Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.

Hillary Clinton played Donald Trump like a grand piano tonight. And I would like a million encores.

dduane:

tyleroakley:

plaidadder:

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I want everyone to know what Hillary Clinton did tonight. It isn’t just that she ‘won’ the debate; Democratic presidential candidates have been winning these debates on substance since 1980 and often, it doesn’t help them in the election. She went in there tonight with two objectives: 1) make people warm up to her personally and 2) make Donald Trump self-destruct. Donald Trump’s objective was to make people believe that he is a grown-up, or at least that he can pretend to be a grown-up for ninety minutes. 

I knew how it was going to go down as soon as she said, “Donald, it’s good to be with you.” I knew for two reasons. First: because she really meant it. She was genuinely pleased to be on a stage with him. And it’s not because she likes him. It’s because she knew she was going to fuck him up and she knew exactly how she was going to do it and she was really looking forward to it.  

Second: she called him Donald. She called him Donald all night long. Consistently and deliberately and for three good reasons. One: it reminds everyone that he has never held a position that gives him any right to a title other than “Mr.” Two: it seems friendly, but it also really pisses him off. And three: By calling him Donald, she avoided repeating his brand name.

This is the level on which Clinton and her team are working. Donald Trump has staked everything on his last name–the name he inherited from his father. It’s Trump this, Trump that, Trump the other. When he puts his name on a thing, it doesn’t say Donald anywhere, it just says TRUMP. TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP. Trump is a good brand name. It’s a noun, it’s a verb, it’s triumphant-sounding. “Donald” has none of those qualities. If she’d been calling him “Mr. Trump,” every time she said it, she would be advertising the Trump brand, which is of course the exact opposite of what she’s there to do. So she called him Donald. And he could not take it.

Without losing her temper, raising her voice, or descending to his level, she made that bastard reveal himself to the Jedi. She brought up things that are going to seem completely unsympathetic to voters, but of which Trump himself is really proud: like not paying any federal taxes (”That makes me smart,” Trump said), stiffing his contractors (”Maybe they didn’t do good work,” Trump said; “I took advantage of the laws,” Trump said), his repeated bankruptcies, the $14 million loan from his father (”A very small loan,” Trump called it). She noted that he exploited the housing crisis for personal gain (”That’s called business,” Trump said). She called him out for his racism; he responded by proving that she’s right (Trump, apparently, is aggrieved that he did not get a medal for opening a club that did not discriminate against Black people even though it was in a really nice part of Florida). When he made what to me was a cryptic jab about her “staying home” while he was traveling, she just smiled and said, “I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate. And yes, I did. You know what else I prepared for? I prepared to be President. And I think that’s a good thing.”

He tried to talk over her. She ignored him. That was beautiful. One, because it’s exactly the way Trump should be treated, all the time; and two, because it made him even madder. His inability to get a rise out of her made him lose his mind. This is a man who wants to be President of the United States. And he spent an entire 2-minute segment begging people to call Sean Hannity so he could vouch for the fact that Trump was always against the Iraq war. Nobody would talk to Sean Hannity, he complained. Why would no one talk to Sean Hannity?

She was capable of actually remembering the original question and getting around to answering it after dealing with the human distraction standing next to her. He often seemed to completely forget the question seconds into his answer. At times, he was so busy talking over the moderator that he didn’t even hear the question. 

Hillary Clinton has been dealing with entitled, narcissistic, patronizing, asshole men her entire life as a Senator and as Secretary of State. She has skills in this area. She used them all tonight; and she enjoyed doing it. She looked like she was at ease, confident, and having a great time. She looked young. That was the way I put it to Mrs. Plaidder, and she agreed. She looked fresh, and energized, and exhilarated by the challenge. And that only made Trump’s “stamina” bullshit seem even dumber.

She stayed focused, despite his distractions. She dropped every bomb she came to drop at exactly the right moment. She used everything he bragged about against him. She made him too mad to put together a coherent sentence. And she smiled.

We knew she could to the job. We now know she can win this election.

During, I believe, the 2012 presidential election, people used to pass around a photo of Obama pointing forcefully at the camera with the caption, “Everybody chill the fuck out. I got this.” 

Y’all can chill the fuck out now. Hillary Clinton has this shit handled. She knows how he works and if he is ever fool enough to share a stage with her again she will fillet him. And yes. I AM WITH HER.

make sure you’re registered to vote HERE, it’s so easy to do.

Yes, she looked great and did really well. I look forward to more of the same. And after that comes the tough part: putting the right person who actually stands a chance of being elected into the Oval Office.

Pleas go get registered NOW. Then VOTE.

Vote Hillary Clinton for President

I am not watching the debate. I tried. I found a livestream of it. I watched for like ten minutes. That was all I could take.

Please for the love of everything, vote for Hillary. Can you imagine having to listen to Trump talk out of his ass in a official capacity while representing you for four fucking years???

Don’t do it, America. Please.

coaldustcanary:

Take careful note, folks. Hillary is silently screaming. Her little nods are self-soothing, telling herself that she can get through this without throwing herself bodily at this burbling windbag and removing his windpipe with her teeth.

“

So … I think I’ll blur the details here.

There was this person who was expounding on the upcoming election and why he wasn’t going to vote for Hillary Clinton. It was his first time voting, you see, and he wanted someone who understood and represented his generation.


He said to me, “You don’t understand – ”


And that’s where I had to stop him. “Look, I do understand. Really.”


“How can you understand? You’re too old.”


“Do you think I was born old? Y'know, I have pictures. Here’s me at thirteen – ”


“But times were different then – ”


“Yes, they were. You could get polio and measles and smallpox. An appendectomy was a serious operation. People smoked everywhere, there was no getting away from the smoke. In school, they taught us to duck and cover in case of a nuclear attack. Whites and blacks still had separate restrooms and drinking fountains. Women couldn’t get a legal abortion. Gas had lead in it. Vegetables were sprayed with DDT. You could be arrested for being gay. Yes, times were different.”


“No, I meant that protesting was a fad, not serious like – ”


“Excuse me? Do you want to see the scar on my scalp where I was hit by a thrown bottle at the first gay rights march? We also had civil rights demonstrations, anti-war marches, and rallies for women’s rights as well. That was no fad. People were dying – ”


“No, look, man – it’s the establishment. That’s what’s wrong – ”


“And you want to replace the establishment with what? A different establishment? Listen – when I was your age, when my generation was your age, we were just as frustrated and just as impatient as you are now. Honest. Am I saying we were wrong? Hell, no. We were right. Better than that, we were so right, we were self-righteous. We went around saying, ‘Don’t trust anyone over 30,’ as if somehow when you turned 30, you became one of them. Y'know?


“You know what we missed? We missed the obvious – that there were a lot of good men and women over 30 who understood the issues, and the complexities of the situation better than we did – because they’d been fighting that fight for a lot longer. We had emotion, we had energy, we had spirit – but we didn’t have enough experience, enough history, enough of everything we needed to effect real change.


"So we didn’t turn out for Hubert Humphrey and we handed the country to Richard Nixon. And a generation later, other people didn’t turn out for Al Gore and handed the country to George W. Bush. And what was missed – both times – was the fact our impatience was the single biggest mistake we could make.


"Hubert Humphrey had experience, he had wisdom, and he shared our goals. Al Gore had experience, he had wisdom, and he shared our goals. But somewhere, enough of us decided that he was too old or too much of the establishment or didn’t really represent us enough, or would just give us more of the same when what we really wanted was more, better, and different, even if we couldn’t define it – enough of us felt that way to hand the presidency to a much worse administration.


"So, no – it isn’t that you’re wrong. It’s that there are people who’ve been down this path before. We know where it leads. And it’s not a good place. We know what this mistake looks like. Because we’ve made it ourselves – and we’re asking you not to make the same mistakes we did, because each time we make this mistake, everyone gets hurt.”


And he said, “So that’s a fancy way of saying ‘suck it up, buttercup, you can’t have what you want.”


And I said, “No, but if that’s the way you want to hear it, then that’s the way you’re going to hear it. The way government works, nobody gets everything they want. The way government is supposed to work, everybody negotiates – and eventually everybody gets a piece of what they need to keep going. Nobody likes that, but consider what the alternative is – if some people get everything they want, that means a lot of people are going to get nothing at all. We keep trying that, it doesn’t work. Let’s go back to the stuff that does work.”


“But I don’t like her – ”


“I’m not asking you to like her. I’m asking you to respect that she knows how to do the job. He doesn’t. You can have your protest vote, that’s your right, but that’s letting everybody else decide who gets the oval office. And you might want to think long and hard about which of the two will build on what President Obama has accomplished and which of the two will tear it all down with no idea of why it worked in the first place. Your choice.”


And he said, “That’s not much of a choice.”


And I said, “The hell it isn’t. It’s a choice between experience and ignorance. That’s the clearest choice I’ve ever seen in an election.”


He didn’t have an answer for that.


And that’s the point –


'I might be old, but I’m not stupid. And I suspect that a lot of other members of my generation feel the same way. We remember when we were impatient. And we remember the mistakes that our impatience created.


“Old people don’t tell young people what to do and what not to do because we want to control your lives – we just want to warn you not to make the same mistakes we did.


"But you will. Or you won’t. Because it’s your choice. Always.”

”

— David Gerrold
(via dduane)

micdotcom:

Watch: Nyle DiMarco reminds voters what’s at stake on election day for people with disabilities

[Nyle DiMarco signing] You can keep this ad muted if you want and keep scrolling past it. But if you’re still listening to my voice, please know that there are a lot of people out there without one. Among the 50 million Americans living with a disability, many don’t have the ability to work, to travel, or to do countless other things you might take for granted. So this November, please consider voting for the only candidate with a plan to change that.

refinery29:

Kerry Washington has pointed words for millennials and people of color considering not voting for Hillary

Washington then pointed out that with Hillary Clinton’s maternity policy, “These issues are not about women’s policy, they’re about economic policy, because we understand in this country that if families are able to take care of each other, we do better as a nation.”

Gifs: Real Time with Bill Maher

WATCH THE VIDEO