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#now I think it’s closer to 50% regardless of who wins presidency next year
Iran & Russia are allies
Russia & China are allies
Japan & America are allies
America gives explicit permission for Russia to invade Ukraine
America lifts sanctions on Russia
America gives Afghanistan to the Taliban
Russia invades Ukraine
America funds Iran
Iran sends those funds to Hamas
Hamas invades Israel
Ukraine, being at war with Russia, allies itself with Israel
China, encouraged by Russia and the Taliban, eyes Taiwan
China expands military operations closer to Japan
Japan strengthens diplomatic ties with Taiwan
India & Israel are allies
I’m not saying WWIII is inevitable but this is how you start one
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ihknkm · 3 years
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As is typical with scoring, high score wins
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Outside the museum, Rosicrucian Park continues to work its magic through exotic stage sets and symbolically coded environments kind of mythic theming that extends even to the flora, which includes papyrus, lilies of the Nile, and scores of roses. Daenerys Targaryen was no stranger to the Dothraki sea, the great ocean of grass that stretched from the forest of Qohor to the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. It was amazing how little things had changed. Instead Tyrion said, “Yezzan’s special slaves did not escape the pale mare. It's an honor to be enshrined regardless of how long it took or how many votes were cast, and to focus on the three or four outliers is to ignore the forest for a clod of dirt stuck to one particular tree..
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patriotsnet · 3 years
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Why Are The Republicans So Evil
New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-are-the-republicans-so-evil/
Why Are The Republicans So Evil
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In 2008 Republicans Said That If We Elect A Democratic President We Would Be Hit By Al Qaeda Again Perhaps Worse Than The Attack On 9/11
A VOTERS’ GUIDE TO REPUBLICANS
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney stated that electing a Democrat as president would all but guarantee that there would be another major attack on America by Al Qaeda. Cheney and other Republicans were, thankfully, completely wrong. During Obama’s presidency, we had zero deaths on U.S. soil from Al Qaeda attacks and we succeeded in killing Bin Laden along with dozens of other high ranking Al Qaeda leaders.
Republicans Will Likely Take Control Of The Senate By 2024
The usual midterm House losses by the White House party dont always extend to the Senate because only a third of that chamber is up for election every two years and the landscape sometimes strongly favors the presidential party . But there a still generally an out-party wave that can matter, which is why Republicans may have a better than average chance of winning in at least some of the many battleground states that will hold Senate elections next year . If they win four of the six youll probably be looking at a Republican Senate.
But its the 2024 Senate landscape that looks really promising for the GOP. Democrats will be defending 23 seats and Republicans just 10. Three Democratic seats, and all the Republican seats, are in states Trump carried twice. Four other Democratic seats are in states Trump won once. It should be a banner year for Senate Republicans.
The Corruption Of The Republican Party
The GOP is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start.
About the author: George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal,Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century,The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, and The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq.
Why has the Republican Party become so thoroughly corrupt? The reason is historicalit goes back many decadesand, in a way, philosophical. The party is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start.
I dont mean the kind of corruption that regularly sends lowlifes like Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic former governor of Illinois, to prison. Those abuses are nonpartisan and always with us. So is vote theft of the kind weve just seen in North Carolinaafter all, the alleged fraudster employed by the Republican candidate for Congress hired himself out to Democrats in 2010.
The fact that no plausible election outcome can check the abuse of power is what makes political corruption so dangerous. It strikes at the heart of democracy. It destroys the compact between the people and the government. In rendering voters voiceless, it pushes everyone closer to the use of undemocratic means.
Read Also: How Many Republicans Voted To Impeach Trump In The House
Opinion: If The Gop Is Now Home To Evil Lunacy Its Time To Leave
The Republican Party refuses to investigate the most violent act of insurrection since the Civil War because it might make the party look bad.
Think about that. It would look bad because it would be obvious that their cult hero incited a MAGA mob and because House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy , who pleaded with the president to call off the rioters at the Capitolon Jan. 6, would be compelled to testify. He might then have to explain why he still takes direction from someone who betrayed his oath.
A commission would look bad for the GOP because it would short-circuit the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, confirming that this effort at subterfuge was intended to assuage the ego of a dangerous man-child. The optics, as they say, would be bad because the GOPs continued refusal to renounce its disgraced former leader would affirm its willingness to open the country up to another violent insurrection. It would also look really bad if some members of Congress were shown to havecommunicated with the Jan. 6attackers. We get hung up on Republicans refusal to endorse the commission, but we should remain focused on their original sin: subversion of democracy.
With or without the commission, the Republican Party is a danger to the republic. And that gets back to the central question as to why any respectable patriot remains in the party. The GOP of Ronald Reagan, of John McCain, of Mitch Daniels does not exist. But dont take my word for it.
Read more:
Think Republicans Are Disconnected From Reality It’s Even Worse Among Liberals
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A new survey found Democrats live with less political diversity despite being more tolerant of it with startling results
In a surprising new national survey, members of each major American political party were asked what they imagined to be the beliefs held by members of the other. The survey asked Democrats: How many Republicans believe that racism is still a problem in America today? Democrats guessed 50%. Its actually 79%. The survey asked Republicans how many Democrats believe most police are bad people. Republicans estimated half; its really 15%.
The survey, published by the thinktank More in Common as part of its Hidden Tribes of America project, was based on a sample of more than 2,000 people. One of the studys findings: the wilder a persons guess as to what the other party is thinking, the more likely they are to also personally disparage members of the opposite party as mean, selfish or bad. Not only do the two parties diverge on a great many issues, they also disagree on what they disagree on.
This effect, the report says, is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree. And the more politically engaged a person is, the greater the distortion.
Should the US participate in the Paris climate accord and reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of what other countries do? A majority of voters in both parties said yes.
You May Like: How Should Republicans Vote In California
Prior To Going To War In Iraq Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Optimistically Predicted The Iraq War Might Last Six Days Six Weeks I Doubt Six Months
What’s more, Vice-President Dick Cheney said we would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people after we overthrow Saddam.
They were both horribly wrong. Instead of six weeks or six months, the Iraq war lasted eight long and bloody years costing thousands of American lives. It led to an Iraqi civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites that took hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Many Iraqi militia groups were formed to fight against the U.S. forces that occupied Iraq. Whats more, Al Qaeda, which did not exist in Iraq before the war, used the turmoil in Iraq to establish a new foothold in that country.
The Iraq war was arguably the most tragic foreign policy blunder in US history.
Why Is Billionaire George Soros A Bogeyman For The Hard Right
US mail bomb threats
He’s a Jewish multi-billionaire philanthropist who has given away $32bn. Why does the hard right from America to Australia and from Hungary to Honduras believe George Soros is at the heart of a global conspiracy, asks the BBC’s Mike Rudin.
One quiet Monday afternoon last October in leafy upstate New York, a large manila envelope was placed in the mailbox of an exclusive country mansion belonging to multi-billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
The package looked suspicious. The return address was misspelt as “FLORIDS” and the mail had already been delivered earlier that day. The police were called and soon the FBI was on the scene.
Inside the bubble-wrapped envelope was a photograph of Soros, marked with a red “X”. Alongside it, a six-inch plastic pipe, a small clock, a battery, wiring and a black powder.
More than a dozen similar packages were sent to the homes of former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats.
None of the devices exploded. The FBI traced the bombs to a white van covered in pro-Trump and anti-Democrat stickers, parked in a supermarket car park in Florida.
Immediately the right-wing media claimed it was a “false-flag” operation intended to derail President Donald Trump and the Republican campaign, just two weeks before the crucial US mid-term elections.
Soon the internet was awash with allegations that the bomb plot was a hoax organised by Soros himself.
Also Check: Why Are Republicans Trying To Repeal Obamacare
The Banality Of Evil And The Evanescence Of Democratic Governance
On May 28, Republican U.S. Senators chose to prevent the creation of an independent commission to investigate the insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. They did so after Democratic Party leaders had acceded to their many demands concerning the composition and remit of the body and despite the fact that many who voted to oppose the commission, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, had previously embraced the need for just such a group and investigation. More, they quite openly justified their vote by contending that the findings of such a body might prove difficult for the GOP politically as it seeks to win control of the Congress in 2022.
;;;;;;;;In a commentary entitled the Banality of Democratic Collapse, published before the Republican Party took this historically significant anti-democratic step, the likelihood of which was then all but certain in any case, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman contended:; ; ; ; ;;
;;;;;;;;The GOP Senate vote to prevent creation of the commission is surely an example;of the phenomenon to which Krugman pointed. He went on to argue that this action and the weakness and cowardice of far too many craven careerist Republican officeholders is why American democracy is hanging by a thread. Cowardice, not craziness, is the reason government by the people may soon perish from the earth.
;;;;;;;;Elon observed that Arendt insisted,
Notes
Krugman. The Banality of Democratic Collapse.
Republicans Are Suddenly Afraid Of Democracy
Comedian: Being Taught That Republicans Are Evil (Pt. 2) | Bridget Phetasy | COMEDY | Rubin Report
In a series of tweets, Senator Mike Lee laid the groundwork to contest the results or block an elected majority from governing.
About the author: George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal,Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century,The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, and The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq.
Were not a democracy, Republican Senator Mike Lee tweeted in the middle of Wednesday nights vice-presidential debate. He was reacting to something hed heard onstage there, in his home state of Utah. Another tweet: The word democracy appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. Its a constitutional republic. To me it matters. It should matter to anyone who worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few. Hours after the debate Lee was still worrying the thought: Democracy isnt the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.
My guess is that Lee wasnt just being pedantic. Worried about an election in which the people can express their will, Lee was laying the groundwork to contest the results or block an elected majority from governing.
Also Check: Did Republicans Lose Any Senate Seats
Republicans Claim That Raising The Minimum Wage Would Kill Jobs And Hurt The Economy
There is far more evidence to the contrary. Cities and states that have higher minimum wages tend to have better rates of job creation and economic growth.
Detailed analyses show that job losses due to increases in the minimum wage are almost negligible compared to the economic benefits of higher wages. Previous increases in the minimum wage have never resulted in the dire consequences that Republicans have predicted.
Republicans have accused President Obama of “cutting defense spending to the bone”. This chart of 2014 discretionary spending firmly disproves that argument.
In 2001 When George W Bush Cut Taxes For The Wealthy Republicans Predicted Record Job Growth Increased Budget Surplus And Nationwide Prosperity
Once again, the exact opposite occurred. After the Bush tax cuts were enacted:
The budget surplus immediately disappeared.
The budget deficit eventually grew to $1.4 trillion by the time Bush left office.
Less than 3 million net jobs were added during Bushs eight years.
The poverty rate began climbing again.
We experienced two recessions along with the greatest collapse of our financial system since the Great Depression.
In 1993, President Clinton signed the Brady Law mandating nationwide background checks and a waiting period to buy a gun.
Recommended Reading: What Did The Democratic Republicans Stand For
In The 1960s Republicans Claimed That The Passage Of Medicare Would Be The End Of Capitalism
California Governor Ronald Reagan even proclaimed Medicare would lead to the death of freedom in America. Of course, they were laughably wrong. Since the passage of Medicare, capitalism has thrived and millions of elderly Americans have had longer, healthier lives and greater personal freedom. Medicare remains the most popular form of health insurance in the United States.
When Bill Clinton raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.5%, Republicans predicted a recession, increased unemployment, and a growing budget deficit. They were wrong.
The 2024 Presidential Election Will Be Close Even If Trump Is The Gop Nominee
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One very important thing we should have all taken away from both the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests is that the two major parties are in virtual equipose . The ideological sorting-out of the two parties since the 1960s has in turn led to extreme partisan polarization, a decline in ticket-splitting and and in number of genuine swing voters. Among other things, this has led to an atmosphere where Republicans have paid little or no price for the extremism theyve disproportionately exhibited, or for the bad conduct of their leaders, most notably the 45th president.
Indeed, the polarized climate encourages outlandish and immoral base mobilization efforts of the sort Trump deployed so regularly. Some Republicans partisans shook their heads sadly and voted the straight GOP ticket anyway, And to the extent there were swing voters they tended strongly to believe that both parties were equally guilty of excessive partisanship, and/or that all politicians are worthless scum, so why not vote for the worthless scum under whom the economy hummed?
The bottom line is that anyone who assumes Republicans are in irreversible decline in presidential elections really hasnt been paying attention.
You May Like: How Many House Seats Were Won By Republicans
But What About Conservatives
I could say some very similar/but different things about conservatives. But a lot of that brings us back to the start and perceptions.
Liberals think that the only way to solve things is with government/taxes/regulations to try to fight injustice… thus not doing so, must be because they just don’t care. Which is where the left’s view of the right as being greedy and morally inferior comes from.
But not choosing the same solutions, isn’t the same as not caring. Some just know they can help more by NOT getting involved and letting them learn/work it out on their own. Or that short term economic benefits with long term economic costs aren’t always a good trade .
That doesn’t mean Republicans are never wrong, or don’t go too far. And of course Government CAN help with some problems, in the short term. Just long term, many of those solutions will make things worse . But either extreme: Always Government or Never Government – can be equally wrong. But the point is perceptions. Once you assume the other side is evil , they’re going to get back to assuming your stupid.
The majority of impassioned and frank discussions with the left, from my side , often gets them to claim I hate the poor, or am just greedy, self deluded and so on. And when I share what I’ve done in my past, to try to convince them otherwise, they get mad . Good people can disagree on how to solve things. Or even on priorities of what should be solved first.
In 2009 Republicans Predicted That The Economic Stimulus Package Would Only Make The Recession Worse And Cause More Unemployment
The results show they couldn’t have been more wrong. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 ended the recession after only a few months. Although 750,000 people were losing their jobs each month when Obama took office, after the Recovery Act was passed the rate of job loss immediately decreased each month and within a year the economy showed positive job growth.
Considering the severity of the 2008 economic collapse and the total opposition by Republicans to do anything at all to stimulate the economy, it is remarkable that the US economy recovered as quickly as it did.
Looking at the rate of job loss and job creation, its easy to see that the stimulus of 2009 was highly successful in stopping the job losses and turning the economy around.
Also Check: How Many People Are Registered Republicans
Republicans Said Waterboarding And Other Forms Of Enhanced Interrogation Are Not Torture And Are Necessary In Fighting Islamic Extremism
In reality, waterboarding and other forms of enhanced interrogation that inflict pain, suffering, or fear of death are outlawed by US law, the US Constitution, and international treaties. Japanese soldiers after World War II were prosecuted by the United States for war crimes because of their use of waterboarding on American POWs.
Professional interrogators have known for decades that torture is the most ineffective and unreliable method of getting accurate information. People being tortured say anything to get the torture to end but will not likely tell the truth.
An FBI interrogator named Ali Soufan was able to get al Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah to reveal crucial information without the use of torture. When CIA interrogators started using waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation methods, Zubaydah stopped cooperating and gave his interrogators false information.
Far from being necessary in the fight against terrorism, torture is completely unreliable and counter-productive in obtaining useful information.
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orbemnews · 4 years
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How America’s Food System Could Change Under Biden The transition memos from the left flank of American agriculture began piling up almost as soon as Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential win was clear. There were pleas small and large. Fix the rules for raising organic livestock, and reverse the department’s track record with Black farmers. Restore school food standards and strengthen G.M.O. labels. Prioritize the climate crisis. There was even a suggestion to change the name of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the Department of Food and Well-Being. The chef Michel Nischan is among those who have spoken with the Biden transition team about nutrition and farming policy. His food-advocacy résumé goes back to the first Bush administration. It was his idea to double the value of food stamps for fruits and vegetables, a notion that has grown into a national program. He has a message for his fellow food warriors, many of whom say their issues were shoved back several squares on the game board under former President Donald J. Trump: The Department of Agriculture is an understaffed agency facing staggering hunger and safety challenges brought on by the pandemic. Repair needs to happen before reform. “It’s like, we know you want us to jump from serving meat to going vegan,” Mr. Nischan said. “But man, we got to get the stove fixed first.” Tom Vilsack, who was agriculture secretary in the Obama administration and is likely to be confirmed by the Senate for another turn, said in an interview on Friday that he has already sketched out his agenda. “There are probably five very, very large challenges ahead that have to be dealt with very quickly,” he said. Topping the list is protecting Agriculture Department employees and people who process the nation’s food from the virus, and figuring out which land-grant universities, government laboratories and other department offices might be able to store and administer vaccines. Hunger relief is a pressing issue, as are two of his boss’s other priorities: promoting social justice and fighting climate change. Next comes propping up regional food systems and helping farmers. “Once we get a bit on the other side of the virus itself, then we have the important business of revitalizing the rural economy that has been hit by this,” Mr. Vilsack said. Mr. Vilsack is returning to a vastly different department from the one he ran in the Obama era, when it landed on the Forbes list of America’s best employers. Morale is low and many positions are unfilled, especially in agencies that provide the data and scientific research on which policy decisions are made. “Mentally and emotionally, the career staff is just devastated,” said Sam Kass, the White House chef who became President Barack Obama’s senior nutrition adviser and has spoken with Mr. Vilsack about his agenda. “They need to start steadying the ship.” Disciples of the good-food movement, which promotes healthful, local food grown in environmentally friendly ways by people who receive fair pay, say that by necessity, many organizations grew stronger during a Trump administration dedicated to agribusiness and factory farming. They’ve had to find ways to be innovative without support from the huge federal food agency. The Agriculture Department, with a budget of $153 billion and nearly 100,000 employees, runs 29 agencies and offices whose jobs range from feeding the poorest Americans and regulating what public schoolchildren eat to managing forests and helping farmers sell commodities like soybeans abroad. Progressive food policy at the federal level had been on a slow but steady rise since the Clinton administration, when the California chef Alice Waters began urging the White House to improve school food and install a White House vegetable garden; when the first national organic standards were introduced; and when the department’s attention to civil-rights issues sharpened. Under Mr. Obama, childhood nutrition and the quality of school food became a priority. Michelle Obama created a permanent White House garden. Thousands of microloans went to small and beginning farmers, and climate-friendly policies gained traction. When Mr. Trump arrived at the White House, his supporters joked about turning the garden into a putting green. His agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, moved the department’s largest science-based research agencies, the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, from Washington to Kansas City, Mo. Whether by design or by default — many employees resigned rather than move — the staffs were gutted, limiting the agencies’ effectiveness. Mr. Trump became a champion in many rural communities, easing regulations, and paying farmers when his tough trade policies and the pandemic hurt sales. “In my over 40 years of covering the business of agriculture from Washington have I ever seen a president talk about agriculture and trade policy as much as our president,” Jim Wiesemeyer, a Farm Journal Washington correspondent, said in an interview with the magazine. But the mood was bleak on the other side. “Looking back on it, it was pretty brutal,” said Laura Batcha, the chief executive officer of the Organic Trade Association, which represents a $50 billion segment of the food industry. “The root of it was a hyper-anti-regulatory agenda with no respect for organics or other forms of sustainable agriculture.” Some, like Ms. Batcha, are putting their faith in Mr. Vilsack, who most recently was the top executive at a global trade group for the dairy industry. Others consider him a retread, without a fresh, progressive view of how to improve the food system. Not all agribusiness and commodity farmers are happy, either. Many were hoping the job would go to Heidi Heitkamp, a former senator from North Dakota with deep connections to rural issues. Fighters for social justice and environmental issues campaigned hard for Marcia L. Fudge, a congresswoman from Cleveland whom President Biden eventually nominated as secretary of housing and urban development. In Mr. Vilsack, the new president went with experience, seeking someone who could immediately get to work on pandemic-related safety and nutrition issues. The number of Americans who face hunger rose by some estimates to more than 50 million in 2020, from about 34 million in 2019. On Friday, President Biden signed an executive order that would increase both the amount federal food assistance for about 12 million people who use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, (also known as food stamps), and the grocery money given to families with school-age children. He has also included more money for food stamps and other federal feeding programs in his proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus package. “Of all the issues we face in this country, to me hunger is the most solvable,” said Billy Shore, the founder and executive chairman of Share Our Strength, which works to end childhood hunger in the United States. “We are so focused on shortages of vaccines or tests. There is no shortage of food in the country or food programs. I think it’s a moment of enormous opportunity.” Public schools have been scrambling to feed students even when the pandemic has kept them home, which has renewed a call for universal school meals. The idea is to eliminate the administrative complexities of the $18 billion program, and make healthy food available to all students regardless of their family’s income, in the way bus rides or textbooks are. (Under a Covid-related order from the Trump administration, all children have temporary access to free school meals through the end of the school year.) The department could help heal political divisions by making it easier for schools to use locally grown food and make meals healthier, said Curt Ellis, the chief executive officer of FoodCorps and among a group pushing for a White House summit on child nutrition during Biden’s first 100 days. “That kind of local economic development is really popular in rural red-state communities, as well as blue-state urban communities,” Mr. Ellis said, adding that the school-nutrition professionals he works with have been making progress despite the Trump administration policies. “The question now is how much can we accomplish with the wind at our backs,” he said. The pandemic has shown how fragile the food-supply chain is, Mr. Vilsack said, and has underscored the need to open more regional and local markets and increase the number of meat processors so the country isn’t so reliant on a handful of plants. Changes that many people thought were decades away, like universal school meals, stronger urban-rural supply chains and e-commerce for agriculture, have accelerated during both the pandemic and the Trump administration, said Krystal Oriadha, the senior director of policy and programs at the National Farm to School Network. Farmers, cooks, environmentalists and anti-hunger advocates — groups often pulling in different directions — were forced to strengthen relationships based on intersectionality and a new understanding of how interconnected and vulnerable the food system is. “This is a new moment, with a new generation of voters putting pressure on ideas around environmental and racial-justice issues like we haven’t had before,” she said. “For the first time, we can all see ourselves in this.” Even Ms. Waters, the chef who has long relied on relationships with high-level politicians to advance her quest to improve children’s education through gardening, is working closer to home now. She is lobbying the University of California to replace its food procurement system with one based on a network of local farms as part of its global food initiative, and to include food in the university’s ​aggressive carbon-neutrality plan. In a recent interview, Ms. Waters said that despite the change in administrations, she has given up on looking to Washington for solutions to what she sees as a broken food system. “If we have one-idea-fits-all at the national level, it just gets watered down,” she said. “I can’t think nationally anymore. I need to act locally. I need to go where the doors are open.” Source link Orbem News #Americas #Biden #Change #Food #system
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chorusfm · 7 years
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Keep on Dreaming Even If It Breaks Your Heart: The Renaissance of Will Hoge
Will Hoge almost got the dream. In 2015, the independent Nashville-based recording artist seemed poised to win the country music lottery. He and his band had been picked by a major radio conglomerate as a spotlight artist, to be introduced on a mass scale to radio listeners nationwide. Looking back now, Hoge says the slot was virtually a guarantee of a top 10 record in the country music sphere. “This is exactly what the program is for,” the radio group told him and his band: spotlighting new artists or independent acts and helping them find a home in the infamously commercialized world of country radio. For Hoge, being picked as a next big thing was the realization of a long-held dream. He’d released his first record—as part of the band Spoonful—in 1997, before going solo with 2001’s Carousel. What followed was a series of well-liked and respected records that melded country, southern rock, and heartland rock into something that sounded like a twangier Springsteen. For 2003’s Blackbird on a Lonely Wire, Hoge got scooped up by Atlantic Records, but the album failed to take off and it was back to the independent musician game after that. Still, Hoge kept trucking and was eventually rewarded for his persistence. In 2012, Eli Young Band recorded a version of “Even If It Breaks Your Heart,” a song from Hoge’s 2009 record The Wreckage. The song was the opening track and second single from Eli Young Band’s Life at Best album, and it ultimately reached number one on the Billboard country chart. Suddenly armed with a number one song to his name, Hoge landed his 2013 track “Strong” in a widely syndicated ad campaign for Chevrolet Silverado. The song charted modestly on country radio, but it was enough to convince Hoge that if he really tried to play the game, he might just be able to make some magic happen. “My thought was, ‘What if we really did present the most palatable version of myself and my sound?’ What would happen?” Hoge says. “Trying to think down the line and imagine myself being 90 years old and having grandkids running around, and I’m this old dude in the rocking chair, and they’re going ‘Remember when granddaddy was a musician?’ I didn’t want to have that moment and go ‘Man, if I had really taken a shot and tried to do something, God, what would have happened?’” So Hoge took his shot. He convened a murderer’s row of Nashville songwriters and went to work on what would become his ninth record, 2015’s Small Town Dreams. The writing credits on the LP included names that any Nashville insider would recognize, like Hillary Lindsay (Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush”), Jessi Alexander (Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb”), Tommy Lee James (Reba McEntire’s “And Still”), and a pre-breakthrough Chris Stapleton. The songs certainly sounded like hits, from the Mellencamp stomp of “Middle of America” to the hometown hymn “Growing up Around Here.” “Better Than You,” another one of the album’s highlights, was as catchy as any song that charted on country radio in 2015. The songs from Small Town Dreams were the ones that Hoge and his band played for the program directors and radio folks in New York when auditioning for the spotlight slot. “They loved it,” Hoge says, simply. The hooky, radio-friendly songs he’d been crafting for a year did exactly what they were supposed to: they hooked the people in country radio. And if they could do that, then surely they could hook country listeners as well. Hoge never got to find out. “By the time we got back home and off the plane, one of the big record label presidents had called [the radio company] and said ‘No, if you don’t give [the spotlight slot] to my artist, I’m pulling all my other artists from these things that you need them to do,’” Hoge recalls soberly. “It was a very realistic wake-up call as to what corporate radio and corporate record-making is all about. And that’s not a complaint. I don’t want to sound like I’m whining. I’m not whining. That’s just…that is this game. It’s always been this game. It’s been this game since the 50s.” Just like that, the chances of Small Town Dreams gathering radio traction went kaput. The record peaked at number 15 on the country albums chart, while the lead single, “Middle of America,” only made it to 53 on the country airplay chart. Two years after the fact, Hoge is philosophical about what happened. He’s not bitter or entitled. He doesn’t even harbor ill will toward the artist who stole his spotlight slot, proven by the simple fact that, when asked, he won’t disclose the person’s name. “There’s no malice there,” he explains. “That’s exactly what you want your record label to do. Shit, if I had a big major label, billion-dollar record company behind me, I’d want them making that phone call too. You can’t play the game and then get mad at it because the rules work exactly how they’re supposed to.” Still, it would be revisionist history to say that Hoge wasn’t shaken by what happened. He took a leap of faith and hit the ground, hard. Malice or not, the harsh turn of events stung him. He dismissed his band, left his publishing deal, and briefly considered giving up music entirely. “There was a part where I really thought that it was maybe time for me to bow out,” Hoge says. “And that was what was really confusing, because it’s not like I have this other skill set of like, ‘Well you know, I was a brilliant mathematician when I was in college, I’ll just go get an engineering job.’ I’m a college dropout. I failed out of college. I don’t have this laundry list of things to fall back on. And I’ve done this for 20 years, so I don’t even know what the job market looks like.” Hoge actually did spend a few days exploring the job market, to see what a life after music might look like. He researched truck driving jobs. He researched landscaping jobs. He looked at jobs where his lack of college degree wouldn’t be seen as a deal breaker. Trucking might even have been a decent fit, since Hoge has spent the better part of the past 20 years driving his band from town to town in a van. Such is life for an independent artist without a tour bus. Ultimately, though, Hoge just had to find a way to fall back in love with being a musician, a songwriter, and a bandleader. Not so surprisingly, it was hearing the right song at the right time that lit the fire in his heart once more. But the song that did it wasn’t a country classic or a rock ‘n’ roll hymn about the transformative power of music. On the contrary, it was much closer to home than that. “I was kind of in a funk in my bedroom one day. In this pitiful moment, I was thinking ‘I don’t know if I want to do this. I don’t know how I’m gonna do this,’” Hoge remembers. “And then I heard my sons. They were nine and six, I guess, at the time. They had started a band, and they were rehearsing in my garage. It’s just this three-piece thing: guitar, drums, and vocals. They were just making up songs. And they don’t really even know how to play or anything like that. “But as I watched them, you know, they were writing. They have two original songs. They had this one called ‘George, You Are Under Arrest,’ that is one of my favorite songs. It sounds like The Ramones. It’s just got this chorus that says ‘George, you are under arrest’ over and over and over. It was great, man, and it made me kind of feel like I was a kid again.” Hearing his sons teae through their songs with zero pretense or self-consciousness reminded Hoge of when he was 17 and learning to play his first guitar. It took him out of his funk and transported him back in time—back before the hit songs and big-name co-writes, and way before a radio conglomerate put the wind in his sails and then set those sails on fire. It reminded him of when he decided he wanted to play music in the first place. The song that sprung first from that genesis moment was fittingly titled “17,” and it ended up as the penultimate number on Anchors, Hoge’s brand new tenth LP. The song is sunny, bracing, nostalgic, and hopeful. “I’m up here with this guitar just tryin’ to learn to play/Every song that I think might make you look my way,” Hoge sings in the first verse. Because what’s purer than playing music to impress a girl? “17” gets back to that purity, and the result is the most unencumbered Hoge has sounded in years. Much of the rest of Anchors follows suit, winding back the clock to the days when Hoge’s music was more dusty roots rock than shiny radio country. By changing his writing process and reconfiguring the intentions behind it, Hoge found his way back to a mindset where good songs were just good songs—regardless of any perceived mainstream potential. The result is the least overtly mainstream Hoge has sounded since The Wreckage. It hearkens back to earlier LPs like Draw the Curtains and The Man That Killed Love, which had more grit and dirt in their DNA. Still, even though Hoge steered clear of the Music Row sound, he took the lessons he learned on Music Row and applied them to his songwriting process. He admired the songwriters in Nashville who would go into work every day with the barest traces of an idea in their heads and then work those ideas until they were finished songs. So instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, Hoge treated the writing process like a day job. “Over the next few weeks, I really just committed to waking up every day, and I’d send my kids to school, and my wife would go to work, and I would sit with the piano or the guitar all day and just work on songs. And that’s really where [this record] was born out of.” “I don’t like, even for myself as an artist, the idea that ‘I’m just gonna write when I’m inspired,’” he adds. “That’s kind of just a cop-out. That’s not the way work works. You wake up and you do work. And some days it’s really easy, and some days it sucks, and that’s just part of it.” Still, the inspiration that sparked “17” clearly arries through to the rest of Anchors, providing the backbone to a record that pairs the unbridled optimism of youth with the weathered resilience that comes from being older and wiser. The characters in “17,” “Young As We Will Ever Be,” and “This Ain’t an Original Sin” live like they are invincible. The characters in “The Reckoning,” “This Grand Charade,” and “Through Missing You” have seen enough to know that they’re not. The genius of Hoge’s writing, though, is that he doesn’t take a side. There’s value in knowing what it means to fail, but there’s also something to be said for taking chances because you’re too young to know what it feels like when they don’t work out. The title track splits the difference between the two perspectives, following a boy and a girl as they drive off into the sunset—“where no one really knows/If it’s saying, ‘Boy, keep driving’ or ‘Turn and go back home.’” As Hoge knows better than most, sometimes, you just gotta take a shot. Today, with a new record in the can, a tour routed and ready to go, and his mainstream country phase a dot in the rearview mirror, Hoge seems comfortable and satisfied living in the now, playing by no one’s rules but his own. “I’m gonna not worry about that call coming anymore,” he says, remarking again on his close shave with radio exposure and stardom. “I’m just gonna go and do the things that I know I need to do as an artist to satisfy my soul, and hopefully those things also feed my family and pay a band, but if they don’t, I will have Frank Sinatra-ed it ‘My Way,’ and I’ll deal with that as I go along.” --- Please consider supporting us so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/interviews/keep-on-dreaming-even-if-it-breaks-your-heart-the-renaissance-of-will-hoge/
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Be Encouraged: To the So-Called Red States from [email protected]
Blue State Digital Mailing Template       : Democrats everywhere are organizing rallies, calling their representatives, packing town halls, and winning critical special elections. With your support, I've been criss-crossing the country headlining fundraisers and campaign events to help push our candidates over the finish line. Can I count on you to help keep me on the road for Democrats? We won an Iowa House seat in January, with an astonishing 72-27 victory when Hillary only carried the seat 52-41. In Delaware, we won a State Senate seat by 16 points when in 2014, Democrats won by a mere 2 points. Now it's time to target the so-called "red states" like Nebraska and Georgia that our Party has ignored for far too long. Tomorrow, I'm headed to Omaha, Nebraska to campaign for Heath Mello in support of his effort to flip the Mayor's seat from Republican to Democrat. A 50-state strategy means electing Democrats everywhere. Donate $3 to elect Democrats from all 50 states.   Yours truly, Martin   Dems look south to test anti-Trump strategy By Eric Bradner, CNN Updated 8:38 AM ET, Fri March 31, 2017 Roswell, Georgia (CNN) Voters here sent Newt Gingrich to Congress for two decades. Tom Price, the conservative Republican tapped by President Donald Trump to dismantle Obamacare, represented the district for another dozen years. In other words, this isn't the type of place where Democrats often seek solace.   But the party, reeling from Hillary Clinton's loss in November and locked out of power in Washington, is looking to Atlanta's northern suburbs to test its ability to bounce back. While most of the country tries to move on from a bruising campaign, voters in Georgia's 6th congressional district return to the polls in April for a special election to replace Price, who Trump selected to become Health and Human Services secretary. Democrats are aiming to turn the race into an early referendum on the Trump presidency and hope success here could be replicated in gubernatorial races later this year in Virginia and New Jersey -- where suburban voters are also crucial -- and maybe even provide a playbook for regaining control of the House next year.   "It's a bellwether for what the Democratic Party is going to be about," Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez told me recently, almost giddy about the prospects for the race.   There's little reliable polling about the contest and, given recent political history, Democrats are careful not to display overconfidence. But the party is optimistic about its main candidate in the race, 30-year-old Jon Ossoff, a former congressional staffer who could benefit from demographic changes in the district and has a $4 million campaign war chest largely funded by small donors. But most importantly, Democrats sense a distrust of Trump that could help them here and in other wealthy, highly-educated and increasingly diverse congressional districts around the country that might otherwise support Republicans.   There's data to back up their suspicions. This district experienced one of the biggest collapses in support for a Republican presidential candidate last year (the biggest shift played out in Utah). While Mitt Romney bested Barack Obama by 23 points here in 2012, Trump beat Clinton by less than 2 points, according to data from the liberal Daily Kos and confirmed by representatives for both the Democratic and Republican congressional campaign committees.   This suburban region is the epicenter of an evolution that played out across the Sun Belt last year but was largely overshadowed by Trump's stunning victories in traditionally Democratic strongholds in the industrial Midwest. In Georgia and Arizona, where Clinton only made a last-minute effort to compete, she came closer to beating Trump than she did in the more traditional swing states of Ohio and Iowa. Reliably red Texas was also closer than Iowa.   So what does it all mean? New battlegrounds are emerging and it's hard to know how it will all shake out.   "Georgia's no closer than Ohio?" Gingrich said during a recent conversation. "With everything you and I knew about politics up until Election Night 2016, we'd have thought that was impossible."   Energized Democrats Democrats in Atlanta's conservative-leaning northern suburbs are feeling something they're not used to: energy.   As the national party gathered in a downtown ballroom on a Saturday morning last month to elect Perez as the DNC chief, more than 300 people turned out to a Democratic breakfast in Cobb County, just northwest of the city. The standing room only crowd was a noteworthy showing in a county that drew nationwide attention during the 1990s for passing a resolution condemning homosexuality.   "It's bigger than you know," Jaha Howard, a dentist who narrowly lost a surprisingly close state Senate race and is seen locally as a rising star, told me after the breakfast. "And it's a bigger tent of Democrats than we typically see."   Three hours later, hundreds more showed up in Roswell, where Ossoff was holding the first of two events to kick off his campaign's door-to-door canvassing efforts.   "It has very little to do with me and more to do with the timing and intensity of grassroots enthusiasm," Ossoff told me the previous night as he sipped tea alongside his longtime girlfriend, a student at the nearby Emory University medical school, at Meehan's Public House, a downtown Irish bar. "I think Atlanta can become -- and Georgia can become -- an economic powerhouse. I think that people here want access to more affordable health care choices. And I think people here are concerned that we're losing sight of those values."   Democrats' hopes here ride largely on the party's appeal to a large pool of suburban women, many of whom are relying on social media to organize. Hundreds have joined the Facebook page of a group called Liberal Moms of Roswell and Cobb or "LMRC" -- a coalition of progressives in the heart of the district.   Over coffee at the "Land of a Thousand Hills" in Roswell, three of the group's leaders told me the same story about discovering its existence. Their first thought: "I thought I was the only one." The group and others like it are giving liberals new opportunities to express themselves in communities where that previously didn't feel like an option. "The first time I put an Obama sign in our yard, our neighbor came over and jokingly threatened our lives," said Shari Sprigle, one of the group's members.   She said she was harassed while driving once, too. "Somebody honked at me to get me to roll down my window. My kid was in the back seat. I rolled down my window and she goes, 'Are you going to vote for Obama?' I said, 'Yeah, I am' -- you know, I thought she was, like, friendly. And then she told me I was going to hell. ...That's the environment here in Cobb County."   Now, she said, the group has "LMRC" car magnets -- and a game. When a member sees another member's vehicle in a parking lot, they flip those magnets upside down as a way to indicate the driver has been noticed. It's a way of sending a message: You're not alone.   Two co-founders -- Jen Cox and Lesley Bauer -- recently split off to form another women's group, named PaveItBlue, with an even narrower focus: Provide the grassroots support Ossoff will need to flip the 6th district for Democrats. Their first meeting was on a recent Sunday night.   Cox said members of the groups love to see -- and participate in -- "visibility efforts," which provide a psychological boost in an area where Democrats have long felt demoralized, and particularly for working mothers who don't have time to phone bank or canvass for candidates.   "It energizes them like they've never felt, and it creates that feeling, like, 'Oh my gosh, I am an activist.' And that's powerful," Cox said.   "Your data may not show that visibility efforts work, that having signs up here work. But we're telling you that it hits us at an emotional level -- that there's hope," she said. "You know, this is Newt Gingrich country. We've been left out for an entire generation. We don't feel left out anymore." Replacing Tom Price Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal set a special election for April 18 to replace Price. It's a "jungle" contest -- which means every candidate will be listed on the same ballot. If one of the 18 declared so far hits 50% plus one, he or she is the winner. If that doesn't happen, the top two finishers -- regardless of party -- advance to a June 20 runoff.   Already, 11 Republicans have entered the race -- including former Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel, former state senator Judson Hill, and Bruce LeVell, who helmed Trump's national diversity coalition and appears to be the first Trump aide to seek office since the billionaire businessman's election.   Two independents are in the running, as well.   Handel leads the way among the GOP, but Republicans are sharply divided over their field of candidates. Handel faces opposition from the conservative Club for Growth, which has launched TV ads attacking her spending as secretary of state and Fulton County commissioner and labeling her a "big-spending, career politician we can't trust with our money."   Dan Moody, meanwhile, got a big boost this week when Sen. David Perdue endorsed him in a 30-second TV spot, declaring the former state representative and businessman "one of us" who "cares more about getting results than getting credit."   The Democratic field, though, narrowed almost instantly, with one serious contender among the five declared candidates: Ossoff, who grew up in the northeastern Atlanta suburbs. Years earlier, Ossoff caught the attention of two of Georgia's most powerful Democrats -- Reps. John Lewis and Hank Johnson.   Ossoff impressed Lewis enough by writing letters to his office as a high school student that the civil rights legend offered him an internship. Then, after Johnson was elected in 2006, he hired Ossoff on Lewis's recommendation to work on his Washington staff while Ossoff was still a student at Georgetown University. Ossoff was as a staffer for Johnson for five years before going to the London School of Economics for a master's degree and then launching a documentary film company.   As he considered his candidacy, Ossoff lined up meetings with Johnson and Lewis, leaving with both of their endorsements.   As we sat in the Rayburn Room just outside the House chamber this month, Johnson heaped praise on Ossoff, saying it was the then-college student's use of Facebook that launched him to victory in 2006. So when Ossoff said he believed he could win, Johnson trusted his former staffer's political mind.   "Between me and you -- I certainly had my negative thought about whether or not Jon could win. But there was never any hesitation in terms of whether or not I would support him," Johnson said.   "The demographics of the state are changing," the six-term Democratic lawmaker said. It took "contortion" for Republicans to keep their seats safe after 2010, he said. But eventually, Johnson argued, the changing tides can't be stopped.   The support of Lewis and Johnson was enough to convince the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that the party had found a strong candidate -- despite the GOP super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund's efforts to seize on Ossoff's youth with a $2.2 million ad campaign using footage of him dressed as Han Solo while in college. The DCCC quickly moved staffers into the district, making clear it was prepared to spend money in a region national Democrats have largely avoided.   But it was the involvement of the liberal blog Daily Kos that really catapulted Ossoff onto the national map. The blog has been the largest driver of Ossoff's eye-popping $4 million fundraising effort to date. It bested its previous fundraising record for a single candidate -- $412,000 for Elizabeth Warren in 2012 -- in a single week. Daily Kos's pro-Ossoff fundraising efforts crossed the $1 million mark on February 28.   As Daily Kos political director David Nir and I exchanged emails this month, he argued that Georgia's 6th district "very well could be a test case for the future of Democratic targeting."   "It would generate even more excitement for future races. And I think it would terrify Republicans, because there are a lot of other districts like this one: traditionally GOP, but highly educated and very Trump-wary," Nir wrote.   What, though, about the record-breaking sums of money? Will such donation surges simply coincide with Trump actions that outrage the left?   "One thing I've experimented with is putting up blog posts asking people to contribute to Ossoff at times when people (myself included!) are really feeling angry and upset at Trump in order to give them something affirmative to do," Nir emailed. "For instance, I published this post the weekend Trump issued his travel ban. It raised almost $34,000. We then sent out an email based on that post and it raised another $118,000. We've seen similar responses in other similar situations as well."   National Republicans, meanwhile, are making plans to hammer Ossoff relentlessly.   They see three major points of attack against Ossoff: He's progressive enough to have become a darling of the liberal blogosphere, his filmmaking business did work for Qatar-owned Al Jazeera and the GOP believes he has inflated his resume.   Central to the resume argument: Ossoff has touted his national security clearance -- but he only held that clearance for five months before departing Johnson's staff.   "Over the past few decades, the voters of GA-06 have shown they are not interested in the representation of a far-left Hank Johnson-type candidate who embellishes his resume," National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Maddie Anderson said in an email. "We are looking forward to showing them that Jon Ossoff is not who he says he is in the coming days."   Nir said progressives are hoping for a win. But he also compared this race to one Democrats lost in 2005. In 2005, a hard-fought campaign by progressives brought Paul Hackett just three points away from victory in an Ohio congressional district that George W. Bush had just won by 28 points.   "That very tight margin in a race that should never have been competitive in the first place was a harbinger of 2006, when Democrats got extremely fired up and won a whole lot of previously red seats," he said.   National Democrats are careful to downplay expectations. Some party operatives said anything closer than a 60-40 blowout could be seen as promising. And because the race is a "jungle primary," Democrats won't yet officially endorse a candidate, even though Ossoff is the party's clear preference.   "There's no one here who's over-promising anything, because we recognize that this is still very challenging terrain," Perez said. "But we're working with the state party to build up our capacity and while we don't get involved in primaries, obviously, we are working and we will eventually be making an investment in this race to help another Democrat and to hold Trump accountable."   Gingrich, the man who once held the seat in play, is resisting the hype. He reminded me of his skepticism in 2014 when there was talk of Michelle Nunn, a Democrat with a legendary last name in Georgia politics, would beat Perdue for a Senate seat. Perdue wound up winning by nearly 8 points.   "Every election cycle, the Washington media has this idea that this is the year Georgia could be changing," the former speaker said. "And every election, it turns out not to be."     Donate                   PAID FOR BY O'SAY CAN YOU SEE PAC NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE'S COMMITTEE 421 M St NW Washington, DC 20001Unsubscribe  
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