#been sitting on this post for a day or two but due to recent polls this is my propaganda

[doggobrie]

I couldn't get this post out of my head since seeing it. The farmer may be hammered, but she's telling the truth.

[reasoningdaily]

When we feel out of control, we shift down to our primitive coping mechanisms, ramping up our fear responses.

The first day I returned to work after maternity leave, I walked to the office racked with a fear I knew to be highly unlikely: that our new, and loving, caregiver would push the stroller across the street at the precise moment a reckless driver ran the light. I imagined the sound of tires screeching, the sickening crunch. I started to sweat, and my heart rate quickened. And then, when I got to the office, I took a deep breath, told myself to pull it together, and did.

What I was doing, I later learned, is common to new parents. In a heightened emotional state, you’re more prone to what psychologists call “catastrophizing”, or experiencing “intrusive thoughts” – imagining the worst-case scenario, however improbable it might be. They came at me full-throttle when I became a mother; according to studies, I’m not alone. By some estimates, more than 70% of new mothers have them. One close friend catastrophizes, but in reverse – once the danger has passed, once the baby has been released from the doctor with just a normal virus, not the dreaded MIS-C, she’ll sit with the fear of what could have happened.

In moderation, while they’re certainly not fun, these fantasies are healthy and normal. They are rooted deep in our bodies, an adaptive trait and evolutionary defense mechanism that helps us prepare for the worst and protect our most valuable possession. If I stay inside the cave and obsess about a mastodon attacking my baby while gulping back my cave wine and binge-watching cave paintings, the lower the chances I wander out on to the tundra and have a tusked encounter, in other words.

What isn’t healthy? Being bombarded with such a relentless onslaught of tragic events that the condition of simply living in today’s world makes these feelings chronic. So chronic, our brains’ ability to process uncertainty and anxiety might be diminishing – as we speak.

First, some stress stats: according to a March poll released by the American Psychological Association, inflation, supply chain problems, global uncertainty and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on top of a two-year pandemic, have pushed America’s stress to “alarming” and “unprecedented levels” that will “challenge our ability to cope”, APA’s CEO said. And unhealthy behaviors that began in Covid’s first year – more drinking, less exercise – “became entrenched” in the second, suggesting that the path towards a collective recalibration may be a far way off. That goes for parents (“Parents Aren’t All Right,” blared a recent Axios article), and non-parents, too.

One way I was able to turn these stats into something more vivid – beyond tallying up my glass-of-wine-and-fistful-of-gummy-bear-consumption-per-week – was to speak to a neurologist who has found herself particularly concerned about what all this might be doing to our neural functions.

“The whole world – but certainly we see it very vividly in America – has had brain changes due to chronic stress, which makes us less capable of making decisions that can give us a healthy future, both at an individual and cultural level,” Dr Amy Arnsten, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Yale medical school, told me. I’d reached out after coming across a YouTube video she posted during the first year of the pandemic that clearly delineates how the brain processes uncontrollable stress, and how that has been exacerbated during Covid.

The nuts and bolts: there are more primitive parts of the brain (like the amygdala) that control our basic functions, like our heart rate, or the immediate rush of fear we feel when a snake slithers across our path; and more evolved regions (like the prefrontal cortex) that execute top-down control, and allow us to focus, plan ahead, and inhibit bad impulses. I have my prefrontal cortex to thank for the statistical reality I was able to summon, that first day back from maternity leave, that assuaged my fear of a skipped light and a vigorously pushed stroller.

When we get stressed or feel out of control, we shift down to our primitive coping mechanisms, ramping up our fear responses and shutting off the prefrontal cortex. The higher the levels of arousal or stress, the stronger those primitive circuits get, the less affected you feel by things that might normally give you pleasure, and the more things feel threatening or sad.

As Arnsten explained to me, your brain is wired to activate its fear system if it sees someone else afraid. So when horrifying news blows up our phones, we instinctively empathize. Combine that with the new normal of living in a constant state of Covid-related uncertainty, and a political environment that can feel hopeless and intransigent, and you get a perfect neurological storm that has her worried.

“You are losing the very circuits that enable you to self-regulate, to be rational,” Arnsten told me, “and in a small-grained way not to be irritable, which is really important for family health.”

Can we get those circuits back? Research suggests yes, if we spend time in calm environments in which we feel in control. There are active ways to combat our new reality, many of which we know but don’t pursue: exercise can strengthen the prefrontal cortex, deep breathing can calm one’s arousal systems. Seeking out joy and humor, in the forms of books or music, can help. Another simple suggestion: “Do something that helps you feel more efficacious,” Arnsten said, “even if it’s very small. Often times, helping someone else can help jumpstart that.”

Before we hung up, Arnsten mentioned one large caveat. In 2011, Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers put three cohorts of rats – young, middle-aged and aged – through stressful situations (which, for a rat, means being restrained by wire mesh), and determined that “aging modulates the capacity for experience-dependent spine plasticity in PFC neurons”. Spines, in this case, refer to “dendritic spines”, which protrude from a neuron’s dendrite, and receive input. You lose them during chronic stress exposure. In layperson’s terms, the study concluded that the older you are, the harder it is to weather the negative effects of chronic stress exposure and respond rationally – if you’re a rat.

“Now that I’m an oldish rat,” Arnsten told me with a chuckle, “I’m hoping they didn’t wait enough in the study; that connectivity did, in fact, return with time.”

For the older rats among us, here’s to hoping.

[thegmdfangirl14]

(Ooof....I haven’t done this in a WHILE, but here goes nothing I guess.)

So, as some of you probably know, I’ve got a birthday coming up in almost a week, and I’m going to be...21. Yeah.... It’s a little hard to believe, right? I’m officially going to be in my 20′s....holy crap. And while most of us are probably wrapping their heads around that, you’re probably wondering where I’ve been for the past little while. As life is known to do, it’s kind of been keeping me busy, and I’m still working on getting back out of my own head after things kind of not going so great for me on my own end (anxieties about aging and some other stuff...which definitely wasn’t fun at all) ....so yeah, things have been kind of crazy on my end. (But don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about my fic either, I’ll be coming back to it soon enough)

And in-between college stuff  and actually starting to feel  more excited about the big day, so I was thinking....Why not celebrate this occasion with a little something special?

It isn’t another contest in case you’re wondering, because I don’t think I’m doing a contest right now (due to recent world events and the pandemic that we’re still in, I’m not too sure if I want to save a potential fanart contest for a later date, or just somewhere in the year), but I still want to do something creative.... and what better way to do that than with doing a little fanfic/original work poll type thing     for the week before my birthday!

It works like this:  You guys can vote on what you’d most like to see from me, and whatever gets the most votes will be the thing that I next post here for you guys to read! Unlike a regular contest, there’s no real end date, unlike a contest, so I’ll play it a little loose with the time. So either I’ll close the voting the day after my birthday, or whenever you guys stop voting I’ll give the results!!

But what, you guys may be wondering, what’s the writing options here?  I mean, I have a few ideas.....here they are!

The categories are as follows:

1. A Betrayus x Valerie fic drabble! Because dang, I’ve been craving to do something with those two other than slow burn or having them at each other's throats. Gotta practice for the good stuff eventually you know? Anyway, here’s the proposed title for the fic.... Bitter and Sweet! It’s kind of a late Valentines day fic, focusing on some cute stuff! It’s no surprise to anyone in the Netherworld that Betrayus can get a touch....moody around a certain holiday (not such a big surprise here, but he hasn’t exactly had a ....great time around the holiday in the past), but maybe a certain horned girl can help.... that is, if she can actually remember how to work the stove.     

2. Character explorations! More specifically, pmatga characters! (Big surprise, am I right?) I’ve been itching to explore more of the world, whether it’s through some of my ocs (Valerie or Delphine) or characters we’ve already been introduced to (or in the case of a certain sister that was only mentioned in the last episode, yet to meet), so suggest away and I’ll do my best!            

3. Cuphead content! More specifically the reader insert type of content! I’ve got two different ideas, which both correspond to two different characters I’ve recently become fascinated by.... Backstage romance (A King Dice x reader drabble) and Something only we share (cuphead devil x reader). For this one I’ll just see which one you guys are more curious about, and then I’ll do my best to write from there! (And yes, it’s ironic I know, the Christian girl getting heart eyes over an animated devil character....)

4. Book related stuff! I’m planning on becoming a fully fledged writer with her own works (eventually), either mainstream-wise or self-published, and I’ve got two different ideas: Bleeding hearts (the name’s still in working), or Sweetness and Nightmares. One’s kind of a originalish work I’ve been sitting on for a little while (*Principal Skinner voice* What if I were to take the characters for my fanfic and just give them different names? Devilishly delightful..) and one’s sort of a middle-grade story featuring a girl raised by the Boogeyman, so chose which you’d like to see (or I could do both if you want), and I’ll put up the prologue for either one of the ideas, so you guys can see what you think of it!

5. Okay, I’ve got no real ideas for this one, but if you guys want I’ll start working on the next chapter for The Tale of the Horned Girl and The Ghost lord, so you guys don’t have to wait so long for it!

Anyway, vote on which category you guys most want to see, and I’ll do whatever category gets the most votes (although I’ll be eventually be doing all of this stuff anyways, sooner or later)!

Happy voting beasties, and I’ll see you soon.... ;)

[elizabethvaughns]

I listened to if then recently and I'm CONFUSED. I also watched a bootleg wich didn't help since I'm not really good in English and the bootlegs have bad audio quality. Do you have tips how I can understand it? Or can you explain it?

It seems like a cool musical and I wanna understand it so badly!!!

if you want me to explain it, i'd be happy to :)

(when i first watched it, i only understood some of the dialogue but i didn't know about the libretto so i just browsed the tumblr tag and hoped for the best lmao.)

i'd recommend reading the libretto of the musical if you want the exact dialogue, lyrics, and locations.

@ifthenslashers has it linked in their pinned post (thank you for that, by the way💙. your resources are very helpful :))

but the libretto is very long, so i'll try to summarize it best i can(under the cut).

i hope this is helpful!

elizabeth vaughn moves back to new york city after divorcing her husband oren after 12 years. as he's waiting for her, her best friend (and ex-boyfriend this is relevant), lucas talks to this kindergarten teacher, who walked up to him and started talking to him. when elizabeth comes to the park(they're meeting in a park), both lucas and kate(the kindergarten teacher) walk up to her. it turns out that kate is elizabeth's neighbor. kate asks elizabeth to go with her and meet new romantic prospects, have fun. she calls her liz. lucas(a housing activist) asks elizabeth to come with him to meet the other members of the new york citizens for change and to go to his street action in the subway. he calls her beth. this is where the timelines diverge.

liz-verse (liz chooses kate):

so liz goes with kate to get coffee. josh barton, an army doctor who just came back from his second tour, walks up to liz. he awkwardly flirts with her. liz gets a call from a number with the area code (347). she doesn't recognize it so she doesn't pick it up. josh asks for liz's number, liz says it's a new number so she doesn't know it, josh asks her if she believes in fate, she says she doesn't, she walks away. ("what if?")

the next day, liz, kate, and anne (kate's girlfriend) are on the way to brooklyn on the subway. the subway car stops for a bit due to a street action (lucas's group's). the three talk about men, and kate keeps pointing out different men on the subway. josh(also on the subway) walks up to liz. again awkwardly flirts. he's from nebraska(are any falsettos mutual reading this? if so, you know exactly what i'm thinking of lmao). kate conducts an instant public poll about fate and whether liz should take josh's number. liz eventually gives in and takes josh's number. ("it's a sign")

over the course of the next few days? weeks? kate sets liz up on various blind dates. during one of them, liz sees josh in the distance. she runs up to him and hugs him in a last-ditch attempt to end that date. she pretends josh is a very old friend of hers, josh plays along. it's been three times that the two met now. josh asks liz out, she says yes, they go on a date that very evening. they end it at liz's apartment("map of new york"). liz expresses her apprehension with...relationships due to the probabilities. josh basically says "you never know"(bc that's the name of the song) and you can never really tell what's going to happen. ("you never know")

soon, josh and liz go on a date to a baseball game(yes, my dear falsettos mutuals, that is absolutely correct). kate, anne, and lucas tag along. soon enough, josh and liz set lucas up with josh's best friend, david. lucas and david hit it off. ("ain't no man manhattan")

liz and josh hang out in liz's apartment, again. josh reveals that he was on the way to the airport when he was on the subway that day and he didn't go back to nebraska bc of her. they make out, liz runs into the bathroom to get her shit together, they....do the do.("what the fuck?").

the next morning, they wake up. they talk about their relationship. they say "i love you".("here i go")

in a few weeks?(by my best estimation), it's liz's birthday! lucas sees liz pouring her champagne out of her glass and confronts her about it. he and david find out she's pregnant. david asks lucas to move in. he says yes. liz tells josh about the pregnancy. kate proposes to anne. she says yes. josh proposes to liz. she says yes. ("surprise")

a c t t w o

josh and liz get married! ("this day/walking by a wedding")

liz is pregnant(duh). she reads in the newspaper that the idiot mayor's nephew's incompetence with city planning cost the life of a child. josh sings about his excitement for a kid, they have their first son, jake. ("hey kid")

time skip some two years.

liz and josh had a second kid, cooper. lucas and david are babysitting jake. lucas is riding on a skateboard with the stroller. liz is (justifiably) bewildered. david's like he's belted in and has a helmet, he's safe. liz and jake go back home, bc liz is free due to spring break(she teaches urban planning in a uni) and josh is on days.

david talks to lucas about having a kid. lucas is apprehensive because...reasons. they sing "best worst mistake" which is objectively the cutest song in the whole show. they say "i love you" to each other for the first time. ("best worst mistake")

josh gets deployed. liz is mad, she tells him to quit. he says he can't. soon enough, he has to go. after some time, some officers come to liz's door, tell her josh died due to an rpg attack on the medical facility. lucas helps her with the kids, she tells him to go, stay with david. ("i hate you")

(sidenote: i'm on the verge of tears rn bc i'm speedrunning the whole musical in my head. sorry.)

liz is grieving for josh. ("you learn to live without")

the gang(minus anne) goes to josh's funeral. it turns out kate and anne divorced because anne was cheating on kate. kate and lucas ask liz about giving josh an honor guard. she says that he wanted to be cremated and have his remains scattered over the platte river in nebraska(who even knew there was a river in nebraska?). david says that he's imagined his life without josh the past few weeks: josh was his best friend, he introduced him to the man he loves, etc. he asks liz that if she met josh the next day while still knowing that she would lose him, would she avoid taking that chance to avoid the loss, or take the chance anyways? ("what would you do?"). lucas, kate, and david go to get the car. liz has a revelation, of sorts. she promises josh to "start over" with her life every day, and, in a sense, not wallow in the what-might-be's("always starting over").

time skip a few months. liz meets stephen(you'll find out who he is, soon enough) and his wife cathy. he offers her a job in the department of city planning. she takes it. lucas and david are walking in the park with their kid, huck, in the background. lucas walks up to liz, sits down, they talk. lucas reveals he's always been a bit in love with her, liz is surprised. they are the brotp and i love them. ("what if?(reprise)")

the end.

beth-verse(beth chooses lucas):

beth gets a call, area code (347). lucas informs her it's the nyc area code. she picks up. it's stephen, one of beth's old friends from grad school. he offers her a job under him as deputy director of city planning. lucas tells her not to go because he doesn't like stephen and he thinks a job with the city does not make enough of an impact. beth and lucas reminisce about their college days. lucas kisses beth. josh, who is seen walking toward beth in the background, walks away. beth recoils. it's all awkward. beth says she'll still come to the street action. ("what if?")

lucas and beth get bench warrants because of the street action.

beth goes to meet stephen. she's a bit hesitant at first bc she doesn't have experience. but she interviews for the job and she gets it. kate sets beth up on numerous blind dates. on one of them, she discreetly texts lucas to help her out. he comes, she runs up to him and hugs him, the date takes his leave. lucas and beth head to lucas's apartment. beth gets a text from stephen. lucas is still miffed about beth taking a city job. lucas tells her it's a bad idea to get involved with the boss. beth denies that she is in the first place. ("map of new york")

time skip. a couple weeks.

the nycc is protesting the redevelopment of the far west side (bc,,, gentrification). a project that, coincidentally, beth is working on.

beth and stephen go to a baseball game. stephen asks beth to convince lucas to back down from the project. beth does so by promising lucas to introduce him to an editor she knows if he backs down from the project.

time skip, the project is a success. ("ain't no man manhattan")

a few weeks? later, stephen comes to beth's place with some plans. she kisses him. he kisses back. he leaves bc he's married. beth calls lucas, who comes right by.

beth and lucas hook up. ("what the fuck?")

beth tells lucas she's sent in her resignation. he tells her that even though he despises stephen, this cannot be the reason that she quits.

lucas wants to know the status of their relationship, beth claims it was purely a one-time thing. lucas tells her he loves her even if she doesn't love him back and that he will always be there for her. ("you don't need to love me")

beth goes to work. she hires a young grad, elena. kate comes in, tells her that she's her kindergarten class's american hero. stephen comes to beth with the resignation, she rips it up. stephen asks beth to do the speech for the project bc the deputy mayor resigned and he has to step up (which means beth is the new director of city planning! yay!). ("no more wasted time")

it's beth's birthday! beth, kate, anne, elena, and lucas have a small get together. when lucas is off getting the cake, the girls find out that beth is pregnant(because...lucas). beth is confused bc she doesn't know what to do with the pregnancy and the job opportunity. elena tells her to follow what she wants to do. lucas is smashed. he asks beth to move in with him. she refuses. he proposes. again, she refuses. ("surprise")

(it is implied that kate proposes to anne here as well)

a c t. t w o

beth walks by a wedding and contemplates shit about weddings.("this day/walking by a wedding") she aborted the pregnancy.

beth is babysitting elena's kid. elena tells beth that she's moving with her husband to oregon. beth is upset because elena reminds her a lot of herself.

2.5 years after the end of act one, we see lucas in the park. he has published his book. a young woman(paulette) comes up to him, asks for an autograph, implies he's old, you know how it goes. beth walks up to lucas. we learn that lucas has avoided all contact with beth bc he had to grapple with the fact that she aborted the fetus. lucas asks beth if she had, at least, thought about the possibility of the two having a kid together. the two contemplate various alternate universes. beth asks if they can still stay friends. lucas wonders if this was his last chance at love. he walks away. he almost runs into a bicyclist—david. ("some other me")

beth is at an awards ceremony preparing to receive an award. stephen comes to say hi. he asks her to come work with him in albany. beth refuses. we learn that stephen has divorced his wife, cathy. ("map of new york(reprise)")

(ok i'm crying again one sec)

beth learns to cope with being alone(romantically).("you learn to live without")

she goes on a flight to london, which has to make an emergency landing in maine. kate decides to divorce anne because she was flirting with someone else(and kate thinks anne doesn't love her anymore). beth calls lucas, and they mend their friendship.("the moment explodes")

lucas tells beth that kate and anne are getting divorced. beth rushes to the bookstore where the two are dealing with the papers. she convinces them not to get divorced. ("love while you can")

a few weeks later, beth, lucas, kate, and anne meet in the park. kate won the nyc teacher of the year award. beth is planning to run for the city council. josh, who just returned from his third tour overseas, walks up to beth. he says hi, asks her out. she says yes, but her friends are waiting for her. lucas and kate pretend to be engrossed in their own thing. beth agrees to go on a date with josh that very day. ("what if?(reprise)")

the end.

[route22ny]

On Tuesday, I received an absentee ballot. It was the second absentee ballot I had received from the New York City Board of Elections in two weeks. I had filled out, completed, and mailed back the first ballot. Now I was holding another one that also had my name on it. After speaking to a Board of Elections representative on the phone, I was told to fill out this second ballot, too, because the first one no longer counted.

If you live in New York City, you might already know why this happened. The contractor screwed up printing the first ones, sending secrecy envelopes with the wrong names on them. As it happened, my first ballot was not one of the screwed up ones—I was aware of the problem and had checked to make sure before filling it out—but the BOE decided to send everyone in Brooklyn a new ballot regardless.

This is hardly the first time the New York City Board of Elections messed up and I highly doubt it will be the last. But in this case, the latest screw-up was the final nudge I needed to push me over the edge. I am not going to vote by mail. I'm voting in person on Election Day. And I really think most of you should, too.

When we started this project, a lot of us thought the USPS would be a potential weak link in the voting-by-mail chain. This made sense at the time given the slowdowns implemented by Louis DeJoy and the agency's financial situation. But thanks to extensive public outcry and five separate federal judges issuing injunctions against the USPS from messing with election mail, I feel really good about the postal service delivering the overwhelmingly vast majority of ballots in a timely fashion to local election officials. There will, of course, be screw ups and small issues affecting a few dozen voters here and a few hundred voters there, but they will be nothing in comparison to the much larger systemic issues with mail-in voting in this country that have nothing to do with the ballot getting from place to place.

I am hardly the only one coming to this realization in recent weeks. Derek Thompson at The Atlantic had a great article about how voting in-person is much safer than we thought months ago while voting by mail has a number of issues in terms of having people's votes actually count. Democratic strategists around the country have been getting wise about the problem as well, shifting tactics to urge more people to vote in person.

Unfortunately, voting by mail seems like a process designed more to weed out ballots rather than count them. The rules vary by state, but generally speaking, the more fields voters have to fill out and the more rules they must comply with, the higher the rejection rate.

Some states like New York simply require a signature which needs to match the one the local election officials have on file. Young voters in particular are vulnerable to having their ballots rejected due to a signature not matching, a study by a voting non-profit in California found, because young people don't put much thought into creating a distinctive signature and refine it over time, exactly the kind of process that would get their ballot thrown out. Most young people's signatures are scribbles they make up to sign credit card receipts quickly. I, for one, can verify that I did not think about creating a unique identifier that would ensure my vote was counted when I came up with my John Hancock. As a helpful New York Times interactive demonstrated, it can be really challenging to match signatures if you don't know what you're doing. This is great for rejecting fraudulent ballots, but it means throwing out a lot of legitimate ones, too.

Back in June during the primaries, 80,000 ballots from New York City out of 400,000 were thrown out, about one out of every five ballots, a staggering toll of voter disenfranchisement. And voters were not notified of what they did wrong so they could correct it in future elections. It is a pretty shitty feeling sitting here with no idea whether my vote in the primary—which in NYC is the most important election for determining local candidates—was counted!

According to the Times, 28 states and DC will give aspiring voters a chance to "cure" ballots with problems (and the courts are generally friendly to these requirements on due process grounds). For the first time, New York will be one of those states this November. But, for my own voting purposes, I don't have a ton of faith in the Board of Elections to execute that process well, given that with the surge of mail-in voting we could be talking about millions of mail-in ballots in the city alone requiring hundreds of thousands of cures if not more.

And that is just regarding signatures. Three states, including the battlegrounds Wisconsin and North Carolina, require witnesses as well as signatures. In Wisconsin, witnesses are required to put in their address. According to an investigation by the non-profit news organization Reveal, 13,834 ballots were thrown out in the Wisconsin primaries because some fields on the witness form were not filled out properly, a number that is sure to increase in the general election with its higher turnout. The voters weren't notified or given a chance to correct them, nor will they be allowed to in November.

All of this would be a regrettable reality if the health risk of voting in-person was quite high. But for most people, it simply isn't. As Thompson noted, other countries have held nationwide elections with in-person voting without tracing any outbreaks to the voting booths, nor have any outbreaks been traced back to primary voting. As long as people generally behave themselves and wear masks, the voting booth ought to be no more dangerous from a pandemic standpoint than the grocery store check-out line.

That being said, I am still a huge proponent of universal vote-by-mail as a concept every state should strive towards. People in states that have had that in place for years such as Washington, Utah, and Colorado should absolutely continue to vote by mail if they prefer. Those states have experience with high volumes of vote-by-mail, signature verification, and robust methods for allowing voters to cure ballots. It is the states like New York, Ohio, and Texas that have suddenly implemented expanded and complicated vote-by-mail procedures I'm worried about. And, of course, if you have pre-existing health issues that make even going to the grocery store or the voting booth an uncomfortable prospect—or if you simply can never be bothered to vote in person but find vote-by-mail an acceptable middle ground—roll the dice with vote-by-mail. It's better than putting yourself at unnecessary risk or not voting at all.

But if you aren't sure what your signature looks like, aren't familiar with your state's vote-by-mail laws, or generally feel fine about voting in person as usual, it's something we should do. This is an extremely important election and I want to do everything in my power to ensure my vote counts. It turns out the USPS isn't a weak link in the vote-by-mail chain at all. In fact, it may be the strongest.

***

This Week In Mail

Americans generally agree on the post office. They overwhelmingly like the post office. And a new poll finds they support it being run like a public service and not a business by a two-to-one margin.

The courts are already playing an important role in this year's election. So far, that role has been to reject GOP claims of voter fraud in mail-in voting and generally uphold whatever election rules the state law requires, regardless of whether that law makes voting easier or harder.

Steve Hutkins at Save the Post Office reviewed documents from eleven lawsuits against the Postal Service to cobble together evidence that new management has a super aggressive plan to slash the number of work-hours after the election, which would likely hobble the post office and make current service levels impossible.

Despite the court injunctions and DeJoy's promises, service has not returned to its pre-DeJoy levels in some areas. Senator Bob Casey from New Jersey published evidence of first class mail backlogged by weeks.

Perhaps on a related note, the USPS is blocking elected officials from inspecting facilities claiming it's too close to the election, which as far as I can tell is a completely made-up reason. Previously, some facilities had scrambled to hide backlogged mail before elected officials showed up.

***

Subscribe to Aaron Gordon’s reporting on the USPS here

[20-37-24]

pairing: f1 driver!dawon x female reader

genre: angst

word count: 1.6k

a/n: don’t eavesdrop, everybody! you might end up in one of my angst scenarios haha…

××× ××× ××× ××× ××× ××× ××× ××× ××× ×××

“take advantage of his money, right? you know what? that’s a great idea! let me write this down.” i pretended to go for my phone on the couch and grabbed a pillow instead, throwing against keegan, that was across the room.

“but you love being here, don’t you?!” he laughed, throwing his hands in the air. “i’m just making good suggestions!”

“of course!” i threw another one, stronger this time. “now, shut up, i need to give him this so he can store in the freezer for later.”

“it smells delicious. did you save some for me?” he wiggled his eyebrows.

“i don’t think you deserve it. bye,” i said as i closed the door.

“see you in the garage!”

i walked through the corridor hearing the loudness from the cars back in the garage. my friend keegan was a part of the public relations team, and he was the one who introduced me to my boyfriend, dawon, a formula one driver.

dawon is truly the most lovable person i know. we became friends pretty fast during summer break last year and i was the first to confess my feelings. since we spent most of the time away from each other due to his hectic season’s schedule and my job, it was impossible to endure the weight and the willing to be with him, closer than we already were. well, it’s been two months, we’re doing pretty good and this is the second time i came to one of his races.

the only problem is that dawon has been really tense this week. apparently, his car isn’t working as expected, so he’s been going to a lot of meetings with his engineers to fix all the problems and create a good strategy for today’s race. i’ve already witnessed him like this before. some days he would call me stressed, insecure and afraid of not doing a good job on the track. the worst part of it is that i can’t do anything besides staying with him as much as i can. he’d told me that my presence is one of his safe places, so i don’t have to worry too much about it.

that’s exactly why i’ve been patient with his recent attitudes and silent treatments. i figured that it was better to give him time to heal and concentrate on the results, just hoping that he would come to me at the end of the day. i knocked softly on the door of his driver’s room where i knew he would be stretching with his coach.

“hello, sorry to bother, but…”

dawon interrupted me, not even trying to look up from his mobile game.

“wait outside, please.”

“oh, okay, i’ll just leave this here…”

“y/n! wait outside! i don’t wanna see you right now.”

my mouth fell open. i stared at michael, looking for answers, but he seemed just as lost as me.

“okay.”

i got out of the room feeling as if an anchor had been tied around my heart. but before i could walk down the corridor back to the garage, i heard michael’s voice:

“you didn’t really need to talk like that.”

“first, we’re not even official, i don’t know why she’s acting like that. and second, you’d do the same if you knew the type of person she actually is.”

i froze on the spot, touching the necklace he gave me on our first date, when he said that i was one of the best people he’d ever met. i shook my head and forced my legs to walk away to find georgia, one of the team engineers, that i became friends with recently.

“hey, georgia, do you know where can i put this? it’s a lunch box for dawon, but i couldn’t give him because he’s stretching right now.”

“give it to someone in the kitchen, they’ll know what to do.” she winked at me and i smiled. “you’ll stay for the race, right?”

“just the beginning of it. there’s some stuff i have to take care of in the hotel.”

“it’s alright. leave this in the kitchen and come back, dawon i’ll be on track in a few.”

i nodded and left.

usually, i give him a kiss before the race, but this time, when dawon entered the garage to talk briefly to his engineers before getting into the car, i was across the hall, by the counter. i could see clearly when he gave me the same cold glare from earlier and then put his helmet on. that’s what made me confirm the plane ticket purchase. that small gesture was what made me want to go home at that very minute, not bothering if i would have to work my ass off for the rest of the year to pay the installments.

i waited until keegan wasn’t around to put the headphones aside and say goodbye to georgia.

“see you in the hotel tonight, no matter what the results will be,” she said, then hugged me tightly. i would miss being around those nice people.

i called an uber and went back to the hotel. i cried in the shower and recovered while i packed the small bag that i brought. most of my clothes we’re already inside, since my fear of losing stuff forced me to be organized. i ordered another car to take me to the airport and sent a text to my sister telling her at what time i would be arriving.

i received a text from georgia and keegan, they were super happy because dawon and his teammate had finished in 4th and 5th. dawon had also won the poll for “driver of the day”. i was glad that people recognized the great driver he is. it was a great ending, after all.

[dawon’s pov]

after the post-race meeting, i intended to go to my driver’s room, but keegan came to congratulate me once again.

“you did so great, man! good job, i mean it, keep pushing like that and you’ll be on podium soon.” he grabbed my shoulders, smiling brightly. “y/n must be so happy for you. where is she?”

i frowned.

“well, i have no idea.” i shrugged. “the last time i heard of her was when you were talking about taking advantage of me.” i smiled bitterly, taking one step ahead, but he stopped me.

“wait, what? were you eavesdropping us?” he sounded offended.

“i was genuinely looking for you when i caught the conversation. i’m not a stalker.”

“well, you should have stayed longer, then you would know we were talking about gold diggers and i was joking with her.”

“were you joking about she being able to walk through the paddock and watch the race from the garage because of me too?” i laughed bitterly.

“seconds before that, she confessed to love you more than this place. and you know how much she loves being here.” it was like someone had punched mein the lungs.

“what?”

“did you know that she cooked for you? that she went around the city to buy ingredients to make you a light meal, ‘cause, no matter how the results would be, she wanted you to relax.” he gritted his teeth, reaching to the cellphone in his pocket. “what did you say to her?”

“just told her to wait in the hallway, but i admit i said it in a shitty tone” i mumbled, running a hand through my hair.

keegan called for georgia when she came out of the meeting room.

“have you seen y/n?”

“she had to solve something back in the hotel, but she left a lunch box for you in the kitchen, dawon.”

i rushed to the kitchen and asked for it. my heart broke when i opened the bag to see the necklace i gave her resting over the box.

[end of dawon’s pov]

after checking in, i looked for somewhere to sit while waiting for my flight. there was a few people here and there, but it was kind quiet for an airport. as soon as i put my earphones, ready to listen to some music, dawon called. my hand went to cover my eyes and i sighed tiredly. shivers went down my spine when i heard the urgency in his voice.

“where are you?”

“outside, where you ordered me to go.”

“i’m serious, y/n. where are you right now?”

“don’t i sound serious?”

“look, i know i was a jerk.”

“well, thank you for your confession, but i’m not interested anymore. i didn’t travel to another country to be humiliated in front of your friend. and for what?”

“i was mad! this stressful week made me misunderstand your conversation with keegan. i thought you…”

“you thought my feelings were artificial so you decided to rub on my face that yours are too? that’s actually great.”

“no! please, is there something i can do to redeem myself?”

“eat the food i cooked for you, it was hard to find that cheese in this huge city.”

“yeah, keegan told me, thank you.” he sighed. “y/n, why did you leave your necklace here?” he sounded like he was about to cry.

“didn’t want to bring any material memories with me. especially the gift that made me feel there was something real between us.”

“it is real, y/n. please, come back, let’s go through it.”

“thank you for taking me to such beautiful places, dawon. i’m going to create a spreadsheet to organize my finances, then i can pay you back.”

“stop, right now. was that a boarding announcement? are you at the airport? i’ll be right there.”

“you don’t have to. right now, you have to rest and celebrate with your team. i’m happy that your efforts brought such great results. i’m proud of you.” i fought against my tears, worried about crying in public. “gotta go now, take care.” i pressed the red icon and breathed out heavily. i picked up my bag and headed to the boarding gate, trying to walk with my head held high.

[insanityclause]

In the longest scheduled extension to date of the blackout of Broadway theaters prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, trade organization the Broadway League announced Tuesday that the 41 top-tier New York theaters that went dark March 12 will remain that way at least through Sept. 6.

That's a full three months beyond the last extension, which bumped back the original April 12 end date for the closure to June 7. However, few pundits are expecting to see theaters open for business Sept. 8, the day after Labor Day, which falls on a Monday when most Broadway theaters remain dark. The situation seems likely to be reevaluated as that date approaches, with producers and theater owners adopting a wait-and-see policy in accordance with state guidelines and other safety and economic considerations.

"No one wants to get too far ahead of the governor on this," said one prominent producer who spoke off the record.

"While all Broadway shows would love to resume performances as soon as possible, we need to ensure the health and well-being of everyone who comes to the theater — behind the curtain and in front of it — before shows can return," Broadway League president Charlotte St. Martin said Tuesday in a statement. "The Broadway League's membership is working in cooperation with the theatrical unions, government officials and health experts to determine the safest ways to restart our industry. Throughout this challenging time, we have been in close communication with Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo's office and are grateful for his support and leadership as we work together to bring back this vital part of New York City's economy — and spirit."

The League's decision follows last week's announcement from the Society of London Theatres, extending the shutdown of live entertainment venues in the British capital through June 28. Like Broadway, that date appears to be a marker rather than a set plan for reopening. West End theaters have been canceling performances on a rolling basis, which seems certain to continue through the summer.

Broadway was the first sector in New York to impose a blanket suspension of operations on March 12, and most insiders expect it to be one of the last to come back.

In a sign that producers are approaching reopening with the utmost caution, the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Plaza Suite, starring Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, announced Tuesday that it will be pushed back by a full year, with the limited engagement now scheduled for March 19-July 18, 2021, at the Hudson Theatre. Directed by Tony-winning actor John Benjamin Hickey, the comedy was originally scheduled to begin previews March 13, the day after the Broadway shutdown, and was one of the fastest-selling productions of the spring.

"We remain deeply committed to bringing Neil Simon's Plaza Suite to New York as promised and cannot wait to help welcome audiences back to our beloved Broadway," said Broderick and Parker in a statement. "Until then, everybody please stay safe."

While some have floated the idea of theaters reopening with socially distanced seating plans, few if any producers think that model would work given Broadway's exorbitant running costs. The more likely scenario involves temperature checks for theatergoers along with compulsory masks and gloves, no intermissions and deep-disinfectant cleaning of auditoriums between performances. But many questions remain, including how to provide adequate protection for actors in productions that don't allow for social distancing. 

The famous William Goldman quote about the film industry seems especially applicable to post-pandemic Broadway: "Nobody knows anything." But the smart money seems to point to an early-2021 reopening, with anecdotal estimates ranging from January through March.

In what could turn out to be a harbinger of things to come for many of the country's stages, Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater, one of America's largest and most respected nonprofits, last week took the bold step of announcing that operations will resume with a compressed mini-season of just three productions running March-August 2021. That represents a massive reduction from the originally scheduled 11 shows, with a budget slashed from $31 million to $12.6 million. Those drastic measures make necessary allowances for the time required to build and rehearse productions, underscoring the complicated logistics for the theater sector of emerging from lockdown.

A Shugoll Research industry survey this month indicated that only 41 percent of New York theatergoers say they are likely to return when theaters resume activity, while almost 1 in 5 people, or 17 percent, say they are very unlikely. More than half those polled, or 58 percent, said they will wait at least a few months before attending a show.

When theaters went dark, the 2019-20 season was just a little beyond the midway point, with another 16 productions scheduled to open before the April 23 cutoff for 2020 Tony Awards consideration. An announcement was made March 25 that due to the coronavirus shutdown, the Tonys would be postponed to a later date to be set once Broadway resumes activity.

Two Broadway shows that had begun previews when the lights went out — Martin McDonagh's Hangmen and a revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — have already announced they will not reopen after the suspension ends. Other shows from nonprofit producers that were about to begin performances have been pushed back to next season, including Roundabout's Birthday Candles and Caroline, or Change; Lincoln Center Theater's Flying Over Sunset; and Manhattan Theatre Club's How I Learned to Drive.

With Plaza Suite also now postponed, that still leaves nine incoming productions in limbo, some of which had minimal advance sales and muted buzz at the time of the shutdown, even less so now. How many of those will forge ahead with opening plans remains to be seen. Uncertainty also hangs over established shows that had started to see a slight decline in business after the initial boom period — Mean Girls, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and even Disney's Frozen among them.

Many are quietly wondering about the wisdom of coming back to half-empty houses even for long-running behemoths like The Phantom of the Opera, which relies heavily on tourism for the majority of its traffic. Even the most optimistic estimates don't anticipate the return of tourists to New York in sizable numbers before summer 2021 at the earliest.

If most of Broadway's 41 houses do reopen, the likelihood of swift financial casualties and prompt closings could mean many prime venues will sit vacant for the first time since the slump of the 1980s and early '90s. The steady growth since then, which propelled Broadway to a record $1.8 billion in grosses last season with attendance of 15 million, now inevitably seems headed for a major reset. Some industryites are asking whether this will mean renegotiating ticketing price scales, landlord percentages and union rates to bring down the prohibitive costs that put Broadway off limits to many entertainment consumers.

Losses to the sector are difficult to calculate, especially with no certainty about a reopening date, but 2019 box office grosses for mid-March through Labor Day totaled $915 million. Industry analysts generally estimate that factoring in the losses to theater-district businesses fed by the Broadway economy — hotels, restaurants, bars, parking garages, taxis and car services — means multiplying total ticket sales by three. That would peg the overall financial blow for the six-month period at a staggering $2.7 billion. At any rate, the impact on one of New York City's principal economic drivers and job pipelines will be devastating, with the fallout sure to be felt for years to come.

As for the Tony Awards, there are two principal schools of thought about which way to go.

Some are lobbying to put a cap on the partial season and present awards for the shows that opened before March 12. This, however, would handicap recent openings like West Side Story and Girl From the North Country given that not all of the Tony Nominating Committee will have seen them and certainly not the majority of voters. Shows that opened early in the season, on the other hand, like Moulin Rouge! and the limited-engagement, Tom Hiddleston-led revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, would have an advantage.

The alternate plan is to combine the truncated partial 2019-20 season with any shows that open between the resumption of Broadway operations and the late-April cutoff for 2021 Tony consideration, presenting the double awards at a ceremony in June next year. That option also has clear disadvantages for some, however, given that voters have notoriously short memories and shows like Betrayal or The Inheritance that have long closed will be ancient history by then.

Whichever route the Tonys choose to go, there are sure to be disgruntled players. But even a partial ceremony of outstanding Broadway artistry right now could serve as a much-needed morale booster to a sector facing unprecedented challenges.

[politicalsci]

In future history classrooms, students will likely be told the tale of the tag-team assault on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by the mainstream media and MPs.  It will be taught as a harbinger of what is erupting into the most pivotal crisis facing Western politics in half a century: the chasm between ordinary people and the elites.  We are seeing it with the Republican establishment’s failed efforts to derail the Trump train and the Democratic establishment’s more successful efforts to extinguish the Bern. This is an emerging contest in which the opposing sides are defined by an ever-growing wealth gap.  The two groups are now viewing each other as adversaries thanks in part to an internet and social media that exposes the disconnect between the mainstream media (MsM) narrative and what the masses feel.  

Corbyn, the self-effacing, mild-mannered veteran activist who was elected with a larger mandate than any party leader in British history, and had pleaded for a ‘kinder, gentler politics’, has become the most media-persecuted politician since George Galloway protested the Iraq War.  While the right-wing press is expected to be harsh on a Labour leader, biased coverage of Corbyn crosses traditional boundaries, infecting centre-left papers as well. The MsM’s seeming contempt for the people’s decision gives pause to anyone who values democracy, whatever one’s ideological persuasion, whether you agree with Corbyn’s policies or not. The unrelenting bullying of the ordinary Party members’ choice of leader may even represent the death-throes of a ‘politico-media complex’ in futile denial that it has lost the hearts and minds of the masses. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of what Noam Chomsky eloquently deconstructed in his Manufacturing Consent.  

Since Jeremy’s historic victory, the MsM, seemingly in coordination with some MPs, have carried out hit and run attacks. Trawling the bottom of the barrel, they find what might otherwise be un-newsworthy statements or incidents and in unison, twist events to suit the prior agreed upon talking point: Corbyn is a bad leader. Defamation lawsuits are avoided by inserting phrases like ‘Corbyn seemed to’ or ‘appeared to’ before each outlandish accusation. Like any dishonest or poor debater, once the scurrilous claim, outright lie or flimsy argument is disproved by their opponents, they hastily move on to the next attack, creeping under the hitherto reliable darkness of public amnesia. The cynical objective of this approach is to sully the victim’s image by planting vague, amorphous negative associations in the public mind. 

A recent London School of Economics study provided academic evidence of what many of us had observed since Corbyn’s election.  It found that 74% of newspaper articles on Corbyn did not include his views, or represented his views out of context, with media coverage generally de-legitimizing him as a political actor.

These techniques have been supported from inside the Party by McCarthyist witch-hunts which provide the MsM machine with an endless stream of victims being expelled, banned and suspended for crimes you never hear the full details of, that have been presided over by internal bureaucrats who have unclear authority and less clear mandates.

The techniques have paid off to some extent, reflecting a reality of the last half century described in Manufacturing Consent. As an Australian expat, I lived in Oxford, and up and down demographically diverse London suburbs, from Hampstead to Essex, from Kensington to Kilburn. I spoke to people of all walks of life and differing party loyalties.  Almost all liked Corbyn as a human being.  The few negative comments about him pre-referendum included ‘weak leader’ or ‘incompetent’. When pressed as to why, there was usually silence. When informed of his policies on the economy, foreign policy and social issues, there was often agreement, and if not, there was at least a repeating of the concession that ‘he’s a decent guy’. While their positive views toward Corbyn were due to his policies, record or values, negative associations seemed based on nothing more than the media’s assiduously repeated talking points.

After the referendum chaos, there was something more solid to hang on the embattled man, gleefully provided by Media Inc. People said either ‘he was weak/lazy in his campaigning for Remain’ or ‘he disingenuous as he was a secret Leave supporter’. When it is offered that, in the long line of politicians upon whom to heap Brexit blame, perhaps the guy who campaigned against it should be after those who made calculated political decisions to support it, my fellow converser usually remembers that people like Nigel Farage also exist. 

On the inside, 172 MPs voted no confidence in Corbyn in a secret ballot, avoiding accountability to local party members. The puzzling arrogance and flippant dismissal of the public will was on full display when Ian Austin MP, who opposed an inquiry into the Iraq War at least three times, told Corbyn - who had protested against Saddam in the 80s when he gassed the Kurds and opposed the 2003 invasion (right side of history on both counts) - to “sit down and shut-up“ during his parliamentary apology following Chilcot. Politicians’ antipathy to Corbyn has been as consistent as JC’s record on Iraq. When he began his journey as leader New Labour stalwarts were wheeled out to express their dismay at an ‘unelectable’ being permitted to occupy such a hallowed seat.  

However, in a shocking act of impertinence, Labour members chose someone who actually held the same views as them.  Corbyn won with a thumping majority of 59.5%, annihilating his closest rivals who received 19% and 17%, with the Blairite candidate bringing up the rear with 4.5%, suggesting a repudiation of New Labour.  Who would have predicted that members of a party built on a workers’ movement would have rejected an ideology that Margaret Thatcher referred to as her greatest achievement? Labour membership swelled to vote in Corbyn as old school ‘true believers’ returned to the fold, joining hands with millennials filled with indignation nourished through a bypassing of the MsM and reliance upon the internet which had exposed to them unjustness of the present reality.  In just the final 24 hours before the deadline, the Party received over 160,000 applications to vote. There were three surges in membership in 2015: one after the election, one after Corbyn entered the leadership race and another when he became leader. 

100,000 people joined the Labour Party in the days after the coup was launched, most of them to support Jeremy.  Within hours’ notice, 10,000 people turned up to a pro-Corbyn Momentum rally next to the very Parliament inside which their deepest beliefs now seemed to occupy such low regard; a massive display of passion and sacrifice by people who can’t afford to take time off work, have families to look after and most likely live nowhere near Westminster.  Membership is set to reach 600,000, making British Labour the biggest social democratic party in the Western world.  This is what democracy looks like.

It’s not only Party members whose views are being studiously ignored by the MsM.  The actual electorate’s opinions are also seemingly irrelevant to media assessments of Corbyn’s electability.  In Jeremy’s tenure, Labour has won all four by-elections, including with increased majorities, performed better in local elections than under predecessor Ed Miliband and won the London and Bristol mayoralties.  Overall, polls show Labour trailing the Conservatives by a smaller margin, 4%, pre and post-referendum under Corbyn’s leadership than in the final months of Miliband’s tenure where it trailed by between 6 and 14%.

Additionally, Corbyn’s monumental popularity amongst Labour members and the explosion of membership numbers provides a key advantage in a country without compulsory voting: an enormous, enthusiastic army of volunteers to execute the all-important ground-game that carried Obama to victory twice. With the poor being underrepresented in voter turnout in Britain, this presents a significant electoral opportunity that can be tapped not through centrist pragmatism but via passionate supporters.  People, more than advertising, can convince people to get out and vote. And as the referendum’s colossal turnout proved, when they’re mad at the establishment, they’ll turn out in droves.

Given this and the example set by Bernie Sanders, you could only honestly describe Corbyn as definitively unelectable if you’d stumbled into the Large Hadron Collider and entered a parallel universe which combines Orwell’s 1984 and Seinfeld’s Bizzaro World. That or you obtain all your ‘news’ from the mainstream media, which has created its own Orwellian bubble.  Black is white, up is down. Victims of racism, and veterans sporting battle scars from a lifetime of fighting racism, are labelled bigots. Supporters of the elected leader are castigated for dividing the Party.  Politicians most in touch with the current popular anti-establishment mood are lampooned as relics of the past.

The MsM, reassured within its echo-chamber, has mistakenly continued to assume each one of us believes that all our neighbours buy this, that everyone else supports the officially sanctioned line and you’d be a tinfoil-hat-crackpot not to.  Instead, a thing called the internet and its social media component have empowered ordinary people to, at least to some extent, see what their fellow citizens really think and connect with them. 

When thousands of indignant ordinary people launch criticisms of MsM and political elites on social media, they are dismissed as bullying trolls.  Those nakedly conspiring to destroy Corbyn maintain such a self-entitled mentality that they seem to expect him to drop to his knees and apologise to them for every tiny scratch they incur in the course of jamming knives into his back.

Like Bernie, Jeremy is an outsider in both policy and style: genuine, slightly scruffy, even being castigated to “put on a proper suit” during Prime Minister’s Questions.  He abjures the ruthless, focus-group talking points-led tactics of more polished operators; his mere existence enraging some because it shines light on their own vacuity.  He speaks openly about big issues that impact people’s daily lives. Corbyn’s rise signifies that the game has changed, that values and principles are now political capital, not political baggage. The baby-boomer almost stands out as a festering indictment of some of his colleagues who, through no fault of their own, came of political age in the post-historical 1990s when careerism filled the void left by idealism.

Like with Bernie in America and across the Western world, the people are not fighting for one man.  They are fighting for themselves, for each other and for those overseas who have even less say in the policies that may impact them most.  They are fighting for change.  Defaming, bullying, interrogating and tearing asunder the humble, elderly Jeremy Corbyn amounts to spitting in the face of the alienated masses he represents.  The manufacturing of consent is no longer consensual.  Now, what you do to Corbyn, you do to them. 

[FULL ARTICLE LINK]

[newstfionline]

Headlines

More than 50% of parents expect to lose income when school starts: survey (Yahoo) With back-to-school season right around the corner, many parents are contemplating whether to send their children back to school or keep them at home due to the health risks of the coronavirus pandemic. And for parents who choose to keep their children at home over COVID-19 concerns, a staggering 54% say that they expect to lose up to half of their income, according to a new survey from Debt.com. Childcare has always been a major expense for parents of young children and is cited as the top-ranking unexpected cost by new parents, followed by diapers and formula, the Care.com survey found. Over half of American families spend at least $10,000 annually on childcare. Currently, it’s cheaper to pay for your teenage child to attend college than it is daycare—the average annual cost of in-state college tuition is $9,410, according to College Board. But there are also big financial implications to staying at home with their children. Over 50% of the parents surveyed by Debt.com expect to lose anywhere from 11% to 51% of their income once school begins.

House holding rare Saturday vote on postal changes, funds (AP) The House is convening for a rare Saturday session to address mail delivery disruptions, poised to pass legislation that would reverse recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations and send $25 billion in emergency funds to shore up the agency ahead of the November election. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the Postal Service will be “election central” as she recalled lawmakers to Washington in a highly unusual election year as millions of Americans are expected to opt for mail-in ballots to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic. The daylong Saturday session comes as an uproar over mail interference puts the Postal Service at the center of the nation’s tumultuous election year, with Americans rallying around one of the nation’s oldest and more popular institutions.

Loss From Wildfires Grows in California (NYT) From the Southern California deserts to the Sierra Nevada to the vineyards and movie sets and architectural landmarks left by modern mortals, little of California has been left unscathed by wildfire. In the past several years, infernos have scorched the Yosemite National Park, blackened the Joshua Tree National Park’s palm-strewn Oasis of Mara, damaged the Paramount Ranch and eviscerated Malibu summer camps beloved for generations. Scars now pockmark the state, with more to come, according to fire officials. Burning across more than 771,000 acres, this week’s fires have largely stemmed from an extraordinary spate of dry lightning. As of Friday, there were some 560 blazes, about two dozen of them major. Smoke has worsened an already oppressive heat wave, the electrical grid has struggled to keep up with demand and the coronavirus has threatened illness in evacuation shelters. At least five deaths have been linked to the fires, which have forced more than 100,000 people out of their homes, filled the skies with thick smoke and consumed hundreds of dwellings.

2 tropical storms a potential double threat to US Gulf Coast (AP) Two tropical storms advanced across the Caribbean Saturday as potentially historic threats to the U.S. Gulf Coast, one dumping rain on Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands while the other was pushing through the gap between Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba. Tropical Storms Laura and Marco were both projected to approach the U.S. Gulf Coast at or close to hurricane force. The current, uncertain track would take them to Texas or Louisiana. The projected track from the U.S. National Hurricane Center would put both storms together in the Gulf on Tuesday, with Marco hitting Texas and Laura making landfall a little less than a day later, though both tracks remain uncertain.

Lights dim on cafe life in Buenos Aires, as Argentina grapples with Covid-19 and a grim future (CNN) It’s a rather unusual sight. Felipe Evangelista is sitting down at the café he has owned for nearly four decades and all he can see are upside-down chairs stored atop empty tables. It is one of the hundreds of cafés, bars and restaurants in Buenos Aires that have been forced to close due to the coronavirus pandemic. Their demise is a troubling new chapter for Argentina’s battered economy, which was roiled by runaway inflation and stagnant growth even before Covid-19 slammed the door on businesses. The pandemic has been brutal for small and medium-size businesses around the capital Buenos Aires. According to the Commerce and Industry Federation of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (FECOBA, by its Spanish acronym), 24,200 of those businesses, roughly 22% of the total, had permanently shut their doors by mid-July. Jonatan Loidi, a financial analyst, author and economics professor, says the pandemic and the implementation of a lockdown aggravated an economy that was already in a recession. “Argentina hasn’t grown since 2011. In the last three years there has been not only lack of growth but also a fall in the country’s GDP.” Loidi pointed out the annualized inflation rate in Argentina, even before the pandemic, was 55%. “Uncertainty is the word that best describes life in Argentina nowadays,” Loidi said.

Turkish navy, air force drills in Aegean Sea amid tensions (AP) Turkish air and naval forces conducted joint training exercises in the Aegean Sea, the country’s Defense Ministry said Saturday, amid strains with neighbor Greece over hydrocarbon discoveries. The announcement came as NATO members Turkey and Greece are facing off in the eastern Mediterranean Sea over gas and oil exploration and a day after Turkey declared significant gas discoveries in the Black Sea. Two weeks ago, Turkey sent a warship-escorted research vessel to prospect in waters where Greece claims exclusive rights to the underlying seabed. Athens responded by sending its own warships to the area and placing its military on alert. France also sent warships and planes to join drills with Greek forces. Relations between Greece and Turkey have traditionally been tense. The two have come to the brink of war three times since the mid-1970s, including once over drilling exploration rights in the Aegean Sea that separates the two countries.

Belarus leader blames US for chaos, vows to end protests (AP) Authorities in Belarus detained a leader of striking factory workers and threatened demonstrators with criminal charges Friday in a bid to stop the massive post-election protests challenging the country’s authoritarian president, who accused the United States of fomenting the unrest. Protesters are demanding that Lukashenko resign, accusing him of stealing a sixth term in office by rigging the country’s Aug. 9 presidential election. Many are fed up with sinking living standards and the lack of opportunities under Lukashenko, and their disgust grew deeper as he dismissed the coronavirus pandemic and refused to order a lockdown. Unfazed by government threats, thousands of demonstrators on Friday formed “chains of solidarity” across the capital of Minsk before marching to the central Independence Square as post-election protests entered their 13th straight day. Motorists honked and slowed down to block traffic in a show of solidarity.

Xi Declares War on Food Waste, and China Races to Tighten Its Belt (NYT) Chinese regulators are calling out livestreamers who binge-eat for promoting excessive consumption. A school said it would bar students from applying for scholarships if their daily leftovers exceeded a set amount. A restaurant placed electronic scales at its entrance for customers to weigh themselves to avoid ordering too much. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has declared a war on the “shocking and distressing” squandering of food, and the nation is racing to respond, with some going to greater extremes than others. The ruling Communist Party has long sought to portray Mr. Xi as a fighter of excess and gluttony in officialdom, but this new call for gastronomic discipline is aimed at the public and carries a special urgency. When it comes to food security, Mr. Xi said, Chinese citizens should maintain a sense of crisis because of vulnerabilities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. It’s part of a broader message from the leadership in recent weeks about the importance of self-reliance in a time of tensions with the United States and other economic partners. The concern is that import disruptions caused by the global geopolitical turmoil, the pandemic and trade tensions with the Trump administration, as well as some of China’s worst floods this year, could cut into food supplies.

S. Korea imposes strict measures to stem spread (AP) South Korea is banning large gatherings, closing beaches, shutting nightspots and churches and removing fans from professional sports in strict new measures announced Saturday as it battles the spread of the coronavirus. Health Minister Park Neung-hoo announced the steps shortly after the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 332 new cases—the ninth straight day of triple-digit increases. While most of the new cases came from the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, which has been at the center of the viral surge in recent weeks, infections were also reported in practically every major city and town.

Antarctic winds trigger rare snowfall across southeast Australia (Reuters) Antarctic air reaching Australia’s south east triggered snowfall down to low altitudes across several states on Saturday, with many people out enjoying the rare event despite wild winds and heavy snow that closed some roads. Pictures of snowy towns and landscapes across New South Wales (NSW), Victoria, the Australia Capital Territory and the island state of Tasmania flooded social media as locals rushed to capture the surprise early spring snowfall. Over one metre (3.3 feet) of snow had fallen in a number of alpine regions, and the cold weather would likely remain for several days, the weather bureau said.

Beirut needs billions of dollars it doesn’t have to rebuild after massive blast (Washington Post) With reddened eyes, 90-year-old Henri Azar surveys what remains of his family home. The traditional wooden-frame windows have been ripped out. Plaster was cleaved from the walls. Sunlight shines through gaps in the bedroom ceiling. A team of engineers tell him he needs to make repairs before the winter rains. Beirut officials have estimated that the damage from the enormous blast that shook the city two weeks ago could reach $15 billion, though the true extent of the destruction remains unknown. At least 25,000 homes are so badly damaged that they are uninhabitable, according to the Beirut government. There are myriad hurdles for rebuilding, including a months-old financial crisis that has sent the value of the Lebanese currency plunging and prompted draconian banking restrictions that limit withdrawals even by those with money in their accounts. Only a few homeowners have insurance, and they are being told they can’t receive a payout until the cause of the explosion is established by the government’s investigation, since damage due to war or terrorism is not covered. They say they have little hope of ever being compensated. In the meantime, landlords and long-term tenants are fighting over who should pay for repairs. No one expects assistance from the bankrupt government, which has been largely absent from cleanup efforts. Private funding of repairs is hamstrung by the banking restrictions, put in place last year after it emerged that as much as $100 billion is missing from the banking system, a sign of the country’s chronic mismanagement and corruption.

Thousands in Mali’s capital welcome president’s downfall (AP) Thousands marched Friday in the streets of Mali’s capital to celebrate the overthrow of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, as the West African nation’s political opposition backed the military’s junta plan to eventually hand over power to a civilian transitional government. But as opponents of the former regime moved ahead with plans for the future, the international community continued to express alarm about the coup that deposed Mali’s democratically elected leader this week. There are concerns that the political upheaval will divert attention away from the more than seven-year international fight against Islamic extremists who have used previous power vacuums in Mali to expand their terrain.

[aboutlouishofmann]

MYP Magazine - Of Time And Truth.

[Original interview here.]

22/07/2019

Interview by Jonas Meyer. Photos by Steven Ludtke

[I skipped the introduction and went straight for the interview]

Jonas:

When the first season of “Dark” was released in December 2017, viewers and critics alike have literally fallen over their enthusiasm. So far, many had not expected such quality from a German production, especially in terms of dramaturgy and visuality. How did you, as a Netflix consumer, experience the series start then?

Louis:

Luckily I’ve been able to enjoy the series as a relatively normal, objective viewer - and that’s true of the current season two. In “Dark” there are several roles and plot-lines, in which my character Jonas does not take part and which I accordingly did not know about from the shooting. During the shoot, I tried anyway to push aside all the other plot-lines and focus only on Jonas Kahnwald. Otherwise, I would probably have gotten pretty confused because the content of the series is so complex.

Jonas:

What is the difference between the current season two and the first one?

Louis:

In Season 1, it’s all about something that happens individually to each character which they have to deal with. In the second season, these characters are much more active, especially Jonas. At the very beginning of the series he is still very passive and in the course of the episodes he has to learn how to handle the issues himself. In the second season, he already knows who he is, what he means and what he needs to do to achieve his goals - and of course, what he has to sacrifice. But all the other characters learn, too, overall, the knowledge of each character acquires in the course of the second season is much larger. In addition, I would say that this second season is also more emotional. Now much more information will be passed on to others which changes their view of the world.

Jonas:

On the platform kino.de there is an episode guide to the first season, in which it is said that a single viewing of the series is not enough to recognize all the contexts and hints: “Often, a short distraction like reaching out to take drink or a look at the clock is enough to miss an important detail." Do you see it the same way?

Louis:

The series is definitely complex, I agree. And with so much information to be conveyed in Season 2 to drive the story forward, this second season may be even more complex than the first one. Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar have always emphasized that with "Dark” they wanted to create a series that challenged viewers in a certain way. By the way, that did not happen until then in Germany - here one tends to play it safe. After the release of the first season, funnily enough, there were critics on the one hand who said that the series was too complicated. And at the same time there were critics on the other side who complained that we were guiding the audience by the hand way too much.

Jonas:

How did you deal with the high complexity, which is created solely within the character Jonas Kahnwald? Is there always an overview, even if you concentrate only on your own narrative thread?

Louis:

Of course we all lost the thread every now and then. But thank God there is Jantje, who has the complete perspective. She knows down to the last detail how, where, what, and when something happens. During the shooting for the second season, we also had a Script Supervisor, to whom you could always turn. In addition, there were special screens on the set, where you could play the entire first season - in the event that you wanted to look, which specific point refers to a scene for which one is just in front of the camera.

Jonas: Lars Montag, director of the Netflix series “How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)”, revealed to us in an interview recently that he has the feeling that since Fassbinder there is actually no German narrative anymore. He said: “All are just trying to imitate Hollywood in any way.” Do you think it requires a special German narrative style - just as the Scandinavians, French or English people attributed to their very own cinematic narrative style?

Louis:

Definitely, no. I think we live in times when everyone is trying to make something special. This alone starts up more and more narrative styles. This can be observed even among the Scandinavians, who are said to have a particularly strong stereotype in imagery and narrative style. The reason for this development is that we all talk more and more international - but that does not explicitly mean that we are more Hollywood-oriented. For me, telling an international story means that we can address viewers across countries by means of certain narrative styles and therefore do not have to reduce ourselves to our local schemes.

Of course, it still needs different narrative in film - but not to emphasize the national location, but to be able to address the most diverse types of spectators. Quite apart from that, there is not one big secret recipe of the Hollywood narrative that you have to use to reach out to people. Rather, I believe that it is much easier today to break out of this Hollywood compulsion - simply because the audience has become much more diverse.

Jonas:

The trailer of the second “Dark” opens with a gloomy, post-apocalyptic landscape in which a destroyed nuclear power plant can be seen. Is it  not strange how realistic and quite imaginable such fictional images are when viewed in the context of the current social debate about climate change and impending environmental catastrophes?

Louis:

When talking about the future, there are two main scenarios that seem possible: one is an extremely modern and thriving science-fiction world of flying cars, where everything flashes and shines. The other is just the opposite: a dark scenario in which everything is destroyed - because we humans have destroyed ourselves. In this scenario, nature slowly regains the upper hand and runs us down. With “Dark 2” there was not necessarily the intention to create parallels to this second possible scenario. But it is actually noticeable that these pictures do not seem so unrealistic in this day and age.

Jonas:

You recently appeared in the Arte short film series “Couples” with Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra. You play a young couple who discusses whether it is appropriate to paint the German flag on one’s face, such as at a game of the national team. He gets mad about it, she does not understand his problem. How do you personally look at this country at the moment?

Louis:

With shame and concern because the most important and threatening topic in the world - climate change - is not taken seriously. There seems to be a kind of change of heart, which is also expressed by the fact that the Greens temporarily lead in the polls. Nevertheless, I always feel stifled when I realize how climate goals are ignored and Germany - which has a certain role model function - fucks it up. I think that’s really sad. I sincerely hope that this green trend will not be short-lived and will continue because we simply have to make sure that this earth is not doomed to destruction in 30 years’ time. When I deal with the predicted, catastrophic consequences of climate change, it scares me. In view of this threatening situation, I do not understand why young politicians are not getting much more involved in Germany. Their job gives them a huge stage! Unfortunately, this stage is only used by the fewest. But now they have the chance to finally speak out truths. But it is only blabbed. If you listen to some of these politicians, you want to shake them and wake them up.

Jonas:

In recent years, you have greatly reduced your social media activity. You could use your popularity and the associated reach to give more space to certain issues in public discourse. Why did you decide to withdraw from the social networks? Don’t you feel like you could’ve made a difference?

Louis:

Of course, with a certain amount of followers and the range involved, it is possible to spread your own opinions and influence those of other people. But for me it has always been difficult to position myself in the social networks on specific political issues. Although it was relatively easy for me in the run-up to the European elections to call with my posts to go to the polls. Otherwise, I’m more careful. I’ve probably missed the chance to tell people my opinions for a long time. By the way, others manage to do really well, which I admire very much. But in my case it was a very selfish decision to delete my Facebook account and withdraw heavily from Instagram.

Jonas:

To what extent?

Louis:

It just did not do me any good. I always had the feeling that I must post something to entertain people. That totally unsettled me and put me under pressure. That’s why I decided to get rid of it. I did not think Facebook was necessary anyway. The decision to stop using Instagram came last year during the shoot for the second season of “Dark”. At that time, I was generally under a lot of pressure. And when there are other components, such as social networks, that add pressure to me, it all got too much. My Instagram account still exists and I post pictures from time to time, but I have to reinstall the app every time because I delete it after each post. In principle, I myself have no access to my Instagram profile. When I want to post something, my girlfriend has to sit beside me because she has the password.

Jonas:

What was the reason that you were so under pressure last year?

Louis:

There has not been any time in my life when I felt more pressure than in 2018 - pressure was my word of the year. That’s because the year before was the craziest and most extreme year I’ve ever experienced, in any way. I have tried to tell myself over and over again, “Louis, 2017 will not be repeated. Take care and get ready! "But I was not ready. 2018 has completely overrun me - due to the extreme expectations, which were suddenly felt from all sides. For the audience, the journalists and the critics, it is a natural fact that you are always good. If you’ve played some good roles, everyone expects you to keep doing your job properly. This matter of course has affected me much more.

Jonas:

How do you feel about seeing yourself on the screen?

Louis:

That’s OK in principle - I really want to see the work I’ve done. But I can really enjoy a movie as a viewer only if I do not have to rate my own work. Overall, I am very critical of myself and therefore quickly dissatisfied. Sometimes I would wish that I am not so hard on myself, because that would make me more free in the way I work. It hampers you a lot when you’re too scared of failure or too much pressure - you realize, pressure is a big issue in my life.

Jonas:

In a few months, the film "Deutschstunde” will start in the cinemas, for which you have taken on a supporting role. In the film adaptation of the novel by the same name by Siegfried Lenz about an expressionist painter, where a prohibition of the profession was imposed by the Nazis in 1943. This repression existed in Germany not only at the time of National Socialism, but also in the former GDR. In some countries, such as China, even today, professional bans are being imposed. How would you react if you were no longer allowed to be an actor?

Louis:

I have never asked myself this question. It makes perfect sense to consider it. I suspect that I have never dealt with the question because here in Germany we are in a very privileged situation where we are allowed to practice what we want as a profession. If that were forbidden, I would be completely at a loss. Acting is what I do best of all activities and what I like to do most. There never was a plan B in my life either - so I would not know what to do with myself.

Jonas:

Can you “not act” as an actor at all?

Louis:

Of course, in everyday life you can stop it. However, every actor is inclined to be a permanently on game, such as with jokes, gestures or certain behaviors. It is easy to express oneself. I believe that in order to give the truth to a person, one must draw truth from oneself. And if you no longer have truths, you can not play them. On the other hand, I have the experience that I always take parts of my characters into my own life or discover new things about myself through them. In other words: through the role, I open a box, which then remains open a bit. As a result, my roles always change a bit for me as well. For example, I feel like through the many sensitive characters that I was allowed to play, I have embraced the sensitive side in myself more - unfortunately I can not find a word in German with which I could better express that. What I mean by that: Had I not played so many sensitive characters, today I would be a sensitive person, but not to the extent that I have become in the end.

Jonas:

Which of your projects has been the most emotionally charged so far?

Louis:

I would say that was “Prélude” by Sabrina Sarabi, which will be released on August 29th. In the film, I play the young piano student David, who suffers from strong self-doubt and feels a huge pressure of expectation - a situation that I can understand very well, as already mentioned. However, with David, he loses control of his life and threatens to break under the pressure.

This movie is the first one I for which I have prepared with a coach. When working with acting coach Frank Betzelt, it was especially about how the energy between the individual characters felt, what these energies wanted and how they influenced the characters. That helped me a lot to dig deep into my role. For example, I have discovered a much greater access to the feeling of anger, mainly to self-rage. I personally did not know that feeling before. Until then, I have never felt the need to be angry, let alone gain access to this emotion.

All in all, during this time I let David’s emotional world come close to me - and literally took it home with me. That put a strain on me not only during preparation and shooting, but also for almost a whole year afterwards.

Jonas:

How exactly?

Louis:

For example, a few months after filming, there was an incident that happened when I was visiting my parents in Cologne with my girlfriend. After watching a couple of episodes of “Babylon Berlin” with Liv Lisa Fries - Liv plays my girlfriend in “Prélude” - I felt an extreme unease in the next morning. I was kind of aggressive and in a bad mood, which kept increasing throughout the day, until I finally just collapsed in the evening. Probably the situation with my parents at home and with my girlfriend on the side gave me such a safe space that I could process all this again. There was apparently no real opportunity to do that before because after the “Prélude” shoot exciting things kept happening. I had the impression that I had dragged this topic for months and only let everything out during my visit in Cologne. But I did not really get rid of it. When I saw the movie for the first time some time later, I was really sad for two or three days and did not know why. So I called Frank Betzelt, who had coached me then. He just asked me one question: “What really bothers you? The fact that you are so sad or that you do not know why you are sad?”

Jonas:

What a clever question!

Louis:

An incredibly smart question! My answer was, “Because I do not know why this is happening to me.” And then Frank said it was fine and I did not have to fight it. The reason for this is that I have grown so fond of the character and thereby experienced the suffering of this young artist even more intensely. We talked about it for a while - and after that phone call it was OK.

Jonas:

Kat Frankie, a singer-songwriter living here in Berlin, wrote the interesting sentence: “People that write sad songs are a little happier.” Is that similar to actors who play sad roles?

Louis:

You can say that the other way around too - look at Robin Williams, who was hilarious in his roles, but must have been extremely sad in his private life and finally took his own life. Basically, I think that actors who play a lot of melancholic roles, also need a certain fascination. And if you have that fascination in general, you have it when you’re not acting as well.

Jonas:

If you ignore the expectations of other people: What is your own claim to yourself?

Louis:

I have a very high standard of myself and I am extremely ambitious.

Jonas:

That means you’re also prone to criticism?

Louis:

I’m trying not to be that. It’s a bit strange to me anyway: I’m really excited about criticism and sometimes find it strange when there’s none at all - especially when I know for sure that there’s something to criticize. At the same time, it is not so easy for me to handle criticism when it is actually voiced, especially if it comes from myself. I wish that was easier.

Jonas:

Are you someone who takes things from peers?

Louis ( smiles ):

Off or on? No, seriously, I think you have to make sure that you can focus on your own work and not get too confused by the hype that is often justified by some of your colleagues. But I also think it’s just right as an actor to keep your eyes open and to be inspired by what’s being done elsewhere. But we should all be in this world anyway, no matter if actor or not.

[berniesrevolution]

How democratic is the United States? According to a poll released by the bipartisan Democracy Project in June, a clear majority (55 per cent) of Americans consider US democracy to be “weak”, with two-thirds (68 per cent) saying it’s “getting weaker.” Half of Americans believe the nation is in “real danger of becoming a non-democratic, authoritarian country”.

In February, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) classed the United States as a “flawed democracy” for the second year in a row. The US ranked 21st in the EIU’s Democracy Index, behind 20 “full” democracies including Germany, Canada and the UK.

“Popular trust in government, elected representatives, and political parties has fallen to extremely low levels in the US,” the EUI analysts wrote. “This has been a long-term trend and one that preceded the election of Mr Trump as the US president in November 2016.”

Indeed it did. The sad truth is that Donald Trump is a symptom, not a cause, of the United States’ democratic dysfunction.

Consider his own election victory: Trump secured the presidency in November 2016 despite winning three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Turnout stood at a miserable 55.7 per cent; more Americans stayed at home than voted for Trump and Clinton combined.

Consider the president’s latest appointment to the Supreme Court: the scandal-plagued Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed by the Senate, in a 50-48 vote, earlier this month – the narrowest confirmation vote since 1881. Not only did a majority of Americans oppose his appointment, but the 50 senators who put him there represent states covering just 44 per cent of the US population.

Consider the Senate itself: each state is guaranteed two senators, regardless of their size. Yet, given current demographic trends, by 2040, according to calculations by Baruch College political scientist David Birdsell, “70 per cent of Americans are expected to live in the 15 largest states … That means that the 70 per cent of Americans get all of 30 Senators and 30 per cent of Americans get 70 Senators”.

Consider also the upcoming midterm elections, on 6 November, described by former White House strategist Steve Bannon, no less, as “a referendum on the Trump presidency.” Thanks to Republican gerrymandering, reports the Washington Post, “some independent analysts think Democrats will need to win the popular vote by seven to 11 percentage points just to get a bare majority” in the House of Representatives. In 2016, Republicans managed to secure 55 per cent of the seats in the House with less than 50 per cent of the vote.

Minority rule, therefore, is the order of the day. Despite winning fewer and fewer votes, Republicans have amassed more and more political power across the various branches of the US government.

For how long should Democrats tolerate this fundamentally undemocratic, and anti-democratic, state of affairs? In November, they could win back control of the House, and maybe even the Senate too, in an anti-Trump “blue wave”. Would that provide a long-overdue opportunity – perhaps bolstered by a Democrat in the White House come 2021 – to address this broken democratic system in the United States? To slowly restore faith in the nation’s elections and institutions?

If a backswing brings us a Democratic government with a mandate for reform, here are eight simple steps they could take to try and fix, reform and improve our “flawed” democracy.

1) Abolish the electoral college

“The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” So said Donald Trump on election night in 2012, when it looked for a brief moment as if Mitt Romney might win the popular vote against Barack Obama. Today, of course, Trump sits in the Oval Office as a result of that very same electoral college – which, unbeknownst to many Americans, was created to boost the political power of slave-owning southern states.

Since the start of this century, the United States has elected two Republican presidents – Trump and George W Bush – who lost the national popular vote but won the majority of electoral college votes. How so? The electoral college elevates smaller, rural Republican states at the expense of bigger, more urban Democratic states. Compare California to Wyoming: the former has one electoral vote per 712,000 people, while the latter has one per 195,000 people. That means a vote in Wyoming has 3.6 times the impact in the electoral college as a vote in California.

The core of democracy is supposed to be the principle of one person, one vote, but the electoral college makes a mockery of that principle. And guess what? Most Americans agree. In June, a PRRI poll found that two-thirds (68 per cent) of Americans would prefer electing their presidents on the basis of the national popular vote, as opposed to the electoral college.

Abolishing the electoral college won’t be easy. It would need a constitutional amendment, which itself requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate and the ratification of three-quarters (38) of the 50 states.

There is, however, an alternative to outright abolition. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement between a growing number of US states to pool their electoral college votes for the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote. The agreement is supposed to take effect once the participating states represent at least 270 electoral votes, the minimum number required to elect a president. As of October 2018, the NPVIC had been adopted by 11 states which, between them, have 172 electoral votes or 32 per cent of the total Electoral College.

2) Pass a new Voting Rights Act

Turnout in the United States is abysmally low by international standards – according to a Pew study in May 2018, the US came 26th out of 32 OECD countries. But Republicans are bent on reducing it even further. Voter suppression has become an integral part of the GOP’s election strategy at the federal and state levels. Take Georgia, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp – who, as secretary of state, also doubles as Georgia’s top election official – is trying to block 53,000 people from registering to vote, nearly 70 per cent of whom are black. His Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, is black.

In 2013, conservatives on the Supreme Court gutted a key section of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act which had required state and local governments in areas with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal “preclearance” before making any changes to their voting laws. The Democrats, if they retake the House and the Senate, should immediately pass a new, beefed-up Voting Rights Act, which would:

– Prohibit racist voter ID laws at the state level. Over the past decade, more than a dozen Republican-led states have introduced restrictive voter ID laws. Their justification? To combat (mythical) voter fraud. The reality? A 2017 academic study found “a significant drop in minority participation when and where these laws are implemented”.

– Mandate that every state automatically register every voter. Thirteen states plus the District of Columbia have already approved automatic voter registration (AVR). In 2016, after Oregon introduced AVR, the state’s turnout increased by 4 per cent compared to the 2012 elections.

- Restore the right to vote to ex-felons. In the swing state of Florida, more than one in ten people of voting age – and a whopping one in five black adults! – are barred from voting due to a felony conviction. In total, and nationwide, around six million Americans with a felony conviction are currently disenfranchised – some of them for life. As the Sentencing Project points out: “We know of no other democracy besides the United States in which convicted offenders who have served their sentences are nonetheless disenfranchised for life.”

– Make election day a federal holiday. Countries such as Germany, France, Spain, Brazil and India either vote at the weekend or recognize election day as a public holiday. One recent study found that “creating a national holiday for election day would increase voter turnout by about 16 percentage points” and cause “voter turnout in the US to be consistent with other developed democracies.”

3) Ban gerrymandering

Is there anything more brazenly anti-democratic than redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts to secure a partisan advantage? That’s gerrymandering.

Take Pennsylvania. In November 2012, according to the Washington Post, “Democratic candidates for the state’s 18 US House seats won 51 percent of their state’s popular House vote. But that translated to just 5 out of 18, or a little more than one-quarter, of the state’s House seats.” How come? Because Republicans had drawn ridiculously-skewed district maps the year before.

Republicans in control of statehouses and governors’ mansions across the United States have gerrymandered their way to the “the most audacious political heist of modern times,” in the words of investigative journalist David Daley. Remember, as political scientist Lee Drutman, of the New America think tank, observed in January, “Gerrymandering is largely a US phenomenon … We’re the only country that uses single-member districts but doesn’t use independent districting commissions to draw them.”

Americans from across the political spectrum have expressed their dislike of gerrymandering. A bipartisan poll conducted by the Campaign Legal Center in September 2017 found that 71 per cent of respondents, including 65 per cent of Republicans, want the Supreme Court to define “clear, new rules” that end blatant partisan gerrymandering.

(Continue Reading)

[theliberaltony]

via FiveThirtyEight tells compelling data-driven stories about politics, sports and science.

It took a while, but President Trump’s second State of the Union address is finally here. From one perspective, the fact that it’s happening is more important than the speech itself — it was nearly the casualty of a fight between Trump and House Democrats over funding a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Tensions remain high as Congress and the president work toward a Feb. 15 deadline to avert another government shutdown. Trump’s address starts at 9 p.m. Eastern time tonight, and we’ll be live blogging our thoughts in real time at FiveThirtyEight.com. First, though, let’s talk a little bit about how State of the Union addresses work and what you can expect this evening.

1. The speeches don’t affect approval ratings much

State of the Union addresses are generally meant as laundry lists of legislation for Congress to pursue — not soaring examples of oratory like presidential acceptance speeches. So it makes sense that, unlike political conventions, State of the Union addresses don’t produce a polling “bounce” for the president — but nor do they take much of a toll. In most cases, their political impact is close to nil.

Gallup has measured presidential job approval ratings both before and after State of the Union speeches since 1978 (for a total of 35, not including the addresses before a joint session of Congress that newly elected presidents gave in their first year in office1). If you look at the difference between those pre- and post-speech approval ratings, the State of the Union has produced an average approval-rating bump of … 0.2 percent. In fact, a president has been just as likely to see his approval rating decrease as increase: 15 speeches have produced an approval rating bump, while 15 have yielded a decline (the remaining five effected no change at all).

How the State of the Union affects presidential approval

Approval rating before and after the speech Year President Before After Change 1998 Clinton 59% 69% +10 1996 Clinton 46 52 +6 2005 W. Bush 51 57 +6 1994 Clinton 54 58 +4 2016 Obama 45 49 +4 1984 Reagan 52 55 +3 2015 Obama 45 48 +3 1980 Carter 56 58 +2 1995 Clinton 47 49 +2 2012 Obama 44 46 +2 2018 Trump 38 40 +2 1988 Reagan 49 50 +1 1992 H.W. Bush 46 47 +1 2003 W. Bush 60 61 +1 2014 Obama 41 42 +1 1982 Reagan 47 47 0 1999 Clinton 69 69 0 2008 W. Bush 34 34 0 2010 Obama 48 48 0 2011 Obama 50 50 0 1979 Carter 43 42 -1 1986 Reagan 64 63 -1 1991 H.W. Bush 83 82 -1 2000 Clinton 64 63 -1 2006 W. Bush 43 42 -1 1983 Reagan 37 35 -2 2002 W. Bush 84 82 -2 2013 Obama 52 50 -2 1978 Carter 55 52 -3 1997 Clinton 60 57 -3 1985 Reagan 64 60 -4 2004 W. Bush 53 49 -4 2007 W. Bush 36 32 -4 1987 Reagan 48 43 -5 1990 H.W. Bush 80 73 -7 Average change +0.2 Median change 0 Average absolute change 2.5 Median absolute change 2

2018 ratings are based on weekly Gallup polls, whereas other years are based on rolling daily averages.

Source: Gallup

Even when a president’s approval rating has increased or declined in the period immediately following a State of the Union, the shift usually isn’t big. The average absolute change (e.g., treating a 4-point dip like a 4-point rise) has been 2.5 percentage points. Presidential approval ratings have budged by more than 4 points in either direction after only five of the 35 speeches, and in those cases, it’s often easier to attribute the shifts to outside events. For example, the 2005 State of the Union came a few days after Iraq’s first democratic election in half a century, which reflected well on President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy.

That should make political analysts think twice when assessing the impact of tonight’s speech. Say Trump’s speech goes well and his approval rating is up 5 points a week from now. Pundits might try to connect the two, but history tells us that the State of Union probably wouldn’t be the reason behind that increase. That said, don’t be surprised if Trump’s approval rating does improve in the next few weeks regardless of how the speech is received. He is probably due for an uptick — his approval rating fell substantially during the recent government shutdown, but the polling effects of a shutdown have historically been short-lived.

2. The speeches don’t influence legislation

Presidents use State of the Union addresses to lay out their policy priorities and persuade Congress to pass them, but they are typically successful at only the first of those objectives. According to political scientists Donna Hoffman and Alison Howard, the average State of the Union from 1965 to 2015 (plus those pesky joint addresses to Congress2) contained 34 policy proposals.

But the share of those proposals that became law within a year of being included in an address varied. On average, Hoffman and Howard found that only about 25 percent of the president’s ideas were fully enacted within a year.3

It’s particularly difficult for a president to get his agenda passed when his party doesn’t control Congress. For example, 33 percent of the proposals in Barack Obama’s 2009 speech and 49 percent of those in his 2010 speech were fully implemented by the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress, but Obama’s success rate dropped when control of Congress was split between Republicans and Democrats from 2011 through 2014. On average, 14 percent of Obama’s proposals in his speeches in those four years were fully implemented within a year. That doesn’t bode well for Trump’s proposals — one month into the 116th Congress, Trump and House Democrats already have an extremely adversarial relationship.

  3. Presidents end up speaking to their own party

Although the audience for the State of the Union is theoretically all Americans, viewership of the event has had a decidedly partisan gleam. For both of Trump’s previous addresses to Congress, more self-identified Republicans than Democrats watched, according to polls that were conducted after the speeches. And we can probably expect more of the same in 2019. People from the president’s party usually have been more interested in hearing what he has to say since at least the end of the George H.W. Bush administration:4

While it’s unlikely that this trend will change tonight — after all, Trump is the most polarizing president on record — voters of all stripes may want to hear what the president has to say in the aftermath of the longest government shutdown in history and as the standoff over the border wall funding continues. Others may have been drawn in by the dispute over when the State of the Union would take place.

  4. But the speeches are part of an important democratic tradition

The importance of the State of the Union in affecting policy or public opinion may be overblown, but it does provide a unique opportunity for the president to speak simultaneously to the public and to Congress. And even though the president is the focal point, the address is really about a president’s legislative agenda, which Congress has the power to enact (or not). Members of both parties sit in the same room and listen to the president. Occasionally, they find common ground. More often than not, they disagree. But a president laying out his or her priorities before Congress is a powerful symbolic reminder that the presidency and legislature are coequal branches of government.

The State of the Union also provides a sense of historical continuity. The address has been either delivered to Congress or submitted as a written annual message nearly every year since George Washington assumed office. And while the televised prime-time address dates only to the 1960s, it does put Trump in the company of former presidents like Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and more recent predecessors like George W. Bush and Obama. By participating in this ritualized address, presidents signal that they are part of history and that the office transcends any single president.

Whether Trump adheres to the usual script tonight or does something, well, Trump-like, the format and setting of the address will push viewers to think about how he fills the office in comparison to past leaders. And at a time when there’s a lot of disagreement over policy, it’s good for the president to go before the American people to make his case, subjecting himself to both public scrutiny and opposing viewpoints. The State of the Union isn’t perfect, but it’s better than the president speaking to the public without Congress present — or, even worse, not speaking at all.

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-like-donald-trump/

Why Do Republicans Like Donald Trump

We Need Somebody Who’ll Finally Get Tough On Foreign Policy

Why Do So Many Republicans Like Donald Trump?

Well, there’s no doubt that Trump talks a tough game when it comes to other countries â he sort of makes it sound like the world will just roll over in front of him, exposing its collective belly for him to scratch. You may remember when he insisted that he’d bring oil prices down by swearing at OPEC leaders back in 2011, when he was teasing a possible 2012 run. Here’s what he told a Las Vegas audience, as detailed by Mother Jones.

We have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you’re not going to raise that f***ing price.

He also had a simple message for China, saying “listen you motherf****rs, we’re going to tax you 25 percent!” This is in keeping with the general level of seriousness he seems to apply to his prognostications â he also insists that if he’s elected, he’ll force the Mexican government to finance a border wall, and that’s still nowhere near the most antagonistic component of his far-right immigration plan.

If you’re the kind of person who wants some more strident red lines in international negotiations, say â to try to secure those ever-elusive “better deals” that some conservatives have been harping on lately â that’s fine, even if we might disagree. But be forewarned: what Trump’s putting out there is little more than presumptuous bombast, so don’t be shocked if that ridiculous wall idea never comes to fruition.

Why Do Trump Voters Believe His Lies It’s Not Because They’re Stupid

The cornerstones of President Trumps campaign were promises to appeal Obamacare and ban Muslims from the US. It took Trump less than 70 days to fail on both promises.

And yet, despite his epic fails, lies and incompetence, Trumps base supports him like theyre spanx and hes Marie Osmond. What explains this loyalty? Science has the answer.

Have a look at this puzzle.

Which drawing best illustrates the correct mechanics and structure of a bicycle?

How you answer will help explain the loyalty of Trump voters. Ill explain in just a bit. But first

What I wanted to know is WTF!?

How can two people look at President Trump and have such polar opposite observations? To find out, I conducted an experiment. I set up a fake account and joined more than 50 pro-Trump Facebook groups. I created a meme that said: What do you like about President Trump, then I shared it.

I got more than a thousand responses in 24 hours and the things people wrote most is that they like Trump because hes not a politician hes a real American not corrupted by Washington, and beholden to no one.

The next most common response was that Trump believes in God.

This was followed in near equal measure by Trump Loves America, he keeps his promises, that hes a good businessman, that he cant be bought, and that he tells the truth.

OK. So, one of them is true! Trump is not a politician. One could go either wayhis love for America.

I got nearly 700 responses.

WATCH NOW:

Opinionthe Gop Needs Women And Centrist Voters Ousting Cheney Only Nets Them Trump Loyalists

More important, experts say, are the shifting demographics of those neighborhoods. “Suburbs are simply far more diverse than they used to be,” a FiveThirtyEight analysis explains. “Suburbs have also become increasingly well-educated, and that may actually better explain why so many suburbs and exurbs are turning blue.” Both communities of color and Americans with higher education tend to vote Democratic combine those factors and you have a recipe for major electoral shifts.

And there’s no indication that shift is reversing. Recent polling from Harvard’s Kennedy School shows Biden dominating the suburbs, where 6 in 10 voters view the president favorably. Biden and Democrats’ lead in suburbs is such an existential threat to the GOP that Georgia Republicans have collapsed into infighting over how suburbs once represented by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich are now reliably Democratic bulwarks.

The Call for American Renewal is also hoping to recapture the support of women who have been fleeing the GOP since Trump’s first campaign. That may be harder than they think, too. Though it’s possible the group could restore some of the ground Trump lost to women, who went nearly 6-in-10 for Biden, Republicans have been losing women voters for years.

Mild dissatisfaction with Trump isnt the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes.

Poll Results Are Fake Unless Theyre Good Trump Says

During his speech at the Dallas convention Sunday night, Trump said he only would have believed the results of CPACs straw poll if they were his favor, Business Insider reported.

Now, if its bad, I just say its fake, the former president told the crowd, reported Insider. If its good, I say thats the most accurate poll, perhaps ever.

In the past, Trump has decried similar things he doesnt like as false, like referring to unfavorable media coverage as fake news.

A Large Share Of Republicans Want Trump To Remain Head Of The Party Cnbc Survey Shows

A CNBC survey conducted in the days before former President Donald Trump‘s impeachment trial finds a large share of Republicans want him to remain head of their party, but a majority of Americans want him out of politics.

The CNBC All-America Economic Survey shows 54% of Americans want Trump “to remove himself from politics entirely.” That was the sentiment of 81% of Democrats and 47% of Independents, but only 26% of Republicans.

When it comes to Republicans, 74% want him to stay active in some way, including 48% who want him to remain head of the Republican Party, 11% who want him to start a third party, and 12% who say he should remain active in politics but not as head of any party.

“If we’re talking about Donald Trump’s future, at the moment, the survey shows he still has this strong core support within his own party who really want him to continue to be their leader,” said Jay Campbell, a partner with Hart Research and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

But Micah Roberts, the survey’s Republican pollster, and a partner with Public Opinion Strategies, emphasized the change from when Trump was president. Polls before the election regularly showed Trump with GOP approval ratings around 90%, meaning at least some Republicans have defected from Trump.

Republicans Cant Understand Democrats

Only one in four Republican voters felt that most or almost all Democratic voters sincerely believed they were voting in the best interests of the country.  Rather, many Republicans told us that Democratic voters were brainwashed by the propaganda of the mainstream media, or voting solely in their self-interest to preserve undeserved welfare and food stamp benefits.

We asked every Republican in the sample to do their best to imagine that they were a Democrat and sincerely believed that the Democratic Party was best for the country.  We asked them to explain their support for the Democratic Party as an actual Democratic voter might.  For example, a 64-year-old strong Republican man from Illinois surmised that Democrats want to help the poor, save Social Security, and tax the rich.   

But most had trouble looking at the world through Democratic eyes. Typical was a a 59-year-old Floridian who wrote I dont want to work and I want cradle to grave assistance. In other words, Mommy! Indeed, roughly one in six Republican voters answered in the persona of a Democratic voter who is motivated free college, free health care, free welfare, and so on.  They see Democrats as voting in order to get free stuff without having to work for it was extremely common roughly one in six Republican voters used the word free in the their answers, whereas no real Democratic voters in our sample answered this way. 

Trumps Role As Republican Party Leader Is Becoming Stronger

This weekends CPAC straw poll results showed that Trumps popularity along with DeSantis in the Republican Party has grown in the last six months, according to Forbes.

In February, only 55% of attendees of a similar CPAC event in Orlando, Florida, said they wanted Trump to lead the ticket in 2024, Forbes reported.

If Trump stayed in political retirement, or at least stayed off the presidential primary ballot in 2024, DeSantis lead the poll with 43% attending Republicans choosing him in Februarys hypothetical presidential primary.

Related

Inside the newsroom: Words matter, including the hateful Murder the media

He Appeals To Rural Voters

More than any other group, Americas rural people have been disempowered and abandoned due to the policies pushed by urban elites. Theyve seen their jobs evaporate and their local culture obliterated, only to be replaced by a Walmart and McDonalds in every town. They also realize that most of the media and academia see them as ignorant and backwards and laughable. instead, Trump treats them with respect. If you look at an electoral map of 2016, Clinton won all the urban areas and Trump won all of the rural ones. Thats because he was the first politician in memory who didnt sneer at them.

Hes Nationalist Rather Than Globalist

Why Do People Act Like Black Conservatives Don’t Exist? | NBC News

He realizes that the ex-factory worker in Ohio lost his job because it was sent to Malaysia. He knows that some banker in Brussels is more interested in increasing his stock portfolio than whether doing so will render huge swaths of the American heartland jobless and pill-addicted. He cares more about what a homeowner in Iowa thinks about him than what some sneering cosmopolite at a Parisian cocktail party thinks.

Emboldened ‘unchanged’ Trump Looks To Re

Across the party as a whole, an NBC News poll released late last month found, a majority of Republicans considered themselves supporters of the GOP, compared to just 44 percent who supported Trump above all, the first time that has been the case since July 2019.

But mild dissatisfaction with Trump isn’t the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes, and they’re buckled in for the long haul. That creates the opening for more traditional Republicans to toy with forming a new party but it’s a slim one.

Why Does Donald Trump Still Seem To Hold Sway Over The Republican Party

Why after leading the Republican Party during a period when it lost its majority in the US House of Representatives and the Senate and its power in the White House does former president Donald Trump still seem to hold the Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Reagan in his thrall?

For US politics watchers, who on the weekend watched on as 43 Republican senators voted to acquit Trump of an act of reckless incitement played out in front of the cameras, that is the $64,000 question.

Or rather, it’s the 74,222,593-vote question.

That is the record number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump last November more than has been cast for any previous president. Unfortunately for them, an even greater number 81,281,502 voted for his rival, now-President Joe Biden.

As much as anything else, those numbers sum up the quandary Republicans find themselves in.

They have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and only remain competitive because older white voters, who tend to be more likely to support conservative candidates, also tend to vote in greater numbers in a non-compulsory electoral system.

Those same voters are also the most likely to cast a ballot in next year’s house and senate primaries, and the next midterm elections in November 2022 which will again determine who holds power in congress. They are the voters who initially flocked to Donald Trump.

All The Republicans Who Wont Support Trump

Numerous top G.O.P. officials have said publicly or privately that they will not be backing the presidents re-election. Some have even endorsed Joe Biden. Heres a look at where they all stand.

Follow our latest coverage of the Biden vs. Trump 2020 election here.

As November draws nearer, some current and former Republican officials have begun to break ranks with the rest of their party, saying in public and private conversations that they will not support President Trump in his re-election. A number have even said that they will be voting for his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

As Mr. Trumps political standing has slipped, fueled by his failures in handling the coronavirus pandemic and by the economic recession, some Republicans have found it easier to publicly renounce their backing.

Here is a running list of those who have said they will support Mr. Biden in the fall, those who simply wont support Mr. Trump, and those who have hinted they may not back the president.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who announced their opposition to the election of Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican Party nominee and eventual winner of the election, as the President of the United States. It also includes former Republicans who left the party due to their opposition to Trump and as well as Republicans who endorsed a different candidate. It includes Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the nominee. Some of the Republicans on this list threw their support to Trump after he won the presidential election, while many of them continue to oppose Trump. Offices listed are those held at the time of the 2016 election.

Why Do Evangelical Christians Love Trump

To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault.

White evangelical support for Donald Trump has long puzzled observers. To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault. Scholars have commented on his crassness, defined by historian Walter G. Moss as a lack refinement, tact, sensitivity, taste or delicacy. Others have observed how he has broken rules of civil political engagement.

But in my research on evangelical masculinity, I have found that Trumps leadership style aligns closely with a rugged ideal of Christian manhood championed by evangelicals for more than half a century.

As I show in my book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, conservative evangelicals embraced the ideal of a masculine protector in the 1960s and 1970s in order to confront the perceived threats of communism and feminism.

Believing that the feminist rejection of macho masculinity left the nation in peril, conservative white evangelicals promoted a testosterone-fueled vision of Christian manhood. In their view, America needed strong men to defend Christian America on the battlefields of Vietnam and to reassert order on the home front.

Why it Matters

How I Do My Work

The Baffling Continued Support For Donald Trump Explained

Donald Trump has, by almost any measure, been the worst president in U.S. history, or at least within the memory of people living in 2020. But for some reason, he has remained popular with a sizable segment of Americans. While Joe Biden defeated him in the presidential election, 74 million Americans voted for Trump, and a large percentage of Republicans, like Trump himself, are denying that he actually lost the election. So why do Trumps diehard fans stay that way?

Yes, hes made some people happy with his tax cuts and appointments of right-wing judges, and he is beloved by white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, but he has downplayed a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 276,000 Americans and caused an economic crash. One would think his personal style, bullying, and insults would alienate many people. Yet his approval ratings have remained stable at around 40 percent for most of his presidency, and the 40 percent cant all be fringe elements. What could possibly account for the continued unwavering support of Trump loyalists?

I think that there are a number of things at play, crosscurrents, if you will, said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.

Winterhof likewise said she observed a decline in enthusiasm among voters who were counting on Trump for positive change and agreed that Biden was better positioned than Clinton among voters overall.

Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

The history of American third parties doesn’t offer much hope. Last year, Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen garnered just 1.2 percent of the vote in a typical third-party showing. In fact, no third-party candidate has achieved a double-digit popular vote total since Ross Perot in 1992, and data trends indicate that popular support for third parties has been in steady decline since then.

And even if the GOP 2.0 secures a marquee name like former Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah to champion its message, the role would likely be as a political spoiler rather than a serious candidate: Even former President Theodore Roosevelt, at the time one of the most popular figures in American culture, barely surpassed a quarter of the popular vote and garnered just 88 electoral votes in an iconic third-party campaign in 1912. No one on the Call for American Renewal bench commands anything near Roosevelt’s profile and platform.

That hasn’t stopped disaffected Republicans from setting their sights on fence-sitting “Biden Republicans” mostly suburban moderates who broke with Trump but remain aligned with GOP ideas like small government that have gone extinct in the post-Trump GOP. Those voters were largely responsible for Trump’s upset victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016, while Biden returned formerly right-leaning suburbs to the Democratic column to help power his 2020 win.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

Why LGBTQ Republicans Hate The Party’s Platform But Like Donald Trump

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.  

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

He Says He Wants To Make America Great Again

Aided by global finance and a compliant press, Americas middle and working classes have been sold down the river. Nearly all of the manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, and what jobs remain here have seen their wages pushed down due to unrestrained immigration. America, once the shining light of the world, became a country ashamed of itself and that felt obligated to apologize to the rest of the world for being more successful than other countries. Something is deeply wrong when someone feels obligated to apologize for winningafter all, you never see that in sports. Trump wants to return us to a better time when people bragged about being American instead of apologizing for it

What Americans Really Think

Social scientists and psychologists believe that people subscribe to conspiracy theories for the simple reason that these theories often tend to validate their views of the world. Republicans believe all kinds of things about President Obama, and many liberals believe similar theories about President George W. Bush.

“For both liberals and conservatives, for everybody, there’s just this tendency to want to believe things that fit our worldview as we believe it,” said Joanne Miller, a political scientist the University of Minnesota and one of the authors of the new study. “Both liberals and conservatives are subject to that. It’s a human tendency to want to believe what we believe.”

In particular, conspiracy theories offer a simple explanation, with an identifiable villain, for the complicated reality of modern politics. That simplicity is appealing.

Miller and her collaborators — Christina Farhart and Colorado State University’s Kyle Saunders — used data from surveys of Americans who were asked whether they thought statements about politicians and public figures were true.

A few conspiracy theories were on the list. Four were designed to suss out conservative respondents:

that Obama was born outside the United States;

that his health-care reform established “death panels;”

that global warming was a hoax

and that Saddam Hussein was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

There were four more theories for the other side:

Why Do Republicans Continue To Support Trump Despite Years Of Scandal

It was late September last year when a whistleblower complaint revealed that President Trump had tried to force the Ukrainian government to investigate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Within moments the scandal captured headlines. What followed was months of back and forth as Republicans supported the president while the Democrats used their political capital to get him impeached.

But this was not the first time   or the last time  the president was caught in the middle of a scandal. Since the impeachment trial that followed the Ukraine incident, episodes from The New York Times uncovering unsavory details from President Trumps tax returns, to his questionable dismissal of multiple Inspectors General, to his refusal to clearly condemn white supremacists have all sparked widespread media attention and partisan fighting in 2020. 

Although with his polls dropping, some Republicans may finally be distancing themselves from the President, the question has been regularly asked the past four years: why do the Republicans continue to support the President despite these troubling charges being leveled at him? And, what is it that the Democrats stand to gain from repeated allegations?

 In addition to demonstrating how polarization accelerates scandals, the paper also found that: 

Republicans Think Democrats Always Cheat

The Republican strategy has several sources of motivation, but the most important is a widely shared belief that Democrats in large cities i.e., racial minorities engage in systematic vote fraud, election after election. We win because of our ideas, we lose elections because they cheat us, insisted Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News last night. The Bush administration pursued phantasmal vote fraud allegations, firing prosecutors for failing to uncover evidence of the schemes Republicans insisted were happening under their noses. In 2008, even a Republican as civic-minded as John McCain accused ACORN, a voter-registration group, of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

The persistent failure to produce evidence of mass-scale vote fraud has not discouraged Republicans from believing in its existence. The failure to expose it merely proves how well-hidden the conspiracy is. Republicans may despair of their chances of proving Trumps vote-fraud charges in open court, but many of them believe his wild lies reflect a deeper truth.

[icemaninvestments]

Another Season put to bed with the IceMan still ahead

Ok here we go a sweep up of end of season positions as not too long before we go again. Good news is there have been enough winners to produce another year of growth for the portfolio.   

I am leaving politics aside for now as recent polls and results are too depressing. Seems at the moment that if Boris Johnson was found in bed with a 14-year-old boy, smoking a crack pipe and shitting on a Union Jack his lead in the polls would actually increase.  

Premiership Arsenal top 6 at 4/7 and top 4 at 11/4  

A rare venture into the Premier League and a massive disappointment, the top 6 was the proverbial 'cert' and I then doubled down with a tickle on the top 4. Arsenal did improve after Christmas but too little too late.  Big Loser.

Championship Norwich Promotion 23/10 

The canaries have had a fantastic season and absolutely romped this Division. They had a 10-point margin over the third placed side. This one delivered much more easily than anticipated. Winner  

League One Portsmouth Promotion 3/1 

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I should have taken the advice but no I rolled the dice again on Portsmouth and just like last year they came up short. even worse as last year they made the play offs, this year they somehow contrived to drop out of a play-off slot on the last day of the season. Disappointed as was expecting a minimum of a play off and an outside shot at automatic promotion. Loser

League Two Bolton Promotion 5/4 

HaHaHa the great escape. I went big on Bolton, and this looked down the drain until a brilliant end of season run saw the Trotters capture an automatic promotion place. Really relieved at this coming home as after the Arsenal debacle I could not afford two 'shorties ' being turned over. Winner

National League Notts County Promotion 3/1 

I know I sound like a stuck record, but this is genuinely the toughest league to get out of with only one automatic promotion place and a convoluted play off to decide the other promotion place.  So, you cannot be that put out if a Team comes up a bit shy, having said that I did have high hopes for County.  I expected them to be competitive in challenging for top slot which never happened. They did comfortably make the play offs and won their first tie but then exited before the finals.  Loser   

Scottish Premiership Hibs in the without Celtic/Rangers market 13/5

To be honest this Hibs pick up was small financial compensation for the huge emotional loss of Celtic failing epically to achieve an historic 10 in a row league titles.  Well done to the Irish connected Edinburgh side who held off a decent challenge from Aberdeen. Winner

Scottish League One Falkirk 2/1 

Falkirk were a side I backed last year and felt cheated as the League was curtailed (rightly) for Covid reasons just when Falkirk had hit a rich seam of form. So, I decided to go again and this year prior to this year’s Covid disruption they were 2 points clear at the top and sitting pretty. When games resumed their form collapsed and they slipped down the table eventually finishing 5th. Loser

Scottish League Two Queens Park 1/2 

Yeah, I know it is a long- odds on shot but a winner is a winner, and I did go in suitably large. As expected, this lot were a different class to the other teams in this division and totally pissed this by a margin of 16 points.  Winner

Champions League Seville 66/1 Each Way 

Despite Seville being 66/1 I was hoping they would go a bit deeper in this tournament especially given a winnable tie in the last 16 which they narrowly lost. Still, they performed about par so no real complaints. Loser.     

FA Cup Everton 20/1 Each way 

Everton made the quarters and had the luck of the draw been with them they might have gone further. As it is they ran into Man City and held out for 80 mins before conceding two late goals. Cannot grumble y as there was a trade out opportunity for a small profit that went untaken. Loser.   

Others 

2021 has been a total shocker on the Horses the old expression I could not tip a waiter comes to mind. Some nice ante post positions at Cheltenham, Aintree and Newmarket all went awry. Reading the market and beating the starting price on the day is well and good but means nothing unless the Horse wins or is at placed. All the horse racing positions could have been traded out on the day but tbh with the exception of one Grand National pick I really fancied their chances. Losers.

New   

Euro 2020 Ukraine 125/1 Each Way 

This is really me chucking a dart on this one and looking for a long shot in a tournament that can throw up some surprises. Ukraine qualified for this by winning a group in front of Portugal. They also recently beat France in a world cup qualifying game so that is the positive case. On the other hand, their first-round performances in this competition have been shite but then again, they have made the last 16 where they will be underdogs against not exactly formidable Sweden. They are also in the kinder side of the draw so knock out football anything could happen.  

That's it. Selections for the new season will follow in due course. 

I am so pleased to be double vaxxed and have good protection against Covid. shame it is less effective against cranks and conspiracy theorists.  

Solidarity to all those who fight for justice in particular Hope not Hate and the Kurds of Rojava. Feck Off to all the Hate Mongers (especially that total bollix Lozza Fox.

IceMan the NiceMan (unless you are a Fascist or a Bookie).   

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Global poverty rates to rise because of coronavirus (NYT) The World Bank says that for the first time since 1998, global poverty rates will rise. By the end of the year eight percent of the world’s population—a half a billion people—could be pushed into destitution, largely because of the wave of unemployment brought by virus lockdowns, the United Nations estimates. While everyone will suffer, the developing world will be hardest hit. The World Bank estimates that sub-Saharan Africa will see its first recession in 25 years, with nearly half of all jobs lost across the continent. South Asia will likely experience its worst economic performance in 40 years.​

About 7-in-10 U.S. adults say they need to take breaks from COVID-19 news (Pew Research Center) An earlier Pew study found that 87% of Americans are following coronavirus news “fairly or very closely,” but new research suggests that many are reaching their limits for news intake. A majority of Americans (71%) say they need to take breaks from coronavirus news, 43% say it makes them feel worse emotionally and about half say they find it difficult to sift through what is true and what is not, according to the new survey.

Is the United States still a party to the Iran nuclear deal? (Foreign Policy) When Washington wants to sanction Iran, it seems to think it is. The Trump administration is looking to its fellow members of the United Nations security council to support the United States in extending an arms embargo against Iran, due to be lifted on October 23. Under the terms of U.N. Security Council resolution 2231, the resolution that endorsed the Iran deal, any country can reimpose sanctions if parties are believed to be in breach of the deal. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has pushed back against the idea that just because the United States withdrew from the agreement it is excluded from enforcing parts of it. “Someone suggested this is fancy lawyering. It’s just reading,” he told a State Department press briefing. Pompeo also called on the European nations who were parties to the Iran deal to join the United States in extending the arms embargo.

Bolsonaro appointee blocked (Foreign Policy) Brazil’s Supreme Court has blocked the appointment of Alexandre Ramagem as Brazil’s new chief of federal police, saying that Ramagem’s close relationship with the Bolsonaro family put him in a compromising position. Bolsonaro had already been criticized for the appointment by Sergio Moro, who recently resigned as justice minister. Moro alleged that Bolsonaro had interfered with federal police investigations prior to stepping down.

Swedish authorities thinking outside the box (Foreign Policy) Authorities in the Swedish city of Lund have devised a novel way to ward off crowds for an upcoming day of national celebration: chicken manure. The Walpurgis festival is usually an all-day, alcohol-fueled party to celebrate the coming of spring, with mass gatherings and bonfires part of the fun. With no formal lockdowns in place across Sweden, Lund’s municipal workers will spread a ton of chicken manure in its central park to deter such revelry. “We get the opportunity to fertilize the lawns, and at the same time it will stink and so it may not be so nice to sit and drink beer.” Gustav Lundblad, chairman of the local council’s environment committee, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

Happy Birthday ‘Colonel’ Tom (Reuters) British World War Two veteran Captain Tom Moore, who has become a national hero after raising almost 30 million pounds for charities that help front-line National Health Service staff, celebrates his 100th birthday on Thursday with an honorary promotion and two military flypasts. Moore was appointed the first Honorary Colonel of the Army Foundation College, based near the town where he grew up, a position that came with the approval of Queen Elizabeth, the defence ministry said. He raised the money by completing laps of his garden with the help of a walking frame, having initially set out to raise just 1,000 pounds. That figure means he now holds the Guinness World Record title for the most money raised by an individual through a walk.

Pandemic Shakes France’s Faith in a Cornerstone: Strong Central Government (NYT) While France’s vaunted health care system has staved off disaster, France has suffered the world’s fourth-biggest death toll—now at 23,660 official deaths, behind the United States, Italy and Spain—a consequence, critics say, of the central government’s failure to anticipate the onslaught of the contagion. That failure and a critical shortage of masks and testing kits—also resulting from gaps in state policies—led to the virus’s rapid early spread, prompting France to impose one of the word’s strictest nationwide lockdowns, now in its seventh week. Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced a tentative plan on Monday to gradually reopen the country starting on May 11. But it was not clear that those steps would halt what polls show is declining confidence in the government’s handling of the pandemic. “Trust in the state has been eroding for some time, since the state is no longer able to respond to the need for security,” said Phillipe Laurent, the mayor of Sceaux and the secretary general of the Association of Mayors of France.

In lockdown, Swiss turn to snooping and snitching (Reuters) A mother checking on her ex-husband’s sexual habits to protect their asthmatic child; a retiree frustrated with a neighbour who talks loudly on late-night conference calls; a woman angry with a family downstairs for hosting large play dates. These are all client requests made to a Swiss private detective since the country imposed coronavirus confinement measures six weeks ago. Christian Sideris, founder of Seeclop, a six-man detective agency in Geneva, has refused all but one of them, urging his callers to seek other solutions in extraordinary times, but the requests reveal the mounting frustration of living together. “We have a lot of these types of cases because people are confined and on top of each other all day,” he said. Normally, Sideris gets between two and four requests a year for such cases. Since lockdown began, he has had two a week. The Swiss are known for complaining about their neighbours, often using rules designed to keep the noise down. These are rigorously enforced in Geneva, where 16th Century protestant reformer John Calvin banned instrumental music when he was in charge.

Greece Has ‘Defied the Odds’ in the Pandemic (NYT) For years, Greece has been seen as one of the European Union’s most troubled members, weighed down by a financial crisis, corruption and political instability. But in the coronavirus pandemic, the country has emerged as a welcome surprise: its outbreak appears to be far more limited than what was expected. As the virus spread across Europe, many Greeks feared the worst: They would be the next Italy or Spain. After all, the country’s health care system had been weakened by a decade-long financial crisis. And Greece has one of the oldest populations in the European Union, second only to Italy, leaving it more vulnerable to the disease. But the number of reported deaths and people in intensive care because of the virus in Greece has remained a tiny fraction of what they are in many other European nations.

Taiwan Emerging From Pandemic With a Stronger Hand Against China (Bloomberg) Few governments around the world are likely to emerge from the pandemic with a stronger standing than before. Taiwan is one of them—and that’s not good for China. Taiwan was forced to contain the outbreak without official help from the World Health Organization and other international bodies, thanks to China’s longstanding push to isolate the democratically ruled island that it claims as its territory. For weeks, leaders in Taipei struggled to evacuate residents from the virus epicenter in Wuhan, as Beijing rejected basic conditions such as having Taiwanese medical personnel aboard the aircraft. Around the same time, the People’s Republic of China flew bombers and fighter jets around the island, prompting President Tsai Ing-Wen to scramble warplanes. Despite those hurdles, Taiwan has led the world in its fight against the virus, with only about 400 infections and six deaths for a population of 23 million. By comparison, New York state—with slightly fewer people—had almost 300,000 cases and more than 22,000 deaths. Taiwan’s success against Covid-19 has shown that democracies could fight the virus without resorting to authoritarian measures, serving as a key rebuttal against Chinese propaganda showcasing the strength of its system against the West.

Packed With Migrant Workers, Dormitories Fuel Coronavirus in Singapore (NYT) Singapore has seen a surge of coronavirus cases among migrant workers, after months of successfully controlling the outbreak. As of Tuesday, coronavirus cases linked to migrant worker dormitories accounted for 88 percent of Singapore’s 14,446 cases, including more than 1,400 new cases in a single day. Many migrant workers live in packed dormitories on the outskirts of the city. These dormitories can house up to 20 people per room, making it almost impossible to follow social distancing guidelines. Migrant workers around the world have been among the most vulnerable groups affected by the pandemic.

Japanese Gangsters Say “No” To COVID-19 aid (Worldcrunch) Japan’s notorious yakuza—gangsters—have displayed a peculiar sense of civic duty in the face of past national disasters, having donated money to victims of the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and the 2011 Fukushima tsunami disaster. Now, Japanese news site News Post Seven reports that yakuza bosses are publicly declining the 100,000 yen ($940) coronavirus relief checks that the government recently agreed to issue to all registered residents. It’s apparently a question of reputation as much as magnanimity. “To put it simply, it’s not worth it taking a mere 100,000 yen if people then turn around and say that I’m profiting from the country during this state of emergency. If the story spread through word of mouth, my reputation would be finished!,” one unnamed leader of a major gang told Tomohiko Suzuki, a writer and noted organized crime expert. We must assume that the yakuza bosses also wouldn’t dare leave the house without wearing a mask.

Protests flare in Lebanon (Foreign Policy) Protesters are out in full force again in Lebanon, where thousands poured into the streets earlier this week to protest the sharp devaluation of the country’s currency, which has worsened a severe economic crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic. The protests turned violent as demonstrators blocked roads, razed banks, and attacked soldiers, injuring 54 military personnel. The turmoil has some experts worried that the country is on the brink of both economic and political collapse.

[armeniaitn]

Why Azerbaijanis and Armenians have been fighting for so long

New Post has been published on https://armenia.in-the.news/politics/why-azerbaijanis-and-armenians-have-been-fighting-for-so-long-37065-16-07-2020/

Why Azerbaijanis and Armenians have been fighting for so long

Azerbaijan and Armenia have shared hostilities over various ethnic, religious and political reasons – but the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is the biggest hurdle that exists between the two.

Recent deadly clashes along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border have shown that old and new problems between the two Caucasian nations, carry the dangerous potential of sliding the two states into a fully-fledged regional war.

The two countries have serious historical differences that span issues including religion, ethnicity and of course, politics. Azerbaijan has a Muslim majority population that also houses a heavy Turkic presence. while Armenia is a Christian majority country predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians. 

In the late years of the Ottoman Empire, an ethnic conflict emerged between the two nations, particularly in Caucasia and parts of eastern Anatolia, largely based on the territories of the respected regions. 

During World War I, the Armenians, backed by Russia and some prominent Western countries, tried to get rid of the Muslim population from Caucasia and Eastern Anatolia in the hope of creating an independent state. This led to an armed confrontation between the Ottomans and Armenians. 

Under the Soviet Union, a federative communist state, the conflict between the nations appeared to be paused when the Armenian and Azerbaijani republics existed side by side. 

But the Soviet designation of territories between Azerbaijanis and Armenians created other problems, and sowed the seed for future conflicts. 

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a major international dispute – it sits among the likes of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, the one concerning former Yugoslavia, and Cyprus, but has not commanded the same level of international attention.

(Zeyd Abdullah Alshagouri / TRTWorld)

The origin of the conflict

After Azerbaijan and Armenia were subsumed into the Soviet Union, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region was established within Azerbaijan by the Soviet Union in 1924. 

During the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the question of the future of the region became a source of enmity once again and clashes began between ethnic Azerbaijanis and Armenians in November 1988. Clashes continued on and off until both countries gained independence in 1991.

Karabakh held a referendum in December 1991 over the creation of an independent state, which would mean unilaterally declaring itself separate from the Republic of Azerbaijan. The majority of those who went to the referendum polls voted in favour of independence, however, most of the Azerbaijanis living in Karabakh boycotted it by suggesting the referendum was illegitimate.

Most countries do not recognise the legitimacy of Karabakh’s declaration of independence. This is partly because only fifteen republics of the former Soviet Union could declare sovereignty from the union according to its constitution, and Karabakh was not one due to its status as an autonomous region. Further to this, unilateral declarations of independence are often rejected because they violate international law.

Following the referendum, the conflict escalated into a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. This resulted in at least 30,000 casualties and displaced an estimated 1 million people from both sides by the end of the war in 1993.

Azerbaijan and Armenia reached an unofficial ceasefire in May 1994 through Russian mediation, while Moscow reportedly supported Armenian forces militarily and politically during the conflict. 

Since then, occasional clashes, like the most recent ones, continue across the countries’ border and in the occupied-Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Karabakh ‘s Armenian militias stand near a howitzer in Hadrut province in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan on April 5, 2016. (Albert Khachatryan / AP Archive)

Russian involvement

Matthew Bryza, a political analyst, who worked as an American mediator between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the 2000s under the auspices of the White House, finds Russian involvement and meditation in the conflict problematic. 

He thinks the Russians, through politicians like Konstantin Zatulin – the first deputy chairman of the committee of the State Duma for the The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – are trying to provoke conflict.  

“Zatulin is a firebrand and a provocateur. In my professional experience, he is always trying to steer the conflicts to create some discord so that Russia can always manipulate the two sides to keep its influence (intact over Armenia and Azerbaijan),” Bryza told TRT World. 

“He came with a statement a couple of days ago, that was extremely provocative. He said ‘Well, it’s not clear to whom Nagorno-Karabakh belongs. The Armenian prime minister tells me it’s Armenian. Azerbaijanis say it’s Azerbaijani. Who knows?’” 

“In fact, Russia like the US and even Armenia until recently agreed that occupied-Nagorno Karabakh is legally part of Azerbaijan. So that is a very provocative step taken by Zatulin, who is supposed to represent a country considered an impartial mediator,” he added. 

Zatulin, born in Batum of Caucasia like Joseph Stalin, the communist dictator who drew the borders of many Soviet republics and autonomous regions including Azerbaijan and Armenia, has long been known for his pro-Armenian stance. 

Konstantin Zatulin, the Chairman of the CIS Commonwealth Committee, listens to the journalist’s question during his press-conference in Moscow on Crimean crisis March 20, 1995. (Reuters Archive)

“As CSTO (The Collective Security Treaty Organization) member states we have obligations to each other. Russia views Armenia as an ally and in the event of an attack the mechanisms envisaged by the CSTO [Charter] will apply to Armenia,” said Zatulin in November 2019, after tensions escalated between Baku and Yerevan. 

The Collective Security Treaty Organization was established in 1992 by some members of the CIS, led by Moscow, to create a kind of Russian NATO across Eurasia. 

“I would like to note that our 102nd Military Base in the territory of Armenia is not deployed here in vain to solely serve as a ‘beauty accessory’,” threatened the Russian firebrand.

The same Zatulin made similar threatening remarks immediately after the most recent clashes.

Veiled threats toward Turkey

“If anybody now uses force in response to an initial Armenian attack on Azerbaijan, Russia will use force against it to protect its ally, which is Armenia,” Zatulin said, according to Bryza. 

Zatulin also appears to threaten Turkey by saying this, a country that has proved Azerbaijan’s strongest ally since its independence. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev speak during a press conference, in Baku, Azerbaijan on Feb. 25, 2020. (Credit: Presidential Press Service / AP Archive)

Ankara has recently deployed technologically advanced armed drones, which have been battle-tested in the Libyan civil war on the side of the UN-recognised Government of General Accord (GNA) and in Syria against the Russian-backed Assad regime forces, across Turkish-Armenian border to show its support for Azerbaijan. 

“Turkey will continue, with all its capacity, to stand by Azerbaijan in its struggle to protect its territorial integrity,” said a Turkish foreign ministry statement. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also proffered his support on Azerbaijan, saying, “Turkey will show no wavering to oppose any attack toward Azerbaijan.” 

Armenia-Azerbaijan clashes have now created another front between Ankara and Moscow. 

Turkey and Russia have recently been at odds in several conflicts across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, from Libya to Syria, and now Azerbaijan, too.

“The major players are Russia and Turkey,” says Bryza, referring to the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict. 

Source: TRT World

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