Tell of adventures strange and rare.

Anonymous asked: Thank you for being one of the few voices of reason on Hillary! I see so little critical (and calm) discussion of her on tumblr, so it's quite refreshing to have you. I like Bernie, but tumblr can be overwhelming in its effusive praise for him.

missamericanavotesblue:

thanks

i completely agree. the tumblr effect with bernie is overwhelming. it’s a harmful hive mentality. 

listen, there’s a reason why bernie’s endorsements have been celebrities and teenagers on the internet and hillary’s endorsements have been political colleagues, thought leaders, and news media (as well as some celebrities and teenagers on the internet). some of that is money, some of it is corrupt money, some of it is political dynasty, and some of it is the fact that we have literally never had a more qualified candidate for president run with so much scrutiny. 

you can say she flip flops on political issues, you can say she’s moderate, you can say she’s corporate. i don’t care. some of it’s true, most of it’s not and it doesn’t particularly matter because a politician’s job is to represent their constituency. 

this woman has been first lady, a senator, and the secretary of state. geez. what more do you want? like literally, what more? her voting records are more liberal than either obama or biden, and she voted with sanders over 93% of the time. 

hillary saw that the democratic constituency was becoming progressively more liberal. her votes and views now reflect that liberalism (thanks lizzie warren for chatting with her). that’s called being a good leader, not being a fake. when you’ve played the game as long as she has you have to make concessions or NOTHING GETS DONE. no progress is made without people playing across the line. when mitt romney was a red governor of a blue state he saw that his constituency wanted socialized healthcare and marriage equality and he signed it into law. not cause he personally agreed with it, but because that’s how you fucking lead. 

and for those of you who are actively pissed about DOMA: here’s a great article about why it happened. history and context is really important if you’re gonna scream about things on the internet. as a queer person i feel really fortunate DOMA happened instead of the alternative. 

bernie sanders doesn’t support other democrats. president obama put a ban on PACs and wall street donating to the DNC and RNC. because he knew that would HURT the DNC he took it upon himself to campaign a money relief fund to support other democratic offices. hillary also took that burden on herself and raised $30 mil for democratic elections that were not hers. bernie raised $1,000 for democratic candidates that weren’t him. what does he think he’s gonna do without a democrat-led senate? house? 

bernie sanders’ policies would be great if we were not a system of checks and balances. sure, if we only had an executive branch, they’d be ace. i’d love to see money reallocated that way. guess what? with a judicial branch and legislative branch that don’t always swing your way it just means your plans and policies are unfundable. they’re going to cause shut downs. they’re going to be un-enactable. and moreover, they just don’t hold water. no economist can make them make sense. i’m so sorry because they sound great, i know they do, but they’re not sound. 

i’m a supporter of hillary. i’ve been trying to keep those opinions off tumblr, but not anymore. you’ve got questions: i’ve got answers. i worked in elections, i studied this, i got my degree in this, yeah, but moreover i don’t want people to feel shamed for voting for a candidate who is objectively much more qualified and ready for this position. 

i wasn’t gonna endorse because internet politics are wild, but eileen myles wrote this truly beautiful and provocative essay and i can’t be quiet about it anymore: you should read it.

On the DNC Wikileaks Scandel

mimsically:

How exactly is “the DNC favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders and wanted her to win” news? Did someone at some point deny that? You know what else is true? The RNC desperately didn’t want Trump to win the nomination and tried to message craft against him and favor establishment candidates. He still won his primary. Sanders didn’t.

There’s no moral equivalency between Sanders and Trump, but there are situational parallels. The system is biased in favor of establishment candidates - 100% true. But Obama overcame who the DNC initially favored (same person they favored over Sanders) via broad coalition building. Trump overcame RNC opposition through fanatic demagoguery (it helps that the Republican voter base is less diverse than the Democratic voter base so he just had to appeal to a specific demo, unlike the coalition you need to build to win the Democratic primary). Sanders failed to build the coalition necessary to overcome the institutional bias against him.

ummm…. not to be too insensitive but… tough? At worst in these emails are suggestions that may rightly require certain DNC members to resign - but nothing showing electoral theft, or a reason not to vote for Clinton over Trump.

(Source: my U.S. government teacher)

“If Trump gets elected, don’t blame me. It’s not my fault. Blame the DNC for backing Hillary.”

 Rationalize it however you want. It won’t change the fact that anyone who votes for a third-party candidate or abstains from voting in this election will be responsible if Trump gets into office, hands the Supreme Court majority to the Republicans, and gives the green light to all the bigots in this country to be as openly terrible as they want to be to minorities and LGBTQ+ people. For gods sake, David Duke is gonna run for the Senate here in Louisiana, people! That tells you all you need to know. He knows that Trump is stoking the racist flames in this country, and he thinks he can ride his coattails to victory. 

 Let me repeat that again: The former KKK leader could possibly be elected to the Senate this year, all because Trump is telling this country that it’s okay to be as hateful as you want to be to people that are different from you.

 Trump will ensure that every progressive SCOTUS decision made during Obama’s presidency is overturned, plus Roe v. Wade. His SCOTUS nominees will have a decades-long negative impact on this country.

 I don’t care if you don’t think Hillary’s a perfect candidate. Got news for you, that’s how most presidential elections are. This is not the year for a third-party protest vote. You are not going to “shake up the two-party system” by voting for Jill Stein. You may feel nice for “voting with your conscience” when you press that vote button, but if Trump gets into office when Stein fails to win a single electoral vote and only succeeds in taking votes from Hillary, I’ve got news for you: you didn’t actually make a moral decision. 

 The people who will be most affected if Trump gets into office are people who don’t have the luxury of only voting if their candidate is “perfect.“ 

 This election will have powerful long-term ramifications, and worrying about a Trump presidency is in no way “thinking in the short term,” as some people like to claim it is. It’s just the opposite. Vote for Hillary.

b3n3aththesurfac3:

thehorsethief:

dogsaremypatronus:

People who say, “I don’t see signs of discomfort” regarding videos of animals who are in discomfort baffle me, because, of course you don’t see discomfort. You don’t study animal behavior, so you don’t see it. 

And no one is expecting you to see it. I wouldn’t expect you to know what a tumor looks like on an x-ray either if you’ve never studied medicine. But you trust your doctor when he points at the blob and says that’s what it is, right? 

In the same way, we expect you to listen when people who do study and understand animal behavior tell you that it is actually discomfort, rather than plugging your fingers in your ears screaming, “LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” as if that will magically make the animal’s discomfort go away. 

The average dog owner wouldn’t recognize discomfort if it, quite literally, bit them in the face. But the thing about scientific fact is that it doesn’t change just because you’re too ignorant to see it. 

If multitudes of professionals are telling you that a behavior displayed in a viral video is problematic, maybe you should stop moaning about how they’re ruining your day and try to learn something instead. 

A major part of the problem is that most people *believe* that they know what animal discomfort looks like; many people had dogs and cats as kids-very few people have been around x-rays from a young age.

Despite being around animals, many people don’t know what discomfort looks like because of disinformation; that horse isn’t in pain, it’s trying to get revenge. That dog isn’t nervous, he’s smiling, that cat isn’t bored, she’s just trying to make trouble.

Much of this comes from our parents; I would bet money that there is a direct link between how a parent views an animal behavior (like a “smiling” dog) and how their kids interpret it.

Another source of disinformation is the media; I distinctly remember being a little kid watching Cesar Milan pin a dog to the ground till it stopped struggling. Milan then explained that he had calmed the dog down by making it submit. It wasn’t for another decade that I learned the term “learned helplessness”

And finally, people don’t want to admit that they’re wrong. Not just because of pride, but because very few people want to hurt animals, and admitting that “I thought my dog was happy, but I was abusing her” is an incredibly difficult thing to think, much less say.

This is so important to the captivity debate I needed to share. If an expert is telling us whales and dolphins are acting inappropriately or abnormally in captivity, we should be listening. Super important. The threat displays come to mind…

(via b3n3aththesurfac3)

porpoise-princess:

seems to me that the whole “rescue/rehab/conservation/research” argument was some sort of a pretend argument in favor of seaworld for many procaps. they were singing praises until seaworld said there won’t be anymore baby shamus, and now suddenly seaworld is the devil to them. rescue/rehab/conservation/research be dammed! 

Yep. None of them ever went to seaworld because “their ticket money contributes to the rescue/rehab of animals in need.” They went there because they wanted to play with the orcas at the underwater viewing area and watch them perform tricks in shows - and they just used the rescue/rehab as a rationalization for their actions.

Now that the orcas will be phased out, the rescue and rehab element of the park holds no purpose for them.

(via porpoise-princess-deactivated20)