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Giving Thanks

MELT YOUR HEART

“One year, [we] gave a boy about 8 years old a coat, tried it on made sure it fit him, he took it off and gave it back to me and I asked, ‘Why are you giving it back?’ and he said, ‘You mean I can keep this?’ and I said, ‘Yes,it’s for you,’” Richard Mantell, vice president of Middle Schools with the United Federation of Teachers, said. “And he came up to me and hugged me and it was hard to fight back tears.” 
Article Link 
[ https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2022/11/20/hundreds-of-children-from-shelters-participate-in-thanksgiving-giveaway ] 

BEING OPPONENT DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL BEING ENEMY

Jon Stewart: "Penalizing someone for having a thought I don't think is the way to change their minds or gain understanding. This is a grown ass man and the idea that you would say to him, we're going to put you in a time out. You have to sit in the corner and stare at the wall until you no longer believe that the jews control the international banking system. Like, we have to get passed this, in the country, the ability to... Look, people think this.  People think jews control Hollywood. People think jews control the banks. and to pretend that they don't, and to not deal with it in a straight forward manner. We will never gain any kind of understanding with each other. "

Colbert:"what do you imagine the right manner to be....what is the response"

Stewart:"First, I think reflexively naming things anti semitism is reductive as some of the things they might be saying, it immediately shuts down a conversation. ... Comedy is reductive, and I think part of what it is, is we play with tropes, because everyone has prejudices in their lives, and in the way they view things. And comics rely on those prejudices as a short hand for our material. Even the wokest of comics plays with tropes, to a certain extent. But my point is the most interesting thing to come out of this in my mind is something Kanye said. On his tour that he was doing after he said that, and then he got interviewed by five different people because the media model is arson and conflict. He said something fascinating in my mind. HE said hurt people hurt people and if the point of all this is then to heal people, the only way to heal a wound is to open it up and cleanse it. and that stings. that hurts. But you have to expose it to air. and I'm afraid the general tenor of conversation in this country is to cover it up, bury it, put it to the outskirts and don't deal with it and what I would say is, look at it from, a black perspective. Its, a culture that feels its wealth has been extracted by different groups, whites, jews, things, whether it is true or not isn't the issue. That's the feeling in that community. And if you don't understand that's where it is coming from, then you can't deal with it. and you can't sit down with them and explain that ... being in an industry isn't the same as having a nefarious and controlling interest in that industry and intention, right. And that has been the anti semitic trope. But you need to be able to meet people from what their community is feeling as well."

Colbert:"so you saying the way is to deconstruct it and tell them why it isn't with facts"

Stewart:"that's right, but if your not allowed to say it. You know dave said something in the snl monologue that I thought was constructive, as well. He said it shouldn't be this hard to talk about things. And that is what we're talking about. Look I can't pretend that there aren't a [expletive] ton of people in this country and this world who believe that the jews have an unreasonable amount of control over the systems. and they wield it as puppet masters. I've been called anti-semitic because I'm against Israel's treatment of Palestinians. I'm called other things from other people based on other opinions that I have. But those shut down debates. They're used as a cudgel, and whether it be comedy or discussion or anything else. If we don't have the wherewithal to meet each other with what is reality then how do we move forward is my question. I don't enjoy it. Don't get me wrong. When people i admire or whose music I like come out and say how many of you are in show business, you know... here is the deal... we have our own tropes. Like a white person's success is because of privilege, a minority's success is empowerment, a jew's success, that's conspiracy. You feel that. I feel that. But I have to be able to express that to people. If I can't say, that is Bull shit and explain why, then where do we go? and if we all just shut it down then we retreat to our little corners of misinformation and it metastasizes. And the whole point of all this is to not let it metastasize. And to get it out in the air and talk about it."
Video link 
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V_sEqfIL9Q ] 

Title: Sableye and Palmon Plushies for Charity
Artist: Tamarinfrog
[ https://www.deviantart.com/tamarinfrog/art/Sableye-and-Palmon-Plushies-for-Charity-938117299 ] 

Hello everyone, it's time for a new Charity Project!

A Charity-Guild Project!

This time we will be drawing or crafting Digimon/Pokemon as PLUSHIES!! 

This project will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation [ https://makeawish.ca/ ] 

Each submission received will add $2.50 to the charity pool.

If you are looking to sponsor this project, please send a note or email charityguild@tommyspuppetlab.com

How to Submit:

You can submit to your gallery and submit to this folder [ https://www.deviantart.com/charity-guild/gallery/85373471/plushiemon-collab ] (Please tag me and mention this journal too please) 

You may add your submission to sta.sh [ http://sta.sh/ ] or dropbox/drive and note me your submission if you wish to refrain from contributing to Deviant"Art" 

We have a channel on our Discord server where you can submit

You can also email to charityguild@tommyspuppetlab.com

Submission rules:

All Deviant"Art" submission rules apply [ https://www.deviantart.com/about/policy/submission/ ] 

Artificial Intelligence (AI "art") is strictly prohibited from any of these projects. All submissions will be checked.

In order to enter, please comment on the posted journal which character(s) you are drawing. First come first serve, and reservations will be held for 2 weeks. After that, anyone can claim that character again.

All gens (1-9) and Digimon forms allowed. Even Wailord. 

Do not add a background to your submission. I prefer transparent backgrounds, no big deal if you don't know how, just submit it on plain white background.

Anyone can enter regardless of skill. I will judge your art by your effort however. No quick doodles. Art from the heart is what matters most! Again, NO AI IS ALLOWED

If drawing on paper, please use UNLINED paper or it will be turned down!

 NO BASES!!

No stock is allowed with exception of brushes, textures, pallets, etc... The work must be 100% yours at the end! No lazy work please!

Minimum canvas size 1200x1200. However you are welcome to use a bigger canvas if needed.

To submit, please see above

No work older than the launch date! November 21st

Deadline: January 5th, 2023

INVITATIONAL - for all information
[ https://www.deviantart.com/tommygk/journal/Draw-Craft-Pokemon-Digimon-as-Plushies-for-Charity-937980393 ]
 

Port Richmond High School students whip up Thanksgiving feast
By Jillian Jorgensen Staten Island
PUBLISHED 2:45 PM ET Nov. 23, 2022
Preparing a Thanksgiving dinner is always a production. But it is extra crazy when you’re preparing to feed hundreds of hungry teenagers who happen to be your classmates.

“In this oven, we have some stuffing and turkey waiting to go out. In the other room we have some mac and cheese and more turkey,” James Ryan, a culinary arts teacher at Port Richmond High School, said. “Some of the students in my eighth period class [are] plating up the pumpkin pies for desserts.”

What You Need To Know
Hundreds of students in Port Richmond High School's culinary arts program worked together to create a Thanksgiving feast for their classmates

They cooked about 300 pounds of turkey, along with sides like mashed potatoes and stuffing

The feast gave them an opportunity to show off the skills they are learning
It was something principal Andrew Greenfield is proud of
Led by their teachers, every student in Port Richmond High School’s culinary arts program helped put together a massive Thanksgiving feast. It featured about 300 pounds of turkey, 75 pounds of potatoes 100 pounds of yas and 32 pumpkin pies, Ryan said.

“We're preparing here for probably about 400-500 students,” Ryan said.

It's a highlight for students in the culinary arts program, who spend all four years getting hands-on cooking experience. They're taught national food safety courses and have the opportunity to get their city food handling license. The popular program serves about 350 students a year.

All of them work on the Thanksgiving meal, with each class tackling a different dish.

“All 12 of our classes have had their hands in it. Not literally, but yeah, almost literally,” Ryan said.

And when the bell rang, the crowds arrived to grab their meals. For students who had worked hard on the feast, it was a moment to savor.

“It honestly feels amazing. I really love how we were able to come together and [prepare] such a big feast for the whole high school and it's just, I'm happy that all the work paid off,” junior Madison Gigliello said.

The meal initially started out smaller, with culinary students just cooking for one another. Over time it grew.

“Then last year after COVID, Mr. Greenfield and Ms. Woodman decided we need everyone together. We're serving a whole school. And it was a hit,” Ryan said.

It’s something principal Andrew Greenfield is proud of.

“What I love about this day is that we don't do a Thanksgiving feast for some students or families. But we do it for our entire school community,” Greenfield said.

And it’s part of what it makes so special for the culinary arts students.

“Every Port Richmond student comes here to try our food and take time out of their day to come try it,” junior Robert Eckman said.

The line stretched down the hallway. After grabbing a plate, students could sit down in the school’s cafe and enjoy a performance by the jazz band.

“You know, everybody’s Thanksgiving at home looks a little bit different, so we try to have a traditional Thanksgiving feast here at school, so everybody can get a taste of that,” assistant principal Suzanne Woodman said.

ARTICLE
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/education/2022/11/23/port-richmond-high-school-students-whip-up-thanksgiving-feast?cid=share_clip

Families spend hours in the cold waiting for ICE appointments
By Eric Feldman New York City
PUBLISHED 11:00 PM ET Nov. 22, 2022
It was just after 2:30 a.m. on a crisp, cold New York City night. The temperature read 34 degrees, but it felt colder. It was the first truly cold day of autumn.

“It’s pretty cold, even my foot falls asleep, even I can’t move my whole hand,” said Edi Kiste, who was bundled up in a line outside immigration offices in downtown Manhattan.

She spoke with NY1 as she held her two-year-old daughter, who spent the entire night outside with her.

“I bundled her up with three pants, a jacket, and like two polo shirts inside,” she said.

She said they were still cold.

On Lafayette Street, there are many strollers and children at this very early hour, all bundled up, all waiting.

One mom appeared to breastfeed her daughter on the curb.

These families are here for the long haul, bringing out cardboard boxes, backpacks and blankets to create makeshift beds.

They are choosing to spend the night on concrete.

Laura Godoi said she arrived outside 26 Federal Plaza at 7 p.m., which was 13 hours before her appointment with immigration officials.

“It gives hypothermia,” she said, describing the wait and the cold weather.

There’s a reason why so many people are lining up on a cold November night with their children.

They are waiting for their appointments with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE.

Many of those NY1 met said they are required to report to ICE after crossing the southern border in recent months.

By 3:38 a.m., the line has only grown.

“We got like 174 people,” said Carlos Estevez, looking at a manila folder he brought to organize everyone in line.

Estevez is not a community organizer. He himself was in line for his own ICE appointment.

He brought the folder because of his past experience lining up for his appointment — and could help explain why so many people are out here overnight.

“They say you can’t enter,” he said.

In a statement to NY1, an ICE spokesperson said the agency is “working to address current processing delays at some ICE offices,” attributing the delays being exacerbated by COVID-19 in recent years.

ICE only lets in however many people the agency can see in one day, no matter how many have appointments set up or how long the line is overnight.

On this night, it’s Estevez’s third overnight trip. Same for Angel Gomez, who said the night before, he got in line at 2 a.m. But that was too late.

Nancy Angeles had a friend waiting in line. Just before 4:30 a.m., she opened her car door, allowing a new group of the people in line to get inside her warm car.

“Whether they’re immigrants or not, they’re people,” she said.

By this time, the line wrapped not only around the block, but continued across the street.

At 5 a.m., the makeshift beds were folded up, because there was an effort to organize the lines.

Estevez led the charge, even though it’s not his job.

Within an hour, ICE started checking people in from two lines, one for families and the other for everyone else.

People got through past the sunrise until 7:48 a.m.

There were still what looked like at least 100 people in line.

“That’s it for the day,” said an ICE agent to the crowd.

The crowd stood there, wondering what to do next. Some talked to ICE agents. Others took pictures of a QR code provided by ICE to follow-up.

People in line, who spoke with NY1, were frustrated. Leonardo Caso showed up at 5 a.m. Edi Fernandez arrived at 4:30 a.m.

Both said they were too late for their scheduled appointments.

“You get up early, and well, they don’t give you a solution,” said Fernandez.

ICE officials said people who miss appointments should also reach out by email.

“When I send them, they didn’t answer me,” said Hamida Al-Hassam, who added that he also missed his appointment, despite getting in line around 3 a.m.

NY1’s video of the overnight experience outside 26 Federal Plaza is generating a response in Washington, D.C.

“There needs to be a more efficient and humane way for ICE to schedule and process people for check-ins and other appearances,” said a spokesperson for Sen. Chuck Schumer. “We are in touch with ICE and advocacy organizations to urge prompt improvements.”

Adrian Pandev is an immigration lawyer based in New York City. NY1 showed him the scene outside 26 Federal Plaza.

“It just shows that the system is not at capacity. It’s over capacity,” he said. “What a mess.”

He thinks most are trying to check in with ICE, as required, within 60 days of crossing the southern border.

“These people are waiting in the streets to comply with the rules,” he said.

He said each day they’re denied their appointments, it pushes them closer to missing their deadline, possibly complicating their status in the U.S.

“Noncitizens would not be deemed a no-show for their appointments if they utilize the QR code,” an ICE spokesperson said to NY1. “ICE would reschedule them.”

An ICE spokesperson said missed appointments do not have to be counted against people in line if they take the proper action.

ARTICLE
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2022/11/23/families-spend-hours-in-the-cold-waiting-for-ice-appointments?cid=share_clip
 

My thoughts to the concept of Unspoken

The video starts off with, and I quote
"Church membership among Black Americans has decreased by 19% over the past two decades. Departures led by Genz and Millennials"
Then the first speaker ask a question. Is Christianity the white man's religion?
A speaker said it is unfortunate the black christian church is pushed to the margins of the black community in the usa. 
But he is wrong, it was inevitable. Like Black Colleges first financed by whites or the National association for the advancement of colored people first financed by whites, the black churches, first financed by whites spent most of the time since the end of the war between the states preaching to black people , individual accountability. 
Again, many , and I say an unproven most , Black churches opposed the panthers/opposed Black violence against whites or blacks scheming/supported white initiatives like the war on drugs which was clearly a scheme to harm the black community. 
The Black Church failed, that is why its numbers are low. It the same problem with people voting. 
People don't mind supporting a church or some religion. They don't mind voting. But they want to see something in return. Don't tell the people the return on investment is the investment itself. 
That is why Black people are disinterested in the Black Church or Parties of Governance. They want something and these institutions don't offer anything and have proven they will not give anything the people value even with the greatest participation by the people. 
Circa 1:53 one of the documentaries creators, a black woman states, many people go by here and say is christianity a white man's religion? 
The problem I have is the question are incorrect. Two better questions are, is there a black version of christianity, or can one make their own version of christianity? the answer to the first is yes, the answer to the second is yes. 
First, The ethiopian Tewahedo church is christian, made by blacks in africa after christianity was introduced to the emperor of ethiopia by christians from europe, I think they were white. IT started, I looked it up, in the 4th century.
Second, all versions of christianity today are variants. No version of christianity reflects what jesus was doing? why? Jesus had no bible. Jesus had no mancraft church. Jesus had no restrictive memberships, meaning all could follow him regardless of their belief or disbelief.  If you want the christianity of jesus you better start with yourself, as a denomination with one member.
2:47 the sister after an interlude continues and says, some black man spoke about being harassed by his friends constantly that christianity is a white man's religion. Again, the problem is comprehending how religions work. Like the roman emperor constantine, manipulated and made the modern european christian churches, any individual has the ability to make their own christian church. This is where excommunicado comes from. It came from after Nicea when the selected christian groups by Constantine, were forced to make a bible, which was not official before and then they excommunicated any one who called themselves christian who didn't convert to their form of christianity. This is very simple.
Haitian Voodoo is similar but not Dahomey Vodun. Faiths , Spiritualities, Religions have versions. It is that simple. They are made more often than not. Sometimes they bicker amongst themselves, ala the reformations of europe. But anyone is free to make one.
In Conclusion, the problem isn't people leaving a religions or spirituality or faith <for the record those three things are not the same> . The problem is, near history saw a swelling of membership to some religions: christianity/islam/buddhism. But those swellings were based on military power of human groups against other human groups, it wasn't willing conversions. But, the religions accepted the selling without preaching how they swelled. So in modernity, the devout of these religions, feel an angst , an isolation, a confusion, but they are wrong to be confused. The christianity of jesus, islam of muhammed, buddhism or siddharta have one thing in common. Each started a faith that was deemed during the time their spirit was inside a living body, a radical minority. 
The people producing this are proselytizing a selling point. That christianity is black, christianity is african, and so Black people of African descent need to flock back to christianity. But the problem is most in humanity are distancing themselves from the religions forced on their forebears. Just remember, Christianity or islam or buddhism were all imperial religions over large portions of humanity at some point in the recent past. 
The modern christians need to accept they are or are becoming a minority populace across humanity as a whole or in parts and focus on improving their community and learning to be happy amongst the majority non christian community.
IN AMENDMENT 1
To the question of Christianity being a white man's religion...well... I have studied a little about the origins of christianity side other religions. One of the problems when we talk of religions or spiritualities or faiths is that the versions they become throughout time have influences. for example. the islam of muhammed didn't have arabic as a standardized language, didn't have a literary quran.  The christianity of jesus, didn't have a bible, didn't use latin as a liturgical language. A modern example is the nation of islam today , it isn't what malcolm built. So, is christianity a white man's religion? If by white you mean white european, then no. Was jesus white? was jesus mulatto? was jesus colored? was jesus black? Does anyone know for sure? Jean Jacques dessalines, first emperor of haiti wouldn't call the people in modern day palestine in jesus's home town , negro. mulatto, ok. Is Christianity a european religion? no. It was born in africa, like islam, like judaism. The fertile crescent isn't in asia, that is africa. 
IN AMENDMENT 2
I remember telling a Black person who was very angry at the abuses the black community in the usa had to deal with that, few to no black people, including myself,  in the usa will join any call to all out violence. But I also told him, to find those who are like minded and then practice what you preach. What is the point ? 
Being in a minority means based on a category/race/rank/order/some factor or measure, you are part of a smaller group of people than another in a given space. But, sometimes, one is part of a minority in a minority. Black Christians in the usa find themselves in that place. This documentary isn't trying to help Black Christians settle into their future. It's base message is to preach to the non Black Christian how Christianity is at the root.

The Explanation

if the video above doesn't appear, use the folloiwng link https://fb.watch/gGrEOH4nmL/

The Trailer
 

The Gospel of Joseph

consider making your own gospel as a starting point, if you are interested in a new christian path

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gospel-of-joseph

KINDRED

'Kindred' Trailer: Shocking Preview For FX's Octavia Butler Adaptation On Hulu Sees Mallori Johnson Violently Traverse Time

Monique Jones

November 07, 2022

The FX/Hulu’s upcoming series based on Octavia Butler’s Kindred has dropped its first trailer, which shows fear and anguish amid mysterious time travel.

The eight-episode series stars Mallori Johnson as a woman and writer who gets forcibly ping-ponged in between the present and America’s past of slavery. All the while, she is navigating an interracial relationship, which becomes even more complicated as she reckons with the racial violence embedded in her family.

According to the official description:

Adapted from the celebrated novel Kindred, by Hugo Award-winner Octavia E. Butler, the FX series centers on “Dana James” (Mallori Johnson), a young Black woman and aspiring writer who has uprooted her life of familial obligation and relocated to Los Angeles, ready to claim a future that, for once, feels all her own. But, before she can settle into her new home, she finds herself being violently pulled back and forth in time. She emerges at a nineteenth-century plantation, a place remarkably and intimately linked with Dana and her family. An interracial romance threads through Dana’s past and present, and the clock is ticking as she struggles to confront secrets she never knew ran through her blood, in this genre-breaking exploration of the ties that bind.

The series also stars Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, Gayle Rankin, Austin Smith, David Alexander Kaplan, Sophina Brown and Sheria Irving.

Kindred is Johnson’s breakout debut role; as Shadow and Act reported in 2021, this marks Johnson’s first role since graduating from Julliard that year.

The series is written by Watchmen writer/producer and playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who also serves as showrunner and executive producer. Joining him as executive producers are Protozoa Pictures’ Joe Wisberg, Joel Fields, Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel. Courtney Lee-Mitchell and Jules Jackson also executive produce with Janicza Bravo, who directs the pilot.

Bravo talked about what it was like to sign on to 'Kindred' in 2021, saying in a statement that she felt represented when she read the book in college.

“I first read Kindred 20 years ago. I was in college. I hadn’t ever seen myself in a world like that. And certainly not at its center,” she said, as reported by Deadline. “What might seem like only a portrait of an invisible woman is also a potent embrace of our relationship to history and how it can bring us closer to our future. After what felt like losing over a year of the life I had come to know so well, an opportunity to direct an adaptation of this specific text was a win. On top of that getting to partner with Branden is something I’d been wanting for quite some time.”

Kindred will air exclusively on Hulu starting Dec. 13.

ARTICLE

https://shadowandact.com/kindred-trailer-shocking-preview-for-fxs-octavia-butler-adaptation-on-hulu-sees-mallori-johnson-violently-traverse-time?item=4

Trailer

Chevalier film

Above is the chevalier film trailer, based on the life of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges 

The following is some of his music
source 1 
https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Saint-Georges,_Joseph_Bologne

source 2
https://www.artaria.com/collections/saint-georges-joseph-bologne-de-1745-1799

My Thoughts

... Support Black people whether they be negra/mulatto/yella/christian/Atheist or otherwise. I didn't say agree or concur to everybody else Black, but support. It helps at the least.

Chaka Khan Reveals Why She Turned Down Steven Spielberg For 'The Color Purple'
The iconic singer shared who she could have played in the award-winning film.
Jazmin Tolliver
By 
Jazmin Tolliver
Nov 4, 2022, 09:10 PM EDT

Chaka Khan wasn’t too keen on the opportunity to star in “The Color Purple.”

The iconic singer, who appeared on “The Jennifer Hudson Show” Friday, said she turned down Steven Spielberg’s offer for a lead role in the beloved 1985 film.

“Funny you should ask that,” Khan said after Hudson asked her about projects she had declined during her long career. “Well, you know I turned down ‘The Color Purple,’ the movie.”

Hudson, who appeared shocked, replied, “What?”

Khan said Spielberg approached her about being in the movie when she was “20, 22 tops,” but nervousness and an aversion to studying kept her from jumping on the opportunity.

“I was like, trying to run [from] that because I was afraid,” the Grammy-winning singer said. ”I was like, ‘Oh God, a movie, oh my God.’”

“I like detested school and tests and studying, you know, I said, ‘Oh, that means I’d have to learn the script,’” Khan added.

The “Through the Fire” singer said that the Oscar-winning director asked her to play Celie, the role that Whoopi Goldberg ultimately portrayed in the critically acclaimed film.

After Khan revealed who Spielberg asked her to play, Hudson told her audience: “Imagine Chaka Khan as Celie, y’all?”

“Woulda been hot,” Khan replied.

“That would have been a whole other Color Purple,” Hudson quipped.

“The Color Purple”, which starred Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover and Goldberg, was produced by Spielberg and Quincy Jones.

Based on Alice Walker’s classic 1982 novel, the film centers on Black women from the rural South during the early part of the last century, trying to survive and thrive under cruel conditions.

The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Goldberg and Best Supporting Actress for both Winfrey and Margaret Avery.

A new movie musical adaptation of “The Color Purple,” produced by Spielberg and directed by Blitz Bazawule, is currently in the works.

The upcoming musical is set to star Taraji P. Henson as Shug Avery, Fantasia Taylor as Celie, Colman Domingo as Mister, Danielle Brooks as Sofia, Halle Bailey as Nettie, Corey Hawkins as Harpo and singer H.E.R. as Speak.

MY THOUGHTS

well, I think she lied on herself. she said "“I was like, trying to run [from] that because I was afraid ....I like detested school and tests and studying, you know, I said, ‘Oh, that means I’d have to learn the script,’ ""  But Chaka your uncle is quincy jones and you have learned tons of songs, and how to sing them. no,she mischaracterized herself. She likes studying and tests in terms of music, not literature. Chaka khan knows how many songs now? learning the script is hard:) The truth is revealed in the blues brothers. Chaka khan played the head of james browns chorus. She played herself. James brown played the head of the church, himself. the only musicians in blues brothers that some can argue had to act was aretha franklin, but aretha franklin does like to cook and has a strong temperament. Chaka khan is comfortable playing herself. In modernity so many artists push being the multimedia agent and many fail at it. But in the role spielberg wanted for her in the color purple, chaka khan who is very independent minded or strongwilled, former black panther of self defense member, would have to play, small/weak/little/abused Celie who does turn around but I don't think chaka khan felt comfortable with celie. and in defense a better thespian in whoopie goldberg got it. As a comedian who did one person shows, whoopie goldberg had experience shifting in character on stage.  I want to end with , Speilberg wasn't wrong. The man danny glover played would choose a woman that look like chaka khan over whoopie goldberg. He is a wife beater, a black land owner in the usa when it wasn't... common:) <meaning whitey kill black landowners> so.. he want a trophy woman, and i apologize to any woman who may read this and feel insulted, but a trophy woman has physical requirements. Chaka khan in her 20s large or firm breast/buttocks/hourglass shape, natural hair, is what you want over whoopie goldberg if you are looking for a trophy wife. 

IN AMENDMENT

..Someone pointed out Chaka khan couldn't had been asked about the color purple in 1975 when she was 20 or 22 so... . I don't know anything about chaka khan's age. The color purple was published in 1982, so spielberg couldn't had asked anyone to be in the movie in 1981 or earlier. And I checked , the blues brothers was made in 1980. I wonder her experience on set

ARTICLE
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chaka-khan-the-color-purple_n_63659fdae4b08f849aab6d9b

Various constitutional amendments prohibit denying voting rights to women, racial minorities and other groups. But the Constitution contains no explicit right to vote.Credit...Jonah Markowitz for The New York Times

Does the Constitution Guarantee a Right to Vote? The Answer May Surprise You.
For decades, the courts and Congress have taken the lead in expanding the legal right to vote, but the founders never explicitly included it.

By Michael Wines
Oct. 26, 2022
The Constitution makes reference to voting 15 times in the original document and another 22 in the amendments. But somewhat surprisingly, none of those mentions makes an explicit declaration that Americans have a right to vote — something many politicians and their supporters consider fundamental to democracy. Here’s a look at why that is, and what rights voters actually have.

What did the founding fathers believe about the right to vote?
If it seems odd that such a fundamental right was not enshrined in writing, the explanation is simple enough: The authors of the Constitution, many of them deeply suspicious of universal suffrage, could not agree on a single standard for the right to cast a ballot.

For all their talk about “We, the people,” most of the founding fathers wanted to limit voting rights to property owners like themselves, the Harvard law professor and historian Michael J. Klarman wrote in his 2016 book “The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution.”

Gouverneur Morris, a New Yorker who wrote the preamble to the Constitution, argued that “the ignorant and the dependent can be as little trusted with the public interest” as could children, Dr. Klarman wrote. James Madison warned that voting should be restricted to the wealthy, “the safest repositories of republican liberty,” because the poorer classes would be swayed by populist appeals. Benjamin Franklin, the most prominent dissenter, pointed out that it was the commoners who had fought for and won American independence and that the rich were hardly immune to corrupting influences.

In the end, the property requirement failed to make it into the Constitution in part because many states already had extended the franchise beyond landholders. Disenfranchising those voters, the constitutional convention delegates feared, could wreck what already seemed to be shaky prospects for approving the new Constitution.

Their compromise left decisions on voter qualifications to the states, but it placed the choice of United States senators and the president in the hands of state legislators, not voters. That changed in the early 19th century, as state legislatures increasingly delegated the choice of presidential electors to ordinary voters, and in 1913, after the 17th Amendment decreed the popular election of senators.

Does a right to vote exist today?
Various constitutional amendments prohibit denying voting rights to women, racial minorities, citizens over age 18 and people unable to pay election-related fees like poll taxes.

But the Constitution contains no explicit right to vote. Rather, the Supreme Court has recognized an implicit right to vote via the 14th Amendment, enacted in 1868 after the Civil War, which aimed to protect the civil rights of people who had been enslaved and guarantees “the equal protection of the laws.”

The court has recognized it in a handful of decisions dealing with the meaning of those amendments. “Undeniably the Constitution of the United States protects the right of all qualified citizens to vote, in state as well as in federal elections,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the historic 1964 ruling, Reynolds v. Sims, that cemented the concept that every vote has an equal value. But even a Supreme Court ruling falls short of the guarantees of rights such as freedom of speech and religion that are embedded in the Bill of Rights.

In practice, the Constitution leaves most decisions about the ballot to state and federal legislators, saying that the “times, places and manner” of elections are state matters unless Congress sets nationwide standards.

What most Americans see as an inalienable right to vote is actually the product of decades of court rulings and legislative decisions, most of them — but hardly all — slowly expanding a legal guarantee of the ability to cast a ballot. Congress could give everyone the right to vote by mail, but since it has not, mail balloting is subject to a jumble of state laws. The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, gave women the right to vote, but by then, Wyoming had been letting women vote for 50 years, even when it was a territory, not a state.

What does the future hold?
For decades, courts and Congress have taken the lead in upholding a legal right to vote — in the Voting Rights Act of 1965; in the 1966 Supreme Court case, Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, which outlawed poll taxes; in federal legislation in 1993 that set ground rules for registering new voters and removing existing voters from the rolls.

In lawsuits seeking to enforce or protect existing election laws, the 14th Amendment’s implicit guarantee of voting rights has become a mainstay of plaintiffs’ arguments.

“As long as those precedents are respected, I think it’s fair to say there’s a constitutional protection of a basic right to vote,” Edward B. Foley, a leading scholar of election law at Ohio State University, said in an interview.

But the evolution of an increasingly conservative Supreme Court with a skeptical approach to voting rights and an emerging record of upending precedents means that the current interpretation of the right to vote is no longer a sure bet, he said.

The court is considering two major voting cases this term — one that could limit the Voting Rights Act’s power to remedy racial disparities in political districts, the other arguing that state courts have no authority to overturn legislative decisions on political redistricting and election laws — that could reverse once-solid precedents.

Indeed, what most voters would consider a foundational right — electing a president — exists nowhere in the Constitution, which says presidential electors may be appointed “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”

Democrats in both the U.S. House and Senate filed legislation last year that would establish a statutory right to vote, but neither bill has received a hearing. And for years, voting-rights advocates have pressed for a new constitutional amendment affirming citizens’ right to cast a ballot. So far, it’s all been to no avail.

Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

ARTICLE
https://www.nytimes.com/article/voting-rights-constitution.html

MY THOUGHTS

The problem is relates to Roe vs Wade, Roe vs Wade is a supreme court decision. the odd thing about Roe vs wade is how people treat it like a legislative act or an amendment to the constitution. it is a decision by the supreme court which the supreme court is totally free or legally allowed to change. 
Voting isn't guaranteed in the usa. But the issue here is how the usa came to be? 
PEople speak of democracy, rule of the people. But the people in the thirteen colonies did not gain the rule based on voting or elections, they gained it by arms, violence, murder, death.
PEople in the USA today speak as if the USA came about through some non violent merit. It came about through killing/death/murder/war, that is where the rule of the people always is. No matter what government style, the people rule through violence. It is the cheap readers of history who mistake  appeased populaces as symbols of the masses power to rule itself. 
It isn't. If the masses want a king/a council/a clan/elected officials, the masses make it happen. 

How Elon Musk Became a Geopolitical Chaos Agent
The world’s richest man has inserted himself in some of the world’s most combustible conflicts.

By Cade Metz, Adam Satariano and Chang Che
Cade Metz, Adam Satariano and Chang Che reported this story from San Francisco, London and Seoul.

Published Oct. 26, 2022
Updated Oct. 28, 2022

In the last four weeks, Elon Musk has offered a peace plan for Russia and Ukraine that outraged Ukrainian officials. He has posted a tweet about Iranian internet access that exposed government protesters to a phishing scheme. He has also suggested in a newspaper interview that China could be appeased if it were given partial control of Taiwan. An official in Taipei demanded that he retract his suggestion.

Mr. Musk has in recent months emerged as a new, chaotic actor on the stage of global politics. While plenty of billionaire executives like to tweet their two cents on world affairs, none can come close to Mr. Musk’s influence and ability to cause trouble. He has sometimes waded into situations even after he was advised not to, and has already left behind plenty of messes.

While the bulk of Mr. Musk’s wealth comes from his stake in his electric car company, Tesla, his influence stems largely from his rocket company, SpaceX, which runs the Starlink satellite network. Starlink can beam internet service to conflict zones and geopolitical hot spots, and it has become an essential tool of the Ukrainian army.

Mr. Musk’s influence will grow with the close of the deal to buy Twitter. He has called himself a free speech absolutist, and he is expected to take a light touch to moderating Twitter’s content.

His critics — and there are many — worry that it is difficult to separate Mr. Musk’s opinions from his business interests, especially when it comes to Tesla, which is increasingly dependent on China.

“Technology has become central to geopolitics,” said Karen Kornbluh, a director with the German Marshall Fund, a geopolitical think tank, and a former adviser to President Barack Obama. “It is fascinating and it is messy and there is Elon Musk in the middle of it.”

In some cases, Mr. Musk has been a boon. When he provided Starlink internet access in Ukraine earlier in the year and funded at least part of the hardware and service, he equipped both civilians and soldiers with a crucial means of communication during the ongoing conflict with Russia.

But the messages he has delivered have also caused problems. This month, in a Twitter post, he said he could not “indefinitely” fund Ukraine’s use of Starlink, before suddenly reversing course.

Late last month, Mr. Musk attended a private event in Aspen called The Weekend. Organized partly by the former Google chief executive and government adviser Eric Schmidt, the event brought together American business and political leaders, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President Al Gore and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford.

At lunchtime, under a tent on a golf course, Mr. Musk took the stage for a sweeping conversation with the billionaire businessman David Rubenstein, according to two people who attended the event and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

At the end of the conversation, to the surprise of many in attendance, Mr. Musk proposed a peace plan for the war in Ukraine that would allow Russia to annex Ukrainian land, seeming to align himself with the Kremlin.

The idea outraged many at the event, according to attendees. The next day, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser to President Biden, gave a video talk at the event and a questioner raised the issue of Mr. Musk’s peace plan. Mr. Sullivan did not comment on Mr. Musk’s remarks at the event, according to a National Security Council spokesperson. Nonetheless, Mr. Musk revealed his plan 10 days later on Twitter. The Kremlin publicly supported the idea.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and his top aides fiercely rebuked Mr. Musk’s plan. But his shifting positions put them in a bind: Starlink terminals have become a crucial means of communication for the Ukrainian Army.

Mr. Musk did not respond to several requests for comment.

In mid-September, as the army advanced into southern territories previously occupied by Russia, it lost access to Starlink in some areas near the front lines, four people with knowledge of the matter said. Two of them said this was because Mr. Musk had “geofenced” the service so that it was available only in certain areas. It was not clear why the satellite system was not working, and others in Ukraine reported that it was working fine.

Mr. Musk has discussed the matter with both the Ukrainian government and the U.S. government in an effort to determine the locations where the army will have access to Starlink, according to the people. A National Security Council spokesperson said that the council, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and “officials across the U.S. government have spoken to Starlink and answered questions about U.S. policy like we do with all companies.”

This month, Mr. Musk delivered more uncertainty to Ukraine when he said he could not keep paying for Starlink service to the country, making it seem like he was shouldering the expense. In fact, the United States, Britain and Poland have paid SpaceX for at least part of the Starlink cost, according to a document outlining the expenditures reviewed by The New York Times.

“He has to decide whether Starlink is a commercial service that provides sometimes lifesaving technology to its customers or a service that is highly dependent on the geopolitical interests of its management and, thus, unreliable for customers who have concerns over national security,” said Dimitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a geopolitical think tank in Washington.

While he was in Aspen laying out his peace plan for the war in Ukraine, Mr. Musk also waded into unrest in Iran.

As protests spread across the country and the authorities responded by blocking internet access in some areas, he appeared to come to the rescue. “Activating Starlink,” he said in a Twitter message after the U.S. government lifted some sanctions that limited the ability of American tech companies to operate in Iran so that they could aid protesters.

Starlink offered the potential to bypass the government’s blockade of land-based internet connections that had taken Iranians in many cities offline.

But as many Iranians soon learned, Mr. Musk’s promise did not hold up. Left unsaid by Mr. Musk was any context on what was needed to get Starlink up and running, how long it would take and why Iranian government restrictions would make it nearly impossible to offer the service widely inside Iran.

While Starlink remained unavailable in Iran, hackers believed to have links to the government began a phishing campaign, sending messages inside social media channels with links claiming to provide access to Starlink, according to Amir Rashidi, a digital rights expert from Iran. Rather than providing access to Mr. Musk’s satellite system, the links were malware that gobbled up information from the users’ phones, said Mr. Rashidi, who analyzed at least five versions of the malware.

A small amount of Starlink internet access is now available in Iran with equipment smuggled across its border, Mr. Rashidi said. That is creating additional concerns that the authorities will be able to identify data transmitted because the satellite signals may be traceable to individuals on the ground.

Mr. Rashidi, who fled the country in 2009, commended Mr. Musk for trying to help but said his tactics were “very irresponsible.”

“It was just someone who wanted to jump up to say, ‘I’m doing something good,’ without understanding what the consequences would be,” he said.

Mr. Musk also recently stepped into perhaps the world’s most delicate geopolitical hot spot: Taiwan.

Tensions between China and Taiwan pose major risks to Mr. Musk’s business empire. Tesla operates a manufacturing facility in Shanghai that produces as much as 50 percent of the company’s new cars. The Beijing government tightly controls how Western companies operate in the country, and observers have long worried about how Tesla’s dependence on China could affect Mr. Musk’s political positions.

This month, Mr. Musk confirmed that he faced pressure from Beijing, when he told the Financial Times that the Chinese government had made it clear that it disapproved of his offering Starlink internet service in Ukraine. Beijing sought assurances, he said, that he would not offer the service in China.

Then he offered a way of easing the tensions: handing some control of Taiwan to China.

The comment, which breaks sharply with the policy of the United States and its allies, drew swift rebukes from Taiwanese politicians.

In a phone interview with The New York Times, Chao Tien-Lin, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwanese legislature’s foreign affairs and defense committee, called on Mr. Musk to retract his statement. “If he does not, I will sincerely advise not just Taiwan but all consumers in liberal democratic countries to boycott Tesla and its related products,” he said.

Some have pointed out that if a military conflict breaks out between the two sides, the Taiwanese, like the Ukrainians, may call on Mr. Musk to provide an emergency means of communication with satellite internet. But given Mr. Musk’s public stance on the situation and links to China, Starlink may not be a viable option.

ARTICLE
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/technology/elon-musk-geopolitics-china-ukraine.html

MY THOUGHTS
IT goes back to the cake and eat it too. People want the USA to have technological dominance, but they also want individual fiscal possibility, but then they want all the rich to be champions of cohesion/peace/philanthropy. 
You can't have your cake and eat it too. no one can. And some people as the metoo era proved are beyond being cancelled.

#NY1 great interview with  @bcuza #ny1politics @insidecityhall  Albert fox 
MTS safety has not increased, it is perceptions of negativity that have increased. New Yorkers, wake up

Albert Fox Cahn talks about MTA’s new plans
By Deanna Garcia New York City
PUBLISHED 9:20 PM ET Sep. 29, 2022
MTA will install two surveillance cameras inside every subway car over the next three years and begin phasing out MetroCards early next year. 

Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a civil rights and privacy group, joined Bobby Cuza on “Inside City Hall” Thursday to talk more about MTA’s new plans. 

“The problem is, people don’t feel safer even when they are safer. But the camera’s aren’t going to solve that,” he said. Cameras are not helpful for investigations and are “terrible” at deterring crime, he said. 

“So what you’re going to see is subways where people feel even more at risk because you have even more images of crimes that take place, even as crime rates continue to go down,” Cahn said.
Article with Video
https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/inside-city-hall/2022/09/30/albert-fox-cahn-talks-about-mta-s-new-plans

The view to incarceration is similar to those who few public transit a hazard.  

Illinois To END Cash Bail, Critics Say 'SAFE-T Act' Will Cause More Crime: Olayemi & Robby Debate
video 

A new Yorker who is honest and exposes the truth. Like many issues, when the goal for some is 100% and every negative instance becomes the standard, you get a false narrative.
NYC has over ten million people. The public transit system is safe for over 95% of these people every day for 365 days. 5% or less deal with incidents and the media to sensationalize plus people who want zero negative incidents cause they have been hurt and feel fear or feel their safety demands no incidents proclaim terror throughout the city.
https://twitter.com/errollouis/status/1579626913496461313

Going home on the violent NYC subways. Riders paralyzed with fright. pic.twitter.com/icOvJ4MDV9

— Errol Louis (@errollouis) October 11, 2022

the problem is a large percentage of people in NYC itself, not the majority, for various reasons will accept nothing but 0% incidents to admit they are safe or comfortable and that is impossible in a city of over nine million people, so inevitable cries of fear

People in the USA talk about justice or the rule of law alot, talk about financial honesty a lot and yet the fiscal truth or legal truth of the usa is always the consistency of the powerful to maintain control and benefit with no penalty side a media presentation of acceptance

How $600 billion was stolen from the American people
By James Bovard
“COVID fraud” is at this point a redundant phrase. Congress appropriated more than $5 trillion for COVID relief but almost $600 billion may have been lost to fraud — an astounding 12%. Washington’s pandemic pratfalls are the greatest federal boondoggle of this century.

Prosecutors are having a turkey shoot nailing COVID crooks: More than 1,500 have been indicted and almost 500 have been convicted. On September 14, the Justice Department announced the creation of three COVID-19 fraud strike force teams.

When President Biden recently signed a law to extend the time to prosecute COVID fraud, he declared, “My message to those cheats out there is this: You can’t hide. We’re going to find you.” But the sheer amount of fraud makes it unlikely that the vast majority of thieves will be charged.

Policymakers acted as if waiving standard federal fraud protections would somehow thwart the COVID virus. On September 22, the Labor Department inspector general estimated that COVID-19 unemployment fraud amounted to $45 billion and could exceed $163 billion. “Overseas organized crime groups flooded state unemployment systems with bogus online claims, overwhelming antiquated computer software benefits in blunt-force attacks that siphoned out millions of dollars,” NBC News reported.

Prison inmates, drug gangs and Nigerian racketeers easily plundered the program. One swindler collected unemployment benefits from 29 different states. In the first year of the pandemic, Maryland detected more than 1.3 million fraudulent unemployment claims — equal to 20% of the state’s population.

Beginning in June 2020, the feds distributed $813 billion in Paycheck Protection Program loans to businesses. President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin boasted that PPP is “supporting an estimated 50 million jobs.” But many of those jobs existed solely in the imagination of political appointees.

The Small Business Administration (SBA), which administered the program, effectively told people, “Apply and sign and tell us that you’re really entitled to the money,” according to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. The SBA camouflaged its “don’t ask, don’t tell” loan standard by claiming to perform economic miracles. The SBA ludicrously boasted that PPP loans saved more jobs than the total number of employees in at least 15 industries.

Yet CBS News found that PPP loans had gone to more than a thousand “ghost businesses” in Markham, Illinois — indicative of a nationwide problem of deluging non-existent companies with federal cash. The feds gave “loans to 342 people who said their name was ‘N/A,’” the New York Times reported.

Fraud permeated relief programs of practically every federal agency that gushered money. On September 20, the feds charged 47 people in Minnesota with looting $250 million from the federal child nutrition programs’ COVID aid. Prosecutors denounced the “brazen scheme of staggering proportions” but federal and state bureaucrats should have stopped the pilfering from the start. “Feeding Our Future,” a nonprofit organization, pocketed $300,000 in subsidies in 2018 and a windfall of almost $200 million in 2021. Fraud snowballed because the US Department of Agriculture issued waivers to “suspend all on-site monitoring of providers” of children’s meals.

Instead of feeding hungry kids, tax dollars were pilfered using a list of phony recipients generated by the website listofrandomnames.com. (No wonder Feeding Our Future wasn’t invited to attend Biden’s White House Summit on Hunger last week.) When the state of Minnesota sought to cut off funding, Feeding Our Future sued, claiming the action “discriminated against a nonprofit that worked with racial minorities,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. Leftist firebrand Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) received thousands of dollars in donations from individuals indicted in the scandal.

Fighting fraud is tricky for federal investigators when some politicians openly used COVID stimulus money to bribe voters. In the January 2021 Georgia runoff race for US Senate, the campaign of Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock distributed fliers declaring, “Want a $2,000 Check? Vote Warnock.” That promise helped Warnock win, sealing Democratic control of the Senate and opening the floodgates for trillions of dollars of additional Biden administration spending.

.@KLoeffler isn't in D.C. fighting for a $2,000 relief check. She's on the campaign trail, trying desperately to save her own job.

She’s fighting for herself. I’ll fight for you. pic.twitter.com/uS5lx4on9B

— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) January 1, 2021
The single biggest COVID fraud will never show up in triumphal press releases issued by federal prosecutors. On August 24, Biden invoked the COVID-19 emergency to justify canceling $400 billion in student loans. A few weeks ago, Biden told “60 Minutes” that the pandemic was over — thus invalidating his justification for loan forgiveness.

But Team Biden signaled that it was entitled to spend hundreds of billions of tax dollars to purchase Democratic votes in the midterm congressional elections regardless of the president’s admission.

Plenty of scoundrels will be convicted in the coming months for stealing COVID money. But it was the politicians of both parties who unleashed the reckless spending that left us with a soaring national debt, roaring inflation, and a fading mirage of prosperity.

Americans should never permit politicians to absolve themselves by uncorking geysers of tax dollars.

Article

https://nypost.com/2022/10/02/how-600-billion-was-stolen-from-the-american-people/

Would you want this?

Their Loved Ones Died. Preserved Tattoos Offer a Way to Keep Them Close.
Laws in most states allow mourners to remove and preserve tattoos as memorial works of art. An Ohio company, Save My Ink Forever, is the pioneer.

Kyle Sherwood, left, and his father, Mike Sherwood, started Save My Ink Forever, which helps families preserve the tattoos of loved ones who have died.Credit...Daniel Lozada for The New York Times

By McKenna Oxenden
Published Oct. 8, 2022
Updated Oct. 12, 2022, 3:15 p.m. ET
Jonathan Gil knew he would never forget the details of the day his 24-year-old twin brother died in a boating accident on Lake Hopatcong in northern New Jersey — the frantic phone call from a friend, the dire search by rescuers and the dread of breaking the grim news to his mother.

But Mr. Gil worried that as the months and years wore on, the memories he held of Jason beyond that tragic day would begin to fade. His family’s solution: Preserve a part of his brother.

Now, anytime he seeks a quick reminder of his twin, Mr. Gil glances past a collage of photos to a shelf next to his desk that acts as an altar, where the tattoo of a black and white skull and three roses, lifted and preserved on skin from Jason’s left shoulder, sits protected in a frame.

“We have his ashes, but with that you don’t see a physical part of him,” said Mr. Gil, 27. “But with the tattoo, you can. It’s nice to have a little piece of him, like you’re holding him close in one way or another and keeping him around.”

The preserved tattoo is the work of the company Save My Ink Forever, started in 2016 in Northfield, Ohio, by Kyle Sherwood, a third-generation mortician, and his father, Mike.

While limited attempts to preserve tattoos stretch back for decades, few other companies globally are doing the same work as Mr. Sherwood, who started his business at the nexus of two growing trends: More Americans are getting inked, and the idea of turning loved ones’ remains into keepsakes is surging in popularity. Some mourners are having cremated remains made into jewelry or infused into glass-blown sculptures — all in the name of keeping a loved one close.

More mourners are also asking funeral homes about this service, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. Walker Posey, a funeral home director and spokesman for the association, said more than half of his roughly 400 clients inquire each year about the keepsakes. That is a sharp increase from five years ago, when clients seldom made such requests. Funeral laws in 49 states — the exception is Washington — allow the tattoo preservation practice.

And a record three in 10 Americans have at least one tattoo, according to a 2019 Ipsos poll, with the popularity of permanent ink continuing to grow among young people.

The idea of keeping a beloved relative’s tattooed skin and hanging it on a wall may be hard for some to imagine. But families who have worked with the Sherwoods say it brings comfort and emphasized that a person’s tattoos often carry great meaning.

Margie Gatehouse, of Salt Lake City, said that as her husband was dying of cirrhosis this past spring, her daughters approached her with the idea of preserving his tattoo. She was stunned at the suggestion.

“I thought it was morbid and thought that it wasn’t even possible,” Ms. Gatehouse, 52, said. “How could you cut something off someone?”

Her daughters, Courtney and Nichole, explained to their mother that their father was on board and that they had found Save My Ink Forever. They asked her to imagine how special it would be to have the black-and-white skull tattoo that has a ribbon with their names on it framed and preserved for years to come. She reluctantly agreed.

Now, Ms. Gatehouse says she couldn’t be more grateful that she listened to her daughters as the frame, which hangs in her living room, continues to connect her to her husband.

“I’m glad that I didn’t miss the opportunity,” she said.

Historians trace the rise of tattoo preservation to the mid-to-late 19th century. Fukushi Masaichi, a Japanese physician, is credited as one of the pioneers in the field, said Karly Etz, a postdoctoral associate at the Rochester Institute of Technology who studies tattoo art history.

While the concept of saving loved ones’ tattoos had been around in fits and starts, Mr. Sherwood sought a way to perfect the preservation process while treating the tattoo as a work of art, ironing out the details for two years.

When Save My Ink Forever receives a request to preserve a tattoo, the company sends a package of materials to the funeral home for the tattoo to be excised. Morticians are directed through an instructional video to remove only the necessary amount of skin needed to preserve the tattoo. The process is “really hard to screw up,” Mr. Sherwood said. If something does go awry, he said, his team can usually fix it.

The mortician places the tattoo into a preservative. It then is shipped to Ohio for the team of about five people to clean, trim excess skin and fix any blemishes.

Sometimes, the skin is damaged. Or in the case of the waterlogged skin of Mr. Gil’s twin, extra care is required to bring the tattoo back to its original glory.

“It’s sort of like cleaning a dirty window,” Mr. Sherwood said, emphasizing that his team does not alter the tattoo in any way. He declined to divulge further details of the process, which takes about three to four months per tattoo.

Finally, the tattoo gets a frame. Families pick the type of frame and matting and then a professional framer gets started. Each tattoo is sewn to the canvas and the frame is pumped with nitrogen to help keep it pristinely preserved as museum-grade UV blocking glass is inserted into place.

In order to have the materials to perfect the science, Mr. Sherwood came up with the idea to pay for people’s tummy tuck procedures, which remove excess skin and fat, in exchange for being able to practice on that discarded skin.

The cost can range from about $1,700 for a small, 5 inch by 5 inch tattoo, to more than $120,000 to preserve an entire body suit.

Mr. Sherwood said while some people may find his business outlandish, he takes pride in being able to give people a long-lasting physical memory of their loved one.

The mortician recalled the case of one man who had a tattoo with both of his daughters’ names in a heart. The family contemplated whether to save the tattoo, but Mr. Sherwood suggested cutting it in half in the style of a friendship necklace, so each daughter would have a piece of their father with them.

In another instance, he helped a grieving mother keep her son’s memory alive after he was murdered. The tattoo had “Papa Eddie” written in a scroll with a fishing rod, in honor of his grandfather, and had been inked by the man’s uncle, who had also died. By preserving the tattoo, Mr. Sherwood said it represented not only her son, but also “three generations of families.”

“The gratification people have and that connection I’m able to make, you can’t explain it,” Mr. Sherwood said. “It’s very humbling and powering to have that impact on someone.”

Tattoo preservation isn’t just for people who have died.

Save My Ink Forever has preserved a handful of tattoos for amputees and recently received a new request from Asher J. Heart, who wants to preserve a tattoo after undergoing gender confirmation surgery next year. Mr. Heart, 30, from Muskegon, Mich., said the ink on his chest no longer felt right, but would serve as a tangible piece of the person he used to be.

“For me, it will not be erasing my past but erasing the pain of it,” Mr. Heart said.

For Mr. Gil, in addition to keeping his twin brother’s tattoo in a prominent viewing spot, he decided to honor him by getting two more tattoos — a portrait of Jason’s face and a replica of a glowing lantern tattoo that Jason had.

Mr. Gil said he hoped those tattoos, too, survived longer than he did.

“I hope someone else does it for me,” Mr. Gil said. “I don’t need this while I’m gone. Once you die, you die. You don’t take anything with you.”

Article
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/arts/save-my-ink-forever-tattoo-preservation.html

‘Is That Black Enough for You?!?’ Review: Elvis Mitchell’s Intoxicating Deep Dive into the Black Cinema Revolution of the ’70s

A critic's movie-love documentary artfully celebrates and deconstructs the decade when African-American audiences, for the first time, could see themselves onscreen.

By Owen Gleiberman

In “Is That Black Enough for You?!?,” Elvis Mitchell’s highly pleasurable and eye-opening movie-love documentary about the American Black cinema revolution of the late ’60s and ’70s, Billy Dee Williams, now 85 but still spry, tells a funny story about what it was like to play Louis McKay, the dapper love object and would-be savior of Billie Holiday in “Lady Sings the Blues.”

The year was 1972, and African-American audiences had rarely (if ever) been given the chance to gawk at a movie star of color who was not just this sexy but this showcased for his sexiness. Louis was like Clark Gable with a dash of Marvin Gaye; when he was on that promenade stairway, Williams says, with a chuckle, that he just about fell in love with himself. That’s how unprecedented the whole thing was. The actor recalls how the lighting was fussed over (we see a shot in which Louis appears bathed in an old-movie glow), and how unreal that was to him on the set. At the time, Black actors didn’t get lighting like that. But Black audiences drank it in with a better-late-than-never swoon, even as they knew that this was a representation they’d been denied for more than half a century.

“Is That Black Enough for You?!?” tells the story of Black film during a singularly creative and unprecedented time — the decade from 1968 to 1978, when Black actors, Black stories, and Black talent behind the camera exploded, in Hollywood and in the adjoining universe of independent film. The actors who came to the fore during this period are legendary: James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Ossie Davis, Diana Ross, Pam Grier, Jim Brown, Tamara Dobson, Max Julien, and many more. The directors, like Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles, were wily and paradigmatic game-changers. And the way that Black talent began to flow through a vast array of forms and genres — action movies, historical dramas, film noirs, musicals, close-to-the-bone indie love stories — made the Black film movement a parallel of the New Hollywood, with new voices overthrowing old strictures.

Mitchell, who wrote, directed, and narrates the film, is a veteran critic who has a unique, at times almost musical ability to nail a film’s unconscious essence. “Is That Black Enough for You?!?” is subtitled “How one decade changed the movies (and me),” and it’s very much Mitchell’s statement about what the rise of Black cinema meant to him, as a Black moviegoer born into a world where movies were still an engine of racial division. His pithy evocation of each movie — the history, the fantasy, the meaning — turns the documentary into a film fanatic’s diary that never tries to separate the importance of these movies from how each of them made him feel. As a critic-turned-filmmaker, Mitchell puts his soul right out there. His conceit is that the very existence of these movies was life-changing, because African-American moviegoers, at long last, had the catharsis of a big-screen mirror. For the first time, they could see themselves onscreen — not degraded or reductive images of themselves, but a reflection of who they were.  

The beauty of the documentary is that Mitchell invites the audience to share in the transformational quality — the life force — that he experienced in Black cinema. “My grandmother,” recalls Mitchell, “told me that movies changed the way she dreamed.” That’s as perfect a summation of the power of movies as I’ve ever heard. Movies change our dreams; they change us. But who, in that formulation, gets to be the “us”?

From the start of the 20th century, white audiences could go to the movies and see themselves. Mitchell, born in 1958, grew up in the Detroit area, where he saw the tumult of the inner-city riot/insurrections of the ’60s, but where he also went to the movies to discover who he was and who he wanted to be. Early on, he takes us back to the studio-system days, where Black actors were reduced to playing hideous racist caricatures. His survey of those images — the servility of Stepin Fetchit, the odd-child-out surrealism of Buckwheat, the shocking minstrel moments that could creep into even a movie by Hitchcock — is searing, not only because of the violence of the racism that defined those roles, but because part of the racism lay in what was not being depicted: Black people in their humanity.

We know that Sidney Poitier was the actor who tore down that wall. But Mitchell, while paying due homage to Poitier’s electric intensity, focuses on another Black actor of the period — the outrageously gifted and charismatic Harry Belafonte, the Calypso singer who’d become a screen actor, appearing opposite Dorothy Dandridge in films like “Carmen Jones” (1954), but who abandoned the movies after the remarkable but mostly ignored film noir “Odds Against Tomorrow” (1959), because he couldn’t accept the roles that he was being offered. He didn’t want to be a compromised, patronized, back-of-the-bus movie star; he wanted the whole thing or nothing. Mitchell presents Belafonte as a great actor who became, for a decade, a kind of vanished specter of the star he might have been in a better world.

And then, even with those odds against tomorrow, that world began to come into being.

If you say a phrase like “the Black films of the ’70s,” the first thing that will pop into a lot of people’s heads is the word Blaxploitation. But apart from the reductive and problematic quality of that word, it simply doesn’t do justice to the astonishing range of movies that made up the Black film renaissance. Many, though far from all of them, were written and directed by white filmmakers, yet even as whites continued to commandeer the means of production, these movies became an authentic showcase for the Black experience through the existential expressiveness of the Black actors who starred in them. What those actors had, according to Mitchell, was “the self-possession that would become the core of Black film,” a quality that “created a warrior class where there hadn’t been one before.”

Liberating the films from their too-easy-to-slot-in categories, Mitchell feeds on the eclectic cornucopia of what a “Black movie,” starting in the late ’60s, could be. He explores the emotional transcendence of “Sounder” (1972). The exhilarating, dread-soaked hustler authenticity of “Super Fly” (1972). The performance of Rupert Crosse, the first Black actor to be Oscar-nominated for best supporting actor, in “The Reivers” (1969), where he sparred teasingly with Steve McQueen in a way that subverted racial power dynamics. The conspiratorial paranoia of “Three the Hard Way” (1974), about a serum dumped into the water in Black cities, which the teenage Mitchell thought was funny until his father told him about the Tuskegee Experiment. The jocular knowingness of “Cotton Comes to Harlem” (1971), with its wryly repeated catch phrase “Is that black enough for you?”

And then there’s the deliverance of the opening credits of “Shaft” (1971), a vérité epiphany in which the camera, accompanied by the snaky imperiousness of Isaac Hayes’s theme song, didn’t just follow Richard Roundtree as he walked through Times Square but worshipped him. The rebel-blues-meets-burn-baby-burn mythology of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” (1971). The “early, all-out glam shower” that was “Lady Sings the Blues.” The way Duane Jones, playing the Black hero of “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), goes through the entire movie without his race being mentioned — and then, after saving the white people, gets paid back by being gunned down. The jaunty self-mockery of Poitier in “Uptown Saturday Night” (1974). The melancholy of William Marshall in “Blacula” (1972). The cowboy effrontery — and haunting commercial failure — of “Buck and the Preacher” (1972). And the clandestine complexity of “Coffy” (1973), in which Pam Grier played a woman bent on vengeance whose every lethal move is weighed down by the gravity of responsibility that’s tearing her in several directions.

“Is That Black Enough for You?!?” is built in a formally simple yet elegant kaleidoscopic way, examining one movie after another but looking at each through a different lens. Here’s how Ron O’Neal jumped a chain-link fence in “Super Fly” and why it mattered, here’s Diahann Carroll’s “core of calm” in “Claudine” (1974), here’s why “The Wiz” (1978), which should have been a crowning achievement of the Black film renaissance, turned out to be its swan song. And Mitchell never stops weaving the past — Hollywood’s and his own — into the narrative, so that we see how this era was anticipated by the career of Oscar Micheaux (who from 1919 to 1948 made 44 features), and how Isaac Hayes’ performance at the 1972 Academy Awards was, for Mitchell, as profound and transporting as any of the films he talks about.

Elvis Mitchell celebrates the moment when Black people, for the first time in movie history, had a popular culture of heroes to respond to. Which gave life, of course, to the heroism within themselves. But even as Hollywood, for the first half of the century, was defined as a place of cinematic apartheid, Mitchell argues against the glib and easy liberal separatism that would sanctify Black cinema — or Black moviegoing — as a hermetic experience. He interviews a host of Black artists, like Belafonte and Laurence Fishburne and Whoopi Goldberg and Samuel L. Jackson and the director Charles Burnett, many of whom testify to the mythology they embraced in old Westerns. They felt discriminated against but not shut out; those “white” movies were for them as well.

And Mitchell offers a head-spinning insight when he talks about the place in the larger movie cosmos that Black cinema came to occupy. During the ’70s, the American hero had gone underground, replaced by the disaffected antihero. Mitchell makes the case that Black cinema brought the hero back. “Audiences of all races came to see these movies,” he says, “because they could feel the adrenaline in the actors.” He also argues that the way Black filmmakers interwove the aesthetics of movies and pop music, down to the bold marketing idea of releasing a soundtrack prior to the movie (a tactic Van Peebles innovated with “Sweetback,” and was then repeated with such seismic soundtracks as Curtis Mayfield’s music for “Super Fly”), paved the way for the fusion of those two industries. “Saturday Night Fever,” in Mitchell’s view, was one culmination of the Black cinema renaissance, with John Travolta appropriating Black nihilistic swagger and the movie selling itself in the spirit of Black movie/music synergy. The ultimate message of “Is That Black Enough for You?!?” is that Black cinema, for all the racism of Hollywood (and America), was never separate from the cinema that wasn’t Black. How could it be? They shared the same dream space.

ARTICLE

https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/is-that-black-enough-for-you-review-elvis-mitchell-1235396637/

P.S.

Blackwood introduction

https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1837&type=status

Carib Gold

https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1860&type=status

South Side Home Movie Project
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1882&type=status

Yemenyah+ Storm and Rain the movie
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1981&type=status

Why merit doesn't work and the need for communal zones of opportunity in media
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2006&type=status

BLACKWOOD discussions

https://aalbc.com/tc/search/?&q=blackwood&type=core_statuses_status&quick=1&author=richardmurray&search_and_or=or&sortby=relevancy

We were Hippies from John Amos, did the country road guy hear this once?
 

Happy Belated birthday, still love his character in the beastmaster film. The beastmaster is a book written by a white man about an indigenous man who is a space traveler who talks to non humans on mars... so the beastmaster in the film is its own creature completely.
John AMos:) 

John Amos in his 1958 East Orange High School yearbook photo.
John Allen Amos Jr. (born December 27, 1939) is an American actor known for his role as James Evans, Sr., on the CBS television series Good Times. Amos's other television work includes The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a recurring role as Admiral Percy Fitzwallace on The West Wing, and the role of Washington, D.C., Mayor Ethan Baker in the series The District. Amos has appeared on Broadway and in numerous films in his five-decade career. He has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and an NAACP Image Award. On film, he has played numerous supporting roles in movies such as The Beastmaster (1982), Coming to America (1988), Die Hard 2 (1990) and Coming 2 America (2021).
John A. Amos, Jr. Was born in Newark, New Jersey. He grew up in East Orange, New Jersey, and graduated from East Orange High School in 1958. He enrolled at Long Beach City College and graduated from Colorado State University, qualifying as a social worker with a degree in sociology. Amos also played on the Colorado State Rams football team. After college, he was a Golden Gloves boxing champion.
In 1964, Amos signed a free agent contract with the American Football League's Denver Broncos. Unable to run the 40-yard dash because of a pulled hamstring, he was released on the second day of training camp. He then played with the Canton Bulldogs and Joliet Explorers of the United Football League. In 1965, he played with the Norfolk Neptunes and Wheeling Ironmen of the Continental Football League. In 1966, he played with the Jersey City Jets and Waterbury Orbits of the Atlantic Coast Football League.
In 1967, Amos signed a free agent contract with the American Football League's Kansas City Chiefs. Coach Hank Stram told him, "You're not a football player, you're a man who is trying to play football." He returned to the Continental League, where he played that year with the Victoria Steelers.
➡From a graduation speech by John Amos in 1987 at Drew University:
"I really didn't decide on an acting career until after I had exhausted just about every other job possibility in the world. I'd been a truck driver, a garbage man, right in the streets of East Orange, a job that I got immediately after graduation that was to be a summer job. And I found I was capable of doing a job society looks on as being demeaning, but to do it with a certain amount of pride.
It was ``Roots,'' and the character of Kunte Kinte, that gave me the greatest satisfaction as an actor, and as an Afro-American. While attending grade school here in New Jersey, Stockton School, and Columbian Junior High, I was given the unique opportunity of being one of a small group of black students that integrated both those."
Amos became well known in his first major TV role, playing Gordy Howard, the weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, from 1970 until 1973.
In 1971, he appeared with Anson Williams in a commercial for McDonald's. 
He is best known for his portrayal of James Evans, Sr., the husband of Florida Evans, first appearing three times on the sitcom Maude before continuing the role in 61 episodes of Good Times from 1974 to 1976. Although cast as a hard-working middle-aged father of three, Amos was 34 when the show began production in 1973, only eight years older than the actor who played his oldest son (Jimmie Walker) and 19 years younger than his screen wife (Esther Rolle).
He has guest-starred in a number of other television shows, including Police Story, The A-Team, The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, In the House, Martin as Sgt. Hamilton Strawn (Tommy's father), Touched by an Angel, Psych, Sanford And Son, My Name Is Earl, Lie to Me, and Murder, She Wrote. He has also appeared as a spokesman for the Cochran Firm (a national personal injury law firm).
Amos wrote and produced Halley's Comet, a critically acclaimed one-man play that he has performed around the world. Amos performed in August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean on Broadway and later at the McCarther Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.
Amos starred in the TV Miniseries Roots, as the adult Kunta Kinte, based on the book and real life family history of author Alex Haley. Amos was featured in Disney's The World's Greatest Athlete (1973) with Tim Conway and Jan-Michael Vincent, and also starred as Kansas City Mack in Let's Do It Again (1975) with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier. His other film appearances include Vanishing Point (1971), The President's Plane Is Missing (1973), Touched by Love (1980), The Beastmaster (1982), Dance of the Dwarfs (1983), American Flyers (1985), Coming to America (1988), Coming 2 America (2021), Lock Up (1989), Two Evil Eyes (1989), Die Hard 2 (1990), and Ricochet (1991). He appeared in the 1995 film For Better or Worse and played a police officer in The Players Club (1998). He played Uncle Virgil in My Baby's Daddy (2004), and starred as Jud in Dr. Dolittle 3 (2006). In 2012, Amos had a role in the movie Madea's Witness Protection, as Jake's father. He also appeared in Ice Cube and Dr. Dre's 1994 video for "Natural Born Killaz."
In 2009, he released We Were Hippies, an album of original country songs by Gene and Eric Cash.
In 2021, Amos starred in Because of Charley, as the patriarch of an estranged step-family riding out the hurricane that tore through Florida in 2004.
AWARDS
In addition to his Emmy nomination for Roots, Amos has also been nominated for a CableACE award, an NAACP Image Award, and a DVD Exclusive Award. Amos has won three TV Land Awards, taking home trophies for his roles on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Good Times and the TV miniseries Roots.
In 2020, Amos was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
**Amos was a member of the 50th Armored Division of the New Jersey National Guard, and he also became an honorary master chief of the U.S. Coast Guard.
#veterans

No Proof Of Racism By School Bus Driver Who Assaulted Black Children On Video, Cops Say
The adultification of Black children was demonstrably what happened on that school bus.
Written By Zack Linly
Posted September 21, 2022

Source: SOPA Images / Getty

Here’s the thing: There’s a difference between blind speculation and experience-based speculation. But our legal system isn’t equipped to differentiate between the two. In any incident involving white people causing harm to Black people, there will be speculation that the incident was racially motivated. In many cases, there won’t be any racial slurs or verbal indications that race played a part in an attack. But Black people will see the racism based on our experience with racism. In other words: We know it was racist because we’ve seen this before. 

But that will never match up with the burden of proof our legal system requires before it will call something racist, regardless of how obvious the racism is. And that’s why the Morgan County school bus driver who was caught on camera pushing a 6-year-old Black child and his 10-year-old Black sister will not be called a racist when he stands trial—at least not by the court.

According to the Morgan Citizen, James O’Neil, the now-former bus driver in question (he was fired after the video went viral), has been arrested and charged with two counts of simple battery after the recorded incident that took place earlier this month. He was booked in the Morgan County Detention Center, where he spent a day before being bonded out.

“The investigation resulted in the arrest of James O’Neil on two counts of simple battery,” Morgan County Chief Deputy Keith Howard said in a statement. “While this was not a complex investigation, it was complicated by the allegation that the incident was perceived as being racially motivated.”

“Investigators took additional time to investigate all the facts to include consulting with prosecutors in the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit,” he went on to say. “Investigators could not establish a nexus that the incident was racially motivated.”

So, how do we know it was racist? Well we don’t—not for sure—but we’ve seen the adultification of Black children at the hands of white authority figures before. We see it in the statistical evidence that Black students are disproportionately and more harshly disciplined than their white counterparts. We saw it when a 9-year-old Black girl was forced into the back of a police car and pepper sprayed while she was severely distraught and begging for help. We saw it when Aurora, Colorado, police pulled over a Black family in an SUV (despite the vehicle description they were given being a motorcycle) and had young Black girls—the youngest of whom was also 6 years old—lying face-down on the ground while handcuffed and frantically crying. 

The adultification of Black children was demonstrably what happened on that school bus.

From the Citizen:

According to Nene Carter, the mother of the children who were pushed, O’Neil allegedly told her six-year-old son to sit in the back of the bus, despite the fact that primary school students usually sit in the front of the bus away from the older high school students riding the bus in the back.

The 12-second video that went viral on social media shows the bus driver standing over the small child while pushing the boy back into his seat near the front of the bus. The 10-year-old sister is standing next to the bus driver trying to reach out for her brother. The girl shouts, “Stop pushing my brother,” as the bus driver is seen repeatedly pushing the crying boy back into the seat.

“Shut your mouth,” the bus driver says to the girl as he continues pushing the little boy.

The girl asks again for him to stop pushing her brother when the bus driver appears to put his hands on the girl. The girl tells the bus driver to “get your hands off” when the bus driver suddenly pushes her, causing the girl to stumble backwards. The bus driver then says to her, “What a pain in the neck you guys are. Get back there.”

A 6-year-old child isn’t a “pain in the neck” because he’s fearful and anxious about being moved to the back of a bus to sit with older teenagers. He’s just a small child being a small child. A 10-year-old child isn’t a “pain in the neck” because she’s trying to protect her younger sibling from the grown man who is aggressively putting his hands on him. She’s just a child doing what she knows she’s supposed to do as a big sister.

But white America often views Black children through a lens that doesn’t detect innocence and underdevelopment as readily and naturally as it does when viewing white children. It’s just really hard to imagine a white 6-year-old child being sent to the back of a bus among much older kids and then being pushed because he didn’t want to go. (I’m going to go ahead and skip over the part where I talk about the racist implications of a white bus driver sending a Black child to the back of the bus in the first place, BTW.)

It’s also worth mentioning that Carter believes O’Neill was only fired because he was caught on viral video manhandling her children.

“We feel like he was terminated because the story got more coverage than the Morgan County Charter School System would have liked,” said Carter. “It was rumored that they were just going to send him to be retrained.”

And if that’s true, it would have been racist AF. But we could never prove it.

ARTICLE
https://newsone.com/4413554/morgan-county-bus-driver-video-update/
Referral
https://twitter.com/msolurin/status/1573716117956304896

My thoughts
The problem is Black people seem not to realize the usa is a collection of states. Each state is free to have its own culture as long as it is republican, meaning no kings or generals or oligarchs running a state. But that doesn't mean a community can not be empowered in a state and abuse other communities in it. 
Yes, the legal system in the usa allows for cases to be taken to the federal level, but that is a task.
The state in question is georgia. A confederate state. A state where jim crow was at its most firm when other compatriots like new york city were allowing more, albeit trickles, for black folk. Has Georgia ever been anything but the enemy to blacks in its history?
Do you think this case needs to go to the federal level?

Happy September Equinox- 9:04 pm eastern standard time - the beginning of Autumn in the northern hemisphere and Spring in the southern hemisphere
the following is an image of Neptune, from the James Webb, it is a composite image, that is not one image from James Webb.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/52373132207/in/feed-37440125-1663769703-1-72157721637473044

Enjoy

a story
The Last Homily On Liturgoid 
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-last-homily-on-liturgoid

a poem, click the image

An art gallery
Witchtember 2022
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/gallery/84411925/witchtember-2022

A fun post 
from the Black Games Elite public group
Breath of the wild playhouse
https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/323-breath-of-the-wild-playhouse/

some other dates after in the month of september
23: Mercury between sun and earth, inferior
Judy Reed, Black woman, in 1884 made a patent for... wait for it... Dough kneeder and roller
Here is the proof of the patent claim, I read it was signed with an X and it seems true. so for Black kids, or yourself, when someone says what you need to know to have a great imagination, tell them they are wrong
https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=00305474

25: Rosh Hashanah- The Ethiopian jews, some call Beta Israelites, originally spoke Agaw. Genetic studies say that they are genetically related to east africans not jews from across the Red Sea, like from israel/palestine/yemen
Mercury<->Moon; Venus <->Moon conjunctions

26: Jupiter will be 180 degrees in the sky, opposite the sun, Jupiter will be no brighter or bigger this year than on this day
1872 first shrine temple in New York City
https://www.meccashriners.org/history

27: St. Vincent de Paul saint day, Charity
Samuel Adams born 1722- he used his influence to get boston to give education to boys plus girls. 
He opposed the still in existence Society of the Cincinnati, a hereditary fraternity. Some might call that the patriarchy today:)
He opposed the constitution, as he felt it didn't make a federation but made a nation. It can be argued in cheap hindsight, samuel adams was 100% correct. if you consider usa history, the constitution has become a legal document that has been used effectively to destroy the concept of a union of states who can be dissimilar to each other while having a unity of purpose. 
He pushed for the Bill of Rights to be entered into the Constitution and supported it. 
Lastly, Samuel Adams was a poor fiscal operator and didn't brew a damn thing:)

28: Woodchuck's hibernate
Moon goes north to south of the ecliptic

29: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra born 1547 - he wrote a book in two parts, which you may know. He only worked for three years. Odd for me as a writer, that I have a similar quantity of work in similar short spans in multiples.  

His first work is LA Galatea
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/la-galatea-8

His first short story collection and only surviving Novelas Ejemplares
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/novelas-ejemplares-english
In Audio book form
https://librivox.org/the-exemplary-novels-of-miguel-de-cervantes-saavedra-by-miguel-de-cervantes-saavedra/

His last work is Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda
The 400th anniversary edition in spanish made by the Real Academia Española, Royal Academy of Spain
https://www.rae.es/sites/default/files/Hojear_Persiles_y_Sigismunda.pdf
Persiles in english translation
http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/content/etext/e006.html
 

(Matt Chase/The New York Times)

'A Crisis Coming': The Twin Threats to American Democracy

David Leonhardt

Sat, September 17, 2022 at 12:53 PM·27 min read

The United States has experienced deep political turmoil several times before over the past century. The Great Depression caused Americans to doubt the country’s economic system. World War II and the Cold War presented threats from global totalitarian movements. The 1960s and ’70s were marred by assassinations, riots, a losing war and a disgraced president.

These earlier periods were each more alarming in some ways than anything that has happened in the United States recently. Yet during each of those previous times of tumult, the basic dynamics of American democracy held firm. Candidates who won the most votes were able to take power and attempt to address the country’s problems.

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The current period is different. As a result, the United States today finds itself in a situation with little historical precedent. American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country’s governing ideals in decades.

The first threat is acute: a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — to refuse to accept defeat in an election.

The violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress, meant to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s election, was the clearest manifestation of this movement, but it has continued since then. Hundreds of elected Republican officials around the country falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged. Some of them are running for statewide offices that would oversee future elections, potentially putting them in position to overturn an election in 2024 or beyond.

“There is the possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office,” said Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies democracy.

The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.

The run of recent Supreme Court decisions — both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular — highlights this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees seems poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades. And the court is only one of the means through which policy outcomes are becoming less closely tied to the popular will.

Two of the past four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote. Senators representing a majority of Americans are often unable to pass bills, partly because of the increasing use of the filibuster. Even the House, intended as the branch of the government that most reflects the popular will, does not always do so because of the way districts are drawn.

“We are far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and a co-author of the book “How Democracies Die,” with Daniel Ziblatt.

The causes of the twin threats to democracy are complex and debated among scholars.

The chronic threats to democracy generally spring from enduring features of American government, some written into the Constitution. But they did not conflict with majority opinion to the same degree in past decades. One reason is that more populous states, whose residents receive less power because of the Senate and the Electoral College, have grown so much larger than small states.

The acute threats to democracy — and the rise of authoritarian sentiment, or at least the acceptance of it, among many voters — have different causes. They partly reflect frustration over nearly a half-century of slow-growing living standards for the American working class and middle class. They also reflect cultural fears, especially among white people, that the United States is being transformed into a new country, more racially diverse and less religious, with rapidly changing attitudes toward gender, language and more.

The economic frustrations and cultural fears have combined to create a chasm in American political life between prosperous, diverse major metropolitan areas and more traditional, religious and economically struggling smaller cities and rural areas. The first category is increasingly liberal and Democratic, the second increasingly conservative and Republican.

The political contest between the two can feel existential to people in both camps, with disagreements over nearly every prominent issue. “When we’re voting, we’re not just voting for a set of policies but for what we think makes us Americans and who we are as a people,” said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist and the author of “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.” “If our party loses the election, then all of these parts of us feel like losers.”

These sharp disagreements have led many Americans to doubt the country’s system of government. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, 69% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans said that democracy was “in danger of collapse.” Of course, the two sides have very different opinions about the nature of the threat.

Many Democrats share the concerns of historians and scholars who study democracy, pointing to the possibility of overturned election results and the deterioration of majority rule. “Equality and democracy are under assault,” Biden said in a speech this month in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.”

Many Republicans have defended their increasingly aggressive tactics by saying they are trying to protect American values. In some cases, these claims rely on falsehoods — about election fraud, Biden’s supposed “socialism,” Barack Obama’s birthplace and more.

In others, they are rooted in anxiety over real developments, including illegal immigration and “cancel culture.” Some on the left now consider widely held opinions among conservative and moderate Americans — on abortion, policing, affirmative action, COVID-19 and other subjects — to be so objectionable that they cannot be debated. In the view of many conservatives and some experts, this intolerance is stifling open debate at the heart of the American political system.

The divergent sense of crisis on left and right can itself weaken democracy, and it has been exacerbated by technology.

Conspiracy theories and outright lies have a long American history, dating to the personal attacks that were a staple of the partisan press during the 18th century. In the mid-20th century, tens of thousands of Americans joined the John Birch Society, a far-right group that claimed Dwight Eisenhower was a secret communist.

Today, however, falsehoods can spread much more easily, through social media and a fractured news environment. In the 1950s, no major television network spread the lies about Eisenhower. In recent years, the country’s most watched cable channel, Fox News, regularly promoted falsehoods about election results, Obama’s birthplace and other subjects.

These same forces — digital media, cultural change and economic stagnation in affluent countries — help explain why democracy is also struggling in other parts of the world. Only two decades ago, at the turn of the 21st century, democracy was the triumphant form of government around the world, with autocracy in retreat in the former Soviet empire, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, South Korea and elsewhere. Today, the global trend is moving in the other direction.

In the late 1990s, 72 countries were democratizing, and only three were growing more authoritarian, according to data from V-Dem, a Swedish institute that monitors democracy. Last year, only 15 countries grew more democratic, while 33 slid toward authoritarianism.

Some experts remain hopeful that the growing attention in the United States to democracy’s problems can help avert a constitutional crisis here. Already, Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election failed, partly because of the refusal of many Republican officials to participate, and both federal and state prosecutors are investigating his actions. And while the chronic decline of majority rule will not change anytime soon, it is also part of a larger historical struggle to create a more inclusive American democracy.

Still, many experts point out that it still not clear how the country will escape a larger crisis, such as an overturned election, at some point in the coming decade. “This is not politics as usual,” said Carol Anderson, a professor at Emory University and the author of the book, “One Person, No Vote,” about voter suppression. “Be afraid.”

The Will of the Majority

The founders did not design the United States to be a pure democracy.

They distrusted the classical notion of direct democracy, in which a community came together to vote on each important issue, and believed it would be impractical for a large country. They did not consider many residents of the new country to be citizens who deserved a voice in political affairs, including Natives, enslaved Africans and women. The founders also wanted to constrain the national government from being too powerful, as they believed was the case in Britain. And they had the practical problem of needing to persuade 13 states to forfeit some of their power to a new federal government.

Instead of a direct democracy, the founders created a republic, with elected representatives to make decisions, and a multilayered government in which different branches checked one another. The Constitution also created the Senate, where every state had an equal say regardless of population.

Pointing to this history, some Republican politicians and conservative activists have argued that the founders were comfortable with minority rule. “Of course we’re not a democracy,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has written.

But the historical evidence suggests that the founders believed that majority will — defined as the prevailing view of enfranchised citizens — should generally dictate national policy, as George Thomas of Claremont McKenna College and other constitutional scholars have explained.

In the Federalist Papers, James Madison equated “a coalition of a majority of the whole society” with “justice and the general good.” Alexander Hamilton made similar points, describing “representative democracy” as “happy, regular and durable.” It was a radical idea at the time.

For most of American history, the idea has prevailed. Even with the existence of the Senate, the Electoral College and the Supreme Court, political power has reflected the views of people who had the right to vote. “To say we’re a republic not a democracy ignores the past 250 years of history,” Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard University, said.

Before 2000, only three candidates won the presidency while losing the popular vote (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes and Benjamin Harrison), and each served only a single term. During the same period, parties that won repeated elections were able to govern, including the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson’s time, the New Deal Democrats and the Reagan Republicans.

The situation has changed in the 21st century. The Democratic Party is in the midst of a historic winning streak. In seven of the past eight presidential elections, stretching back to Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, the Democratic nominee has won the popular vote. Over more than two centuries of American democracy, no party has previously fared so well over such an extended period.

Yet the current period is hardly a dominant Democratic age.

What changed? One crucial factor is that, in the past, the parts of the country granted outsize power by the Constitution — less populated states, which tend to be more rural — voted in broadly similar ways as large states and urban areas.

This similarity meant that the small-state bonus in the Senate and Electoral College had only a limited effect on national results. Both Democrats and Republicans benefited and suffered from the Constitution’s undemocratic features.

Democrats sometimes won small states like Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming in the mid-20th century. And California was long a swing state: Between the Great Depression and 2000, Democratic and Republican presidential candidates won it an equal number of times. That the Constitution conferred advantages on residents of small states and disadvantages on Californians did not reliably boost either party.

In recent decades, Americans have increasingly sorted themselves along ideological lines. Liberals have flocked to large metropolitan areas, which are heavily concentrated in big states like California, while residents of smaller cities and more rural areas have become more conservative.

This combination — the Constitution’s structure and the country’s geographic sorting — has created a disconnect between public opinion and election outcomes. It has affected every branch of the federal government: the presidency, Congress and even the Supreme Court.

In the past, “the system was still anti-democratic, but it didn’t have a partisan effect,” Levitsky said. “Now it’s undemocratic and has a partisan effect. It tilts the playing field toward the Republican Party. That’s new in the 21st century.”

In presidential elections, the small-state bias is important, but it is not even the main issue. A subtler factor — the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College in most states — is. Candidates have never received extra credit for winning state-level landslides. But this feature did not used to matter very much, because landslides were rare in larger states, meaning that relatively few votes were “wasted,” as political scientists say.

Today, Democrats dominate a handful of large states, wasting many votes. In 2020, Biden won California by 29 percentage points; New York by 23 points; and Illinois by 17 points. Four years earlier, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s margins were similar.

This shift means that millions of voters in large metropolitan areas have moved away from the Republican Party without having any impact on presidential outcomes. That’s a central reason that both George W. Bush and Trump were able to win the presidency while losing the popular vote.

“We’re in a very different world today than when the system was designed,” said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California. “The dynamic of being pushed aside is more obvious and I think more frustrating.”

Republicans sometimes point out that the system prevents a few highly populated states from dominating the country’s politics, which is true. But the flip is also true: The Constitution gives special privileges to the residents of small states. In presidential elections, many voters in large states have become irrelevant in a way that has no historical antecedent.

The Curse of Geographic Sorting

The country’s changing population patterns may have had an even bigger effect on Congress — especially the Senate — and the Supreme Court than the presidency.

The sorting of liberals into large metropolitan areas and conservatives into more rural areas is only one reason. Another is that large states have grown much more quickly than small states. In 1790, the largest state (Virginia) had about 13 times as many residents as the smallest (Delaware). Today, California has 68 times as many residents as Wyoming, 53 times as many as Alaska and at least 20 times as many as another 11 states.

Together, these trends mean that the Senate has a heavily pro-Republican bias that will last for the foreseeable future.

The Senate today is split 50-50 between the two parties. But the 50 Democratic senators effectively represent 186 million Americans, while the 50 Republican senators effectively represent 145 million. To win Senate control, Democrats need to win substantially more than half of the nationwide votes in Senate elections.

This situation has led to racial inequality in political representation. The residents of small states, granted extra influence by the Constitution, are disproportionately white, while large states are home to many more Asian American, Black and Latino voters.

In addition, two parts of the country that are disproportionately Black or Latino — Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico — have no Senate representation. Washington has more residents than Vermont or Wyoming, and Puerto Rico has more residents than 20 states. As a result, the Senate gives a political voice to white Americans that is greater than their numbers.

The House of Representatives has a more equitable system for allocating political power. It divides the country into 435 districts, each with a broadly similar number of people (currently about 760,000). Still, House districts have two features that can cause the chamber’s makeup not to reflect national opinion, and both of them have become more significant in recent years.

The first is well known: gerrymandering. State legislatures often draw district boundaries and in recent years have become more aggressive about drawing them in partisan ways. In Illinois, for example, the Democrats who control the state government have packed Republican voters into a small number of House districts, allowing most other districts to lean Democratic. In Wisconsin, Republicans have done the opposite.

Because Republicans have been more forceful about gerrymandering than Democrats, the current House map slightly favors Republicans, likely by a few seats. At the state level, Republicans have been even bolder. Gerrymandering has helped them dominate the state legislatures in Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio, even though the states are closely divided.

Still, gerrymandering is not the only reason that House membership has become less reflective of national opinion in recent years. It may not even be the biggest reason, according to Jonathan A. Rodden, a political scientist at Stanford University. Geographic sorting is.

“Without a doubt, gerrymandering makes things worse for the Democrats,” Rodden has written, “but their underlying problem can be summed up with the old real estate maxim: location, location, location.” The increasing concentration of Democratic voters into large metro areas means that even a neutral system would have a hard time distributing these tightly packed Democratic voters across districts in a way that would allow the party to win more elections.

Instead, Democrats now win many House elections in urban areas by landslides, wasting many votes. In 2020, only 21 Republican House candidates won their elections by at least 50 percentage points; 47 Democrats did.

Looking at where many of these elections occurred helps make Rodden’s point. The landslide winners included Rep. Diana DeGette in Denver; Rep. Jerry Nadler in New York City; Rep. Jesús García in Chicago; Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in northern New Jersey; and Rep. Barbara Lee in Oakland, California. None of those districts are in states where Republicans have controlled the legislative boundaries, which means that they were not the result of Republican gerrymandering.

Again and again, geographic sorting has helped cause a growing disconnect between public opinion and election results, and this disconnect has shaped the Supreme Court as well. The court’s membership at any given time is dictated by the outcomes of presidential and Senate elections over the previous few decades. And if elections reflected popular opinion, Democratic appointees would dominate the court.

Every current justice has been appointed during one of the past nine presidential terms, and a Democrat has won the popular vote in seven of those nine and the presidency in five of the nine. Yet the court is now dominated by a conservative, six-member majority.

There are multiple reasons (including Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision not to retire in 2014 when a Democratic president and Senate could have replaced her). But the increasingly undemocratic nature of both the Electoral College and Senate play crucial roles.

Trump was able to appoint three justices despite losing the popular vote. (Bush is a more complex case, having made his court appointments after he won reelection and the popular vote in 2004.) Similarly, if Senate seats were based on population, none of Trump’s nominees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — would likely have been confirmed, said Michael J. Klarman, a law professor at Harvard. Senate Republicans also would not have been able to block Obama from filling a court seat during his final year in office.

Even Justice Clarence Thomas’ 1991 confirmation relied on the Senate’s structure: The 52 senators who voted to confirm him represented a minority of Americans.

The current court’s approach has magnified the disconnect between public opinion and government policy, because Republican-appointed justices have overruled Congress on some major issues. The list includes bills on voting rights and campaign finance that earlier Congresses passed along bipartisan lines. This term, the court issued rulings on abortion, climate policy and gun laws that seemed to be inconsistent with majority opinion, based on polls.

“The Republican justices wouldn’t say this and may not believe it,” Klarman said, “but everything they’ve done translates into a direct advantage for the Republican Party.”

In response to the voting rights decision, in 2013, Republican legislators in several states have passed laws making it more difficult to vote, especially in heavily Democratic areas. They have done so citing the need to protect election security, even though there has been no widespread fraud in recent years.

For now, the electoral effect of these decisions remains uncertain. Some analysts point out that the restrictions have not yet been onerous enough to hold down turnout. In the 2020 presidential election, the percentage of eligible Americans who voted reached the highest level in at least a century.

Other experts remain concerned that the new laws could ultimately swing a close election in a swing state. “When you have one side gearing up to say, ‘How do we stop the enemy from voting?’ that is dangerous to a democracy,” Anderson, the Emory professor, said.

An upcoming Supreme Court case may also allow state legislatures to impose even more voting restrictions. The court has agreed to hear a case in which Republican legislators in North Carolina argue that the Constitution gives them, and not state courts, the authority to oversee federal elections.

In recent years, state courts played an important role in constraining both Republican and Democratic legislators who tried to draw gerrymandered districts that strongly benefited one party. If the Supreme Court sides with the North Carolina legislature, gerrymandering might increase, as might laws establishing new barriers to voting.

Amplifying the Election Lies

If the only challenges to democracy involved these chronic, long-developing forces, many experts would be less concerned than they are. American democracy has always been flawed, after all.

But the slow-building ways in which majority rule is being undermined are happening at the same time that the country faces an immediate threat that has little precedent. A growing number of Republican officials are questioning a basic premise of democracy: that the losers of an election are willing to accept defeat.

The roots of the modern election-denier movement stretch back to 2008. When Obama was running for president and after he won, some of his critics falsely claimed that his victory was illegitimate because he was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii. This movement became known as birtherism, and Trump was among its proponents. By making the claims on Fox News and elsewhere, he helped transform himself from a reality television star into a political figure.

When he ran for president himself in 2016, Trump made false claims about election fraud central to his campaign. In the Republican primaries, he accused his closest competitor for the nomination, Sen. Ted Cruz, of cheating. In the general election against Hillary Clinton, Trump said he would accept the outcome only if he won. In 2020, after Biden won, the election lies became Trump’s dominant political message.

His embrace of these lies was starkly different from the approach of past leaders from both parties. In the 1960s, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater ultimately isolated the conspiracists of the John Birch Society. In 2000, Al Gore urged his supporters to accept George W. Bush’s razor-thin victory, much as Richard Nixon had encouraged his supporters to do so after he narrowly lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960. In 2008, when a Republican voter at a rally described Obama as an Arab, Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee and Obama’s opponent, corrected her.

Trump’s promotion of the falsehoods, by contrast, turned them into a central part of the Republican Party’s message. About two-thirds of Republican voters say that Biden did not win the 2020 election legitimately, according to polls. Among Republican candidates running for statewide office this year, 47% have refused to accept the 2020 result, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis.

Most Republican politicians who have confronted Trump, on the other hand, have since lost their jobs or soon will. Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, for example, eight have since decided to retire or lost Republican primaries, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

“By any indication, the Republican Party — upper-level, midlevel and grassroots — is a party that can only be described as not committed to democracy,” Levitsky said. He added that he was significantly more concerned about American democracy than when his and Ziblatt’s book, “How Democracies Die,” came out in 2018.

Juan José Linz, a political scientist who died in 2013, coined the term “semi-loyal actors” to describe political officials who typically do not initiate attacks on democratic rules or institutions but who also do not attempt to stop these attacks. Through their complicity, these semi-loyal actors can cause a party and a country to slide toward authoritarianism.

That’s what happened in Europe in the 1930s and in Latin America in the 1960s and ’70s. More recently, it has happened in Hungary. Now there are similar signs in the United States.

Often, even Republicans who cast themselves as different from Trump include winking references to his conspiracy theories in their campaigns, saying that they, too, believe “election integrity” is a major problem. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, for example, have both recently campaigned on behalf of election deniers.

In Congress, Republican leaders have largely stopped criticizing the violent attack on the Capitol. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, has gone so far as to signal his support for colleagues — like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — who have used violent imagery in public comments. Greene, before being elected to Congress, said that she supported the idea of executing prominent Democrats.

“When mainstream parties tolerate these guys, make excuses for them, protect them, that’s when democracy gets in trouble,” Levitsky said. “There have always been Marjorie Taylor Greenes. What I pay closer attention to is the behavior of the Kevin McCarthys.”

The party’s growing acceptance of election lies raises the question of what would happen if Trump or another future presidential nominee tried to replay his 2016 attempt to overturn the result.

In 11 states this year, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, a position that typically oversees election administration, qualifies as an “election denier,” according to States United Action, a research group. In 15 states, the nominee for governor is a denier, and in 10 states, the attorney general nominee is.

The growth of the election-denier movement has created a possibility that would have seemed unthinkable not so long ago. It remains unclear whether the loser of the next presidential election will concede or will instead try to overturn the outcome.

‘There Is a Crisis Coming’

There are still many scenarios in which the United States will avoid a democratic crisis.

In 2024, Biden could win reelection by a wide margin — or a Republican other than Trump could win by a wide margin. Trump might then fade from the political scene, and his successors might choose not to embrace election falsehoods. The era of Republican election denial could prove to be brief.

It is also possible that Trump or another Republican nominee will try to reverse a close defeat in 2024 but will fail, as happened in 2020. Then, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, rebuffed Trump after he directed him to “find 11,780 votes,” and the Supreme Court refused to intervene as well. More broadly, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, recently said that the United States had “very little voter fraud.”

If a Republican were again to try to overturn the election and to fail, the movement might also begin to fade. But many democracy experts worry that these scenarios may be wishful thinking.

Trump’s most likely successors as party leader also make or tolerate false claims about election fraud. The movement is bigger than one person and arguably always has been; some of the efforts to make voting more onerous, which are generally justified with false suggestions of widespread voter fraud, predated Trump’s 2016 candidacy.

To believe that Republicans will not overturn a close presidential loss in coming years seems to depend on ignoring the public positions of many Republican politicians. “The scenarios by which we don’t have a major democracy crisis by the end of the decade seem rather narrow,” Mounk of Johns Hopkins said.

And Levitsky said, “It’s not clear how the crisis is going to manifest itself, but there is a crisis coming.” He added, “We should be very worried.”

The most promising strategy for avoiding an overturned election, many scholars say, involves a broad ideological coalition that isolates election deniers. But it remains unclear how many Republican politicians would be willing to join such a coalition.

It is also unclear whether Democratic politicians and voters are interested in making the compromises that would help them attract more voters. Many Democrats have instead embraced a purer version of liberalism in recent years, especially on social issues. This shift to the left has not prevented the party from winning the popular vote in presidential elections, but it has hurt Democrats outside of major metropolitan areas and, by extension, in the Electoral College and congressional elections.

If Democrats did control both the White House and Congress — and by more than a single vote, as they now do in the Senate — they have signaled that they would attempt to pass legislation to address both the chronic and acute threats to democracy.

The House last year passed a bill to protect voting rights and restrict gerrymandering. It died in the Senate partly because it included measures that even some moderate Democrats believed went too far, such as restrictions on voter identification laws, which many other democracies around the world have.

The House also passed a bill to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., which would reduce the Senate’s current bias against metropolitan areas and Black Americans. The United States is currently in its longest stretch without having admitted a new state.

Democracy experts have also pointed to other possible solutions to the growing disconnect between public opinion and government policy. Among them is an expansion of the number of members in the House of Representatives, which the Constitution allows Congress to do — and which it regularly did until the early 20th century. A larger House would create smaller districts, which in turn could reduce the share of uncompetitive districts.

Other scholars favor proposals to limit the Supreme Court’s authority, which the Constitution also allows and which previous presidents and Congresses have done.

In the short term, these proposals would generally help the Democratic Party, because the current threats to majority rule have mostly benefited the Republican Party. In the long term, however, the partisan effects of such changes are less clear.

The history of new states makes this point: In the 1950s, Republicans initially supported making Hawaii a state because it seemed to lean Republican, while Democrats said that Alaska had to be included, too, also for partisan reasons. Today, Hawaii is a strongly Democratic state, and Alaska is a strongly Republican one. Either way, the fact that both are states has made the country more democratic.

Over the sweep of history, the American government has tended to become more democratic, through women’s suffrage, civil rights laws, the direct election of senators and more. The exceptions, like the post-Reconstruction period, when Black Southerners lost rights, have been rare. The current period is so striking partly because it is one of those exceptions.

“The point is not that American democracy is worse than it was in the past,” Mounk said. “Throughout American history, the exclusion of minority groups, and African Americans in particular, was much worse than it is now.

“But the nature of the threat is very different than in the past,” he said.

The makeup of the federal government reflects public opinion less closely than it once did. And the chance of a true constitutional crisis — in which the rightful winner of an election cannot take office — has risen substantially. That combination shows that American democracy has never faced a threat quite like the current one.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Tijan Njie as Robert Pilatus and Elan Ben Ali as Fabrice Morvan in the upcoming Milli Vanilli biopic, 'Girl You Know It's True' | CREDIT: DENIS PERNATH, COPYRIGHT: LEONINE STUDIOS / WIEDEMANN & BERG FILM

MY THOUGHTS

I rather it be the Frank Farian story. What convinced him to use two black models from germany and have them have lyp synching careers? I think that kind of story could had led to discussions of how white artists from the USA or Europe made careers being talentless and living off of black artists. I think that was what made Farian who was old enough to see this, be inspired to create and orchestrate milli vanilli. and then in the second act of the film. The fact that he was able to labeled blameless by the media as the producer of milli vanilli while also able to place all blame on milli vanilli, like either of them paid for the singers who were totally complicit as well. so... as always, the film has potential but I would had gone another way.

THE ARTICLE

Milli Vanilli biopic first look teases controversial music duo's looming vocal storm
Girl You Know It's True is produced by Netflix's Dark masterminds Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann.
Joey Nolfi
By Joey Nolfi September 01, 2022 at 11:48 AM EDT

Girl, you know it's true: A Milli Vanilli biopic is on the way, and the studio behind the planned project has unveiled a first look at its stars.

Lead actors Tijan Njie and Elan Ben Ali appear in the new photo as Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, the faces of the ill-fated German-French pop duo who notched three No. 1 singles in the United States in the late '80s. It was later revealed that the pair had taken credit for vocals actually provided by several other singers, including John Davis, who died in 2021.

Matthias Schweighöfer will star as Milli Vanilli producer Frank Farian in the Leonine Studios- and Wiedemann & Berg–produced film, currently titled Girl You Know It's True.

Simon Verhoeven will direct from a script he wrote. Producers on the film include Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann, who previously worked on the Oscar-winning international film The Lives of Others, the Oscar-nominated movie Never Look Away, and Netflix's popular thriller series Dark.

The movie's plot follows the duo's scandal, which was allegedly orchestrated by Farian and saw the frontmen lip-syncing to the voices of other artists who were only credited as background vocalists on their official releases.

Milli Vanilli initially won a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1990, though they ultimately returned the award.

Controversial filmmaker Brett Ratner was previously working on a Milli Vanilli biopic, though that project was dropped by production company Millennium Media in February 2021, after its announcement received intense backlash in the wake of Ratner being accused of sexual misconduct in 2017. (Ratner "categorically" denied the allegations through his attorney Marty Singer at the time.)

Girl You Know It's True does not have a release date yet, but it is expected to film in Munich, Berlin, Capetown, and Los Angeles before wrapping in December.

ARTICLE URL

https://ew.com/movies/milli-vanilli-movie-first-look-photo/

IN AMENDMENT

beverly hills cop 4...many stockholders of the redstone company want the white jewish clan to sell the firm to an investment firm. But they are being adamant against it, which I think is the better strategy. but, having said that, they don't have the money for a high quantity of big budget films, thus why fox sold its movie division to disney and at&t sold warner bros with debt to discovery channel.  The screenwriter to this film is a former law enforcer so I don't know how funny this will be. I am not a true fan of beverly hills cop so I can't speak for the audience or the fanbase.

Title:  In Appreciation of James Webb
Artist: GDBee < https://gdbee.store/ >  
Prior Post
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2013&type=status
GDBee Post
https://aalbc.com/tc/search/?q="gdbee"&quick=1&type=core_statuses_status&updated_after=any&sortby=newest
 

The tweet in question mentioned 6 things: Keke palmer's career/Zendaya's career/Colorism/Hollywood/Comparing two thespians careers/former child stars careers... The suggestion made in the tweet is that the two child stars have different careers at the moment with zendaya being more and Palmer less, and that contrast is an example of colorism in hollywood. And lastly, that said point warrants a deep inspection to their careers. ... I will start with the point. No two thespians ever have the same careers. Hollywood has never provided two thespians with the same careers. Boris karloff didn't have the same career as bela legosi. Billie D Williams didn't have the same career as James Earl Jones. No two thespians ever have the same career in the film industry anywhere. Jackie Chan didn't have the same Career as samo hung, and that is hong kong cinema. Alec Baldwin doesn't have the same career as Harrison Ford. What is my point? Suggesting that two thespians careers can be defined as different based on a negative bias is a simplicity of how the film industry works. Sharon stone didn't have the same career as Meryl Streep who didn't have the same career as Michelle Pfeiffer. The film industry never is the same for any two thespians. Now, is colorism real. I will define colorism as biases based on skin tone. To the issue in question. The skin tone closer to the average of white europeans is given a positive bias while the skin tone closer to the average of black africans is given a negative bias. Based on my definition of colorism, it is real. But, are the careers of Palmer side Zendaya an issue of said bias or hollywood reality? Based on that logic, Angela Bassett overcame colorism and Vanessa Williams didn't gain enough from it. But is that true? If you look into any two thespians careers the reality is simple. A thespian is lucky if they are involved in fiscally profitable work at a higher rate. Why did Val Kilmer's career, before his illness, not be greater than Tom Cruise? Colorism is real. All biases are real. But are biases the key to success or perceived success in a given space? Not always. The main point of the original tweet, which is a reply, is an assumption, absent any way to be proven. As Palmer correctly stated, Keke palmer's career is keke palmer's. I add, Zendaya's career is Zendaya's. Comparing artist careers based on negative biases in any industry isn't acceptable unless it is an industry normal. For example, Judy Garland was born the same year as Dorothy Dandridge. Both are well known singers. Both played in well-known roles. Was dorothy dandridge blockaded from roles as a black person in hollywood that Judy Garland wasn't as a white person in hollywood? yes. But that was an industry standard at that time, in all areas. Black characters were intentionally not written. Black writers were intentionally not hired. Black producers only existed in the independent system, not hollywood. Colorism like all biases is real and still exists, throughout all aspects of humanity. But, a bias must be universally applied in an arena to claim its potency, not existence but potency, absent strict proof. Lastly... the tweet that is the source of the article's debate is a reply. In the original tweet, linked below, Keke PAlmer is praised. Zendaya isn't mentioned. And, the viewpoint that Keke Palmer is a recent star is challenged as historically inaccurate using the posters life. 

Why do I say this? I argue the BET article is dysfunctional. If you simply go to the original post. You will see the source post. They are not even connected in theme. And, I argue that Keke Palmer in replying to the colorism point has either bad media management, cause many stars do not make their own tweets, or enough people she cars about mentioned this that she felt she needed to speak. I will also add, in modern times, sometimes making negative issues loud is a way to become more popular. 

THE ARTICLE

https://www.bet.com/article/mkptst/keke-palmer-zendaya-colorism-twitter

the tweet in question, THE REPLY

https://twitter.com/NBAgladiator/status/1550912209668153348

the original tweet, THE SOURCE

https://twitter.com/aiyanaish/status/1550873544850014209

as a fellow truth telling writer, I realize it takes time for us to learn how to be commercial writers, a finesse must be learned that I haven't, that Rod Serling was able to learn on the go so to speak, that I think most of the most profitable writers today comprehend

An Early Run-In With Censors Led Rod Serling to ‘The Twilight Zone’
His failed attempts to bring the Emmett Till tragedy to television forced him to get creative

Jackie Mansky

April 1, 2019

In August of 1955, Emmett Till, an African-American boy from Chicago was abducted, beaten, and shot while visiting family in Mississippi. A nation divided by race dug in its feet in the aftermath. While Jet magazine disseminated photographs from the open-casket funeral, showing the full mutilation of the 14-year-old’s corpse, another story played out in the courtroom. That fall, an all-white jury acquitted the two killers, both white, of all charges.

The miscarriage of justice proved a galvanizing point in the Civil Rights Movement. Rod Serling, a 30-year-old rising star in a golden age of dramatic television, watched the events play out in the news. He believed firmly in the burgeoning medium’s power for social justice. “The writer’s role is to be a menacer of the public’s conscience,” Serling later said. “He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus the issues of his time.”

Soon after the trial concluded, Serling, riding off the success of his most well-received teleplay to date, felt compelled write a teleplay around the racism that led to Till’s murder. But the censorship that followed by advertisers and networks, fearful of blowback from white, Southern audiences, forced Serling to rethink his approach. His response, ultimately, was “The Twilight Zone,” the iconic anthology series that spoke truth to the era’s social ills and tackled themes of prejudice, bigotry, nuclear fears, war, among so many others.

Tonight, “The Twilight Zone” enters another dimension led by Jordan Peele. Peele has emerged as one of Hollywood’s most interesting auteurs, using a toolbelt of humor, horror and specificity to explore the human experience, especially through the construct of race. That through line can be found throughout his body of work from the witty sketch-comedy episodes of “Key & Peele” to his latest offering, the box-office record-setting Us. His perspective makes him a natural choice to step in as host and executive producer of the buzzy reboot coming to CBS All Access.

But unlike Serling, Peele will also be able to take the franchise in a direction that the dramatic writer wanted to go but was never able to get past the Cold War censors during the original show’s run from 1959-1964. For all that his Oscar-winning directorial debut Get Out, for instance, shares the DNA of “The Twilight Zone,” Peele’s allegory about black people in white spaces is direct in a way that Serling could never have been. To get on air, the story would have been forced to compromise in some way—camouflaging its intent by setting the story on a distant planet or another time period. Peele commented on that in a recent interview < https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/arts/television/jordan-peele-twilight-zone.html >  with Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times: “It felt like, if Serling were here, he’d have a lot to say and a lot of new episodes he couldn’t have written back in his time,” he said. 

Few examples tell Serling’s struggles better than his attempt to bring the Till tragedy to television. Already, when he first pitched the idea to the advertising agency representing the U.S. Steel Hour, an hour-long anthology series on ABC, Serling was pre-censoring himself. Aware that he’d have to make concessions to get the script on screen, he sold the representatives on a story of a Jewish pawnbroker’s lynching in the South. When the idea was greenlit, Serling worked on that script as well as an adaptation for Broadway, where he knew he would have the freedom to tell Till’s story more directly, centering that plot around a black victim.

But Serling misjudged just how restrictive 1950s television could be. After he mentioned that his script-in-progress was based on the Till murder trial in an interview with the Daily Variety, papers around the country picked up the scoop. Thousands of angry letters and wires from the likes of white supremacist organizations followed, threatening both Steel Hour and ABC, who quickly capitulated and ordered changes to Serling's script. Recounting the incident several years later during an interview < https://books.google.com/books?id=C_Z1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=to+suggest+an+unnamed+foreigner,+then+the+locale+was+changed+from+the+South+to+New+England,+and+Im+convinced+they+would+have+gone+up+to+Alaska+or+the+North+Pole+using+Eskimos…except+I+suppose+the+costume+problem+was+of+sufficient+severity+not+to+attempt+it.&source=bl&ots=HUvHNRKWDW&sig=ACfU3U0-tiDUmMXyHM37Ig7rlkS6entsrQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjoxrPwkKbhAhUGj1kKHT0zBAcQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false   ;

“Station owners and advertising agencies were afraid to offend any segment of their white audiences, even racists, for fear of losing income,” explains < https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/arts/television-radio-battling-the-bottom-line-in-tv-s-earliest-days.html >  journalist Jeff Kisseloff, author of The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961. As television gained a national audience in the 1950s, the creative freedoms that permeated the earliest days of the medium were quickly being pushed out in an attempt to sell to a white consumer market. Black purchasing power wasn't taken into account. “[A]s late as 1966, one study indicated that black performers constituted 2 percent of the casts of commercials,” according to research < https://books.google.com/books?id=PP1tHJN8h6AC&printsec=frontcover&dq=james+l+baughman&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjoxsr8o6fhAhUMxVkKHdQhAdMQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=james l baughman&f=false>  by media theorist James L. Baughman. The great Nat King Cole surmised the situation at hand succinctly, “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.” 

When Serling's teleplay,“Noon on Doomsday,” finally aired on April 25, 1956, any hint of the South was removed from the plot; not even a Coca-Cola bottle could appear, lest viewers invoke the idea of the region. Instead, the opening crawl made clear that the story was set in New England. (Really, all that mattered was that it was set far away from the South: “I’m convinced,” Serling said in the Wallace interview, “they would have gone up to Alaska or the North Pole…except I suppose the costume problem was of sufficient severity not to attempt it.). The victim was now depicted as an unknown foreigner. “Further,” Serling fumed, “it was suggested that the killer in the case was not a psychopathic malcontent but just a good, decent, American boy momentarily gone wrong…”

It should be noted that some details of this ordeal might be exaggerations on Serling’s part or conflations of the two scripts he was working on simultaneously for stage and screen; Rod Serling Memorial Foundation board member Nicholas Parisi cautions in his recent biography of Serling that “a good deal of myth has crept into the narrative surrounding the production of ‘Noon on Doomsday.’” For instance, the Jewish Southerner that Serling said was initially cast as the victim, he writes, actually appeared in a draft of the theatrical script, instead. The unknown foreigner was already in Serling’s initial teleplay draft.)

Whatever the case, by the time everything was said and done, the message that aired in the teleplay of “Noon on Doomsday” was thin and garbled. When Serling read the New York Times’ review of it, he realized just how so. In a letter to a friend, he wrote: “I felt like I got run over by a truck and then it back[ed] up to finish the job.” Meanwhile, his relationship with the Theater Guild, whom he’d sold an option of the Broadway script and also produced the teleplay, had soured. Despite attempts to salvage it, the theatrical version of the story was not performed or published in his lifetime.

But Serling wasn’t done with the Till tragedy. Once again, this time for CBS’ “Playhouse 90” series, he attempted to tell the story of a lynching in a small town, this time setting the plot in the Southwest. After haranguing from CBS executives, Serling had to move the story back 100 years, erase any direct allusion to Till, as well any black and white racial dynamics in the script. Unlike “Doomsday,” however, this production, titled “A Town Has Turned to Dust,” still communicated, if more universally, Serling’s desired message on prejudice and hatred. The closing soliloquy, delivered by a journalist signing off a telegram to his editor, already had the feel of the best of the “Twilight Zone” epilogues Serling himself would go on to deliver:

Dempseyville got rain tonight for the first time in four months. But it came too late. The town had already turned to dust. It had taken a look at itself, crumbled and disintegrated. Because what it saw was the ugly picture of prejudice and violence. Two men died within five minutes and fifty feet of each other only because human beings have that perverse and strange way of not knowing how to live side by side, until they do, this story that I am writing now will have no end but must go on and on.

Scholar Lester H. Hunt argues that the lessons Serling took from the experiences of “Doomsday” and “Dust” laid the groundwork for what was to come in “The Twilight Zone.” Based on the censors, Hunt writes in an essay < https://books.google.com/books?id=qOfuslNpHE4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=twilight+zone+rod+serling&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA7ILt0KLhAhXpx1kKHQe8C_oQ6AEIWDAI#v=onepage&q=twilight zone rod serling&f=false > , “[Serling] changed, rather abruptly and driven by the pressure of circumstance, from an artist who thought it was his highest calling to comment on the problems of the day by depicting them directly to one who commented on principles and universals involved, not merely in the problems of the moment, but of human life itself.” 

Or, as Serling himself later put it, “If you want to do a piece about prejudice against [black people], you go instead with Mexicans and set it in 1890 instead of 1959.”

Serling had also learned his lesson from his earlier dust-up with the Daily Variety. In his interview with Wallace, he demurred about whether or not his new show would explore controversial themes. “…[W]e're dealing with a half-hour show which cannot probe like a [Playhouse 90 production], which doesn't use scripts as vehicles of social criticism. These are strictly for entertainment,” he claimed. After Wallace followed up, accusing him of giving up “on writing anything important for television,” Serling easily agreed. “If by important you mean I'm not going to try to delve into current social problems dramatically, you're quite right. I'm not,” he said.

Of course, that couldn’t have been further from the case. His missteps with adapting the Till tragedy for television forced him to realize that to confront issues of race, prejudice, war, politics and human nature on television he had to do so through a filter.

The Twilight Zone is actually a term Serling borrowed from the U.S. military. Serling, who served as a U.S. Army paratrooper in World War II, an experience that marked many of the stories he went on to write, knew it referred to the moment a plane comes down and cannot view the horizon. As the title of the anthology drama, it spoke to his mission for the show: to be able to tell bold stories about the human conditions on screen by obscuring the view somehow.

As Peele steps into Serling's iconic role, he does so knowing he has a chance to speak more directly to those concerns. The veil that held Serling, who died in 1975, back has lifted somewhat, opening up the narrative for bolder stories to now enter “The Twilight Zone.”

ARTICLE

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/early-run-censors-led-rod-serling-twilight-zone-180971837/?fbclid=IwAR1iVtrTGDd8Fq7zQTTZflU7ZbSMTFhKEV1M8BOFoGdYyKhwmYi8OZp4QlA

IN AMENDMENT

to see some pretty photos, I wish my underater train design could had been implemented , fortunate engineers

China completes Rail Line around Taklamakan Desert on the old Silk Road
By baronmaya 

China has finished the new Hotan-Ruoqiang rail line and completed the circle around the huge Taklamakan Desert on the old Silk Road.

Ancient Silk Road travelers cursed China’s largest desert as Takla Makan, an ominous Persian-Turkic expression that translates as “Enter and you may never Return.”

Undeterred by its sandstorms and merciless terrain in the oblong basin north of Tibet’s glacier-packed peaks, China has announced the completion of the final section of a Taklamakan Desert railway loop line, the world’s first to encircle a desert.

Elsewhere, China is constructing Maglev train systems capable of hurtling passengers and freight hundreds of miles per hour, including an underwater route near Shanghai to reach tiny offshore islands.

These latest railways increase China’s military, industrial, agricultural and political prowess, amid escalating rivalry with the USA over each nation’s capabilities.

The Taklamakan Desert railway loop also allows Beijing greater access to rebellious Xinjiang province’s Kashgar, a distant southwestern city near vulnerable borders with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Kashgar and elsewhere in Xinjiang comprise a large population of restive Muslim Uighurs of ethnic Turkic origin.

The railway loop also enables exploitation of the Tarim Basin oilfield, estimated to cover 350,000 square miles, or 560,000 square kilometers, under the Taklamakan’s huge dunes and shifting sands.

According to China’s official Xinhua news agency, workers tighten the screw of the rail and finished the final Hotan-Ruoqiang link on September 27, 2021. From the oasis town of Hotan, an existing line continues to Kashgar.

This railway line runs through the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert,” said Yang Baorong, chief designer of the final 513-mile section. Sandstorms pose a serious threat to railway construction and operation, as tracks can be buried underneath.

Tickets to use this newest link are expected to go on sale in June 2022, allowing travelers to ride the entire loop to encircle the Germany-sized Taklamakan, which is second only to the Sahara Desert in size.

The Taklamakan loop is hailed by Beijing as a way to help the region, especially Xinjiang’s impoverished southern edge near northern Tibet.

That edge includes an existing Golmud-Korla Railway which now joins the new loop. Other trains already go south from Golmud to Lhasa in Tibet, and future plans envision continuing those tracks south from Lhasa to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu.

More than 2,000 years ago, Bronze Age inhabitants buried mummies in the Taklamakan, according to a French-funded excavation. As the desert expanded southward, ancient kingdoms crumbled into ruins or were buried.

These included the flourishing Loulan kingdom on vast Lake Lop Nur, before its water evaporated in the 5th century.

By constructing a railway around the desert, Chinese engineers have recreated Silk Road caravan routes that linked China and Europe by skirting the Taklamakan’s rim.

Buddhist monks also trudged those routes spreading their religion east, until medieval sea routes replaced hazardous overland treks to East Asia.

The Taklamakan Desert parches 124,000 square miles and is about 600 miles east to west.

It bulges up to 260 miles across, flanked by the snow-capped Tian Shan range on the desert’s north and the Kunlun Mountains along its southern curve. Rugged Pamir peaks form its western ridge.

The railway had to cross, or route around, elevations up to 5,000 feet. Grass grids were laid across 165 million square feet of dunes which were virtually devoid of plant life, officials said.

Anti-desertification programs planted 13 million seedlings. In the harshest, most unpredictable zones – battered by sandstorms and smothered by swollen dunes – engineers designed lengthy bridges above chaotic sand.

Closer to Beijing meanwhile, a Maglev train project is starting in Shanxi, a north-central province. Magnets allow Maglev train carriages to float without wheels.

The high-speed train uses superconducting magnetic levitation technology to disengage from the ground to eliminate frictional drag.

This Maglev uses “a near-vacuum internal duct line to dramatically reduce air resistance, to achieve travel speeds of more than 1,000 kilometers-per-hour.

China already boasts the world’s fastest commercial Maglev on a 19-mile route in Shanghai, linking Pudong Airport to an urban metro system on the city’s edge within seven minutes, at up to 268 mph.

Nearby, a bullet train is preparing to zip under the sea at 155 miles-per-hour. Construction is well underway,” the UK-based website IFL Science reported in May 2021.

It would be “the world’s first underwater bullet train, which would extend nationally from Ningbo, a port city near Shanghai, to Zhoushan, an archipelago of islands off the east coast.

Covering a 47.8-mile stretch of almost entirely newly-built railway, the new route will include a 10-mile underwater section.

Verified post
https://weibo.com/2286908003/LxXRGg1aU

Article
https://cosmoschronicle.com/china-completes-rail-line-around-taklamakan-desert-on-the-old-silk-road/
 

From Ukrainians in Ukraine who want unification between Ukraine side Russia  which is the historic commonality, to Taiwanese who want Taiwan to unite side mainland china, which is the historic commonality, to Black descended of enslaved who despise whites in the usa, which is the historic commonality. 

One of the big problems in modern humanity is the inability of communities or villages in this prose to functionalize that they have tribes. It isn't that people are ignorant. No one is ignorant. It isn't that people don't have plans or ideas. We all have plans or ideas. But the inability of individuals or groups to functionalize that their village has various tribes who don't want the same thing. I rephrase, who want things that can not coincide without splitting the village. If you are taiwanese and you want unification of all taiwan with mainland china, how can you get what you want while a taiwanese who wants total taiwanese independence from china get what they want? It is impossible, unless Taiwan split into two pieces, which oddly enough is the key point in the war between the states. 

If you are black and you want a black state in the united states of america, if you are black and you want integration between phenotypes in the usa, if you are black and you want black people to find a new home outside the usa, how can all three get what they want with one village? It is impossible. Unless the village break up into three parts.

Same to ukraine, how does one part of ukraine join with russia while one part of ukraine go independent forever?  same to the native american community in the usa. Some native americans want independence with reparations. Some native americans want to be part of the usa fabric. but how do you do both? 

IReland is the key. Most in northern Ireland wanted to stay part of the UK. So that region stayed. But most in ireland wanted freedom from england and got it. 

The question is how do tribes in any village learn to accept a split among parts with love/happiness... not what usually occurs. What usually occurs being, tribes telling each other their wrong or stupid or ignorant or lazy or dumb or some negative, for wanting what they want. 

I know many Black people who love the USA. It is their home. They want integration. and they welcome the white neighbor and the white wife. I know many Black people who hate the USA. They want to kill all the whites in it. And have no caring for the government of the usa with its constitution at all. 

But, neither group is right or wrong. Either group needs better guidance or management from their leaders or members.  But better guidance or management is blockaded by the ugly thought , somewhat stemming from the usa's war between the states period , that it is better to knock down other tribes to hopefully have your tribe outlast them, as if any idea can be killed.

They Inhabited Separate Worlds in Taiwan. Decades Later, They Collided in a California Church.

David Chou and Pastor Billy Chang spent their whole lives forging parallel paths. They were born in early 1950s Taiwan, grew up just miles apart during martial law and later rebuilt their lives in the United States.

But over several decades, they carried with them vastly different memories — and views — of the island of their birth.

Mr. Chou was the son of parents who fled mainland China following the 1949 Communist revolution, part of a mass exodus of Chinese who established an authoritarian government-in-exile in Taiwan. Though he was born on the island, he and his parents were “mainlanders” devoted to the Chinese motherland and saw Taiwan as forever part of China.

Pastor Chang’s relatives were local Taiwanese who had spent centuries on the island. At home, he spoke Taiwanese Hokkien, a language that for decades was banned in public spaces. Pastor Chang grew to believe that despite Beijing’s longstanding claims, the self-ruled island had its own identity, separate from China.

In May, the lives of the two men collided in a quiet retirement community in Southern California. Authorities say that Mr. Chou, 68 — armed with two guns, four Molotov cocktails and a deep-seated rage against Taiwanese people — opened fire inside the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church as members gathered in honor of Pastor Chang, 67.

The mass shooting was part of a spate of violence that has stunned the nation in recent weeks. One day before, a white 18-year-old fueled by racist hate killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store. Less than two weeks later, an 18-year-old massacred 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

But the shooting in the church in Laguna Woods, Calif., stood out in its own way, a variation on American tragedy that seemed to show how faraway conflicts, even those in the distant past, can reverberate in the gun culture of the United States.

At the Southern California church, a crowded May 15 lunch celebration for Pastor Chang gave way to an eruption of gunfire. Mr. Chou fatally shot a doctor, John Cheng, 52, who tried to stop him, police said. Pastor Chang then threw a chair at the gunman, allowing others to subdue and tie him up with an extension cord. Five congregants, ranging in age from 66 to 92, were injured.

Mr. Chou is being held without bail on charges of murder and attempted murder pending an August arraignment.

As with internal tensions over the years in immigrant communities worldwide — California’s Little Saigon and Miami’s Cuban-American precincts are two U.S. examples — the crime has echoed across the Taiwanese diaspora and underscored divisions that remain frozen in time, even as younger generations have moved beyond them.

“How do we reconcile the views of these identities?” said Annie Wang, 42, a Northern California-based co-host of the podcast “Hearts in Taiwan,” noting that her parents spent years avoiding talk of the schisms related to Taiwanese independence. “It’s been so behind closed doors, but I can’t see a way around this anymore. Someone went and killed for this.”

The shooting has also deepened fears about safety in a time of rising anti-Asian attacks in the United States and underscored debates about access to firearms and mental health services. Those who know Mr. Chou say he had been unraveling for years and was desperate in the face of eviction, a dying wife and financial troubles.

A Strong Taiwanese Identity
Growing up in the countryside of central Taiwan in the 1960s, Pastor Chang always felt at home at church. His father was a Presbyterian pastor, and the congregation members, mostly local Taiwanese farmers, would often bring the young family selections of their latest harvests: water spinach, cabbage and rice.

Outside of that community, Pastor Chang was not always shown such favor. He was a benshengren, a descendant of long-ago ethnic Chinese settlers. His classmates whose families had just fled the mainland, or waishengren, enjoyed certain advantages he did not have.

Under the authoritarian rule of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, who lost the civil war to the Communists, mainlander families received preference for civil servant jobs and government positions. Schools were required to teach in Mandarin and promote a Chinese identity, while Taiwanese Hokkien was forbidden in public spaces. Over four decades, tens of thousands of people who dissented from the government’s policies were arrested, and at least 1,000 — more than half benshengren — were executed.

Pastor Chang said he went through a “late political awakening” in the 1980s while in seminary, devouring forbidden texts that discussed this political repression and pushed the idea of a distinct Taiwanese identity. He joined large protests to call for freedom of speech, the first buds of a movement that would eventually lead to democracy in Taiwan in the 1990s.

Pastor Chang emigrated to the United States in 1991 following his parents and siblings, assured in his own Taiwanese identity. He led a small church in Camarillo, Calif., before joining Irvine Presbyterian in 1999. Over time, the congregation grew beyond 150 people and became the largest of about 40 official Taiwanese Presbyterian congregations in the United States.

Immigrants from Taiwan joined waves of Chinese-speaking immigrants from mainland China and Hong Kong, and they included both benshengren and waishengren. By and large, they have all coexisted peacefully in their adopted country, and tensions over homeland politics have rarely risen to the surface.

In the United States, Taiwanese Presbyterian churches have become a social hub for older congregants to bond over their common language and shared experiences. At church bazaars, grandmothers and aunties cook beloved Taiwanese snacks, including sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, and oyster pancakes.

“That’s what I remember church being: celebration and remembrance of your culture,” said Peggy Huang, 51, a Yorba Linda city councilwoman whose parents are members of the Laguna Woods church.

While the church was not overtly political, the belief in a separate Taiwanese identity suffused the institution. Unlike some Taiwanese-led churches that offer services in Mandarin or English, most Taiwanese Presbyterian churches in the United States adhere to the Taiwanese language. Pastor Chang said it stemmed partly from their view of Mandarin as the “language of the oppressors.”

In addition to lectures on topics like combating dementia and estate planning, the Laguna Woods church has organized talks on the 2/28 Incident, during which the Nationalist government killed up to 28,000 people in Taiwan in the late 1940s. During services, members often pray for Taiwan’s safety in the face of China’s rising threats. Pastor Chang said his congregation had very little interaction with the waishengren in Laguna Woods, who mostly attend a Mandarin-language church.

“It would be an overstatement to call us a pro-independence church,” Pastor Chang said. “But we do not deny that we love Taiwan.”

Love for the Motherland
Mr. Chou grew up with the trappings of a middle-class life: He lived with his four siblings in a modest, two-story concrete house in the central city of Taichung. Because his father was an officer in the Nationalist army, his family was treated favorably and he attended one of the top high schools on the island.

But the waishengren community was also steeped in the pain of having to flee mainland China when Communists took over. And Mr. Chou decades later told friends he was bullied and hit by the children of longtime Taiwanese families. (The divide between the two communities still shapes politics in Taiwan, but political violence is rare.)

Friends and relatives of Mr. Chou have been trying to make sense of the mass shooting. But those familiar with his political leanings were less surprised.

David ChouCredit…Orange County Sheriff’s Department, via Associated Press
“Of course, we feel bad for the victims, but he did it for a reason,” said James Tsai, a friend of Mr. Chou’s in Las Vegas, pointing to resentment fueled by the childhood bullying.

Like many waishengren of his generation, Mr. Chou held on to a romanticized vision of China as a lost homeland even after he moved in 1980 to the United States, where he worked in the hospitality industry.

In the preface to a mixology book published in 1994, Mr. Chou called Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping “great leaders” for making China prosperous. He resented the emergence in Taiwan in recent decades of a Taiwanese identity separate from China and rooted in the island’s democratic values. In a 2018 book, Mr. Chou called benshengren “poisoned” rebels who had betrayed their Chinese ancestors with their pro-independence views.

Mr. Chou settled down in Las Vegas, where he and his wife bought property that they rented out to help put their two sons through dentistry school. But Mr. Chou soured on the United States in 2012 after he was assaulted by a tenant over a rent dispute, according to friends and his 2018 book. The attack fueled what would become an obsession with guns.

Several members of the local Taiwanese Presbyterian Church and a Taiwanese social club said Mr. Chou mingled occasionally with the benshengren community at their events. Most were unaware of his political views until 2019, when his photo appeared in an article about an event hosted by a pro-China group.

“Swiftly eliminate the monsters of Taiwanese independence,” read a banner that Mr. Chou brought to the event.

In a telephone interview, Jenny Koo, chairwoman of the organization, said she had met Mr. Chou only twice and that she remembered thinking his political views were “too radical.”

It remains unclear why Mr. Chou targeted the church in Laguna Woods. He has a brother who lives in the area, according to friends and his niece.

The police said last month that the gunman acted alone when he chained, nailed and super-glued shut the doors to a multipurpose room before he opened fire on congregants. Several days later, the Los Angeles office of the World Journal, a Chinese-language newspaper, said that it had received seven handwritten journals titled “Diary of an Independence-Destroying Angel” from Mr. Chou.

On Friday, Mr. Chou stood at the front of a cage, making fleeting eye contact with attendees at a hearing in a Santa Ana, Calif., courtroom. He wore a blue surgical mask and a lime green jumpsuit used for inmates in protective custody.

The Ripples of History
The Laguna Woods shooting came as a shock to many in the Taiwanese and Chinese diaspora, particularly those in the younger generation who grew up in the United States and felt little connection to decades-old grievances.

Ms. Wang, the podcast co-host, said that as a child, she struggled to understand why her mother identified as a Chinese American, even though she spoke Taiwanese and her family had been in Taiwan for generations.

It was not until Ms. Wang, and a cousin, Angela Yu, began learning more about Taiwan’s history that they understood the fraught nature of identity in the diaspora, and why their parents adhered to their Chinese American identity while friends’ parents emphasized being Taiwanese.

The cousins, who now identify as both Chinese American and Taiwanese American, started their podcast to discuss these thorny issues.

“The time that our parents immigrated was a freezing of identity, and they passed those ideas about identity on to their kids,” Ms. Wang said.

She added that she hoped the shooting would open the door for the diaspora to “speak more openly and honestly” about these struggles.

Reflecting on the church confrontation, Pastor Chang sounded a note of resignation.

“The gunman and I, our generation, had the misfortune of being born during a political era that forced our two groups to not get along,” he said. “That is the original sin of our generation.”

Amy Qin reported from Taipei, Taiwan. Jill Cowan reported from Laguna Woods, Calif. and Santa Ana, Calif. Shawn Hubler reported from Sacramento. Amy Chang Chien reported from Taichung, Taiwan.
 

In this community or elsewhere online I suggested that the Black populace in the USA has financially tried everything, applied everything. But has not governmentally tried everything. 
The one absent attempt in the USA in terms of government in the USA by the Black populace in the USA is a Black PArty of Governance. 
Now, whites in NEw JErsey are starting their own third party. It isn't a federal party. It is focused on New Jersey alone. 
The question I have isn't validating the strategy of a Black party of governance. My posts below provide ample arguments. 
I am not interesting in being apart of a Black party of governance in the USA. I am not suggesting anything is easy. I never said the idea should be implemented as a straight confronter to the elephants or donkeys. < Which the whites in the article below prove >
The question is what is the source behind black rejection to this idea? 
I never said it was easy. I suggested it need to be done in small municipal levels. I am not trying to become part of said party or be an idol in it. Enough Black people are financially affluent in modern usa to support it. 
Some Black folk in this community or before elsewhere online or offline, suggested that the two parties are adequate, utilizing personal or individual instances of positive use, or stating that the black populace in majority doesn't utilize the two party system well enough.
But, my problem with all those arguments is in over one hundred and fifty years, black people have supported the POAL <party of abraham lincoln> or the POAJ <party of andrew jackson> in great or positive fashion. But it didn't yield better results. 
Don't tell me that the black populace in the USA when engaged more positively or disengaged more positively to either party , after yielding the same results, places the problem on the black populace. To restate, the Black populace has heavily supported either party full of agenda at times and at other times disengaged either party with nonchalance. But the results are the same. So how can the problem be Black people? 
If you are getting you ass kicked after training for months with experienced trainers and a complete training scenario fully finances and then you are still getting your ass kicked when you are not training at all and are not investing or have any investment to your training. then maybe you need to stop getting in that ring. 
Maybe you need to make your own ring to fight? Will your own ring be lauded as the one that is older that is more well known that is better financed? probably not. But, It is your own ring and to the community connected to it you can do far more than merely be a member of another ring. You can potentially help others. 
But, the question then is, do Blacks want to help Blacks? Are Blacks telling other Blacks to pull up bootstraps? 
Black folk in the USA or anywhere else have to try new things if they don't want to go in circles.

My Black Party of Governance posts
January 21st 2019
https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/194-richard-murray-creative-table/?do=findComment&comment=496
February 6th 2019 - video is Feb 2nd 2019
https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/194-richard-murray-creative-table/?do=findComment&comment=498
June 25th 2020
https://aalbc.com/tc/blogs/entry/261-good-news-blog-stories-through-a-year/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-914
April 12th 2022
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/9211-the-black-community-in-the-usa-need-an-alternative-to-black-officials-from-the-party-of-andrew-jackson-or-abraham-lincoln/
April 20th 2022
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1890&type=status
June 1st 2022
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1929&type=status

I add a Black member of the party of Andrew Jackson who proves my point
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/9449-interesting-discussion-on-the-impact-of-immigration-on-the-afroamerican-community/?do=findComment&comment=52623
MLK jr Bootstraps
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1924&type=status
 

ARTICLE
New Jersey Centrists Seek to Legalize Their Dream: The Moderate Party
by Blake Hounshell

When Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the Supreme Court docket majority in a landmark 1997 case, rejected a minor celebration’s demand that it’s allowed to appoint candidates who have been already on the Democratic ticket, he argued that states have a robust curiosity in “the political stability of the two-party system.”

Almost 25 years later, Rehnquist’s elementary premise is now broadly in query. Indicators of maximum polarization and voter unease are all over the place, from this week’s congressional hearings over one celebration’s baldfaced try and overturn a presidential election to the surging variety of Individuals who decline to register as both Democrats or Republicans.

Previous efforts to face up viable third events have foundered repeatedly in america, nonetheless — be it as a result of they hitch themselves to quixotic causes on the expense of extra mainstream appeals, or due to the obstacles the 2 main events routinely place of their path.

A brand new political celebration in New Jersey is hoping to disrupt that sample by embracing the very method that Justice Rehnquist scorned — fusion voting — with ambitions of taking the concept nationwide. And whereas the celebration’s founders acknowledge that the probabilities of success could also be low, supporters say they’ve recognized a components that provides better promise than extra sweeping however in the end unworkable concepts for overhauling America’s sclerotic political system.

The celebration, led by a core of native Republicans, Democrats and independents alarmed by the G.O.P.’s rightward drift below former President Donald J. Trump, has given itself a reputation that makes its middle-of-the-road ideological positioning crystal clear: the Reasonable Celebration.

The celebration’s purpose is to offer centrist voters extra of a voice at a time when, the group’s founders say, America’s two main events have drifted towards the political fringes. However in contrast to conventional third events, the Reasonable Celebration hopes to nudge the Democratic and Republican Events towards the middle, not exchange or compete with them.

One of many celebration’s co-founders is Richard A. Wolfe, a associate on the regulation agency Fried Frank and former small-town mayor who says he’s repulsed by the Republican Celebration’s embrace of conspiracy theories and fealty towards Mr. Trump.

“Beginning round 2020, my spouse and I began to really feel just like the Republican Celebration now not represented our views,” Mr. Wolfe stated in an interview. “We began to get very uncomfortable with the extremism.”

However he couldn’t convey himself to assist the Democratic Celebration, which he views as too beholden to left-wing financial concepts and cultural causes. Feeling politically “homeless,” Mr. Wolfe started having quiet conversations with like-minded people about beginning a brand new political celebration and stumbled throughout the idea of fusion voting, he stated.

Beneath fusion voting, a number of events can nominate the identical candidate, who then seems greater than as soon as on the poll. Proponents say it permits voters who don’t really feel comfy with both main celebration to specific their preferences with out “losing” votes on candidates with no hope of successful.

The apply is frequent in New York, which has two distinguished fusion events: the Working Households Celebration, which backs progressive candidates however normally aligns with Democrats; and the Conservative Celebration, which helps candidates on the center-right however normally aligns with Republicans. Within the Connecticut governor’s race in 2010, 26,000 votes solid on the Working Households Celebration poll line for Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat, made the distinction between victory and defeat.

Forty-three states, together with New Jersey, prohibit fusion voting, nonetheless. The Reasonable Celebration hopes to alter that by difficult these bans in state courtroom.

The primary check case is Consultant Tom Malinowski, who’s favored to win the Democratic main to proceed to symbolize New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District. An upscale suburban space that features Mr. Trump’s Bedminster golf membership, the district turned considerably extra Republican-leaning after a bipartisan redistricting fee redrew the state’s maps final yr.

Mr. Malinowski’s seemingly Republican opponent, Tom Kean Jr., is the scion of a robust political dynasty in New Jersey. His father, Tom Kean Sr., is a reasonable former governor of the state who gained nationwide recognition as a co-chairman of the Sept. 11 fee. Mr. Malinowski narrowly defeated the youthful Mr. Kean in 2020, successful by simply 5,329 votes.

New Jersey political analysts anticipate an much more troublesome race this yr for Mr. Malinowski, who fastidiously weighed his possibilities earlier than deciding to hunt a 3rd time period.

In an interview, Mr. Malinowski stated that he welcomed the Reasonable Celebration’s assist.

“I feel that is a solution to a query that lots of Individuals have been asking,” Mr. Malinowski stated. “Folks in the midst of the political spectrum really feel disenfranchised by events that play to their base, notably on the Republican facet.”

Though it has been dominated by the Democratic Celebration lately, New Jersey has a historical past of rewarding centrist politicians. Of the state’s practically 6.5 million registered voters, barely over 4 million are registered as Democrats or Republicans, leaving 2.5 million unaffiliated with both main celebration.

A ballot of New Jersey voters performed in April by the Monmouth College Polling Institute discovered that 52 % of adults within the state both want or lean towards retaining Democrats accountable for Congress, whereas 41 % favor placing Republicans in energy.

Fusion voting was as soon as widespread throughout america. However most state legislatures outlawed the apply after it turned a well-liked software of minor events and actions through the Progressive Period, threatening the 2 main events’ unique maintain on voters.

Beneath Gov. Woodrow Wilson, New Jersey handed a regulation in 1911 expressly permitting fusion tickets. Wilson hailed the measure as placing “each technique of alternative within the palms of the folks,” based on a recent New York Occasions account. However a decade later, New Jersey state lawmakers, alarmed by the expansion of minor events, barred candidates from showing greater than as soon as on the identical poll.

On Tuesday, the Reasonable Celebration submitted nominating petitions on Mr. Malinowski’s behalf to the New Jersey secretary of state, Tahesha Approach, together with a memorandum and varied different materials laying out the case for why fusion voting must be authorized. The secretary of state’s workplace declined a request for remark.

If, as anticipated, Ms. Approach declines to permit Mr. Malinowski to run on the Reasonable Celebration ticket, the celebration and a few of its supporters plan to problem her determination in state appeals courtroom.

Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer at Shield Democracy, a nonprofit group that’s representing a voter who intends to problem Ms. Approach’s seemingly ruling, stated that New Jersey had robust protections for voting rights and freedom of speech, meeting and affiliation that should invalidate the century-old ban on fusion tickets.

Shield Democracy turned concerned, Mr. Tremitiere stated, as a result of the group believes that fusion voting “may help present a significant off-ramp to escalating extremism and polarization.”

The state-centric technique might permit the celebration to bypass the Supreme Court docket, whose 1997 ruling that states have the authority to outlaw fusion tickets is taken into account unassailable below the federal Structure, notably given the courtroom’s present conservative majority.

However the Reasonable Celebration’s authorized staff plans to argue that not solely has political polarization reached unsustainable ranges for the reason that Nineties, fusion voting has contributed to the steadiness of states like New York and Connecticut.

“It’s an uphill battle, definitely,” stated Jeffrey Mongiello, a lawyer in New Jersey who has written critically in regards to the state’s ban on fusion voting. Mr. Mongiello famous that the burden can be on the plaintiffs to show that the ban on fusion voting is unconstitutional below New Jersey regulation, however the Supreme Court docket’s ruling.

Mr. Malinowski, a former State Division official and longtime analyst for Human Rights Watch, has been an influential voice on overseas coverage throughout his time within the Home. He was an outspoken supporter of arming Ukraine to defend itself in opposition to Russia’s invasion and sponsored a invoice to grab the belongings of Russian oligarchs and reallocate them to the Ukrainian authorities.

For now, the Reasonable Celebration is targeted on altering the regulation in New Jersey, with the courts being essentially the most promising avenue. However the celebration’s allies, which have the backing of well-heeled nationwide donors, have recognized eight to 10 different states which have the same mixture of a good structure and a probably sympathetic Supreme Court docket.

The Working Households Celebration tried a comparable gambit in Pennsylvania in 2019, leading to a 4-to-3 State Supreme Court docket determination in favor of the state’s argument that fusion voting would unleash “electoral chaos.”

Supporters of fusion voting see a mannequin that can be utilized to bolster centrist voices throughout the nation and break what they are saying is the “doom loop of zero-sum partisan warfare” that’s endangering American democracy.

“There’s a gut-wrenching aversion amongst many Republicans that claims, ‘I might by no means vote for a Democrat,’” stated Lee Drutman, an analyst on the New America Basis who wrote an skilled transient in favor of the Reasonable Celebration’s petitions. “Fusion voting permits folks to specific their true preferences in a manner the two-party system doesn’t.”