the surgical interventions necessary to attain it. Women lambasted the piece on social media, calling it “absurd,” “unacceptable” and “sad.”

The assumption that some vaginas are more desirable than others, feminist commentators pointed out, imposes the male gaze on the female body. Additionally, they argued, the article’s emphasis on “pink” vaginas and its suggested use of skin-whiteners was patently racist.

Black feminist bloggers likely started this particular line of critique. As early as 2014, they were denouncing Brazilian cosmetic surgery as “racism cloaked as science.” Plastic surgeons, wrote Gabi Porfírio in a June 2014 post on Blogueiras Negras, have become “experts at using demeaning terminology for the noses of black people.”

But in a country where only 63 percent of households have internet access, black feminists also have also used more traditional forms of protest to engage women of color.

A year before the the hashtag #MeuPrimeiroAssedio would go viral, black feminists began working across Brazil to organize women who don’t generally participate in activism. Their efforts culminated in the Black Women’s March Against Racism and Violence and in Favor of Living Well in Brasilia, the capital.

There, 50,000 Afro-Brazilian women of all ages and backgrounds came together to denounce violence against black women – not just sexual violence but also deadly abortions, mass incarceration and medical neglect. It was the first ever national march of black Brazilian women.

The first-ever national march of black Brazilian women had ‘living well’ as a central demand. Brazilian Ministry of Culture

In a country that has long ignored inequality, the protest put race squarely on the feminist agenda. By contrasting the diverse forms of violence black women face with the idea of “living well,” the Black Women’s March voiced an alternative vision of racial and gender justice for Brazil.

In doing so, they join #MeToo, #MeuPrimeiroAssedio and a whole chorus of female voices around the globe. Online and on the ground, Brazilian feminists demand equity from the surgeon’s table to the office.

Alvaro Jarrin received funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies to carry out his research on beauty in Brazil.

Kia Lilly Caldwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

[efqmarcelo26469-blog]

. Successful Social networking site Advertising and marketing.

Make social media help you, not vice versa, along with a basic evaluation on just how your approach is working or even a full social playbook. Our team can additionally take social to your internet site by creating a center of your social nourishes or even the babble around your brand, a wonderful dynamic brand name structure resource. As a side details, social marketing could indicate any Internet 2.0 social book-marking, content sharing, or social media internet site. The enhancing world wide web seepage participates in a key duty in the swift growth of social media sites texting.

A blogging site is actually a best location to establish that vocal," as well as this likewise serves as a logical car that can help both seed talks in social networking sites as well as help lead those very same social media users back to your own website. It certainly not simply develops additional web content for internet search engine to index, but that also reveals your customers as well as would-be customers what does it cost? of pertinent understanding you have regarding your organisation. On the internet neighborhoods have actually possessed an extensive impact on pop culture noticeable from the extensive use sites like YouTube, Flickr as well as various other media channels. Nevertheless, with the development from new tools like social networks, the capability to more easily help make one thing popular permits companies to produce a 'pull' along with a lot a lot less up-front investment. Erase the information on the back-up media from the previous week either personally or even by means of the data backup plan you are actually making use of before executing a brand-new backup to this. As much as people aim to do their absolute best in making the ideal digital advertising campaign, there are actually some brand-new as well as innovative technological procedures that could possibly equally effortlessly do their job (and perhaps even more). Digital advertising and marketing organizations in India have developed like a candy outlet on the street road as well as bring in major business to outsource business. Intending to draw in massive readers to their companies, they spent billions making their own artistic web content. Ted Rubin is actually a leading social advertising schemer, keynote speaker, behaving CMO from Brand Innovators, and also co-author of Gain on Relationship. At one point from the range are those that claim that, with social networking sites websites like Facebook, the web has allowed individuals to improve their socializings more than ever in the past. Social task as well as the underlying feelings that steer this are a means to an end, the devices that carry out the logic from survival. Nonetheless, electronic advertising strategies have actually additionally developed substantially for many years. This fast lane from development need to certainly not discourage companies coming from obtaining involved with social media, yet rather watch this as a problem or even adventure as well as get on board right now whilst most services are actually also still learning. Social media site enhances people to construct connections and also connect along with a larger section from people, discuss their point of views, adventures, ideas as well as sceneries along with each other, while concurrently, the very same system operates as the tool from obtaining promos as well as marketing. Whether you're an advertising and marketing communications specialist, business manager, or even business person, you'll know the best ways to tailor and supply social techniques with networks that are relevant to your consumers. I need somebody which is actually going to be able to load all 10 from my sessions through advertising and marketing on social networking sites. Today, news in traditional media (newspapers, consumer publications, field journals, updates submission solutions) is actually finest tracked on the Internet. Using built-in social media advertising resources, our company may target a viewers so precisely in order that the correct folks are actually observing your notification, verified to receive much higher click-through-rates and much better ROI. . Social Media Advertising has actually had your father's spoken word campaigns and also put all of them on anabolic steroids. However if your provider is actually a way of life brand or a buyer great or a substantial provider that touches virtually everyone (say Google.com), recognizing your viewers's current media routines as well as creating slim people could lead you down a bland pathway of me as well" web content. Unlike straight advertising where you may predict a provided action cost from 1-3%, virus-like advertising and marketing can be hit or miss. Material supplied in this particular method can easily help you associate with your audience without being actually also pushy. To find out more regarding yellow pages personal numbers uk (why not check here) take a look at our webpage. MySpace: I still find MySpace the absolute most annoying of all the social networking web sites, and also hear excessive terror stories from MySpace stalkers and of people needing to shut profiles due to harassment through various other consumers. Along with effective resources like Google analytics, one can easily track the company' spresentation as well as end results all over various social media sites systems. This is considering that if information is actually the king of your internet site thus undeniably, circulation is actually the queen, which assists to reach out to a broader audience as well as raise your sale fee. Ensure to connect every one of your social networking sites sites to make sure that your followers may follow you anywhere. They construct trust fund along with their clients by letting them understand that they can operate as a group as well as assistance one another to strengthen their clients' internet marketing strategies. In addition to being a strong advertising and marketing broker as well as brand contractor, that likewise assists you improve your sales significantly. A social method and activity isn't an one time occasion yet a continual process as a result folks as well as budget plan should be appointed to this. It may be just about anything; you can easily start a site, reveal item examples, start blogging and also sharing video clips, or maybe use the social networks to develop understanding about your item. That is actually not simply media professionals who can possess issue with profiles, yet in this prompt paced and also occupied sector, that is actually quick and easy to lose monitor as well as put your financial duties on the back burner. Use it. Like people, Facebook customers along with such as minded interests will certainly gravitate to tales as well as events. Social media is becoming a low-cost and obtainable discovering platform. I hope these 7 steps assist you to start your social networks tasks with a consistent and crystal clear strategy bring about effectiveness. Now-a- times there is actually an usual sensation if one couldn't be found anywhere then social networks is actually a location to go. This is a established as well as highly productive strategy in service advertising and marketing where an advertising and marketing plant needs to be actually developed. I've been thinking about among the biggest main reason whies organisations as well as entrepreneurs take the time to become on social networks.

[markjsousa]

Yelp Reputation Management Tips

As an entrepreneur, you already know the impact that Yelp can have on your business. Because of this, Yelp reputation management is extremely important.

On average, Yelp receives 145 million unique visitors… per month! Additionally, some studies suggest that 90% of Yelp users claim that positive reviews affect their buying choices. Yes, you read that correctly, 90% of users!

With this statistic in mind, it becomes even clearer why the most successful business owners devote so much time to their profiles on Yelp.

Even if you have the best product or business, a poorly kept (or non-existent) presence on Yelp keeps people from choosing you.

What a Good Yelp Reputation Looks like

A great reputation on Yelp doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it will look seriously suspicious if every rating is 5-stars. Even the best businesses get criticized by a user at some point or another.

  The important thing is that the majority of comments have something positive to say about your business and the user’s personal experience with it. This is where an effective Yelp reputation management strategy comes into play.

In addition to having a business page full of recent, descriptive and overwhelmingly positive comments, there are other elements that will keep your business’ Yelp page in tip top shape.

Taking control of your business’ profile page, filling in all information, keeping it updated and quickly responding to users are all important aspects of cultivating a strong reputation on Yelp.

When it comes to Yelp reputation management, remember that you can shape how people perceive your business by staying active on the platform and attentive to customer needs and feedback.

Because you don’t get to edit what customers are saying about your business online, focus on the aspects of your business’ reputation on Yelp that you do control.

The secrets of great Yelp reputation management

Start with your profile

– take control of the existing page or start a new one. Make sure all contact information is updated… but go the extra mile. For example, update the profile with recent images from your restaurant, include other places where users can connect with the business – places like instagram, facebook, or your primary website.

Engage with customers when appropriate. Thank users for their positive reviews and offer your apologies to those who had less than stellar things to say. Find out if there is any way that you can make that relationship better – give them a coupon to come back in, or tell them how your team is currently addressing that issue.

Stay active. Be supportive of other businesses in your industry. Make sure that your business finds its community online. This is not only a way to introduce your name into online communities, but it’s a great way to invite reciprocal support.

Build a business that people want to support. This is much easier said than done, but if you aren’t focused on the actual user experience with your product or business – then there’s no point in going on Yelp. You’ll just open yourself up to negative reviews. So make sure that you are paying attention to the experience that clients, customers, vendors, partners and employees are having with your business. Are you working on building a high quality product or experience? You must have a strong base in order for people to write great reviews about it.

Let people know you’re on Yelp, but don’t demand reviews. This is likely the trickest aspect of an effective Yelp reputation management campaign. The best reviews are organic, and if they look fishy, Yelp’s software will likely flag them. According to Yelp’s guidelines you can’t directly ask customers to review your business on Yelp as this would likely create a bias in reviews. However, if someone has a phenomenal experience with your business and they want to write about it, make sure it’s easy for them to find your Yelp page. Remember, don’t coerce or incentivize anyone, but make sure that you tell your customers that your business is on Yelp and that their feedback is welcomed and appreciated. To learn more about Yelp’s specific guidelines, read their Business owner’s guidelines. 

What to do if you have negative Yelp reviews

Yelp is a great site for consumers to learn about businesses through other customers’ experiences and for businesses to generate some interest, but there can be a downside.

Unless a user deploys hate speech, sexually harasses or threatens others – the user can pretty much say anything. This emboldens some users who have a personal agenda to attack businesses or their owners. And unfortunately, this means that some users may write some comments that are not only false, but harmful to the reputation of your business both online and in real life.

With this in mind, here are some steps on how to deal with negative comments on Yelp:

How to deal with negative comments on Yelp

When it comes to responding to bad Yelp reviews, Yelp has a built in tool for businesses. The free review response tool lets business owners respond privately or publicly to any reviews left on their page. So what does that mean for you? Both public and private responses have their pros and cons, and you need to understand both before kicking off your Yelp reputation management campaign.

Let’s start with the pros of a public response:

By diplomatically addressing any complaints publicly, you show your users that you are apologetic for any sub-par experience, appreciate their feedback and can share steps you’re taking to correct this situation. This sort of public acknowledgement is important for your brand. However, there are a few cons to responding publicly to a bad review.

The cons of responding publicly:

If you respond in a way that is less than professional and courteous, you lose respect from other users and potential customers. If you respond publicly and this somehow incites the user who posted the poor review, that just means that you will be engaging with more negativity. Additionally, by responding directly to a negative review, you are actually helping that review rank higher in search results by keeping it active. That means that you are increasing the likelihood that someone will read this bad review.

Pros of responding privately:

If you choose to respond to someone privately, there’s also a lot to consider.

The advantage of responding directly to your attacker, is that you can appeal to them calmly and rationally and ask for more information concerning their experience and how to rectify it directly.

Cons of responding privately:

However, by responding privately, you run the risk of the user responding very publicly anyway. Also, if someone comes across this negative review, it may look like you did nothing as there is no public resolution.

3 key factors when responding

While the way that you communicate is important, when it comes to dealing with bad Yelp reviews, the key to turning this negative into a positive is what you choose to communicate. It’s up to you to use your discretion in which types of reviews you choose to respond to, but try to keep the three factors of timeliness, courtesy and follow-up in mind. Sticking to these is crucial for finding success with Yelp reputation management.

Timeliness:

By responding to users quickly, you show them and other potential customers how important their feedback is. If you don’t respond at all, it seems like you don’t care about their experiences, or aren’t engaging on this platform. This leaves you open to even more criticism.

Courtesy: In addition to timeliness, courtesy is key. Instead of responding with a slew of insults, try to find something positive within the criticism. If there’s nothing there, simply apologize for their experience and thank them for their feedback. And if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. It all depends on your personal style. No matter what someone else is saying to you, it’s probably not worth it to quibble with this person online. Instead stay courteous, calm and cool-headed.

Follow-up: In addition to timeliness and courtesy, a course of action or follow-up is also necessary when dealing with negative reviews on Yelp. It’s one thing to simply apologize, but by explaining actionable steps to your disappointed customer the actionable steps you plan to take, you show that you take their complaints seriously. By following up, you show your commitment to high-quality service, and that you truly care about the customer experience. Don’t just pay lip-service and make promises you can’t keep. Be specific about what you plan on doing, and set a timeframe for more follow-up.

Ask for help

A good Yelp reputation management strategy needs a way to drive positive reviews to your page. When it comes to soliciting for reviews, Yelp discourages any outright asks or offers of compensation for positive reviews.

However, make it known to your customers that you’re on Yelp! Encourage customers to visit your page. Word of mouth is important – particularly for smaller businesses, and Yelp is just the digital version of this. Include links to your Yelp page in your email signature or on your business cards.

According to Yelp, business owners shouldn’t ask customers directly to review their experience. These sorts of reviews are often viewed as disingenuous, and Yelp’s software may filter them right out of the recommended reviews section on your page.

Earlier this year, Brian Patterson of Marketing Land reached out to a contact at Yelp, and uncovered more information when it comes to asking clients and customers to review your business. According to this exchange, while asking for reviews is discouraged – it doesn’t violate any terms of service.

Incentivizing the customers is prohibited, but technically, asking for reviews is allowed. However, as mentioned before, if these reviews seem forced or are published by users who don’t post very often, there’s a good chance that the reviews will be filtered out of recommended reviews, and no one will really see them.

So remember, use this information at your discretion, but don’t spend your energy trying to capture reviews that won’t help you much in the end. Reputation management on Yelp needs to be done the right way.

Acknowledge constructive criticism

When it comes to harsh reviews, it’s easy to retreat or completely destroy unfounded accusations. However, neither of these reactions will help your business. As we said before, focus on the constructive aspect of any criticisms on Yelp.

While it’s true, the site’s review-filtering process isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, there are a lot of real people venting about their experiences at different establishments on Yelp. So take a deep breath and dig in. There is a good chance that some of these criticisms can not only help you improve your business, but give you the opportunity to show what your brand is all about in the way that you choose to respond!

Love your haters

Let’s face it, Yelp isn’t always fair when it comes to the rules and options for business owners. There’s no way to remove a bad review (even if it is false) unless it is truly lewd, hateful, or threatening. And, as a business owner, you do not have the option to be anonymous.

Additionally, Yelp has been accused of tampering with reviews and rankings of businesses that choose not to purchase ads on the platform.

All of this tends to skew the bias towards the consumer and those businesses spending more money on the platform.

Don’t let this get you down. Instead, focus on showcasing your brand and the heart of your company. The businesses that success with Yelp reputation management focus on this more than anything else.

Be grateful that this platform lets you deal directly with people who are satisfied or dissatisfied with your product. Here you have the opportunity to improve your business in a practical way, and develop a strong method for responding to criticism.

How can you contest or correct the review?

When it comes to dealing with harsh reviews that are also false, Yelp does not allow you to delete the post as a business owner. Instead, your options are those listed above.

If someone leaves a message that includes hate speech, lewdness or truly threatening remarks, Yelp will remove it. However, lies are harder to prove, and Yelp does not mediate or research these types of comments.

How to take things even further

Yelp reputation management is tricky, and while completely removing most bad reviews from Yelp is nearly impossible, there is another effective method to dealing with these kinds of damaging search results while improving the overall presence of your business online.

We encourage that individuals and businesses alike focus on best practices when it comes to search engine optimization and branding so the properties that they control have the best chance at rising in search results.

While creating positive content that you control will not remove bad Yelp reviews, this approach gives you the best chance to control the results that rank well while suppressing the negative reviews.

To accomplish this, you must focus on building up your company’s Facebook page, Twitter account, Google Plus page and more. You have to actively engage and post original content on these platforms and more while also maintaining a professional website for your business.

Managing your company’s online reputation beyond Yelp

While Yelp reputation management is an important piece of the online puzzle for businesses, remember that this is just one aspect of your business’ identity. In addition to engaging on the Yelp platform, you need to develop your brand through company websites, active social media accounts, and polished online identities of your company’s executive members.

Remember, when people type in the name of your company, there are at least 10 spots for search results. By ensuring that your company has secured a number of profiles, you increase the chances that your team is in control of the content that people are seeing online associated with your brand.

When creating a positive online identity for your company, the combination of branding and SEO (search engine optimization) tactics is the most beneficial to this long-term goal.

How BrandYourself can help

BrandYourself’s DIY tool is intended for individuals (as opposed to businesses) who want to improve their personal brand online. However, our customized managed services cater to individuals and small businesses alike.

Yelp reputation management is something we help clients with regularly, and we’re always here if you need a little help.

If you choose to work directly with BrandYourself’s team of experts through our Managed Services division, a boutique package is the smartest choice to improve the reputation of your business online.

To learn more about these options, schedule a consultation with one of our Reputation Advisors, or give us a call directly at 646-863-8226.

The post Yelp Reputation Management Tips appeared first on BrandYourself Blog | ORM And Personal Branding.