#seems like a lot of so-called Americans were cheering for Mexico

[doctorwhoandfairytaillover]

Recuerdo

Summary:  Ubbe wasn't sure what he was expecting when he went to Mexico, and he certainly didn't think that he would fall in love with both a girl and the culture at the same time. When Xochilt comes into his life, the last thing he expected was that there would have to be a choice between family and love

AN: Thanks a bunch @vikingstrash for being patient with me and making the really great dividers and moodboards, and hope y’all enjoy this as I might write a series for these two.

Ubbe hadn’t really meant to learn Spanish.

When he and his younger brothers were still in high school, Hvitserk had chosen to sign up for a pen pal program in the school that was aimed at improving the student’s language skills. Needless to say, Hvitserk didn’t learn much Spanish while he was in school, it wouldn’t be until he was in university that he would even learn any of the language but to avoid his brother failing, Ubbe learned the language on his brother’s behalf. Looking back, perhaps it would have been better to let Hvitserk fail and learn on his own but ultimately Ubbe did appreciate being able to learn a language that was different from his own.  

In filling the role of “pen pal,” Ubbe had struck up a small friendship with the person Hvitserk had been assigned to correspond. She was a nice girl from Mexico; Xochilt and explained to him from their very first letters that her name didn’t sound like he probably thought it did. She was a sweet person; frequently speaking of her family and everything they did together, her ambitions to see more of the world and possibly become a translator, and so much more she shared with him through letters.

But this was a time when an email or phone call wasn’t quite as feasible for her compared to Ubbe, so as time went on, communicating simply became much harder for them. Until eventually, communication ceased between the two when Ubbe went off for university to take up a position in his father’s company.

Years went by and a lot happened in his life since his cheerful days of writing letters; he married and divorced, his father died, his brothers fought bitterly over the family company before they worked things out, and at last things seemed to be settling down.  

With all of his brothers working together to run their late father’s company, they all decided it would be good to expand it outside the company and who better to begin their expansion than Ubbe. Out of all his brother’s, he was the most fluent in multiple languages and they sent him off to begin the Latin American branch in the heart of Mexico City. He would spend the first year in the country as the company established itself and when that time ended, he would return back to his home in Denmark.  

January

He had been in Mexico for roughly three weeks when he decided to take one of his employees' recommendations to check out the local markets or visit the plaza when he had the chance. Things had been a whirlwind of getting used to the time zone, using another language frequently, and settling himself in his temporary apartment. Ubbe figured that with the next meeting being in two weeks, it would give him the opportunity to get to know a bit of the place that he would live in for the next year.

For it being January, the weather was a nice mild 72 F (22 C) and Ubbe really looked forward to seeing the tianguis that he had heard some things about. The employee had briefly mentioned that depending on the area, would also determine whether or not the tianguis would be set up or if the streets would be bare. It took a bit of asking around and making sure that he used the correct words to find out that it would be best for him to go out on a Tuesday, as every week that is when people from the area near his apartment would set up their stalls.

Everything felt so vibrant, loud, and exciting for Ubbe as he walked amongst the people that were clearly there to purchase goods from the many open stalls. Samples of fruit and tasty treats had been quickly placed into his hands from the various vendors as he let himself be moved and pulled along with the crowd that flowed beneath the tarps that sheltered them from the slight sprinkling of rain.

It did feel a little stifling for the man as he had rarely ever been to anything similar to the market that he was currently in, he was a little embarrassed to think that he had spent so long having someone else buy his groceries or items that he had missed out on experiencing something similar. In letting himself be pulled in every which way, Ubbe hadn’t had much of a chance to ask too many questions but it was amazing to him that so many people del barrio were the ones that had set up the market and stalls out the front of their homes.

He was on the edge of the market and close to an open road, when someone called out to him.

“Oye, güerito. Do you mind moving out of the way? Someone’s trying to get past you and you’re blocking their way.”

Ubbe looked over his shoulder and spotted an elderly woman trying to get around him but was struggling to do so, quickly he moved and helped the woman pick up her basket onto the sidewalk and was rewarded with a nice pinch on the cheek.

Once more the voice called out to him, “I have never seen you around these parts. Where are you from güerito?”

Ubbe looked around to find who it was that kept talking to him, a young woman with long dark hair gently waved at him in amusement from where she was perched. A much older woman sat beside her and she softly tapped at her shoulder, whispering something that he couldn’t quite hear and moved away from her stall of pottery.

“You never answered my question güerito, are you simply visiting the area or a tourist?” she asked.

“I suppose both, since I am from Denmark” he chuckled. “But I’m here for the year and wanted to see the tianguis that one of my employees had mentioned to me. I will be honest, I am a little bit overwhelmed with everything but I think that I would like to come again on the days that I am not too busy.”

“Well there is plenty in the city and even the barrio itself for you to see, if I remember correctly there should be more than 150 museums for you to choose from and see the things that they have to offer” she said with a pensive expression. “Some of them are free to the public, but like many places there are others that charge a modest fee for the experience of getting to see everything.”    

“You’re very knowledgeable about it all, have you been to all 150 museums?”

She laughed, “No I have not. But I am very proud of where I am from and what better way to show it off than to know as much as I can about the very place in which I was born.”

“Have you ever thought about being a tour guide?” he asked. “You seem like you have plenty of stories to tell about it all and would probably know much more than you’re letting me on.”

“I feel like you’re subtly trying to ask me if I would be willing to show you around some of these things since you have very little knowledge about these things” she said and smiled in amusement. “You’re still a stranger to me and I don’t go to places without at least knowing someone’s name.”

She looked at him pointedly and gestured to let him know that she was waiting.

"My name is Ubbe, Ubbe Ragnarsson."

"Huh," she chuckled. "I have no idea how common that name is in your country Ubbe, because I remember while in high school there was a boy who wrote on his brother's behalf with that exact name."

He frowned in confusion but also furrowed his brow in wonder.

"What's your name?"

"My name is Xochilt, Xochilt Rodriguez but my name doesn't sound like how you think it will be spelled."

"Well how would you spell your name? Maybe I do know how it's supposed to be."

"It's X - O - C - H - I - L - T"

"Looks like it is a very small world then Xochilt, because I am pretty sure that I was that same person that wrote to you on his brother's behalf."

A smile lit up her features and she called out to her great grandmother, "Mama Consuelo encontre el güerito de cuando estaba en la secundaria!"

May

Time went quickly and Ubbe couldn’t believe that he had already been in Mexico for 5 months, spending so much time with Xochilt and her great grandmother Doña Consuelo, it felt like he had always lived in Mexico. Of course, he couldn’t ignore that his brothers frequently called to ask him how he was doing and whether or not there was progress in the Latin American branch of their company but it only felt like background noise to everything that he was experiencing each and every day.

On weekends or whenever either of the two had the chance to see one another, they would go to see some of the sights that Xochilt was always telling him about.

They had gone to Xochimilco where the canals were filled with numerous color boats and they had a blast when they invited others to join them, drinking and laughing together as the people made the ride more exciting. They had been to the Zocalo, where Ubbe had been intimidated by the various men that were dressed in what Xochilt said was the traditional garb of warriors before the Spaniards had come to colonize the country. The men were understanding that it was a bit much and both ruffled his hair while giving him a fist bump to acknowledge Ubbe doing his best to not be intimidated.

Ubbe and Xochilt had done and seen so much together, now in the middle of May they stood before the imposing structures of Teotihuacan. The pyramids according to Xochilt were those of the moon and sun where ceremonies used to take place but also where sacrifices tended to take place.

The trek to get to the temples was long and Ubbe already felt like giving up when he saw the size of the structures but after a lot of pep talking from Xochilt and realizing halfway that the distance between going back and going up was the same, they had made it to the top of temple of the moon.  

It was a breathtaking sight around them as they stood there, both because Ubbe was absolutely exhausted after the arduous journey to get there and also because as he watched Xochilt smile in content when a cool breeze blew through her hair, his poor heart had skipped several beats.

“Te amo Xochilt.”

She turned to him startled, Ubbe felt as if his heart would beat out of his chest but he wouldn’t take it back. Perhaps they had only truly spent a few months together in person, but coupled with their adolescent friendship only solidified his feelings for her all the more.

“I know that I don’t have much time left in Mexico, but I need you to know how I feel and also, if you would possibly think about traveling with me back to Denmark.”

“Ubbe... as much as I would like to even think of the possibility, I can’t just leave my great grandmother behind to go with you.”

“We could bring her with us and with the branch of my company establishing itself better, we could come back more frequently if you’re ever feeling homesick.”

“Ubbe, I really can’t.”

“Why not?” he asked, “Is there something that I am missing?”

“Have you ever noticed how my Mama tends to ask you to repeat yourself at times or will sometimes forget if she’s done a task?”

“Yes...”

“She was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and we don’t know how much her memory will deteriorate but I can’t just leave her alone while she’s going through this Ubbe. She needs me, do you understand?”

“Yes, I do” as much as it crushed Ubbe, he would never do anything to possibly hurt Doña Consuelo.

“Can we still stay friends, Ubbe?”

He smiled softly and gently pulled her into a hug, “Always.”

October

While Xochilt was inside cooking lunch, Ubbe offered his help to Doña Consuelo to put the various linens and shirts to dry out on the clothesline. It was a slow and clumsy attempt as he struggled to pin the things onto the line, but the elderly woman appreciated it all the same as she calmly pointed out what he could do.

“Mi niño, stop what you are doing for a moment” the woman said.

Ubbe worried that he would be scolded for either his lack of speed or that he was doing the task incorrectly. The woman motioned for him to crouch down and in his haste to do so, slipped and fell in the process.

“Buena cosa que mi nieta didn’t fall in love with your grace,” the woman laughed a throaty chuckle.

“We’re simply friends Doña, nothing more.”

“Me crees pendeja? I didn’t have five children without knowing how men’s minds work and recognizing the signs of love when I see them” she said. “But I also know that neither you or Xochilt want to risk taking the first step.”

Ubbe smiled sadly, “That’s where you’re wrong Doña Consuelo, I already confessed to Consuelo but she already rejected me.”

“Both of you are so dumb, my grandaughter more so. Listen to me carefully, fight for this love because it’s precious” she told him softly, holding his hands in her own weathered palms. “The older you get like me, the more people you lose and all that you are left with are the recuerdos when they are gone.”      

“But... I’m scared Doña,” Ubbe said softly. “What if I get my heart broken and despite what you say, Xochilt could turn me down once more and I wouldn’t want to push her to give me an answer that I want.”

“Matters of the heart are delicate, mî niño. I know that Xochilt is worried about me most when she answers you” said Doña Consuelo. “I have lived a long life and my memories get foggier everyday y un dîa no tendré recuerdos, but until then I want to see you both happy for as long as my memory allows.”

Ubbe clearly hesitated, but Doña Consuelo simply smiled at him and mouthed for him to go, gesturing toward her great granddaughter as she glanced at them from the open window.

4 Years Later

“Me da tanto gusto verte niña” her Uncle Alejandro greeted, happily wrapping Xochilt in a warm embrace. “I am grateful that you traveled all this way in your state to come and visit us.”

She laughed softly, “I am only pregnant tío, and the doctor gave me a check up to be sure that it would be okay to travel.”

Her uncle turned to Ubbe, “La cuidas muchacho. Her grandmother may not be with us, but I can scold you on her behalf.”

While Ubbe held onto their son Ragnar and was scolded by the older man, Xochilt carefully approached the small altar that had been placed in the middle of the room. The images of those they had lost through the years seemed to almost smile at her return. Every uncle, aunt, cousin, and even her parents. She knew each of them by name and knew who they were, even if she hadn’t known them very well in life.

Gingerly she kneeled to look at the newest addition to the altar and carefully picked up the frame of her great - grandmother, smiling at her the same way she had when given the news of another great - great grandchild soon to be born.

It had only been a few months since Doña Consuelo had passed and Xochilt still felt the dull ache of pain that she wouldn’t get to see her great - grandmother. But it was also a bitter sweet sentiment that she would have once a year in which the older woman would be able to come and visit, to see Xochilt’s children grow and learn more about her through the stories of her life.  

“Hi Mama,” Xochilt greeted Doña Consuelo. “It’s been some time since I have talked to you, but gracias a Dios, Ubbe, Ragnar and I were able to come for a visit.”

Carefully Xochilt pulled out the bottle of tequila that she had brought as an offering and poured out a shot, setting it on the table of the altar. “Normally I would drink a shot with you, but at 6 months, I wouldn’t do that considering I want your great - great granddaughter to be healthy.”

Xochilt hadn't been pregnant with her second for very long when she told her great grandmother the news, sadly both her memory and health declined drastically after the exciting news. Doña Consuelo never had the chance to learn that she was to have a great great grandmother before she passed away.

"You know Mama, both Ubbe and I were talking about names recently but couldn't seem to come to an agreement. But on our plane ride here, we found a name that we liked very much" Xochilt chuckled as she wiped away her tears. "How do you feel about Consuelo being named after you?"

Despite obviously receiving no response, Xochilt couldn't help but imagine the old woman would have told her that her name wasn't that special and to choose a more traditional name for the baby before ultimately giving up to then smother her great granddaughter with all the affection she had always given her.

"I miss you so much everyday Mama, but I know that you will always be with me por que en mis recuerdos siempre estarás." 

Tagged: 

@vikingsbigbang @vikingstrash @ietss @pinkrockstar19 @thenightperson @xbellaxcarolinax​ @quantumlocked310​

[queequegsleash]

I have to say kudos to the Americans of Mexican descent in the crowd cheering for the US.

[missnewtuti]

Ok Woso fam, I feel like a lot of uswnt fans should get into softball.

The quick run down:

Softballs back for the first time since 2008. The US lost to Japan in the final gold medal game, and two of those players are on this roster (and this year will probs be a rematch)

Softball is basically faster, more fun to watch baseball. For the Olympics they have a bunch of “pace of play” rules that make sure the games average ~2 hours

A+ uniforms. Some have shorts! Some have pants and belts! Hats, visors, headbands, and braids galore.

Tall Amazon ladys throw ball real good

No fans means you get to hear the teams cheer for their batters and that’s real fun too

The US plays Japan in their final opening round game tonight at 9pm ET / 6pm PT. The gold medal game is 7am ET on Tuesday morning.

Ok, you in? Here’s the full scoop

The History

Softball hasn’t been in the Olympics since 2008, but it’s back this year. It probably won’t be in London in 2024, but it’s likely to be back in LA 2028 (LA has some great softball stadiums and has some of the best college programs).

The US won gold 🥇 in 2004 and were favorites to defend their title, but were upset by Japan 🇯🇵 in the gold medal match, walking away with silver 🥈

The US has two olympians from 2008, Canada has four, and Japan also has two. You can read more about them here.

The Format

6 countries are in this years tournament. They all played each other once, and the top 2 will play for gold. 3 and 4 will play for bronze.

So far, most teams have played 4/5 games. And with US and Japan both undefeated, they’re locked in for the gold medal game.

The Rivalry

So now the script is flipped from 2008. Japan - the host nation - is defending their gold. Japan has a professional softball league too, so a lot of folks play over there.

Two of the Americans from that 2008 team are back (more on them coming up next), looking to get some redemption.

Like c’mon this is one of those times we can root for the USA with some underdog vibes. Well ok maybe not full underdog, but at least we don’t have to do insane mental gymnastics to have a chip on our shoulder for this one.

The Amazons

Cat Osterman and Monica Abbott are both 6’3” pitchers who have been racking up strikeouts, and are looking to come away with gold after being upset in 2008. Osterman actually unretired when softball was announced for the Tokyo games.

They both still have a ton of impressive college records and some of the current team grew up watching them so that’s fun too. Apparently their coach calls them Fire and Ice.

Here’s an article about the fantasy draft new team every week league Osterman was a player/coach in. She always looks like she won’t take any of your shit and I dig that vibe. Apparently some of the team calls her Momma Cat which is adorbs.

I guess softball is less terrible for human bodies than baseball so these two ladies start every game, and so far Abbott has pitched 2 complete games and was the closer in Osterman’s two starts.

Softball is fun

So, first off, softball is a lot of fun to watch. You get all of the good stuff from baseball - hits and running and stealing bases and strike outs - but it doesn’t feel like watching paint dry.

It’s seven innings, and there’s a ton of rules to make sure the game doesn’t drag on. Pitching changes are quick, and they move between innings so quickly they don’t need to cut to commercial.

The pitchers all have their own little pitch dance they do, like I have no idea what’s going on but it looks cool.

Oh also, this is neat. They don’t make you throw the four balls for an intentional walk. You can literally just say nah, I’m not pitching you, just head over to first.

Some pitchers even hit, which is super neat. This post is gonna be mostly US focused, but here’s Sara Groenewegen, a Canadian pitcher who also hits (she’s usually their DP when she’s not pitching).

The Fashion

Ok, so not to be gay (don’t worry, that’s coming up in the next section) but holy shit softball uniforms are great. So much variety but all just really work (baseball should be taking notes).

I’m biased, but the US has some of the best uniforms. They can go full red, white, or blue, or they can mix and match. The USA on the pants is a nice touch, and I’m a sucker for a good belt.

But there’s a ton of variety. Japan wears shorts! And long sleeves. And hats. I couldn’t find any great pics but here’s one.

And the headwear - the glasses, the visors, the hats, the hairstyles. In my very scientific observations, softball seems to have the highest braid to player ratio of any sport. I guess soccer has buns and softball has braids.

Personally, I’m a fan of some good headband game, I’m sure JJ fans feel me. Some ppl wear face masks and others don’t and there seem to be a bunch of different helmet shapes and styles. Most teams seem to go with visors (I’m thinking so they have more real estate for the braid designs) but some teams go with hats.

Go Gays

As Pinoe once said, you can’t win a championship without gays. It’s just science. All three of US softballs gays (at least based on my cursory Instagram search 🕵️‍♀️) were involved in the US’s extra innings walk off win against Australia. (Chiddy hit the walk off, scoring Haylie and Ally).

Haylie McCleney

She’s the US lead off hitter and has an absolutely insane .727 batting average so far. She also recently got engaged, so that’s cute. Every team has that insane iron man - and apparently McCleney is that for the US. The center fielder leads a bunch of the teams trainings and workout stuff.

Ally Carda

First baseman Ally Carda has also been having a good tournament and is (dating? Engaged? Married? Idk it wasn’t in the Instagram caption and I didn’t feel like digging in) to a former US Softball Olympian (2004, 2008).

Amanda Chidester

Finally, we have Amanda Chidester, an outfielder (and sometimes DP). She secured the US spot in the gold medal match with her eighth inning walk off, earning the US a 2-1 victory over Australia.

She also has the arguably funnest Olympics storyline because she actually played a game against her fiancée, who plays shortstop for Mexico. (She had a sweet Instagram post about it).

The chaos

Softball gets rid of a lot of boring stuffy baseball rules. Rosters are smaller and players can re enter the game under certain circumstances so there can be fun shenanigans with pinch runners.

Also if there’s 2 outs and a catcher up on base, someone comes and runs for them so they can go put on their catcher outfit. Softball appreciates an efficient costume change.

In CAN vs JPN, the umpires messed something up and weren’t gonna let a Canadian pitcher re enter the game and the whole Canadian team just walked off the field like we’re not gonna play til you get your shit together.

So, in conclusion, women’s sports are fun to watch and softball is neat. Hopefully they get some hype these Olympics and we see some investment in professional leagues.

[teaspoon-of-salt]

(full article under cut:)

The scariest day of Maria Del Carmen’s life started with a phone call that initially cheered her up.

A native of Mexico, she has spent the last 24 years as a housekeeper in Philadelphia and had a dozen regular clients before the pandemic began. By April, she had three. Food banks became essential to feeding herself and her three children. To earn extra money, she started selling face masks stitched on her sewing machine.

So in mid-August, when a once-regular client — a pair of professors from the University of Pennsylvania and their children — asked her to come and clean, she was delighted. No one was home when she arrived, which seemed like a wise precaution, given social distancing guidelines. What struck her as odd were the three bottles of Lysol on the dining room table. She had a routine at every home, and it had never involved disinfectant.

Ms. Del Carmen started scrubbing, doing laundry and ironing. After a few hours, she stepped outside to throw away some garbage. A neighbor spotted her and all but shrieked: “Maria, what are you doing here?!” The professors and their children, the neighbor said, had all contracted the coronavirus.

“I was terrified,” Ms. Del Carmen recalled. “I started crying. Then I went home, took off all of my clothing, showered, got in bed, and for the next night and the next day, I waited for the coronavirus.”

She never got sick, but she still is livid. At 58 and, by her account, overweight, she considers herself at high risk. That is why she never took off her mask while cleaning that day — diligence she thinks might have saved her life.

“There are a lot of people who don’t want to disinfect their own homes,” she said, “so they call a housekeeper.”

The pandemic has had devastating consequences for a wide variety of occupations, but housekeepers have been among the hardest hit. Seventy-two percent of them reported that they had lost all of their clients by the first week of April, according to a survey by the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The fortunate had employers who continued to pay them. The unlucky called or texted their employers and heard nothing back. They weren’t laid off so much as ghosted, en masse.

Since July, hours have started picking up, though far short of pre-pandemic levels, and often for lower wages.

“We plateaued at about 40 percent employment in our surveys of members,” said Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the alliance. “And because most of these people are undocumented, they have not received any kind of government relief. We’re talking about a full-blown humanitarian crisis, a Depression-level situation for this work force.”

The ordeal of housekeepers is a case study in the wildly unequal ways that the pandemic has inflicted suffering. Their pay dwindled, in many cases, because employers left for vacation homes or because those employers could work from home and didn’t want visitors. Few housekeepers have much in the way of savings, let alone shares of stock, which means they are scrabbling for dollars as the wealthiest of their clients are prospering courtesy of the recent bull market.

In a dozen interviews, housekeepers in a handful of cities across the country described their feelings of fear and desperation over the last six months. A few said the pain had been alleviated by acts of generosity, mostly advances for future work. Far more said they were suspended, or perhaps fired, without so much as a conversation.

Scrubbing a fluffy little dog named Bobby

One of them is Vicenta, a 42-year-old native of Mexico who lives in Los Angeles, and who, like many contacted for this article, did not want her last name used because she is undocumented.

For 10 years, she had earned $2,000 a month cleaning two opulent homes in gated communities in Malibu, Calif. This included several exhausting weeks in 2018, when fires raged close enough to cover both homes in ash. Three times a week, she would visit both houses and scrub ash off floors, windows, walls and, for one family, a fluffy little dog named Bobby.

Vicenta received nothing extra for the added time it took to scour those houses during the fires. She would have settled for a glass of water, she said, but neither family offered one.

“It was incredibly hot, and my mouth and throat were really sore,” she recalled. “I should have seen a doctor, but we don’t have health insurance.”

If Vicenta thought her years of service had banked some good will, she was wrong. Early in May, both families called and left a message with her 16-year-old son, explaining that for the time being, she could not visit and clean. There was some vague talk about eventually asking her to return, but messages she left with the families for clarification went unreturned.

“Mostly, I feel really sad,” Vicenta said. “My children were born here, so they get coupons for food, but my husband lost his job as a prep cook in a restaurant last year and we are three months behind on rent. I don’t know what will happen next.”

Housekeepers have long had a uniquely precarious foothold in the U.S. labor market. Many people still refer to them as “the help,” which makes the job sound like something far less than an occupation. The Economic Policy Institute found that the country’s 2.2 million domestic workers — a group that includes housekeepers, child care workers and home health care aides — earn an average of $12.01 an hour and are three times as likely to live in poverty than other hourly workers. Few have benefits that are common in the American work force, like sick leave, health insurance, formal contracts or protection against unfair dismissal.

‘A treadmill life’

This underclass status can be traced as far back as the 1800s, historians say, and is squarely rooted in racism. Domestic work was then one of the few ways that Black women could earn money, and well into the 20th century, most of those women lived in the South. During the Jim Crow era, they were powerless and exploited. Far from the happy “mammy” found in popular culture like “Gone With the Wind,” these women were mistreated and overworked. In 1912, a publication called The Independent ran an essay by a woman identified only as a “Negro Nurse,” who described 14-hour workdays, seven days a week, for $10 a month.

“I live a treadmill life,” she wrote. “I see my own children only when they happen to see me on the streets.”

In 1935, the federal government all but codified the grim conditions of domestic work with the passage of the Social Security Act. The law was the crowning achievement of the New Deal, providing retirement benefits as well as the country’s first national unemployment compensation program — a safety net that was invaluable during the Depression. But the act excluded two categories of employment: domestic workers and agricultural laborers, jobs that were most essential to Black women and Black men, respectively.

The few Black people invited to weigh in on the bill pointed out the obvious. In February 1935, Charles Hamilton Houston, then special counsel to the N.A.A.C.P., testified before the Senate Finance Committee and said that from the viewpoint of Black people, the bill “looks like a sieve with the holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”

The historian Mary Poole, author of “The Segregated Origins of Social Security,” sifted through notes, diaries and transcripts created during the passage of the act and found that Black people were excluded not because white Southerners in control of Congress at the time insisted on it. The truth was more troubling, and more nuanced. Members of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration — most notably, the Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr. — persuaded congressional leaders that the law would be far simpler to administer, and therefore far more likely to succeed, if the two occupations were left out of the bill.

In the years that followed, Black domestic workers were consistently at the mercy of white employers. In cities like New York, African-American women lined up at spots along certain streets, carrying a paper bag filled with work clothes, waiting for white housewives to offer them work, often for an hour or two, sometimes for the day. A reporter, Marvel Cooke, and an activist, Ella Baker, wrote a series of articles in 1935 for The Crisis, the journal of the N.A.A.C.P., describing life in what they called New York City’s “slave markets.”

The markets’ popularity diminished in the ’40s after Mayor Fiorello La Guardia opened hiring halls, where contracts were signed laying out terms for day labor arrangements. But in early 1950, Ms. Cooke found the markets in New York City were bustling again. In a series of first-person dispatches, she joined the “paper bag brigades” and went undercover to describe life for the Black women who stood in front of the Woolworths on 170th Street.

“That is the Bronx Slave Market,” she wrote in The Daily Compass in January 1950, “where Negro women wait, in rain or shine, in bitter cold or under broiling sun, to be hired by local housewives looking for bargains in human labor.”

That same year, domestic work was finally added to the Social Security Act, and by the 1970s it had been added to federal legislation intended to protect laborers, including the Fair Labor Standards Act. African-American women had won many of those protections by organizing, though by the 1980s, they had moved into other occupations and were largely replaced by women from South and Central America as well as the Caribbean.

A total lack of leverage

Today, many housekeepers are undocumented and either don’t know about their rights or are afraid to assert them. The sort of grass-roots organizations that tried to eradicate New York City’s “slave markets” are lobbying for state laws to protect domestic work. Nine states have domestic workers’ rights laws on the book. Last summer, Senator Kamala Harris introduced the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which would guarantee a minimum wage and overtime pay, along with protections against racial discrimination. The bill has yet to pass, and if it did, labor advocates and historians say it would merely be a beginning.

“It’s important to get a federal bill, but it leaves unanswered the question of enforcement,” said Premilla Nadasen, the author of “Household Workers Unite” and a professor of history at Barnard College. “The Department of Labor is overextended and it tends not to check up on individual employers. The imbalance of power between employer and employee has been magnified by the pandemic because millions of people are now looking for work. And xenophobic rhetoric has made women more fearful of being deported.”

The pandemic has laid bare not just the vulnerability of housekeepers to economic shocks but their total lack of leverage. Several workers said they had clients who would not let anyone clean who has had Covid-19; others know clients who will hire only Covid survivors, on the theory that after their recovery, they pose no health risk. Housekeepers are often given strict instructions about how they can commute, and are quizzed about whether and how much they interact with others. But they have no idea whether their employers are taking similar precautions. Nor, in many cases, are they accorded the simple decencies that are part of formal employment.

“It would be nice to have at least two days’ notice when someone cancels on you, either to let you know or compensate you for your time,” said Magdalena Zylinska, a housekeeper in Chicago who helped lobby for a domestic workers’ rights bill that passed in Illinois in 2017. “I think a lot of people don’t realize that if I don’t work, I don’t get paid and I still have to buy food, pay bills, utilities.”

Ms. Zylinska emigrated from Poland more than 20 years ago and has yet to get a week of paid vacation. The closest she came was in 1997, when a couple handed her $900 in cash, all at once — for work she’d just finished, work she would soon do, plus a holiday bonus.

“The couple said, ‘Merry Christmas, Maggie,’” she said. “I remember counting that money four times.”

[scarfacemarston]

Part 1: RDR Gang HC Are they politically active? Not an opinion on politics!

So the RDR server I help run has a question of the day. Today, I asked, is your character politically active? I didn’t want any actual opinions on politics. Just to know if they’re active and how. Since some people roleplay, they answered as their ocs and some of the canon characters responded. Non rpers were also free to talk. (Shameless plug - anyone over 18+ and kind is welcome to join our server! Just ask. :) ) I’ll write my opinions below five at a time. These are just guesses! Next is Javier, Sean, Abigail, Uncle, and Molly.

Dutch Van der Linde: He loves to debate and he is political in the sense that he is “Giving Uncle Sam the finger” through his actions. He appears to want a form of anarchy, he definitely wants it in rdr 1. He has a lot of opinions. The way he lives is his protest. Modern Au - he’d probably be the type to have bumper stickers and go to rallies. I think he’s very vocal and talks the whole time during the debates. I can see him getting into arguments or at least trying to persuade others to see his point. Often times, For those politically active, they sometimes split to watch political events by themselves out of respect for one another.

Hosea Matthews: He is very well informed. While he agrees with Dutch on some matters, he very much so has his own opinions. He’s not afraid to debate, but I see him being more open to other points of view. I can see him participating in political events when he wasn’t on the run. Modern Au: I can see him being a big advocate for any type of suffrage. I especially see younger him picketing. Today, he watches the news and reads. During debates, he’s fact-checking and watching, but doesn’t say much, but he’ll occasionally exclaim something. Arthur Morgan: He is very very reluctantly political. In canon, he was dragged into politics. He didn’t like sharing his opinion. Maybe because it broke his “Dumb brute act” but we all know he’s intelligent. He says he ended up enjoying the suffrage rally and admits that everyone has certain rights. Modern Au: I see him being supportive. I think a more active family member or partner could convince to be more active. He definitely is not cool with bigotry and in canon and AU he will say something.  He’ll watch debates mainly because John, Javier, Charles, Sean, Tilly, and Abigail are all very involved. He’ll occasionally cheer or jeer in the privacy of his own.  John Marston: Believe it or not, he’s quite political. He’s shown reading the newspapers constantly and has a lot of opinions and concerns. He doesn’t necessarily always share them, but I’ve heard some of his conversations. In RDR 1 - he’s strangely both very political and not political. He’s very annoyed that Governor Nate Johns is elected. Nate had been known to be a crooked person. When Marston hears several people talk about Native Americans and other minorities in a bigoted way, he gets very upset. He’s actually very intelligent and will debate them down or call them out. He constantly calls out Herbert Moon, Professor MacDougal, and even the Pinkertons. When John is forced to go to Mexico, he is desperate to not get involved in the Revolution, but is dragged into it and is forced to do both side’s dirty work. He hates every second of it. He’s shown hints of being supportive of women’s rights because he constantly praised Luisa (A girl in Mexico), Bonni, Sadie, and Abigail for “being a woman in a man’s world - actual quote. When he comes home to Abi, he’s way more grumpy talking about politics and talks with Uncle. Abigail just seems to let him talk. Modern Au I think would be the same. I think he was pretty punk in his younger years. He was angry about everything. I can see younger him being active in certain situations. Usually calling for a revolt of sorts before someone tells him to chill. Older him will watch the debates and yell at the tv. He’s more private these days, but he’ll find sly to let his opinion be known. Sometimes, his resting bitch face cracks.   Micah Bell: Honestly? I’m not sure. I want to say that he doesn’t care. I feel like he’d be the type to make everyone annoyed or angry just for his enjoyment. I think the gang has troubles remembering this, but they eventually remember and ignore him Micah isn’t stupid by any means. I just think he’s rather chaotic and would like anarchy type of ideas better if he has any opinions at all. I can see him maybe getting into arguments with other people for the same reason. Most of this is Modern Au related as I don’t see Micah caring as much in Canon as he has plenty of stuff to do. However, I can totally see him sitting in a tavern and trying to start an argument between patrons and just sitting back to watch. 

[newstfionline]

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Americans Are Drinking More During The Pandemic (NPR) When the pandemic began spreading across the U.S. in March, stores, restaurants and schools closed down. But liquor stores in many parts of the U.S. were deemed essential and stayed open. Alcohol sales have ticked up during the pandemic, so maybe it’s a good time to ask yourself: Are you drinking more than you’d like to be? R. Lorraine Collins, a psychologist at the University of Buffalo, recommends asking yourself, “Are you keeping alcohol as ... a special beverage for limited situations, or are you engaging in alcohol use across the board?” A break from alcohol can lead to a range of outcomes. As we’ve reported, a 2016 British study of people who participated in a monthlong “Dry January” break, found that 82% said they felt a sense of achievement. “Better sleep” was cited by 62%, and 49% said they lost some weight. Maybe you hike farther, have better conversations or get better sleep. Notice if your life feels richer to you. If we’re stuck at home for now, why not give it a try? What do you have to lose?

‘Do as I say’: Anger as some politicians ignore virus rules (AP) Denver’s mayor flies to Mississippi to spend Thanksgiving with his family—after urging others to stay home. He later says he was thinking with “my heart and not my head.” A Pennsylvania mayor bans indoor dining, then eats at a restaurant in Maryland. The governor of Rhode Island is photographed at an indoor wine event as her state faces the nation’s second-highest virus rate. While people weigh whether it’s safe to go to work or the grocery store, the mayor of Austin, Texas, heads to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on a private jet after hosting a wedding for 20. California’s governor dines at a swanky French restaurant with lobbyists, none wearing masks, a day after San Francisco’s mayor was there for a birthday party. Both had recently imposed tough rules on restaurants, shops and activities to slow the spread of the virus. To the public’s chagrin, some of America’s political leaders have been caught preaching one thing on the coronavirus and practicing another. Sure, politicians have long been called out for hypocrisy. But during a pandemic that’s forced millions into seclusion and left many without paychecks, such actions can feel like a personal insult—reinforcing the idea “that some people just don’t have to follow the rules while the rest of us do,” says Rita Kirk, a professor of communications at Southern Methodist University. Pandemic-era hypocrisy has only deepened the polarization in a time already marked by division, emboldening those who doubt the seriousness of the virus and dividing people’s responses based on political affiliations.

Hacked networks will need to be burned ‘down to the ground’ (AP) It’s going to take months to kick elite hackers widely believed to be Russian out of the U.S. government networks they have been quietly rifling through since as far back as March in Washington’s worst cyberespionage failure on record. Experts say there simply are not enough skilled threat-hunting teams to duly identify all the government and private-sector systems that may have been hacked. FireEye, the cybersecurity company that discovered the intrusion into U.S. agencies and was among the victims, has already tallied dozens of casualties. It’s racing to identify more. “We have a serious problem. We don’t know what networks they are in, how deep they are, what access they have, what tools they left,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow. Many federal workers—and others in the private sector—must presume that unclassified networks are teeming with spies. Agencies will be more inclined to conduct sensitive government business on Signal, WhatsApp and other encrypted smartphone apps. The only way to be sure a network is clean is “to burn it down to the ground and rebuild it,” Schneier said.

College students recruited as teachers to keep schools open (AP) As the coronavirus sidelines huge numbers of educators, school districts around the country are aggressively recruiting substitute teachers, offering bonuses and waiving certification requirements in order to keep classrooms open. Coming to the rescue in many cases are college students who are themselves learning online or home for extended winter breaks. In Indiana, the 4,400-student Greenfield-Central school district about 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Indianapolis made a plea for help as its substitute pool shrank. “I said, ‘If you’ve got a student who’s in college, maybe they’d like to work even a two-month thing for us—which would be a stopgap, no doubt—but it will help us a whole, whole bunch,” said Scott Kern, the Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation director of human resources. Over a dozen college students answered the call including his own daughter, 19-year-old Grace Kern, who is studying medical imaging technology at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. She has been working in elementary school classrooms, helping students as teachers offer instruction remotely via a screen inside the room.

An Ex-Governor Is Gunned Down, Punctuating a Deadly Year for Mexico (NYT) The former governor of the state of Jalisco was gunned down early Friday while vacationing in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta, the authorities said, a brazen killing that further illustrated the government’s struggles to rein in the deadly violence that has surged across Mexico over the past five years. The killing of the ex-governor, Aristóteles Sandoval, who was shot in the back inside a restaurant restroom, is one of the highest-profile political killings in Mexico in recent memory, security experts said. Mr. Sandoval was killed just hours before President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his cabinet delivered a grim update on the nation’s security situation during a news conference. More than 31,000 murders were recorded in Mexico this year as of November, the latest month for which government statistics are available, a figure roughly on pace with 2019. But homicides have nearly doubled over the past five years.

Bosnian city of Mostar gets a vote (AP) Irma Baralija is looking forward to Sunday, when she intends to vote and hopes to win her race as the southern Bosnian city of Mostar holds its first local election in 12 years. To make that vote possible in her hometown, the 36-year-old Baralija had to sue Bosnia in the European Court of Human Rights for letting a stalemate between two major nationalist political parties prevent her, along about 100,000 other Mostar residents, from voting or running in a municipal election for over a decade. By winning in court in October 2019, Baralija believes she has “busted the myth (that nationalist parties) have been feeding to us, that an individual cannot move things forward, that we matter only as members of our ethnic groups.” Left without fully functioning institutions, Mostar—one of the impoverished Balkan country’s main tourist destinations—has seen its infrastructure crumble, trash repeatedly pile up on its streets and hazardous waste and wastewater treatment sludge dumped in its only landfill, which was supposed to be for non-hazardous waste.

India’s virus cases cross 10 million as new infections dip (AP) India’s confirmed coronavirus cases have crossed 10 million with new infections dipping to their lowest levels in three months, as the country prepares for a massive COVID-19 vaccination in the new year. Dr. Randeep Guleria, a government health expert, said India is keeping its fingers crossed as the cases tend to increase in winter months. India is home to some of the world’s biggest vaccine-makers and there are five vaccine candidates under different phases of trial in the country.

Israel’s top-secret Mossad looks to recruit via Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV (Washington Post) After decades in the shadows, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, has been getting a lot of airtime, both on the news and in popular TV thrillers. In real life, details of operations attributed to Israel are in the open like never before, including the theft two years ago of a trove of nuclear secrets from inside Iran, last summer’s drive-by killing of al-Qaeda’s No. 2 in Tehran and the assassination last month of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. And on the screen, streaming hits like Apple TV Plus’s “Tehran,” Netflix’s “The Spy” and Hulu’s “False Flag” have starred the Mossad as a cold, ruthless and efficient machine. Far from squirming, the once-supersecret agency has welcomed the exposure, former spies say. The Mossad needs recruits. Military veterans who might have once made their career in national service now leave to work for lucrative start-ups, or found their own. Israeli companies Waze, Wix, Viber and others were started by intelligence veterans. In response, Yossi Cohen, the Mossad’s director since 2016 and a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has embarked on a hiring spree, increased the agency’s number of sabotage operations and enlarged its budget by billions of shekels. The Mossad’s recruitment drive includes a heightened social media presence and a calculated trickle of unconfirmed information about its exploits. And former spies say the agency is quietly embracing a slew of TV shows and movies that could do for the agency what “Top Gun” famously did for naval recruitment: make a life in the organization seem cool again.

Chaos and jubilation as freed Nigerian schoolboys reunite with family (Reuters) Parents sobbed, mobbed their children in hugs and even kissed the ground in gratitude on Friday as they reunited with scores of schoolboys who had been kidnapped a week earlier in northwest Nigeria. Hundreds of adults jostled to find their offspring among the 344 dusty and dazed looking children who had arrived by bus in Katsina state on Friday morning. Those who succeeded cheered and grabbed their children, but scores more were still waiting by early evening. “I feel like God has granted me paradise because I am so happy,” said an ebullient Hamza Kankara after she found her son, Lawal, in the crowd. Another man knelt and kissed the ground, thanking God for the return of his young son, before clutching the boy and sobbing.

[swedeandsour]

Ahead of her upcoming debut LP “Powerslide” Soleima talks about Anthropology, Social Welfare, writing cheeky songs and her first Valentine’s Day

Fresh off a tour opening for Electric Guest, we spoke to Danish musician Sarah Mariegaard during her first North American tour. Touching base with what will soon become her debut LP “Powerslide”, we caught up with the Copenhagen artist on what makes her tick. Speaking on friendships and collaborations,  and her previous dabbling in anthropology, we debunk the mystery behind Sarah’s cultivated alter-ego Soleima in our interview with Mariegaard.

Words + Interview: Peter Quincy Ng

How’s the tour been so far?

It’s been my first tour in America and Canada! It’s also my first time touring for such a long period, so it’s definitely something special.

It’s been a year since your last EP “Bulldog”, so give us an update on what’s new with Soleima.

We’re releasing an album in March, and it’s going to be so fun. I’m excited to release a full-length album, because of releasing only singles, its something that you have to really cherish.

There’s a little tale that goes with your track “Roses”. I’ve read recently that on EP “Bulldog”, that it was a spontaneous songwriting effort that grew organically rather than you framing it around a narrative. How do you invent some of the characters and stories behind them, because often they are quite cheeky?

(Laughs) Yeah, I guess for “Roses” or for all of my songs, its experiences from my own life and people around. I try to put it in a way that people can relate to. “Roses” is a manifestation of something I’ve been going through and not really believing in myself and my own path. “Roses” its both dealing with it and describing it, and then putting an end to it, so I wrote it as sort of an empowerment song to myself.

You’ve been a person who has been no stranger to collaboration, from community drumming in Tanzania to Flødeklinikken to your work with producer Vasco. Soleima was never truly built in isolation, so tell me about Sarah’s team-building skills?

(Laughs) I definitely work very well in collabs and write a lot of stuff with others and friends. Some of the songs start on the piano where I write on my own, some start in a room with five other people going, “What about this? What about that? Argh!” and it’s important to have those different processes because songs will end up differently. I like both sides and I like both sides of the outcome.

You started out playing piano in Flødeklinikken, but where do you find your own voice as a soloist? 

Actually, it was Vasco and a guy who was his best friend called Vera, where we all had this dream of writing songs for others. I was studying and they were doing other daytime jobs, but we wanted to write songs to become topliners or producers. However when writing I started to feel ownership over some of the songs and release them under my own name. In Flødeklinikken, we were seven people writing together, but I missed that part where I could have full creative control

One of my first musical memories of you was from your video and demo track “My Boi”, tell me your collaboration with visual artist Maya SB?

Since the beginning of the Soleima project we always worked very closely. She’s a very close friend and I trust her vision and creativity. It was very easy to start working together, and of all the visuals that we’ve made “My Boi” is the one I am proudest of. I really think it’s amazing and it’s very much Maya’s vision. We still work together and I feel very humbled and blessed to be working with her.

“My Boi”

One of the things you’ve said about yourself despite being in hip-hop collaborative Flødeklinikken, is that you never saw yourself as a rapper. So what was it like knowing that your cover of “Check” got you on stage with Young Thug?

(Laughs) That was such a fun thing for me! Like it was so funny, and that’s so much how this all works. You do something and it opens a tiny door into something else, which opens another tiny door into something else, that’s a great example of that. You make a fun cover of a random hip-hop song, and then you get to open for him. I don’t know it’s super fun, and I’ve always listened to hip-hop and done it.  

“Check”

And as for Kranium? He’s a pretty big name in dancehall!

It’s because I recently got signed the U.S. instead of Denmark and this was our first conversation, because they’ve heard the “Breathe” track. They wanted to put the artist on the track, and then we did it and it was super fun.

“Breathe” 

So it must be a huge dream to make it like that and get signed. But an earlier dream of yours was as an anthropologist?

I have a Bachelor’s degree in anthropology, and I started to move into music when I finished. I was kind of a crossroads where I was wondering if I wanted to do my Master’s degree or do both? But then, because I got signed, I wanted to give it 110%. Luckily, I’ve been able to live off my music since then. My heart is definitely divided but it sounds a little spoiled to say but because I know it’s such a lucky thing to do music as a career, but I do really dream of going back to anthropology. Maybe I hope I could combine the two.

It’s something that pretty much comes up in every interview, but the name Soleima is taken from something father’s tell their daughters when they about to do something that’s up to no good. So if you had to dedicate a song to the teenage girl from Denmark, which one would it be? (Laughs) That’s a hard question, but there are some cheeky ones; “Roses”, “Shut the Fuck Up”, “Cheers for the Tears”.

I’ve read that your mother works with children and your father an addiction counselor. But did they ever get worried the lifestyle and parties of a touring artist, given their background working with people’s issues?

You are so well prepared! This is amazing I’m super impressed. But yeah, in Scandinavia, the support system is so big. There’s always a system to take care of you, and because of that I have a theory that parents in Scandinavia dare to have their children follow their weird dreams than if you were in U.S. I think as opposed to Scandinavia, over there having an education and making enough money is more important, because if not who is going to take care of you. Whereas in Denmark, I could take another career path and I wouldn’t be out in the street. I have my little theory but that’s why I think people dare to do whatever they want out there.

I also have super cool parents, who let me do whatever the fuck I want. As for the partying I think they would be worried if I seemed unwell, but I think by now it seems like they don’t think I’m drinking everyday or doing drugs.

Touring life can be difficult tell us how you keep the sanitary or some on-stage rituals you perform to shake the nerves?  

Today we had an off day yesterday and we walked around the town for a many hours actually. All of us, we really enjoyed walking around the towns, and doing super normal things. But we just typically hang out half-an-hour before the show before we get into focus.

Today is Valentine’s Day, anything special for the audience?

Actually, in Denmark we don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day, it’s not a tradition there. Maybe some do but I never liked it, so I’m actually going to celebrate my first one with everyone here.

Actually speaking of holidays, I asked Rasmus (School of X), about where he’d have his dream holiday and he said in Mexico with you.

Ah! Oh my God that’s the cutest! We used to go to Tulum and enjoy the ecotourism, but now it’s a bit too touristy and a lot of partying. It’s also because we’ve been travelling for so many years, and vacations, they are really important and it’s about having time together. So I would say the same, no matter where we are, the best vacation is one with Rasmus.

[blackfreethinkers]

Ten years have passed since my book, “The New Jim Crow,” was published. I wrote it to challenge our nation to reckon with the recurring cycles of racial reform, retrenchment and rebirth of caste-like systems that have defined our racial history since slavery. It has been an astonishing decade. Everything and nothing has changed.

When I was researching and writing the book, Barack Obama had not yet been elected president of the United States. I was in disbelief that our country would actually elect a black man to be the leader of the so-called free world. As the election approached, I felt an odd sense of hope and dread. I hoped against all reason that we would actually do it. But I also knew that, if we did, there would be a price to pay.

Everything I knew through experience and study told me that we as a nation did not fully understand the nature of the moment we were in. We had recently birthed another caste system — a system of mass incarceration — that locked millions of poor people and people of color in literal and virtual cages.

Our nation’s prison and jail population had quintupled in 30 years, leaving us with the highest incarceration rate in the world. A third of black men had felony records — due in large part to a racially biased, brutal drug war — and were relegated to a permanent second-class status. Tens of millions of people in the United States had been stripped of basic civil and human rights, including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, education and basic public benefits.

Nevertheless, our nation remained in deep denial that a new caste system even existed, and most of us — even those who cared deeply about racial justice — did not seem to understand that powerful racial dynamics and political forces were at play that made much of our racial progress illusory. We had not faced our racial history and could not tell the truth about our racial present, yet growing numbers of Americans wanted to elect a black president and leap into a “colorblind” future.

I was right to worry about the aftermath of Obama’s election. After he was inaugurated, our nation was awash in “post-racialism.” Black History Month events revolved around “how far we’ve come.” Many in the black community and beyond felt that, if Obama could win the presidency, anything was possible. Few people wanted to hear the message I felt desperate to convey: Despite appearances, our nation remains trapped in a cycle of racial reform, backlash and re-formation of systems of racial and social control.

Things have changed since then. Donald Trump is president of the United States. For many, this feels like whiplash. After eight years of Barack Obama — a man who embraced the rhetoric (though not the politics) of the civil rights movement — we now have a president who embraces the rhetoric and the politics of white nationalism. This is a president who openly stokes racial animosity and even racial violence, who praises dictators (and likely aspires to be one), who behaves like a petulant toddler on Twitter, and who has a passionate, devoted following of millions of people who proudly say they want to “make America great again” by taking us back to a time that we’ve left behind.

We are now living in an era not of post-racialism but of unabashed racialism, a time when many white Americans feel free to speak openly of their nostalgia for an age when their cultural, political and economic dominance could be taken for granted — no apologies required. Racial bigotry, fearmongering and scapegoating are no longer subterranean in our political discourse; the dog whistles have been replaced by bullhorns. White nationalist movements are operating openly online and in many of our communities; they’re celebrating mass killings and recruiting thousands into their ranks.

White nationalism has been emboldened by our president, who routinely unleashes hostile tirades against black and brown people — calling Mexican migrants criminals, “rapists” and “bad people,” referring to developing African nations as “shithole countries” and smearing a district of the majority-black city of Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Millions of Americans are cheering, or at least tolerating, these racial hostilities.

Contrary to what many people would have us believe, what our nation is experiencing is not an “aberration.” The politics of “Trumpism” and “fake news” are not new; they are as old as the nation itself. The very same playbook has been used over and over in this country by those who seek to preserve racial hierarchy, or to exploit racial resentments and anxieties for political gain, each time with similar results.

Back in the 1980s and ’90s, Democratic and Republican politicians leaned heavily on the racial stereotypes of “crack heads,” “crack babies,” “superpredators” and “welfare queens” to mobilize public support for the War on Drugs, a get-tough movement and a prison-building boom — a political strategy that was traceable in large part to the desire to appeal to poor and working-class white voters who had defected from the Democratic Party in the wake of the civil rights movement.

Today, the rhetoric has changed, but the game remains the same. Public enemy No. 1 in the 2016 election was a brown-skinned immigrant, an “illegal,” a “terrorist” or an influx of people who want to take your job or rape your daughter. As Trump put it: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems. … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

He promised to solve this imaginary crisis through mass deportation and building a wall between the United States and Mexico. He also insisted that his political opponent, Hillary Clinton, wanted “millions of illegal immigrants to come in and take everybody’s jobs.” And he blamed domestic terroristic attacks in New Jersey and New York on “our extremely open immigration system,” which, he argued, allows Muslim terrorists into our country.

The fact that Trump’s claims were demonstrably false did not impede his rise, just as facts were largely irrelevant at the outset of the War on Drugs. It didn’t matter back then that studies consistently found that whites were equally likely, if not more likely, than people of color to use and sell illegal drugs. Black people were still labeled the enemy. Nor did it matter, when the drug war was taking off, that nearly all of the sensationalized claims that crack cocaine was some kind of “demon drug,” drastically more harmful than powder cocaine, were false or misleading. Black people charged with possession of crack in inner cities were still punished far more harshly than white people in possession of powder cocaine in the suburbs. And it didn’t matter that African-Americans weren’t actually taking white people’s jobs or college educations in significant numbers through affirmative action programs.

Getting tough on “them” — the racially defined “others” who could easily be used as scapegoats and cast as the enemy — was all that mattered. Facts were treated as largely irrelevant then. As they are now.

Fortunately, a growing number of scholars and activists have begun to connect the dots between mass incarceration and mass deportation in our nation’s history and current politics. The historian Kelly Lytle Hernández, in her essay “Amnesty or Abolition: Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement,” chronicles how these systems have emerged as interlocking forms of social control that relegate “aliens” and “felons” to a racialized caste of outsiders. In recent decades, the system of mass incarceration has stripped away from millions of U.S. citizens basic civil and human rights until their status mirrors (or dips below) that of noncitizen immigrants within the United States. This development has coincided with the criminalization of immigration in the United States, resulting in a new class of “illegal immigrants” and “aliens” who are viewed and treated like “felons” or “criminals.” Immigration violations that were once treated as minor civil infractions are now crimes. And minor legal infractions, ranging from shoplifting to marijuana possession to traffic violations, now routinely prompt one of the nation’s most devastating sanctions — deportation.

The story of how our “nation of immigrants” came to deport and incarcerate so many for so little, Hernández explains, is a story of race and unfreedom reaching back to the era of emancipation. If we fail to understand the historical relationship between these systems, especially the racial politics that enabled them, we will be unable to build a truly united front that will prevent the continual re-formation of systems of racial and social control.

In my experience, those who argue that the systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation simply reflect sincere (but misguided) efforts to address the real harms caused by crime, or the real challenges created by surges in immigration, tend to underestimate the corrupting influence of white supremacy whenever black and brown people are perceived to be the problem. “Between me and the other world, there is ever an unasked question,” W.E.B. Du Bois famously said back in 1897: “How does it feel to be a problem?” White people are generally allowed to have problems, and they’ve historically been granted the power to define and respond to them. But people of color — in this “land of the free” forged through slavery and genocide — are regularly viewed and treated as the problem.

White nationalism, at its core, reflects a belief that our nation’s problems would be solved if only people of color could somehow be gotten rid of, or at least better controlled. In short, mass incarceration and mass deportation have less to do with crime and immigration than the ways we’ve chosen to respond to those issues when black and brown people are framed as the problem.

As Khalil Gibran Muhammad points out in “The Condemnation of Blackness,” throughout our nation’s history, when crime and immigration have been perceived as white, our nation’s response has been radically different from when those phenomena have been defined as black or brown. The systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation may seem entirely unrelated at first glance, but they are both deeply rooted in our racial history, and they both have expanded in part because of the enormous profits to be made in controlling, exploiting and eliminating vulnerable human beings.

It is tempting to imagine that electing a Democratic president or more Democratic politicians will fix the crises in our justice systems and our democracy. To be clear, removing Trump from office is necessary and urgent; but simply electing more Democrats to office is no guarantee that our nation will break its habit of birthing enormous systems of racial and social control. Indeed, one of the lessons of recent decades is these systems can grow and thrive even when our elected leaders claim to be progressive and espouse the rhetoric of equality, inclusion and civil rights.

President Bill Clinton, who publicly aligned himself with the black community and black leaders, escalated a racially discriminatory drug war in part to avoid being cast by conservatives as “soft on crime.” Similarly, President Obama publicly preached values of inclusion and compassion toward immigrants, yet he escalated the mass detention and deportation of noncitizens.

Obama claimed that his administration was focused on deporting: “Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.” However, reports by The New York Times and the Marshall Project revealed that, despite Obama’s rhetoric, a clear majority of immigrants detained and deported during his administration had no criminal records, except minor infractions, including traffic violations, and posed no threat.

Equally important is the reality that “felons” have families. And “criminals” are often children or teenagers. The notion that, if you’ve ever committed a crime, you’re permanently disposable is the very idea that has rationalized mass incarceration in the United States.

None of this is to minimize the real progress that has occurred on many issues of race and criminal justice during the past decade. Today, there is bipartisan support for some prison downsizing, and hundreds of millions of philanthropic dollars have begun to flow toward criminal justice reform. A vibrant movement led by formerly incarcerated and convicted people is on the rise — a movement that has challenged or repealed disenfranchisement laws in several states, mobilized support of sentencing reform and successfully organized to “ban the box” on employment applications that discriminate against those with criminal records by asking the dreaded question: “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

Activism challenging police violence has swept the nation — inspired by the courageous uprisings in Ferguson, Mo., the viral videos of police killings of unarmed black people, and #BlackLivesMatter. Promising movements for restorative and transformative justice have taken hold in numerous cities. Campaigns against cash bail have gained steam. Marijuana legalization has sped across the nation, with more than 25 states having partly or fully decriminalized cannabis since 2012.

And “The New Jim Crow,” which some predicted would never get an audience, wound up spending nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and has been used widely by faith groups, activists, educators and people directly affected by mass incarceration inside and outside prisons. Over the past 10 years, I’ve received thousands of letters — and tens of thousands of emails — from people in all walks of life who have written to share how the book changed their lives or how they have used it to support consciousness-raising or activism in countless ways.

Everything has changed. And yet nothing has.

The politics of white supremacy, which defined our original constitution, have continued unabated — repeatedly and predictably engendering new systems of racial and social control. Just a few decades ago, politicians vowed to build more prison walls. Today, they promise border walls.

The political strategy of divide, demonize and conquer has worked for centuries in the United States — since the days of slavery — to keep poor and working people angry at (and fearful of) one another rather than uniting to challenge unjust political and economic systems. At times, the tactics of white supremacy have led to open warfare. Other times, the divisions and conflicts are less visible, lurking beneath the surface.

The stakes now are as high as they’ve ever been. Nearly everyone seems aware that our democracy is in crisis, yet few seem prepared to reckon with the reality that removing Trump from office will not rid our nation of the social and political dynamics that made his election possible. No issue has proved more vexing to this nation than the issue of race, and yet no question is more pressing than how to overcome the politics of white supremacy — a form of politics that not only led to an actual civil war but that threatens our ability ever to create a truly fair, just and inclusive democracy.

We find ourselves in this dangerous place not because something radically different has occurred in our nation’s politics, but because so much has remained the same.

The inconvenient truth is that racial progress in this country is always more complex and frequently more illusory than it appears at first glance. The past 10 years has been a case in point. Our nation has swung sharply from what Marc Mauer memorably termed “a race to incarcerate” — propelled by bipartisan wars on “drugs” and “crime” — to a bipartisan commitment to criminal justice reform, particularly in the area of drug policy. And yet, it must be acknowledged that much of the progress occurred not because of newfound concern for people of color who have been the primary targets of the drug war, but because drug addiction, due to the opioid crisis, became perceived as a white problem, and wealthy white investors became interested in profiting from the emerging legal cannabis industry.

Some of the reversals in political opinion have been striking. For example, John Boehner, a former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, stated in 2011 that he was “unalterably opposed to decriminalizing marijuana,” but by the spring of 2018 he had joined the board of a cannabis company.

Growing sympathy for illegal drug users among whites and conservatives, and concern regarding the expense of mass imprisonment, helped to make possible a bipartisan consensus in support of the Trump administration’s First Step Act — leading to the early release of more than 3,000 people from federal prisons for drug offenses. This development, which benefits people of color subject to harsh and biased drug sentencing laws, is difficult to characterize as major progress toward ending mass incarceration, given that Trump continued to unleash racially hostile tirades against communities of color and his administration vowed to reinstate the federal death penalty. He also rescinded a number of significant reforms adopted by Obama and expanded the use of private prisons.

Obama also has a complicated legacy with respect to criminal justice reform. Obama was the first sitting president to visit a federal correctional facility, the first to oversee a drop in the federal prison population in more than 30 years, and he granted clemency to nearly 2,000 people behind bars — the highest total for any president since Harry Truman. His administration enacted significant policy changes, including legislation reducing sentencing disparities involving crack and powder cocaine, a phasing out of federal contracts with private prisons, and limitations on the transfer of military equipment to local police departments.

And yet it sometimes appeared that Obama was reluctant to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the structural changes required to address police violence and the prevailing systems of racial and social control.

For example, when black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested in his own home for no reason, Obama responded to the national furor and media frenzy by inviting Gates and the arresting officer to a “beer summit” at the White House to work things out over drinks and peanuts, as though racial profiling is little more than an interpersonal dispute that can be resolved through friendly dialogue.

Most troubling, the modest criminal justice reforms that were achieved during the Obama administration coincided with the expansion of the system of mass deportation. Although the administration agreed to phase out federal contracts for private prisons, it made enormous investments in private detention centers for immigrants, including the granting of a $1 billion contract to Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest prison company, to build a detention facility for women and children asylum seekers from Central America.

Immigrant detention centers were exempted from the phaseout plan for private prisons, which meant that only about a quarter of the population held in private facilities in the United States was affected by the plan. The caging of immigrants for profit was allowed to continue without restraint.

The reality is that, during both the Obama and Clinton years, highly racialized and punitive systems thrived under liberal presidents who were given the benefit of the doubt by those who might otherwise have been critics. Obama and Clinton’s public displays of affection for communities of color, the egalitarian values they preached and their liberal or progressive stances on other issues helped to shield these vast systems of control from close scrutiny.

Many of us saw these presidents as “good people” with our best interests at heart, doing what they could to navigate a political environment in which only limited justice is possible. All of these factors played a role, but one was key: These systems grew with relatively little political resistance because people of all colors were willing to tolerate the disposal of millions of individuals once they had been labeled criminals in the media and political discourse. This painful reality suggests that ending our nation’s habit of creating enormous systems of racial and social control requires us to expand our sphere of moral concern so widely that none of us, not even those branded criminals, can be viewed or treated as disposable.

If there is any silver lining to be found in the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, it is that millions of people have been inspired to demonstrate solidarity on a large scale across the lines of gender, race, religion and class in defense of those who have been demonized and targeted for elimination. Trump’s blatant racial demagogy has awakened many from their “colorblind” slumber and spurred collective action to oppose the Muslim ban and the border wall, and to create sanctuaries for immigrants in their places of worship and local communities.

Many who are engaged in this work are also deeply involved in, or supportive of, movements to end police violence and mass incarceration. Growing numbers of people are beginning to see how the politics of white supremacy have resurfaced again and again, leading to the creation and maintenance of new systems of racial and social control. A politics of deep solidarity is beginning to emerge — the only form of politics that holds any hope for our collective liberation.

The centuries-long struggle to birth a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy — a nation in which every voice and every life truly matters — did not begin with us, and it will not end with us. The struggle is as old as the nation itself and the birth process has been painful, to say the least. My greatest hope and prayer is that we will serve as faithful midwives in our lifetimes and do what we can to make America, finally, what it must become.

[salmonthestoryteller]

One Flew East, One Flew West

@roswellprompts for Crash Fest 2019.

@dummythiccie - Prompt Two: A high school class with all of the characters in it I was actually super excited to get this prompt! I love writing gen fics, and writing one set in the past was the perfect playground.  I hope you enjoy it!

One Flew East, One Flew West A Roswell New Mexico Fanfic

Liz paced as the clock snuck closer to the end of the lunch period.

"Liz, it isn't the end of the world." Maria tried to cheer her up.

"Maria, not only did I forget the book for American Literature, I left my notes in it.”  Liz glanced at her watch again.  Lunch was almost over.

“Rosa said she’d bring it, right?”  Alex was lounging against the wall and seemed about as concerned as Maria.  Which was not at all.

“Since when does that mean anything?”  Liz crossed her arms, and continued to pace.

Maria and Alex exchanged a glance.  “I’m sure she’ll be here.”  Maria reassured her.

Before Liz could go into a list of the reasons she might not be, Rosa’s car pulled into the school parking lot.  Liz relaxed somewhat, though she was still bouncing in place on the sidewalk waiting for the car to pull up next to her. She opened the door to lean inside.  “Gracias, Rosa, I-”  Liz cut off, coughing.  “Seriously? How can you breathe in here?”

“I have the windows open.”  Rosa pointed out.  Her posture was loose, and her eyes slightly unfocused.

“Are you drunk or just high?”  Liz asked her, grabbing up the book from the front seat angrily.

“I’m not that high.  Chill, little miss perfect.”

“This isn’t funny, Rosa.  What if Valenti pulls you over?”

“Well, I mean his son his still drooling over my sister, maybe he’ll cut me some slack.”

“Rosa, seriously you-- just tell me Dad and Mom didn’t see you like this.”

“As if any of us have seen Mom for the last week.”  Rosa reminded her.

The bell rung.  Liz slammed the door shut and stormed inside without replying. Alex and Maria exchanged looks, and Alex followed Liz.

“You could not fight with her.”  Maria suggested, leaning on the driver’s side window.

“She’s so uptight.”  Rosa replied.  “Seriously.”

“You know how she gets when your mom does this.”

“She has her way of dealing and I have mine.  Don’t even care right now where she is. I feel great.”

Rosa’s words only made Maria’s expression more concerned.  “I’ve got to get to class. Drive safe, okay?”

“Pfft.  I think I obeyed every traffic law getting here. I didn’t even california roll that stupid stop sign on seventh.”  Rosa told her.  Maria looked like she wanted to say more, but Rosa waved her off.  “I’m good.  Don’t be late for class or Liz will blame me.”

“We can hang out later, okay?”  Maria promised, before heading inside.

-----

“So you took notes?”  Alex kept his tone light as he fell into step beside her in the school hallway.

“I always take notes.”  Liz replied, still tense from the fight with Rosa.

“It’s literature, Liz.  Not chemistry.  I’m sure you can remember the plot just fine.”

“Last year, I heard Mr. Williams failed a student for not citing enough in book references for her report.  You know what he’s always saying.”

“You mean the whole, “If you think you can watch the movie version and fill out one of my quizzes, you’re wrong” schtick? Yah, I’m pretty sure that's an exaggeration.” Alex offered her a grin.

“What if it’s not?” Liz told him as they entered the classroom and took their seats.  “It could affect my whole GPA.”

“You do realise you have another whole year before graduation?”  Alex reminded her.

“You can’t slack off and make it up in one year.  They look at the whole record.”  Liz told him.

“Seriously?”  Isobel was seated on MIchael’s desk near the back.  “Please tell me we are not discussing colleges when Homecoming is less than two weeks away.”

“Some people take this stuff seriously, Iz.”  Michael lectured her. He had a notebook out, but whatever he was scribbling didn’t look like it was related to the American Literature class.

“I didn’t realize you were part of the conversation.”  Liz mentioned, keeping her smile intact though she sounded slightly annoyed.

“Iz thinks she’s part of every conversation.”  Max moved to diffuse the situation, taking his seat in front of Michael.

“Just the ones that are actually important.” As if to emphasize the point, Isobel got up and returned to her seat.  A few of the girls from the class quickly gathered around her. Liz rolled her eyes and took her own seat.

“I see you got your notes.”  Max pointed out.

“Yah, Rosa came through.”  Liz’s expression was still far from happy.

Max glanced at Alex, who gave a small shake of his head.  “We were discussing whether notes were necessary in literature class.”  He offered in way of moving the conversation forward.

“Well, yah, of course they are.” Max gestured to his own notebook.

“Puh-lease.  So unnecessary.”  Michael commented, despite still being engrossed in his own notebook.  Alex found himself trying to peer at the pages, but he was keeping it in his lap and the desk was blocking even though Isobel had moved away.

“You and that big brain of yours don’t count.”  Max told him.

“You can probably quote every book we’ve been assigned for this class.”  Michael glanced up at him. “You’ve read every one.”

“That’s cuz Evans is a loser who doesn’t know the meaning of the word fun.”  Kyle glanced back from his seat toward the front. Max’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t respond.  “Nothing to say, Evans?”

“Leave him alone, Kyle.”  Liz spoke up.

Kyle shrugged.  “I’m just giving advice. Not my fault if I think Evans needs to loosen up a little.”

“My brother is just an exception to the “Girls mature faster than boys rule” that you are so clearly demonstrating.”  Isobel spoke up from her desk.

“Or maybe all the Evans are just a little bit frigid.”  Kate Long put in from where she was standing with the group around Kyle’s desk.

“You want to start something with me, Kate?”  Isobel leaned forward.  “I mean your brand of fun seems to keep landing you in detention rather than on the homecoming board.  Which, oh right, you’re banned from going to, aren’t you?  Doesn’t sound like you’re much fun to me.”

“You little-!”

“Hey, hey.”  Maria had just entered, and quickly pulled Kate back from where she was heading toward Isobel.  “What is going on in here?”

“A badly cliched teen drama plot?”  Alex offered her.  Isobel and Kate both shot glares his way.

The bell rang again, and Maria let go of Kate to take her seat by Liz.  She offered a smile to her best friend, who returned it before focusing on her notes.  A glance back at Alex earned a shrug, and she nodded in return.

“Everyone who is not in their seats in the next thirty seconds just earned themselves a special assignment.”  Mr Williams walked into the classroom.  The students still milling around other desks quickly grabbed their seats. “I’m not even going to pretend half of you read the first five chapters of the book like instructed.  So let’s see if you even recall what book you’re on… Mr Valenti?”

Kyle turned back from where he’d been talking to the friend at the desk behind him.  “The one about the looney bin.”  He offered.  His friends laughed at the joke, as did a few other students.

“The one about the looney bin.  Well, I can’t say I recall that title being on my reading list this semester.”  Mr Williams crossed his arms.  “Care to try again or should I just assume you didn’t read anything besides the synopsis on the assignment papers?”

Kyle rolled his eyes, hesitating a moment before answering.  “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“Glad to see you actually managed to read the title on the front at least.”  Mr Williams circled the desk.  “Now did anyone get so far as who can tell me the main character? Ms Long?”

“McMurphy.”  Kate answered.

“I take it you and your friends watched part of the movie this weekend?”

“I-” She began to object, but Mr Williams spoke over her.

“Ms Ortecho?  Who’s the main character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”

“Chief.” Liz offered.  “He’s the one the book’s narrative is told from.”

“But McMurphy is who everything is about.”  Kate disagreed.

“McMurphy is going to disrupt the ward, but that doesn’t make him the main character.”  Max jumped in.  “He’s the static character.  Chief is the one who will change.”

“Reading ahead of the class, Mr Evans?”  Mr Williams asked pointedly.

Max played with the edges of the notebook in front of him.. “I, um… I’ve actually read the book previously.”

“Shocking.”  Kyle whispered to the group near him.

“Something to say, Mr Valenti?”  Mr Williams turned to him.

“Just curious if there’s an assignment in this class Evans hasn’t read, honestly.”  Kyle offered.  When his friends snickered, Max only sat back with a sigh.

“Have something productive to add to the conversation about the actual assignment or do think my class is a waste of time for you?”

The classroom fell deathly silent.  “Just that I really didn’t find any of the characters very interesting, to be honest.”  Kyle offered.  “Or relative to modern society.”

“It’s about society.”  Michael broke in.  “It’s about how fucked up society is.”

A few snickers followed his words, and Mr Williams sighed.  “Mr Guerin, language.”

“I agree with him.”  Alex spoke up.  “That’s the whole point of the story.  How society is prejudice against anything that doesn’t fit its current viewpoint on normal.  That’s as relative today as when the book was written.”

“Call me surprised, Manes, that that’s your take.”  Kyle glowered at him.  “All things considered.”

“Alright, break it up.”  Mr Williams sat behind his desk.  “I’m hoping all of you remembered to actually bring the book to class, because if it’s not with you today I’ve got a great extra assignment for you.”

Liz sent Alex and Maria a look that plainly said, “I told you so.”

“We’re starting on chapter six.  And I suggest those of you who haven't read the first five chapters get them read before the quiz at the end of the week.  Who wants to start?”

Fini

[biofunmy]

The best TV of the decade? It’s a lot to sort out.

Impossible, really — and, at first pass, my picks for best shows of the 2010s wouldn’t look much different from most other critics’ lists: “Breaking Bad,” “The Americans,” “Game of Thrones,” “Twin Peaks: The Return,” “Veep,” “The Good Wife,” “Transparent,” “Atlanta,” “Fargo,” “The Crown” — that’s 10, right? Hit “send” and let’s get on with life.

But perhaps there’s another way to approach this stretch of much-too-much TV, and instead categorize the shared qualities that separated the decade’s very best shows from the heap of mediocre ones. That way, we can talk about this extraordinary period of scripted dramas and comedies without starting one last argument about where they rank.

I know readers only have time anymore to read lists, but bear with me. Here are the best kinds of shows we watched over the last 10 years. Many of them belong to more than one category — a sign of their greatness.

Anxiety-makers

These would be your nail-biters, seen mainly on prestige cable, often on Sunday nights.

Why we gorge on these cliffhanging, often upsetting dramas on the night we most need to rest up for the week ahead, I’ll never know, but we went to bed desperate over characters and story lines we couldn’t control: In AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” probably the decade’s finest work of story engineering and execution (and yes, I’m aware it premiered in 2008), when will Hank Schrader (or Skyler White) finally catch on that Walter White is the meth kingpin of New Mexico? Some of those close calls (the train episode!) and slow-building conflicts were almost too hard to take.

The decade’s other great adrenaline-producer, FX’s “The Americans,” aired on Wednesday nights, where the panic attacks seemed more manageable. How long would it take FBI agent Stan Beeman to figure out that his friendly neighbors, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, were deeply embedded KGB spies? How much does Paige know? Will they outlast the Cold War? Showtime’s “Homeland,” meanwhile, neatly bundled our post-9/11 anxieties with the mental problems of a CIA agent who thought she could save the world.

These are but three shows that gave America’s TV addicts a strong case of the jitters. Others tried and sometimes came close. I started out the decade worrying way too much about Rick and the other doomed survivors of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” (until I gave up on them entirely a few years ago), but the show’s success is notable for its stress-inducement, which was so strong that the network started an aftershow, “Talking Dead,” to help audiences cope with the latest gory developments.

Immersive portraits

These were some of my favorite shows, broadly defined by the word “dramedy” (because they were sometimes intensely funny), but better described as character studies, portraiture — of characters I’ll never forget: Amy Jellicoe in HBO’s “Enlightened,” followed by Hannah Horvath in “Girls.”

Many shows in this category can in some ways be regarded as selfies. Louis C.K., who quickly became persona-non-grata, nevertheless triumphed with “Louie,” which made it possible for similar shows to act as a mirror that not only reveals a personal nature, but a universal quality that potentially can be shared by the audience. I’m thinking here of Donald Glover’s “Atlanta” (FX), Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None” (Netflix), Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag” (along with “Catastrophe”) and Pamela Adlon’s “Better Things” (FX).

This genre also, at long last, helped television achieve the diversity it had for too long failed to produce. Issa Rae’s “Insecure” (HBO) is a triumph in the way it both inhabits its creator’s viewpoint as millennial black woman, yet welcomes viewers of any sort.

To that list add Hulu’s “Ramy” and “Pen15,” HBO’s “Looking” and Comedy Central’s “Broad City” — any show where a viewer potentially discovers someone unlike themselves: different age, different background, different race. Or, more importantly, a viewer at long last sees themselves in the main character.

Washington certainly saw its uglier self in Armando Iannucci’s gloriously foul-mouthed “Veep” (HBO), the true definition of comic relief and on-point satire at a time when politics grew unfathomably absurd.

Metaphorical profundity

The best dramas in the 2010s reflected a larger message about the society that watched them — sometimes obliquely, sometimes bluntly. Despite its notably weakened final season, HBO’s “Game of Thrones” has proper claim, I think, to be deemed the show of the decade, but not just because it grew so popular. It’s because how much of it seemed to eerily echo our surroundings: Climate change (and denial of it); shocking acts of violence; widespread social collapse; galling politics; extreme disparities in class and wealth; weapons of mass destruction . . . I could go on.

Timing is everything. Hulu took a 1985 dystopian novel — Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” — revved it up and released it just as the Trump administration began detaining, locking up and banning immigrants, appointed conservative judges and looked the other way at nationalist fervor. The metaphor there was almost too applicable; fortunately, the show was strong enough to withstand the hype.

Viewers learned how to find meaning in just about any show — the betters ones made it more compelling: AMC’s “Mad Men” was a beguiling search for the soul of the 20th century; CBS’s “The Good Wife” was a wicked running commentary on politics, technology and modern relationships; NBC’s “This Is Us” was (and still is) a fascinating rumination on the essence of what makes a family. (Note to all you Ancestry genealogy nuts: It’s not just DNA.)

Happy-snarky-sweet

Certain comedies just make us feel better (and also sharper, wittier — empowered, even) no matter how many times we re-watch old episodes. It’s in the camaraderie aspect, the life lessons, the archetypal arrangements, the snarkiness glossed over by group cohesion. It’s a continuation of what began in the best multicamera, studio-audience, ersatz-family sitcoms (“Cheers,” “Seinfeld”), rejiggered for a wired generation. Most of them aired on NBC: “Parks and Recreation,” “30 Rock,” “Community,” “The Office,” “The Good Place,” “Superstore” — now joined by “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” A few others aired on other networks, giving viewers a similar satisfaction: “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS; “Modern Family,”“Happy Endings,” “Cougar Town” and “Black-ish” on ABC.

Transformative tellings

In addition to finding new narrative styles and (quite belatedly) focusing on overlooked demographics, TV turned out to be an excellent venue for recasting an old story from a fresh perspective or enlightened distance.

I’m thinking here of FX’s “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” a compelling departure from the way we popularly regarded that murder trial. It inspired others to dramatize previous events with a corrective, even courageous new viewpoint — such as Netflix’s “When They See Us,” about the unjustly imprisoned teens who were wrongly coerced into confessing to a 1989 Central Park attack on a female jogger.

Crime wasn’t the only subject in need of a remix. Both “Downton Abbey” (PBS) and “The Crown” (Netflix) succeeded because of the way they re-examine extreme privilege, without preventing us from enjoying the luxurious roll in it.

Some shows were revelatory in more subtle ways: Jill Soloway’s “Transparent” (Amazon Prime) masterfully wove a woman’s journey with the entirety of modern American Judaism, enlightening its audience to more than just the trans experience. And Showtime’s “The Affair” played with the very nature of truth, telling the story of marital infidelity from competing — and crucially different — perspectives.

Impossible puzzles and true art

If the decade in TV will be remembered for anything, it will likely be the complexity of some shows. The weirdness. The unexpected swerves. It turned its viewers into perpetual puzzle-solvers and conspiracy theorists. After beginning the decade with an unsatisfying wrap-up of ABC’s “Lost,” co-creator Damon Lindelof returned on HBO with a confounding take on “The Leftovers,” finally mastering the balance between befuddlement and momentum with “Watchmen.”

There are, finally, two standouts — and they challenged my ceaseless harangue about reboots. One was Noah Hawley’s expanded and wholly reimagined take for FX on “Fargo,” a Midwestern crime saga first seen in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 film classic.

The other was David Lynch’s long-delayed but staggeringly beautiful sequel to his 1990 TV sensation “Twin Peaks.” Critics argued, somewhat pointlessly, whether “Twin Peaks: The Return” (Showtime) was a very long film or a strangely protracted TV series.

I can settle that: It was nothing short of pure art — unexpected, absolutely original and layered with deep, trippy meaning. Of all the TV I slogged through in the 2010s, it’s the show I most look forward to someday watching again.

Sahred From Source link Entertainment

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[extraterrestreilegal]

Chapter I

Growing up is an adventure all on its own. You are your own person so you feel like you are who you are meant to be. Aside from all the confusion that goes along with growing up, we grow up into the version of ourselves that we hope will take us to the life we want to be living. But what happens when everything you once thought was right, turns out to be wrong? What happens when a boy grows up fearing not only the world, but himself. Of what he could become… of his potential. It was 2002 and I was only five year’s old. A year after tragedy struck the United States of America by the hand of Osama bin Laden, I found myself at Benito Juaréz Aeropuerto International in the heart of Mexico City, Mexico, my home.

My mother told us that our father was coming home. Being five year’s old, I didn’t understand where he had been. Growing up I always heard the story of how my brother and I cried when the world trade center was struck. Not because our father was there, but because we didn’t know where he was and all we knew he was in America. So we cried because we thought our father was gone. My mother would say she calmed us down and told us he was safe. But I remember not believing it until I saw him at the airport. I remember feeling relief at the sight of his face. But the thing was, I didn’t recognize the man who was towering over me when he walked up to us at the airport. I only felt excitement and a sense of what was going on because my older brother, Alex, ran up to him, cried, and hugged him. I rarely remember this day, but I remember the feelings I felt. I remember confusion of why I was hugging this man. I didn’t recognize him, but my brother called him dad. So it must be him.

Though my mind was young and I only have flashes of memories left in me, I remember a few days later my mother and grandmother were arguing. My grandfather was upset and I couldn’t quite understand why. But I knew there must be either something wrong because I hadn’t seen them argue a lot since my father had left. A few days later, we’re packing backpacks with 2 pairs of clothes, some water, snacks, etc. Me being a child, I remember feeling excited. We only did these things when we were going to the beach, or on a family trip. Except this time, it was only my mother, father, and Alex that were going to go on a permanent trip to America. I felt sad because I remember wanting the rest of my family to come, I grew up always going on family trips with everyone. But not this time. This time, it felt more quiet. Like there was something else going on, but I was young. So I went along with it until I found my mom looking at our house in the city that my grandfather had built for us. I saw a look in her eyes that I can’t ever forget. It was the sight of hope. I always knew my mother was a strong woman. But neither her or I had any idea of what seeing our home for the last time, would do to us. It was the last time I saw that in her eyes, and I would always remember how I felt. Hopeful.

Driving through Mexico City in the mornings always felt like a day dream. The view from the highest elevated roads leading down towards the city always made it feel like a rollercoaster in a movie. You knew it was a beautiful city, you knew where you were going, it was the center of Mexico, I never understood why we’d ever want to leave it. After overhearing my grandfather talking to my parents, I started realizing that it might be the last time I would ever get to see my city. I hesitantly asked my grandfather if my brother and I could ride in the hatch of his truck. He smiled, stopped the truck, and let us hop in the back. Looking into the distance, we could see the sun rising over the beautiful city we called home. Fiery reds, deep violets, and plush pink streaks filled the sky. I remember feeling scared and happy at the same time. I couldn’t explain it then, but deep down I felt uncertain.

About an hour had gone by since we left the city limits. We were in the middle of no where. The sun was beating on our faces as we arrived to what appeared to be an abandoned house. Shortly after our arrival, another vehicle pulled up next to us and out came two American women. Cheerful and ecstatic, they came up to our car and knocked on the window and asked in Spanish, “Hi, I’m Sarah and this is Karrah, I was just wondering if you guys are the one’s we’re supposed to be meeting here to *whispers* take us to America?” My father smiled and explained to them that we ourselves were going to be taken there as well. After a brief conversation, what appeared to be a moving truck was heading towards us in the distance. It pulled up in front of our parked vehicles and out came two men. The men were carrying guns and I think it scared my mother because she grabbed my brother and I and pushed us behind her. One introduced himself to the grown up’s as Enrique, and the other as Humberto. Enrique was carrying a hand gun at his waist and Humberto climbed out of the passenger side carrying an automatic rifle proudly in his grip.

After awkwardly standing behind my mother for a few minutes, it must have been time to go because my mother started saying goodbye to our grandfather as tears streamed down her face. After we said our goodbyes, we were led by Humberto to the back of the moving truck. Once the truck’s back doors flung open, I caught a whiff of what must have been a skunk because it sure smelled like it, except with a more earthy undertone. As I’m trying to figure out what the smell is, Sarah, one of the American’s, yelled out, “Holy shit! That’s a lot of pot! I thought I’d seen a lot in my life but never that much! How much is that?! Easily a ton I bet!”

Enrique came around the corner laughing at her and said, “Two tons to be exact! You didn’t think you guys were our only shipment this week did you?”

Full of enthusiasm, Sarah and Karrah climbed into the back of the truck and laid down on top of the bags of this “pot”. Then my family followed one by one. Everyone except my grandfather, who was sitting in his car waiting for the back doors to close on his daughter and her family.

As the doors closed on the what feels like the last memory I have in Mexico, two lights flickered on. It was Sarah and Karrah looking through their bags for water because they looked like they were ready to faint. I do give them credit for bringing flashlights because we really couldn’t see anything except the low sun light peaking through the door’s hinges. As the day went on, we were getting really exhausted from sitting down for so long, so I fell asleep in my mother’s arms. When I woke up, it was dark and all I could hear was Sarah and Karah talking in English. I climbed towards them and I said the only English word I knew, “Hi.”

They smiled and started talking to me in Spanish. They asked me what my name was, where I was from, what I liked to do for fun there, basic things. Then I asked them, “Why are you going to America if you’re American? Isn’t that where American’s are at?”

With a slight smile and warm voice, Sarah started to explain to me how they ended up in that truck with us. Now remember, this was 2002, shortly before the one year anniversary of 9/11. What happened was they were on vacation in Puerto Vallarta. They were out partying with some locals a few days before, one thing led to another, and they woke up with their belongings missing. Including their passports. Which normally would be an easy fix for Americans, they’d simply go to the United States’ Embassy and get a new one. But this was the year after the world trade center was destroyed by an extremist organization. The United States of America were taking such high precaution’s (with good reason), on who was coming in and out of their country. For unknown reasons though, the girl’s were flagged and were not permitted to renew their passport at the embassy after showing all the proper documents. So out of frustration after multiple visits to their embassy, they decided the only way they were going home was the illegal way. They had made friends in Puerto Vallarta and they set out looking for anyone who could help them “hop the border” as they put it. Eventually they spoke to the right people, got their parents to send them the amount of money needed for the service, and that led them to the back of the truck we were currently sitting in.

Shortly after they explained to me their story, everyone else started waking up. I had no idea what time it was, I just knew I had been up talking to Sarah and Karrah for a few minutes. Once my mother finally woke up, she gave my brother and I light snacks to munch on. We sat there for a while just talking amongst ourselves and then all of a sudden we heard the truck coming to a stop. We all seemed confused because we had been sitting in the back of a truck full of pot, in the dark, with two men who were driving it around with guns. We heard footsteps approaching the back and as soon as the doors flung open, we saw a dark blood red sky filling the scenery with Humberto standing there to help us out of the truck. It must’ve be sunrise because they told us it would be safe right there to stretch our legs and walk around cause we had a long day ahead of us. My parents first got off and they helped my brother and I off. After a few minutes of looking around at nothing but dirt, Sarah and Karrah got curious and asked my parents if it was okay if they took my brother and I on a short walk. Hesitantly but surely, my parents allowed us to go. Before we went on our walk, I remember my mother telling Alex to be careful and to keep an eye on me. He agreed, and then we ran towards Sarah and Karrah who were a few feet away.

As we were making our way around the desert, we decided to go over a hill that was in the near distance to see if we could see anything else if we got up higher. As we were climbing, we could see the beauty the stillness of the desert brought to our sight. Taking in the view, we noticed there was a seemingly abandoned building at the other side of the hill. Out of curiosity, we slowly made our way to what we soon discovered was an abandoned car shop. I remember being fascinated by how this structure was still standing despite all it’s flaws. The way the blood red sky peeked through the cracks showed me how beauty could be found in the darkest and scariest of places. As we made our way around the building, we saw a statue of a saint in the distance. It looked like a massive one so we made our way towards it. Sarah and Karrah were talking amongst themselves. But Alex and I eventually stopped and they bumped into us about 20 feet in front of the statue. Confused they asked us what was wrong, and then they heard what we were hearing. A low growl started coming from the statue. Next, ice blue eyes appeared from the top of the saint’s head, grey hair with the blood red sky reflecting off it started appearing. Without any hesitation, Sarah and Karrah each picked my brother and I up one by one and they ran with us in their arms. I remember looking back as they were running, whatever that was, it wasn’t coming for us. It seemed like it was more disturbed than anything. Eventually the eyes and fur disappeared into the distance and we were back with the others. Seeming nervous of whatever was out there, Enrique and Humberto told us to to get back in the truck. So we did hopped back in and again, we were locked in the back once again.

Hours later I remember hearing music playing and people talking outside of the truck. We eventually heard the truck come to a stop and again, footsteps approaching the truck. This time when Humberto opened the truck, the scent of carne asada filled our nostrils. The sound of banda music playing burst through my ears. It was as if I was back home, only I wasn’t. Once we made it out of the truck, Sarah and Karrah smiled and told us, “Welcome to America! Enjoy your stay!” And that’s when I knew, I was no longer in Mexico. I was no longer home. And that was the last time I would ever see Sarah and Karrah again. I hope they made it home okay.

[patriotsnet]

Did Trump Say Republicans Were Dumb

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-trump-say-republicans-were-dumb/

Did Trump Say Republicans Were Dumb

Ben Carson: March 4 2016

Donald Trump Tells Oprah in 1988 What He Would Do as President

You would be forgiven for forgetting that at one point last fall, Dr. Ben Carson was tied with Trump for first place in national Republican presidential preference polls. They were two different versions of the “outsider” candidate Trump, the brash billionaire and reality TV star; and Carson the quiet doctor propelled by faith. ;In;November, Trump went on the attack. He turned to Carson’s own autobiography for ammunition, noting with skepticism Carson’s story of how his religious conversion began when he attempted to stab a friend only to have the knife blade break on the friend’s belt buckle. “How stupid are the people of Iowa?” Trump asked. “How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” At the time it seemed a direct challenge to evangelicals that could only hurt Trump, but it was Carson who began to slip in the polls. The doctor did poorly in the early primaries and dropped out after Super Tuesday. A week later he endorsed Trump, saying the two had “buried the hatchet” and that he believed there are “two Donald Trumps” the bombastic public figure and the private man who is “cerebral” and willing to consider other views.

Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters

Former aides say that in private, the president has spoken with cynicism and contempt about believers.

One day in 2015, Donald Trump beckoned Michael Cohen, his longtime confidant and personal attorney, into his office. Trump was brandishing a printout of an article about an Atlanta-based megachurch pastor trying to raise $60 million from his flock to buy a private jet. Trump knew the preacher personallyCreflo Dollar had been among a group of evangelical figures who visited him in 2011 while he was first exploring a presidential bid. During the meeting, Trump had reverently bowed his head in prayer while the pastors laid hands on him. Now he was gleefully reciting the impious details of Dollars quest for a Gulfstream G650.

Trump seemed delighted by the scam, Cohen recalled to me, and eager to highlight that the pastor was full of shit. Theyre all hustlers, Trump said.

The presidents alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion. My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith, he declared at a rally for evangelicals earlier this year. Its a message his campaign will seek to amplify in the coming weeks as Republicans work to confirm Amy Coney Barretta devout, conservative Catholicto the Supreme Court.

So If None Of This Counts What’s The Point

According to those conducting the recount, the purpose of this project is to address a prevailing concern among some voters that the 2020 election was illegitimate. And if the final result is that there was no fraud? That’s fine, too.

“This is not about calling into question the results of the November election,” Ken Bennett, spokesman for the audit, told the Washington Post. “This is about identifying if there are any areas of our elections that need to be improved going forward.”

Few Democrats believe this, of course. They fear that the point of the audit is to simply sow further doubt about Biden’s victory – and pave the way for Republican state-level efforts to enact new voting restrictions that disadvantage their candidates and voters in the name of “ballot security”.

Also Check: What Is Difference Between Democrats And Republicans

Trump Slashes At Mcconnell As He Reiterates Election Falsehoods At Republican Event

Former president Donald Trump called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a dumb son of a bitch as he used a Saturday night speech to Republicans to blame the senator for not helping overturn the 2020 election and reiterated false assertions that he won the November contest.

Trump, speaking at a Republican National Committee gathering at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., excoriated a number of Republicans even as he publicly called for party unity focusing on those who voted to convict him in impeachment proceedings. But he saved his sharpest vitriol for the Kentucky Republican.

If that were Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell, they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it, he said of the election certification on Jan. 6, the day his supporters led an insurrection on the Capitol to block President Bidens formal victory.

Trump spent much of the speech, with many senators in the room, lashing into his former ally in personal terms, often to cheers from the partys top donors. He falsely claimed that he won the Senate election for McConnell in Kentucky and attacked his wife, Elaine Chao, who served as Trumps transportation secretary.

I hired his wife. Did he ever say thank you? Trump said. He then mocked Chao for resigning in response to the Jan. 6 events and Trumps behavior that day.

Some attendees left the private event early, with the speech getting mixed reviews.

Bette Midler Apologizes For Sharing Fake Trump Quote: But It Sounds So Much Like Him

Singer/actress refuses to take down the fictitious meme after her apology

Bette Midler apologized on Monday after posting a fake quote attributed to Donald Trump where he purportedly disparaged Republican voters in a 1998 People Magazine interview.

I apologize; this quote turns out to be a fake from way back in 15-16. Dont know how I missed it, but it sounds SO much like him that I believed it was true!, the singer/actress

I apologize; this quote turns out to be a fake from way back in 15-16. Dont know how I missed it, but it sounds SO much like him that I believed it was true! Fact Check: Did Trump say in 98 Republicans are dumb? via

Bette Midler

In addition to her apology, Midler also included a link to the Reno Gazette Journal debunking the quote. It read, If I were to run, Id run as a Republican. Theyre the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and theyd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.

The photo accompanying the quote shows a younger Trump around the time he was a real estate developer in New York City and long before he became a political candidate.

Dumb and Dumber @GOP, he said in a tweet before deleting. Narisetti is also an alum of the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and News Corp.

The memes providence dates back to at least 2015 when Snopes, a liberal-leaning fact-checking website, fact-checked the quote and proved it was false.

Don’t Miss: What Is The Definition Of Republicanism

Wait A Minute Bamboo Fibre

Yes. According to one volunteer, John Brakey, they’re investigating whether fake ballots may have been snuck in from overseas.

“They use bamboo in their paper processing, people in southeast Asia,” he told a local CBS television station.

Brakey is quick to say he doubts such fraud is real, but the investigators apparently want to leave no stone unturned, untested and unsubjected to ultraviolet light.

As mail-in Arizona ballots are matched against registered voters, multiple votes cast by the same individual would have been flagged.

Donald Trump’s Most Controversial Quotes

On America:

GETTY

Guns

He also praised the National Rifle Association and Second Amendment, describing his sons as serious NRA. His praise of the Second Amendment comes just days after an Uber driver went on a deadly shooting spree in Michigan, killing killed six people.

I want to begin by thanking my boys, Eric has been all over the place making speeches. Hes getting better than me so Im a little jealous. And Don went to , you were all over, right?

He loves the rifle stuff. This is serious rifle. This is serious NRA, both of them, both of them. We love the Second Amendment folks, nobody loves it more than us, so just remember that.

Guantanamo

Trump is promising to keep the controversial detention camp open after President Obama’s repeated pledges to close it, something he reiterated in his victory speech.

Were going to keep as you know Gitmo, were keeping that open, and were going to load it up with bad dudes. Were going to load it up w a lot of bad dudes out there.

Walls

Finally, he repeated his most familiar campaign promise: to build that big beautiful wall, and make Mexico pay for it.

Were going to have our borders nice and strong. Were going to build the wall, you know that. Were going to build the wall. And I have a lot of respect from Mexico and you just heard we won Hispanics. But let me tell you Mexico is going to pay for the wall, right? Its going to happen.

Recommended Reading: Who Has More Billionaires Democrats Or Republicans

Jeb Bush: Feb 20 2016

A year ago, Jeb Bush was at the forefront of an historic fundraising juggernaut, with a super PAC that raised more than $100 million by June. But Bush could never generate the passion and enthusiasm of Trump. The billionaire branded Bush a “low energy” candidate;and proceeded to tie George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq around Jeb Bush’s neck like a lead weight. During a , Trump said President Bush had lied about the pretext for the Iraq War.;Jeb rose to his brother’s defense. ;”While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe and Im proud of what he did,” he said. But Trump fired back: “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign, remember that. That’s not keeping us safe.” A;week later Trump won the winner-take-all Palmetto State primary and Bush dropped out of the race.

Tale Of The Tape: The 16 Contenders Trump Has Knocked Out

Oprah asks a 42-year-old Trump if he’d run for president

Donald Trump clobbered his opponents in Indiana, knocking out Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ;and;Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Cruz whom Trump labeled “Lyin’ Ted” acknowledged Tuesday that he had no path left to the nomination and suspended his campaign, and;Kasich threw in the towel;Wednesday. Even RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has called the fight for Trump, declaring the billionaire the presumptive nominee.

Heres how Trump has dispatched the contenders who stepped into the ring with him during this years presidential contest:

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Jeb’s Campaign Releases Video Of ‘the Real Donald Trump’

Jeb Bush’s campaign is ratcheting up its attacks on Donald Trump, releasing a video that paints the Republican presidential candidate as an unabashed liberal. And Trump is firing right back.

The spot, titled “The Real Donald Trump,” plays on two separate occasions a clip of the billionaire candidate saying that he “lived in New York and Manhattan my whole life” and that “my views are a little bit different than if I had lived in Iowa.”

“Liberal Things That Trump Says,” the text on screen reads before flipping to “Liberal Things That Trump Believes.” Trump has made a point of embracing his eclectic policy views in the past, something that Bush’s campaign is seizing upon in the latest spot.

Trump is shown in a 1999 “Meet the Press” interview telling Tim Russert that he is “very pro-choice,” though a dozen years later, Trump announced that he opposed abortion in most instances, except in cases of rape, incest or to protect the health of the mother.

The spot also highlights Trump’s praise of single-payer health care systems in Canada and in Scotland during last month’s GOP debate, though it does not include his qualifying statement that although he thought it was a good idea for the U.S. in the late 1990s, he does not believe that to now be the case.

Im Getting The Word Out: Inside The Feverish Mind Of Donald Trump Two Months After Leaving The White House

I Alone Can Fix It

To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.

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To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.

Seventy days had passed since Donald Trump left Washington against his will. On March 31, 2021, we ventured to Mar-a-Lago, where he still reigned as king of Republican politics. We arrived late that afternoon for our audience with the man who used to be president and were ushered into an ornate sixty-foot-long room that functioned as a kind of lobby leading to the clubs patio. A model of Air Force One painted in Trumps proposed redesigna flat red stripe across the middle, a navy belly, a white top, and a giant American flag on the tailwas proudly displayed on the coffee table facing the entrance. It was a prop disconnected from reality.; Trumps vision never came to be; the fleet now in use by President Biden still bears the iconic baby blue-and-white livery designed by Jacqueline Kennedy.

Trump had invited us to Mar-a-Lago to interview him for this book. He had declined an interview for our first book about his presidency, and when A Very Stable Genius was published in January 2020, attacked us personally and branded our reporting a work of fiction. But Trump was quick to agree to our request this time. He sought to curate history.

But future elections were not front and center in his mind. A past election was. Trump was fixated on his loss in 2020, returning to this wound repeatedly throughout the interview.;

Also Check: How Do Republicans Feel About Climate Change

Wisconsin Gop Wrestles With Just How Much To Indulge Trump

The former president set off infighting among state Republicans by saying they were not working hard enough to challenge the 2020 results, accusing them of covering up election corruption.

By Reid J. Epstein

Wisconsin Republicans were already going to great lengths to challenge the 2020 election results. They ordered a monthslong government audit of votes in the state. They made a pilgrimage to Arizona to observe the G.O.P. review of votes there. They hired former police officers to investigate Wisconsins election and its results.

But for Donald J. Trump, it wasnt enough.

In a blistering statement last week on the eve of the state partys convention, the former president accused top Republican state lawmakers of working hard to cover up election corruption and actively trying to prevent a Forensic Audit of the election results.

Wisconsin Republicans were alarmed and confused. Some circulated a resolution at the convention calling for the resignation of the top Republican in the State Assembly, Speaker Robin Vos, who in turn announced the appointment of a hard-line conservative former State Supreme Court justice to oversee the investigation. The Republican State Senate president released a two-page letter addressed to Mr. Trump that said his claims about Republicans were false but that made sure to clarify in fawning language the state partys allegiance to the former president.

Fact Check: Trump Did Not Call Republicans The Dumbest Group Of Voters

5 Min Read

An old quote falsely attributed to Donald Trump has recently resurfaced online. The viral meme alleges Trump told People magazine in 1998 that Republicans are the dumbest group of voters in the country. This is false.

While the quote has been debunked several times since it apparently surfaced in 2015, users have recently been resharing it on social media. Examples can be seen here , here , here , here

The meme reads: If I were to run, Id run as a Republican. Theyre the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and theyd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific. – Donald Trump, People Magazine, 1998

Snopes first wrote about the false quote here in October 2015 . Since then, the quote has been debunked multiple times .

People magazine has confirmed in the past that its archive has no register of this alleged exchange.

People looked into this exhaustively when it first surfaced back in Oct. . We combed through every Trump story in our archive. We couldnt find anything remotely like this quoteand no interview at all in 1998., a magazine spokesperson told Factcheck.org that year .

In December 1987, People published a profile on Donald Trump titled Too Darn Rich. The article quoted him saying he was too busy to run for president .

Read Also: How Many Registered Republicans In Texas

Donald Trump Quotes That Should Horrify His Evangelical Supporters

After months of campaigning, flip-flopping on important issues,;and generally wreaking havoc on the party that for decades has presented itself as defenders of Christian America, Donald Trump took to the stage at the Republican National Convention and thanked the evangelicals who helped him get there.

At this moment, I would like to thank the evangelical and religious community because Ill tell you what. Because the support theyve given me, and Im not sure I totally deserve it, has been so amazing. And has had such a big reason for me being here tonight. True. So true.

So true, its cringeworthy.

White evangelical Protestants are a considerable force in the elections making up one-fifth of all registered voters.;While a number of evangelical leaders have pointed out that Trumps policies and actions are decidedly un-Christian, rank-and-file white evangelical Americans have in fact thrown their support behind the candidate. According to the Pew Research Center, 78 percent of white evangelical voters;say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today.;

But if you place Trumps quotes, principles and policies next to the ideals set forth by Christianitys founder, the gap is startling. Trump has little regard for some of the fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ showing love for your neighbor, welcoming the stranger, and asking for Gods forgiveness.;

[bongaboi]

COMMENTARY: Amid the Gold Cup final festival: Mexico's fans celebrate, cope and hope

COMMENTARY

Amid the Gold Cup final festival: Mexico's fans celebrate, cope and hope

by Andrea Canales @soccercanales

While visiting Spain for a summer years ago, I attended a bullfight. Beyond having read Ernest Hemingway, I didn’t know much about bullfighting. I watched and listened as the crowd cheered the matadors and the event finally closed with the defeated bulls being dragged out of the arena. Between the swords, horses and the elaborate costumes, the bullfight felt like an ancient art. That spell was broken somewhat when the woman sitting next to me pulled out her cell phone to update her husband. “Torearon bien, pero mataron muy mal,” she reported.

They fought well, but they killed very poorly. That’s the basic translation. All the excellent capework and the elegant stances even as the bull’s horns passed by with mere inches to spare didn’t matter in the end if the climax of the event was sloppy and prolonged because of hesitation or lack of strength or discipline to hold the sword steady and accurate for a clean, killing blow.

Watching Mexico vs. the USA in the Gold Cup final in Las Vegas' sold-out (61,514) Allegiant Stadium on Sunday night, I was reminded of that description. Time and again, El Tri, which controled the majority of the run of play, would build up nicely for a shot, but either the U.S. defense and goalkeeper Matt Turner would come up big or the final Mexico shot would be off target.

“Faltaron contundencia.” Another phrase that came to mind was one that has cropped up in the past with Mexico before. This one translates generally to lack of forcefulness, or concluding energy and finishing strength. Indeed, even when the USA had passes going awry in the final and was off target in their few counterattacking chances, they seemed energetic against Mexico all game long, though that often involved rather frantically defending much of the time.

It’s not necessarily a fair assessment of Mexico to consider it an aged team when their best young players are contending for an Olympic medal in Tokyo and therefore not at the Gold Cup. It’s also interesting to note that the star player many El Tri fans longed for Mexico coach Tata Martino to bring into this roster, Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, wouldn’t have, at age 33, turned the dial more to youth and the team’s future.

COMMENTARY

Amid the Gold Cup final festival: Mexico's fans celebrate, cope and hopeby Andrea Canales @soccercanales, Yesterday

While visiting Spain for a summer years ago, I attended a bullfight. Beyond having read Ernest Hemingway, I didn’t know much about bullfighting. I watched and listened as the crowd cheered the matadors and the event finally closed with the defeated bulls being dragged out of the arena. Between the swords, horses and the elaborate costumes, the bullfight felt like an ancient art. That spell was broken somewhat when the woman sitting next to me pulled out her cell phone to update her husband. “Torearon bien, pero mataron muy mal,” she reported.

They fought well, but they killed very poorly. That’s the basic translation. All the excellent capework and the elegant stances even as the bull’s horns passed by with mere inches to spare didn’t matter in the end if the climax of the event was sloppy and prolonged because of hesitation or lack of strength or discipline to hold the sword steady and accurate for a clean, killing blow.

Watching Mexico vs. the USA in the Gold Cup final in Las Vegas' sold-out (61,514) Allegiant Stadium on Sunday night, I was reminded of that description. Time and again, El Tri, which controled the majority of the run of play, would build up nicely for a shot, but either the U.S. defense and goalkeeper Matt Turner would come up big or the final Mexico shot would be off target.

“Faltaron contundencia.” Another phrase that came to mind was one that has cropped up in the past with Mexico before. This one translates generally to lack of forcefulness, or concluding energy and finishing strength. Indeed, even when the USA had passes going awry in the final and was off target in their few counterattacking chances, they seemed energetic against Mexico all game long, though that often involved rather frantically defending much of the time.

It’s not necessarily a fair assessment of Mexico to consider it an aged team when their best young players are contending for an Olympic medal in Tokyo and therefore not at the Gold Cup. It’s also interesting to note that the star player many El Tri fans longed for Mexico coach Tata Martino to bring into this roster, Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, wouldn’t have, at age 33, turned the dial more to youth and the team’s future.

The passion of Mexico fans is evident hours before a match actually begins. For many El Tri supporters, game day is an all-day event of costuming, food and mutual celebration of family, friends and fans. The fact that a global pandemic is still ongoing puts a dent in even the most fervent festival of futbol. There were other negative elements factoring in as well for Mexico.

Though he hasn’t been called into the team in over a year, Hernandez, Mexico’s top all-time goalscorer, was by far the most popular jersey name on the many Mexico shirts being worn in Vegas. Hernandez’s absence, beloved player that he is, cast a bit of a pall on the Gold Cup squad partly because his lack of selection hasn’t really been explained by Martino, other than to say, “Javier Hernandez wasn’t in this roster because I picked other players.” Hernandez, in the midst of a stellar season with his club team, the Los Angeles Galaxy, suffered a calf injury early in July, which alleviated some of the pressure on Martino’s decision to not call him.

El Tri players also had to deal with the pressure of their own fans becoming a liability during the Gold Cup, when the recurrence of the homophobic chant by some in the crowds during the group stage and other matches, including very briefly in the final, threatened the squad with FIFA sanctions that could affect whether fan crowds are present at upcoming World Cup qualifying games.

There was also a sorrowful burden placed on the Mexican team both early and late in the Gold Cup tournament. In the debut match for Mexico, plucky Hirving “Chucky” Lozano suffered head and neck injuries in a collision with Trinidad & Tobago goalkeeper Marvin Phillip, required facial surgery, and was obviously ruled out of the tournament. Another blow hit the team last week when Zizinho, the father of midfielder Jonathan Dos Santos, died at age 59, reportedly of Covid-19 complications.

Mexico soldiered on after a dour draw in the opening game of the tournament, but never seemed to be firing on all cylinders as a team, even as it advanced. It took a moment of individual magic against Canada by Hector Herrera late in injury time for El Tri to escape that game with a victory.

Until last night, U.S. men’s national team coach Gregg Berhalter had never won against El Tri in a Gold Cup final, either as an unused player in 1998 or as coach in 2019. Both those games, the USA lost 1-0. With the youngest roster in the tournament and some questioning his tactical nous all during the tournament, Berhalter and his players finally silenced many doubters. The fact that the victory came on his 48th birthday made the triumph extra sweet.

The USA displayed an odd consistency in all their games, winning each one, 1-0, except for their game against Martinique, where they surrendered their only goal of the tournament in a 6-1 victory. Most U.S. players improved not only as the tournament went on, but in the final against Mexico, it was interesting to see some of them adjusting in real time to the skill and ability of their opponents. Though at times the U.S. players looked overwhelmed, they did just enough to prevent goals, and eventually worked well enough together to create chances. It’s likely that the American team, with less expectation to win than Mexico, played with more freedom as a result.

Walking out of the stadium almost an hour after the match concluded, I wasn’t surprised to see that the throngs of people still mingling in the parking lots were exclusively Mexico fans. Some were coordinating rides or plans, but most were sharing their own somber debriefs of the game with each other, many hands still clutching Tricolor flags.

“I’ve never seen the team play so tired.”

“We played well, though. We were really aggressive early on, weren’t we? I kept thinking the next chance was going to score.”

“Matt Turner was the difference. How does the U.S. always produce such good keepers? Maybe it’s because they play basketball.”

“We need our killer instinct back. We need Chicharito to return.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get the USA in qualifying. Tata’s going to regroup, the best players will be back together, and El Tri will come back stronger than ever.”

I couldn’t help but smile, picking up these bits of conversation. Even in the disappointment over a close loss, the passion of the Mexico supporters was always at the forefront. Long live the rivalry.

[wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog]

How Kate Spade built her billion-dollar empire — and left it

Handbag designer Kate Spade at her New York showroom in 2000. (Photo: Thomas Iannaccone/Penske Media/Rex/Shutterstock)

The fashion industry is mourning the loss of Kate Spade, one of America’s most beloved designers. On Tuesday morning, the Associated Press reported that Spade was found hanged, an apparent suicide, in her New York City apartment.

Spade was born Katherine Brosnahan in Kansas City, Mo., in 1962. She created her eponymous label in 1993 with her then-boyfriend — who later became her husband — Andy Spade (the brand is a combination of the founders’ names). The two met while at Arizona State University and neither studied fashion.

After graduation, the couple moved to New York City, where Kate started her career as an accessories editor at Condé Nast’s Mademoiselle magazine. Although Spade had an eye for fashion, she did not have a design background. Nevertheless, with a little push from Andy over dinner at a Mexican restaurant, she sought to make her handbag line a success — but it didn’t happen overnight.

Andy and Kate Spade in 1999. (Photo: Globe Photos/zumapress.com)

“At the time, things were very — bags were too complicated. And I really loved very simple kinds of architectural shapes. And I would wear these very simple shapes, none of which were famous designers. I mean, there were no names. If someone were to say, whose is that? I’d say, I don’t know; I bought it at a vintage store, or it’s a straw bag I got in Mexico,” Spade told Guy Raz in the NPR podcast How I Built This. 

Kate Spade in 2010. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Kate’s first handbag mockup was famously made of burlap. She took her first few prototypes to a trade show at the Javits Center in New York in 1993 and sold units to Fred Segal in Los Angeles and Barneys New York, arguably two of the most renowned fashion retailers in the nation. But the profits barely covered the costs for the booth. And two years of hustling later, the company still wasn’t turning a profit. 

However, things took a dramatic turn in 1996 after Kate Spade won the prestigious Council of Fashion Designers of America Perry Ellis award that brought international acclaim to the brand. More department stores, such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, started ordering in bulk, which helped the brand out of the red. At the CFDA awards, “there were reporters from around the country, not just New York, at the show. They were saying, you know, oh, my — who is this?” Spade said to Raz in the NPR podcast. “And so that really, really helped us a great deal, I have to say.”

A wall of Kate Spade bags on display in a London pop-up shop. (Photo: Alamy)

  Kate Spade with her husband, Andy, left, and David Spade, right, attend the American Fashion Awards in 2001 in New York City. (Photo: Diane Cohen/Getty Images)

Soon after Kate’s CFDA win, her most iconic item, the Sam bag, known for its boxy shape and nylon material, became the “it” accessory of the ’90s. Spade’s decision to sew the inside logo on the exterior of the bag was a move the New York Times said helped create “a brand identity and her empire.”  

“The purses became something of a handshake,” said Wall Street Journal fashion reporter Christina Binkley to Racked. “When two women met and saw they were both holding Kate Spade bags, they’d nod at each other and understand they were on the same page. It was very chic.”

In part, its success can be attributed to Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour, who featured Spade’s bag in the magazine alongside European labels like Gucci. Celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, and Monica Lewinsky became Kate Spade fans.

“Kate Spade had an enviable gift for understanding exactly what women the world over wanted to carry. She launched her label at a time when everyone thought that the definition of a handbag was strictly European, all decades-old serious status and wealth. Then along came this thoroughly American young woman who changed everything,” said Vogue editor in chief and Condé Nast artistic director Anna Wintour in a statement on Vogue.com. 

Kate Spade with a handbag of her own design in 1998 in New York. (Photo: Thomas Iannaccone/Penske Media/Rex/Shutterstock)

To capitalize on the the company’s popularity, the Kate Spade brand started to grow, and in 1996 the label opened its first store on Thompson Street in Manhattan’s hip SoHo neighborhood. New York was equally important to the brand’s DNA as it was to Spade’s story. The city is where the brand was born, the company bares its name (the full name being Kate Spade New York), and it is where many of Spade’s first and most loyal customers lived.

Fans range widely in age, but to this day, scoring a Kate Spade as a teenager or young adult has largely been considered a rite of passage. “It seems like just yesterday I was running my fingers over the shelves where it was my job to rearrange the iconic nylon box bags,” wrote Stella Bugbee for the Cut. “The simple rectangular totes were a status symbol for chic downtown women at the time, and I sold so many of them, I lost track.”

Kate Spade bags were modestly priced between $150 and $450, making them not only aspirational but attainable. They hung in a sweet spot compared with the brand’s European counterparts. “The name held prestige, but it wasn’t off-putting,” as Robin Givhan told the Washington Post. 

Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade at the ASPCA Bergh Ball, “Tails of Time,” at the Mandarin Oriental in New York City in 2007. (Photo: Brian Ach/WireImage for Chopard)

It was also Spade’s personal quirky sense of style, 1950s-style bouffant hair, and cheerful smile that added a lot of joy to the label. This infectious energy resonated with consumers, with many connecting with her Midwestern roots. Spade brought a vivid color palette, a playful charm, and feminine poise to her designs, making them highly covetable.

Kate Spade and Michael Kors at the CFDA-hosted preview of “Fashioning Fiction,” at MoMA Queens in New York City in 2004. (Photo: John Calabrese/Penske Media/Rex/Shutterstock)

In 1999, Kate and Andy Spade sold 56 percent of their company’s shares to the Neiman Marcus Group for $34 million. In 2006, Neiman Marcus bought out the rest of the couple’s shares to sell the company to Liz Claiborne (owner of Juicy Couture & Lucky Brand Jeans), which would later change its name to Kate Spade & Co.

Kate Spade shopping in 2007. (Photo: Billy Farrell/PatrickMcMullan.com)

In 2007, Kate and Andy Spade would officially leave the multimillion-dollar brand they helped create, devoting more time to family and raising their daughter, Frances Beatrix Spade. But Kate’s vision and spirit would continue to drive the brand’s ethos long after her departure. Young, fresh-faced celebrities like Taylor Swift and Millie Bobby Brown carried on the funky aesthetic into the next generation, wearing it on the red carpet and being snapped by paparazzi wearing the brand’s designs.

In 2016, nearly 10 years later, the duo would return to fashion, launching a brand-new shoe and handbag label called Frances Valentine.

“Frances is a longtime family name on my dad’s side,” Spade told WWD in 2015. “My grandfather, father, brother, and my daughter’s name is Frances. And then Valentine was my mom’s dad’s middle name because he was born on Valentine’s Day.” 

  Kate Spade and daughter Frances Spade, Darcy Miller, and Jenna Lyons at the J.Crew Bridal Boutique in 2010 in New York City. (Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/WireImage for J.Crew)

Kate too would come to love the name Valentine so much that she changed her surname to Valentine. She explained the name choice to the Business of Fashion in 2016: “It kind of makes [me] sound kind of cool, like a rap star or something,” she joked. “But we’re not trying to be cheeky or coy. It really was to distinguish the name and separate the two worlds. Obviously we’re super proud of Kate Spade, and we want to be respectful of both.”

In 2017, Kate Spade & Co. sold to Tapestry, Inc. (parent company to Coach and Stuart Weitzman) for an astounding $2.4 billion.

Kate Spade, left, and Cynthia Rowley at the opening of Annie Leibovitz’s “Pilgrimage” exhibit at Manhattan’s Pace/MacGill gallery in 2011. (Photo: Steve Eichner/Penske Media/Rex/Shutterstock)

Among other things, Kate Spade will be remembered as one of the first major female American designers, one who helped pave the way for other industry successes like Jenna Lyons (formerly of J.Crew), Tory Burch, and Cynthia Rowley.

Read More from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• Designer Kate Spade, 55, found dead in apparent suicide • Style mavens Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan are why you should never turn down a blind date  • Why adoptive parents like Sandra Bullock feel that ‘the perfect child will find you’

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If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.

[mickadamz]

i know everyone has their own opinions on this, but how do you characterize 2p American and 2p England? like how do you see their personalities and stuff? how do you think they vary from their 1p (is that the term?) versions?

OOHEHEHEEHEHEH OH MAN YOURE IN FOR A TREAT

IVE DONE SO MUCH WIT THEM ITS INSANE OKAY

2p eng: his full name is oliver jack marshall. I’m gonna include physical appearances as well. so oliver…

6′0-6′1

average build, though much scrawnier compared to like idk the 1800s

redhead???? yes?

dusty blue eyes

fair skin, not as pale as arthur, but not as tan as, say, greece or romano

longer, kinda rounder features as compared to arthur’s rather compact and sharp features

wavier hair

usually has a scar on his left eye, other scars are au dependant 

ambidextrous, arthur is only left handed (personal head canon, i don’t remember his dominant hand LOL)

freckles bitch

appears to be in his mid-late twenties

has a tired but understanding look on his face most the time

actually has a very nice and subtle smile. he’s been through a lot and its really a blessing to see him relax

as for non appearance based traits:

one of the few aph related characters i don’t see as bisexual, as he’s fully homosexual

not much of a social person, similar to his 1p, but arthur has a bigger struggle with making friends and talking to people as he’ kinda got a mindset that not many people even like him and he’s kinda rude as a defence mechanism? idk i haven’t touched canon in a while but oliver is still not a social person but mores than arthur is

introvert

has a… huge amount of secrets behind his sorta cheerful exterior. beneath that he’s not as nice as you think but he’s trying. things are hard for him

despite existing for much longer and dying less than arthur, he has no idea how to not keep his feelings and such closed up and he finds it difficult to deal with traumatic events. he’s mentally weaker and pretty unstable when having an episode or just in a very stressful situation. otherwise, he seems to function alright

surprisingly not very affectionate to people. theres a few exceptions.

actually has a good relationship with his sealand, arnold gets Nervous hen oliver’s away for a while or doesn’t call-text back within an hour or so. see the o=point above the affection related one

PETTY

sorta friendly, trying to be more open to people. he knows the make mistakes so he tries to be more forgiving

kinda stoic, not much seems to faze him in a regular setting

died 108 times or so (not counting the story related to my allen blog)

bad at baking but excellent at cooking: “oliver is that a cake” ‘*crying* it’s a mistake’

not very graceful

STUPIDLY COURAGEOUS PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF G

breaks the rules if he sees its unjust or unnecessary. a very moral tied person, compared to arthur who fears he’ll be punished the second he tries to against the law, no matter the cause behind it

very loyal

most optimistic of the 2p allies

really likes to make things for people, good artist and basic builder

selfless

enjoys vaporwave

has 3 scottish straight-brutish shorthair cats and a horse, the cats are named samwise, bess, and marmalade/marmie. the horse is named thomas

2p america’ full name is allen tomas soliz .

physically:

5′6-5′7

his appearance (skin tone, hair, facial features) resemble a mid twenties mexican-american man 

his legs aren’t very strong, but he’s pretty fast

his upper body is of average build, but he works out regularly so it’ll increase in strength

missing a tooth

warm, friendly dark brown eyes

calloused hands from having to do things himself and helping out some people he’s come across in the south-western US before westward expansion

wavy, almost curly hair. he attempts to groom it for what its worth.

his skin and hair are soft, he regularly takes care of himself!

picks at his fucking nails so they don’t look the best but what can you do, not like they’re dirty

growing a moustache and a goatee 

SIDEBURNS

h….hes hot

does have scars, most tend to be on his hands from doing heavy duty tasks on his own. has one just above his right eyebrow and on his lip where his tooth is missing

million dollar smile!

right handed

as for non physical traits:

unlike alfred, his twin is a sister and its 2p mexico instead of 2p canada. he’s still related to him though. its mor elf a half/step brother situation

that being said, his mother’s personification is based around the aztec empire area, though mostly around that one group of natives

broadway fan!!!!!!! would die to get on broadway

a big sweetheart really

I’m unsure about the vegan thing but he’s probably got food allergies anyway so dietary restrictions still apply i guess

has a dg named veggie and 2 cats, named armel (large man) and calixto (the devil incarnate)

social fuckin butterfly bitch!

dense like alfred, but not on purpose. cannot read the atmosphere that well

an open fucking book

bisexual

very big on affection in any form

HORNY ON MAIN

I’m kidding but he likes sex. not a big fan of one time flings or fuckbuddies, but has tried it or done it more than once. 

hopeless romantic

he actually switched spots with his nyo counterpart. he used to represent the mid-west due to the high native and mexican population back around the 1800s when he officially joined the other 3 americas. when jessi came along, he switched with her once broadway became bigger and once films started being produced. she’s a movie star, and he’s a Hugh jackman kind of person. he just wants to sing

he may look rough and tough, but once you see him smile for the first time (usually as a greeting to people on the street, he’s very friendly to people), you can see he’s really just a nice person and loves to socialize

graceful as hell, also has a powerful singing voice

also very emotional

almost as stupidly courageous as oliver

rule breaker, most the time for fun, other times because of his morals. protests if he finds it necessary or it suits his personal beliefs

optimistic

i should note that my 2ps have more ‘free reign’ than the other counterparts. they’re the ‘backups’ in case the 1ps are unable to do something. seeing historically, men were more involved in government, its why most personifications involved with government affairs are males. there are obvious exceptions to this, but thats a general (fan made) reason why the majority that we’ve seen in the series are male