#poltiical

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

In the US House of Representatives, it's rule by the Taliban Twenty, all due to the pact that Kevin McCarthy struck with them to become speaker. The US government is heading for a shutdown from next weekend, as lawmakers look increasingly unlikely to strike a budget deal in the face of hardline opposition from the right wing of the Republican party. Legislators have just one week to come up with a spending plan that can make it through both chambers of Congress — no easy feat with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives by a slim majority and Democrats holding the Senate by a similarly razor-thin margin. If there is no agreement by midnight next Saturday, millions of federal workers will begin to be furloughed, bringing all but “essential” operations of the government to a halt.

A protracted shutdown could have ripple effects across the US economy, denting business and consumer confidence when there are already fears that a recession is coming. The latest budget stand-off stems from a sharp divide within the Republican party over taxing and spending, including whether to sign off on a large additional aid package for Ukraine. The Republican infighting also threatens the leadership of Kevin McCarthy, the California lawmaker who became Speaker of the House on a record 15th ballot in January. McCarthy defied critics when he brokered an agreement in May that avoided an unprecedented default on US government debt. But now the Speaker is facing a tougher challenge as he struggles to satisfy a right flank of his own party that has torpedoed several of his attempts in recent days to continue funding the government.

The right wing of the House Republican conference has been emboldened by former president Donald Trump, who has cheered the possibility of a shutdown, writing on his Truth Social social media platform: “Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government . . . They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!” Trump presided over two government shutdowns during his time in the White House. The second, stemming from a dispute over his plans to build a wall on the US-Mexico border, lasted 35 days, making it the longest shutdown in US history. Even if McCarthy is able to satisfy the demands of his most rightwing members, any deal that is passed by the House must also be signed off by the Democrat-controlled Senate — and Republican hardliners have shown no willingness to support a bipartisan compromise.

[financial times]

[fleapit]

hi. why is nobody talking about the porn ban in north carolina? the PAVE act is a bill that was passed back in september 2023 (came into law january 1st 2024) that effectively bans users from viewing websites hosting adult content without age verification. (link to the bill)

"-the act legally requires commercial ventures to verify users’ ages if a company “knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material.”

In order to do so, North Carolina requires these sites to either use “a commercially available database that is regularly used by businesses or governmental entities for the purpose of age and identity verification,” or utilize “another commercially reasonable method of age and identity verification.” Companies are not allowed to hold records on any personally identifying information used to confirm users’ ages.

Additionally, North Carolina offers residents the right to a lawsuit if a site is found to record user identifying information, or if a minor’s parent or guardian finds that a website allowed their child to access a site purposefully hosting material “harmful to minors.”" obviously we don't want these websites having our IDs, but sites like e621 and pornhub just straight up aren't asking for them either- blocking their service to the state in it's entirety instead. even beyond the restriction of adult websites, obviously as the 'queerest place on the net' we can see how "material that is harmful to minors" is not just intentional vague wording, but a massive red flag. even if you dont care about the porn- which you should, this is a massive rights violation. how long until 'harmful material' is expanded to include transgender people? same-sex relationships? anything lgbtq? this is a serious fucking problem and it opens the door to hundreds of potentially worse bills that extrapolate on the same concept.

i have no idea what to do to fight it, but if someone smarter than me could add links to representatives or something, that would be awesome.

i'm also going to tag a few people to get this post out: @polyamorouspunk @safety-pin-punk @doggirlbreasts (i have no idea who else to tag, if any of you can think of someone who can help this post get out there, please tag them!)

[one-time-i-dreamt]

Theodore Roosevelt hired a milf to advise him on all his important decisions while he was president.

[troythecatfish]

[the-owl-tree]

the fact that we finally had a chance for a political murder mystery story and the writers threw it away for more christianity. i feel so deeply violent now when i think bout how excited i was after reading the first book of asc

It's kind of interesting how a lot of the issues were set up in the first half and I'd written them off as issues and not like. focal points of the plot. One thing that's been eating at me is how the narrative is taking on the One Bad Apple approach with Splashtail

"They'll change back" LIKE WHAT?????? IS THAT HOW THIS WORKS NOW. It's such a telling line when it comes to the writing team's ideology, it's not that RiverClan's xenophobic pride has opened them up to a leader that uses those fears to gain power, it's that Splashtail is a nasty little man who OHKO's no take backs his own deputy and loooooveees murder. I was kind of baffled by this decision then I remembered it's literally how they described TigerClan, with Tigerstar being the nasty little man who corrupted the poor wittle RiverClan cats in executing half-clan cats. Let's not examine the underlying ideology in Clan society that might have lead to it!

I don't think WC has anything really that interesting to say political wise and the more i think about it trying another political story, the more gnawing off my toes becomes appealing. I agree that ASC started off on a way more grounded tone that was appealing and that definitely was thrown out the window with little to no warning.

They just dropped the ball real hard. It's rough.

[super-sootica]

One for the Brits

You watch the EU having fun and being productive, they look like such a happy crew, and there you are in the rain, looking in through the window, soaking wet, looking in at the party.

[itscoldinwonderland]

The scariest thing to acknowledge is that anyone can be radicalized. Liberal, conservative, leftist, communist, capitalist, socialist, it doesn't matter. You can be radicalized into faciaim. No matter how much you believe you are against faciaim. It can be alluring. And that's a really scary thought. It's easy to point to the opposition and say"they are the facist, I would never". But that is a fault. The idea that you could never be a fascist is facism propaganda. Facism feeds in the undereducated. Faciaim feeds on hatred. That's why it's so important not to generalize. To acknowledge that any moment, anyone "on your side" can become a victim of facism. Including yourself.

Be deligent. Don't generalize. Accept people whete they are and you might actually find allies...

[muddypolitics]

(via Daring Fireball: Holy Hell, Trump Did Use Twitter Direct Messages, There Were ‘Many’ of Them, and the Special Counsel Now Has Them)

Katelyn Polantz, reporting for CNN:

The special counsel’s investigation into Donald Trump and the aftermath of the 2020 election sought the former president’s Twitter direct messages, of which there were many, federal prosecutors and lawyers for Twitter revealed in newly unsealed transcripts from February court hearings about the search warrant. [...]

A lawyer representing Twitter, now called “X,” similarly confirmed in court that Trump’s account had several private messages between users on the platform. “X” was able to find both the sent direct messages and deleted messages for prosecutors, according to the transcripts.

“We were able to determine that there was some volume in that for this account. There are confidential communications,” a lawyer for Twitter said about @realDonaldTrump’s direct messages.

Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, reporting for The New York Times:

While it remained unclear what sorts of information the messages contained and who exactly may have written them, it was a revelation that there were private messages associated with the Twitter account of Mr. Trump, who has famously been cautious about using written forms of communications in his dealings with aides and allies.

The papers included transcripts of hearings in Federal District Court in Washington in February during which Judge Beryl A. Howell asserted that Mr. Smith’s office had sought Mr. Trump’s direct messages — or DMs — from Twitter as part of a search warrant it executed on the account in January.

In one of the transcripts, a lawyer for Twitter, answering questions from Judge Howell, confirmed that the company had turned over to the special counsel’s office “all direct messages, the DMs” from Mr. Trump’s Twitter account, including those sent, received and “stored in draft form.”

The lawyer for Twitter told Judge Howell that the company had found both “deleted” and “nondeleted” direct messages associated with Mr. Trump’s account.

I am not at all surprised that “deleted” DMs are not in fact deleted, but rather hidden. I am slightly surprised that Trump — famously averse not just to using email and text messages, but even to his own lawyers taking written notes in meetings, so as not to leave a chain of evidence for his lifelong criminal activity — would use, of all things, the infamously unencrypted direct messaging feature on Twitter. To be clear, this is a pleasant surprise.

Kyle Cheney, reporting for Politico, “Special Counsel Obtained Trump DMs Despite ‘Momentous’ Bid by Twitter to Delay, Unsealed Filings Show”:

Among the data the search warrant commanded Twitter to produce:

Accounts associated with @realdonaldtrump that the former president might have used in the same device.

Devices used to log into the @realdonaldtrump account.

IP addresses used to log into the account between October 2020 and January 2021.

Privacy settings and history.

All tweets “created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by @realdonaldtrump, including any subsequently deleted.

All direct messages “sent from, received by, stored in draft form in, or otherwise associated with” @realdonaldtrump.

All records of searches from October 2020 to January 2021.

Location information for the user of @realdonaldtrump from October 2020 to January 2021.

As I speculated last week, nothing you do on Twitter is private. Not your DMs, not your “deleted” DMs, not your searches, not your location (if you’re foolish enough to grant Twitter/X access to it), not your draft posts.

Elon Musk comes out of this looking like he’d happily fellate Trump:

Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell held Twitter in contempt of court in February, fining the company $350,000 for missing a court-ordered deadline to comply with Smith’s search warrant. But the newly unsealed transcripts of the proceedings in her courtroom show that the fine was the least of the punishment. Howell lit into Twitter for taking “extraordinary” and apparently unprecedented steps to give Trump advance notice about the search warrant — despite prosecutors’ warnings, backed by unspecified evidence, that notifying Trump could cause grave damage to their investigation.

“Is this to make Donald Trump feel like he is a particularly welcomed new renewed user of Twitter?” Howell asked.

“Twitter has no interest other than litigation its constitutional rights,” replied attorney George Varghese of WilmerHale, the firm Twitter deploys for much of its litigation.

But Howell returned to the theme repeatedly during the proceedings, wondering why the company was taking “momentous” steps to protect Trump that it had never taken for other uses. In the hearing on Feb. 7, 2023, Howell referenced Musk, asking: “Is it because the new CEO wants to cozy up with the former president?”

The unsealed court filing (PDF) is here, for your reading enjoyment. Hope you stocked up on popcorn, like I did, for indictment season.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

[favorite quote: “Elon Musk comes out of this looking like he’d happily fellate Trump” - ed.]

[princess-viola]

we seriously need a better term to refer to when people try and use their identities as a shield against criticism than 'identity politics' because idk about y'all but i just automatically associate that term with right-wing fucksticks who call like any minority rights movement as 'identity politics' because they're right-wing fucksticks

[deadpresidents]

Which Landon would make a better President: Alf or Michael?

First of all, I'd like to congratulate you for almost certainly being the first person to ever reference Michael Landon on Tumblr. I'm guessing that two or three generations of my readers had to do a Wikipedia search to figure out who that was.

Anyway, I think the more pertinent question is which Alf would make a better President? Landon or...well...Alf?

I think we all know the correct answer to that question. However, one potential issue might be that the news about President Biden's dog biting Secret Service agents would pale in comparison to the scandal of President Alf eating scores of cats while in office.

And, someone may need to double-check this fact, but I'm pretty sure that Alf has had more Electoral votes cast on his behalf over the years than Alf Landon actually received (8 total Electoral votes) in his landslide defeat to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936:

[sidewalk-scrawls]

"Trump has been charged with four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States "by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit to obstruct the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election"; conspiracy to impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding; a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have that vote counted; and obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct and impede, the certification of the electoral vote."

Source

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 2, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, voters in Kansas overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to their state constitution that would have stripped it of protections for abortion rights. With 86% of the vote in, 62% of voters supported abortion protections; 37% wanted them gone. That spread is astonishing. Kansas voters had backed Trump in 2020; Republicans had arranged for the referendum to fall on the day of a primary, which traditionally attracts higher percentages of hard-line Republicans; and they had written the question so that a “yes” vote would remove abortion protections and a “no” would leave them in place. Then, today, a political action committee sent out texts that lied about which vote was which. Still, voters turned out to protect abortion rights in such unexpectedly high numbers it suggests a sea change. It appears the dog has caught the car, as so many of us noted when the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision on June 24. Since 1972, even before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Republican politicians have attracted the votes of evangelicals and traditionalists who didn’t like the idea of women’s rights by promising to end abortion. But abortion rights have always had strong support. So politicians said they were “pro-life” without ever really intending to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Dobbs decision explicitly did just that and has opened the door to draconian laws that outlaw abortion with no exceptions, promptly showing us the horror of a pregnant 10-year-old and hospitals refusing abortion care during miscarriages. Today, in the privacy of the voting booth, voters did exactly as Republican politicians feared they would if Roe were overturned. But this moment increasingly feels like it’s about more than abortion rights, crucial though they are. The loss of our constitutional rights at the hands of a radical extremist minority has pushed the majority to demonstrate that we care about the rights and freedoms that were articulated—however imperfectly they were carried out—in the Declaration of Independence. We care about a lot of things that have been thin on the ground for a while. We care about justice: Today, the Senate passed the PACT Act in exactly the same form it had last week, when Republicans claimed they could no longer support the bill they had previously passed because Democrats had snuck a “slush fund” into a bill providing medical care for veterans exposed to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the bill was unchanged, and Republicans’ refusal to repass the bill from the House seemed an act of spite after Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced an agreement on a bill to lower the cost of certain prescription drugs, invest in measures to combat climate change, raise taxes on corporations and the very wealthy, and reduce the deficit. Since their vote to kill the measure, the outcry around the country, led by veterans and veterans’ advocate Jon Stewart, has been extraordinary. The vote on the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022 tonight was 86 to 11 as Republicans scrambled to fix their mistake. In an ongoing attempt to repair a past injustice, executive director of the Family Reunification Task Force Michelle Brané says it has reunified 400 children with their parents after their separation by the Trump administration at the southern border. Because the former administration did not keep records of the children or where they were sent, reunifying the families has been difficult, and as many as 1000 children out of the original 5000 who fell under this policy remain separated from their parents. And we care about equality before the law: Today, Katherine Faulders, John Santucci, and Alexander Mallin of ABC News reported that a federal grand jury investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol has subpoenaed Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone for testimony. Yesterday, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), and the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Bennie Thompson (D-MS), sent a letter to Homeland Security inspector general Joseph Cuffari expressing “grave new concerns over your lack of transparency and independence” in his inspection of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Secret Service texts and texts from the two top political officials in the Department of Homeland Security, Acting Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, were erased, and a memo criticizing the department for not complying with requests for their disclosure was changed to praise their compliance. Maloney and Thompson asked Cuffari to recuse himself from the investigation and to provide them with documents and testimony. At CNN, Tierney Sneed and Zachary Cohen broke the news that it is not just the Secret Service phones and acting DHS secretary’s and deputy secretary’s phones that were wiped of information from the days around January 6, 2021. The Defense Department wiped the phones of officials from the Army and the Defense Department who left at the end of the Trump administration. Those include the phones of former acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller, former chief of staff Kashyap Patel, and former secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy. Miller, Patel, and McCarthy were involved in the military response to the events of January 6. The erasures came to light in a lawsuit brought by American Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog group formed in 2017, in early 2021. The Pentagon acknowledged the Freedom of Information Act request from American Oversight on January 15 and yet apparently wiped the phones anyway. Our laws say that official records are supposed to be retained, and a former Department of Defense official from a past administration told Sneed and Cohen that communications are always archived. Heather Sawyer, the executive director of American Oversight, told Sneed and Cohen that the erasure “just reveals a widespread lack of taking seriously the obligation to preserve records, to ensure accountability, to ensure accountability to their partners in the legislative branch and to the American people.” McCarthy was a Trump appointee who played a key role in the deployment of National Guard troops on January 6; there have been conflicting explanations for the three-hour delay before they arrived at the Capitol. Trump put acting secretary of defense Miller into office after losing the 2020 election; Miller took office on November 9. Kashyap Patel was an aide to then-representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) when the two fought to strangle the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2020 election; he went from there to the National Security Council and then in November 2020 became Miller’s chief of staff in the Pentagon. Both Miller and Patel were accused of blocking the transition of the Pentagon to the incoming Biden administration, and on December 18, 2020, Miller abruptly halted the transition meetings, saying that the halt was because of a “mutually-agreed upon holiday.” Biden transition director Yohannes Abraham told reporters, “Let me be clear: there was no mutually agreed upon holiday break.” White House call logs and diaries are also missing, and Cassidy Hutchinson, former chief aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, allegedly told the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol that she saw Meadows burn papers after meeting with Representative Scott Perry (R-PA). Perry later asked Trump for a presidential pardon for his actions in trying to overturn the election. Perry was apparently not the only one concerned about his actions. Today, Maggie Haberman and Luke Broadwater reported in the New York Times that two of the Arizona Republicans producing a slate of fake electors giving Arizona’s electoral votes to Trump contacted Trump’s lawyer Kenneth Chesebro with their concern that what they were doing “could appear treasonous.” (Chesebro put the word “treasonous” in bold.) The two were Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward and Arizona state senator Kelly Townsend. Ward has since doubled down on Trump: on July 19 she led the state party to censure Arizona house speaker Rusty Bowers after his testimony before the January 6 committee that Trump and his supporters showed no evidence that he had, in fact, won the election. If the majority is speaking up for our rights and freedoms, it seems the Republican Party is doubling down on extremism. Today, Bowers lost the Republican primary in a bid to move to the state senate. His opponent, who won by a large margin, was endorsed by former president Trump.

—

Notes:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/08/02/politics/defense-department-missing-january-6-texts/index.html

https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/02-4-2022/national-guard-questions/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-national-security-council-aide-is-named-to-top-pentagon-post-11605037916

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/09/933105262/trump-terminates-secretary-of-defense-mark-esper

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-loyalist-kash-patel-blocking-some-pentagon-officials-helping-biden-n1250053

https://www.axios.com/2020/12/18/pentagon-biden-transition-briefings

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/26/meadows-burned-papers-meeting-scott-perry-00035411

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/09/cheney-scott-perry-jan-6-hearing-00038724

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/us/politics/arizona-trump-fake-electors.html

Dr. Kelli Ward 🇺🇸 @kelliwardazThe @AZGOP Executive Committee formally censured Rusty Bowers tonight— he is no longer a Republican in good standing & we call on Republicans to replace him at the ballot box in the August primary. Full press release from AZGOP coming soon.

625 Retweets1,933 Likes

July 20th 2022

Mueller, She Wrote @MuellerSheWroteBREAKING: dem reps agent sent a letter to DHS OIG Cuffari demanding internal communications, and showing a cover-up at the agency including altered language in memos about the DHS investigation into missing USSS text messages. 1/

3,474 Retweets9,607 Likes

August 1st 2022

/photo/1

Theresa Fallon @TheresaAFallonThis practice blockade/live fire exercise around Taiwan in order to teach them a lesson is likely to boomerang on Xi. This will win plaudits on Weibo but scare just about every other country in Asia. No amount of Beijing's soft-power efforts will erase this belligerent act.

29 Retweets67 Likes

August 2nd 2022

https://abcnews.go.com/US/white-house-counsel-subpoenaed-federal-grand-jury-investigating/story?id=87845397

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/02/kansas-abortion-referendum/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/kansas-abortion-constitutional-right-vote

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/biden-administration-task-force-reunites-400-migrant-families-separate-rcna41013

Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🇺🇲🇺🇦 @RachelBitecoferRepublican state senator Rusty Bowers lost his political career upholding the rule of law & keeping his oath of office. Thanks for putting #CountryOverParty Senator.

106 Retweets357 Likes

August 3rd 2022

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

* * * *

[from comments] TCinLA Writes That's Another Fine Mess

Republicans really are The Enemy of the People.

But - like the Battle of Midway we weren't supposed to win - the path to victory has been revealed by the voters of Kansas: organize against the lies (they informed people what the correct vote was, and they got out the news of the fake text instructions today, and they worked to get people out to vote) and instead of the usual 200-300,000 voters showing up, 700,000 voters showed up and they won. They won because they just put their heads down and their shoulders to the wheel and they didn't moan and complain about being "disappointed." And they won. Lots of people who weren't Democrats voted HELL NO in that election, because there aren't enough Democrats in Kansas to win like that.

So the next time you run across a "genius" telling you how we can't win in November, tell the moron to either pull his head out of his ass and get to work, or get the hell out of the way.

[this-acuteneurosis]

I just had a terrible idea while re-reading the first part and of course I had to share. I've said it before, I'm not a shipper but my brain is trash and I live on the internet so here's my terrible ida of the day: DLB in-universe shipper(s) POV segment(s).

Not exactly what I think you're looking for, but uh...

~...~

It’s an open secret that Senator Sadashassa is pursuing Senator Amidala’s newest aide.

Open in that everyone who has talked to either of their staff is aware of the frequent collaborations, everyone who has passed them in the hall has seen Leia Skywalker make the senator laugh, everyone who has spent more than a few moments around them has seen Senator Sadashassa reach out to touch Leia’s shoulder or arm and linger just half a breath long enough to almost not be just friendly.

To say nothing of what some can smell or sense or see with more enhanced senses.

It’s secret in that, like many things in the Senate, it won’t go beyond these walls until there’s more political capital to be gained by bargaining with it.

It almost reaches that tipping point every other week or so, when Senator Darsana does something—sends an aide that visits with Skywalker a little long, stops her in the hall and quickly earns an indulgent smile—but never quite goes past that point where it’s just rich, filthy gossip and speculation among the various other senatorial staffs. It only comes to the attention of actual senators if they are particular friends—or enemies—of one of the three parties involved.

Senator Sadashassa’s aides are all rolling eyes and long suffering sighs when they are asked about the progress. Senator Amidala’s handmaidens are more tricky. Eiraté will smile, Cordé will laugh once and shake her head, and Dormé with simply smile pleasantly as if she has no knowledge on the topic.

Sheltay is losing her mind.

It’s her first and most important responsibility to stay on top of staff gossip in the Senate, what with the prince being busy with actual politics. Sheltay is the one who gets to wade through the mire of torrid secrets and unpleasant half truths. Well, her and her assistants. But Sheltay has to know what’s happening, because sometimes it’s enough to tip the scales for their actual work.

Skywalker is toying with two completely different senators, keeping both lightly engaged and denying neither.

And she’s winning.

Senator Amidala’s office has gotten direct promises from both senators related to Naboo’s recent refugee focus. Concessions! From Senator Darsana!

It’s not a method Sheltay agrees with, less for any cultural or moral reasons, and more because the risks of backlash are so high.

But it’s working. And Sheltay doesn’t really know what to do with that.

Leia Skywalker is an enigma and a mystery. She’s pretty enough, but that’s not a stand out quality in the Senate. She’s smart—dangerously clever, Sheltay thinks—but that’s not it either. There are hundreds, thousands of intelligent and capable staff members from across the galaxy in these buildings every day.

There’s something else about her. Something that’s easy to miss when she’s pretending to be quiet and unassuming, a shadow in the main halls and a passing thought in full meeting rooms.

And then Sheltay is notified that Leia Skywalker is attending the negotiation dinner with Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi—rising negotiator and Jedi master to Anakin Skywalker—and all of Sheltay’s carefully constructed assumptions and plans are promptly shot.

She’s not paid enough for this.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I had a job as a sort of butler who’d just bring stuff around to various rooms and put them on tables there.

Every room was a different D&D-type roleplay group, some for Earth, others for other worlds, and there were a lot for subsections, like for the specific parts of Earth wars was related to them, their environments, etc.

I was going to the American politics one often and overheard something like, “Well then, because someone decided there has to be four presidential impeachments, we’ll have to get rid of one.”

I watched as they whispered what that even meant and who it was about and then soon enough there was this Billboard of every US president, real, current, and possible future, with some faces being covered in static.

Jimmy Carter’s face also turned to static, and I felt the memory of him dripping away. Then I spent the next day wondering who the president between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan was.

[punkass-diogenes]

Reminder that when you talk about Zionism with regard to the state of Israel, you are talking specifically about political Zionism. Although the two have more or less become synonymous in the modern age, there have historically been and still are other forms of Jewish Zionism that the numerous very valid critiques of political Zionism do not (necessarily) apply to, and many of them preceded political Zionism.