Archive for the ‘Tea Party’ Category

PHOTOS: New Limited Edition Cheshire Cat Mad Tea Party Funko POP! to be Released Online April 10 – wdwnt.com

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One of Wonderlands most enigmatic residents is going for a spin at the Mad Tea Party in Funko POP! form.

Funko has announced they will be releasing a POP! Ride featuring the Cheshire Cat riding one of the attractions signature teacups as part of their Funko Virtual Con taking place April 10th-12th. Unlike the Alice Mad Tea Party Funko POP! released at the Disney Parks and shopDisey last year, the Cheshire Cat rides a yellow teacup, while Alice rides a purple one.

The POP! had been scheduled to be an exclusive release at WonderCon in Anaheim during that time, but due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and Californias active stay-at-home order, the convention has been postponed. However, Funko has decided to carry on with its online release. Given that this is a convention exclusive, quantities are limited, so be sure to check Funkos website for more information.

Would you go mad for this Cheshire Cat figure? Let us know in the comments below!

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PHOTOS: New Limited Edition Cheshire Cat Mad Tea Party Funko POP! to be Released Online April 10 - wdwnt.com

Conservatism in the Time of Coronavirus – National Review

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) questions David Marcus, head of Facebooks Calibra, during testimony before a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, July 16, 2019.(Erin Scott/Reuters)The coronavirus accelerates a generational and ideological transition on the right.

Not long ago, as the severity of the coronavirus pandemic became clear, journalists were quick to say that the crisis marked the end of an era. The Trump Presidency is Over, declared a headline in The Atlantic. One article in Politico said, The Pandemic Is the End of Trumpism. A New York Times op-ed column carried the headline, The Era of Small Government Is Over.

Well, yes. At least so far as that last article is concerned. The era of small government has been over for decades (if it ever happened at all). The highpoint of Republican and conservative efforts to limit the size and scope of the federal Leviathan was either Ronald Reagans 1982 budget or the ClintonGingrich welfare reform of 1996. Then the GOP abandoned its plans for minimal government.

Even the Tea Party insurgency which began as a rebellion against standpatters in the Republican establishment protested cuts to Medicare and achieved little more than a sequester that severely damaged military readiness. And, of course, the current Republican president was elected on a pledge not to touch senior health care and retirement benefits. No small-government conservative, he.

What the moment requires is some intellectual modesty. It is far too early in the development of this national emergency to make definitive judgments on its political, economic, social, and cultural effects. We might as well explore alternative scenarios. For example: The coronavirus might not signify a conclusion to or beginning of a historical era, so much as an acceleration of previously germinating inclinations.

This quickening is most visible in the United States Senate. It was the youthful and heterodox members of the Republican conference who first recognized the severity of the challenges emanating from Wuhan, China. As Congress put together its economic-relief bill, these lawmakers did not worry about violating free-market dogma. They recognized the extraordinary nature of the situation. Their primary concern was the fate of the unemployed. In so far as Trumpism, to the degree that it exists, describes a political tendency that is suspicious of overseas commitments, international trade, and unchecked immigration, and more worried about the rise of China than the revanchism of Russia, this pandemic does not spell the end. It may even serve as vindication.

The Republican senators most widely seen as preparing to run for president in 2024 have used the past few weeks to articulate a conservatism that is more heavily weighted toward security than freedom. Tom Cotton has a bill, cosponsored by Mike Gallagher in the House, to end U.S. dependence on the Chinese manufacture of pharmaceuticals. Josh Hawley introduced an Emergency Family Relief Act that was much more ambitious than the (for now) onetime payments included in the economic triage bill. Marco Rubio designed the small-business lending component that is essential to the CARES Act. They all criticized the Chinese government for lying about the coronavirus as it spread throughout the world.

On Capitol Hill, then, the virus has elevated the senators and staffers who have spent the last few years calling for a realignment of Republican politics away from the prerogatives and priorities of corporate America and toward those of middle- and working-class families without college degrees. The China hawks, economic nationalists, and advocates of industrial policy have found themselves playing the role of Cassandra, who saw the cost of war firsthand after her warnings were dismissed.

The young people on the right drawn to the agenda of national populism will come out of this experience more skeptical of China, more critical of the pre-crisis economic policy of the GOP, more suspicious of uncontrolled flows of labor, capital, and goods across borders. They may find that they have company, since the number of unemployed and nonparticipants in the labor force is about to swell.

If the results of the disease and recession are widespread and long-lasting, expect the new acolytes of realignment to adopt Tyler Cowens formulation of state-capacity libertarianism as a possible model for reconciling markets with a state strong enough to boost infrastructure, education, and research and development. The lack of capacity in the public-health system and in the domestic manufacture of pharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment is a tragic reminder of the consequences of drift. Recent days have provided empirical proof of the aphorism that capitalism is, in the end, a government program.

A traditionalist right that understands the United States is in a full-spectrum competition with China, that uses public policy to strengthen working families in both the service and manufacturing sectors, and that observes and promotes American traditions of constitutional liberty would not be the worst upshot of this calamity. But it is just one conceivable outcome. And by no means the most likely.

The debate over conservative economic policy is just that, a debate, and the pro-market and supply-side constituencies, while no longer fashionable in certain corners of the Internet, have lost none of their vigor, none of their intellectual ability, none of their institutional power. The mounting pressure from some on the right to restore economic normalcy as soon as possible testifies not only to the un-sustainability of lockdowns over time, but also to the potency of the status quo ante coronavirus.

After all, the law of unintended consequences stipulates that for every action there is an equal and unplanned and (probably) negative reaction. The cascading collapses of demand, liquidity, and solvency may soon put us in a world more unstable than the creaky one we already inhabit. And if past is prologue, the monetary and fiscal expansion that authorities have used to stave off doomsday will look very different to conservatives out of power. One year from now, the American political scene could well resemble that of a decade ago, when a unified Democratic government was under siege from Red State outsiders who had rekindled opposition to deficit spending.

If that happens, then anyone connected to the coronavirus response will be exposed to intra-party challenges. And Nikki Haley, who defended capitalism with aplomb in the Wall Street Journal, and resigned from the board of Boeing after the company requested a federal bailout, will benefit from an anti-statist turn on the grassroots right. In the long run, then, coronavirus may end up reinvigorating both the nationalist and free-market camps.

But you know what else happens in the long run. For the time being, coronavirus has accelerated a generational and ideological transition within American conservatism toward the politics of social conservatism, foreign-policy unilateralism, and economic solidarity.

This article originally appeared on the Washington Free Beacon.

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Conservatism in the Time of Coronavirus - National Review

EDITORIAL: Just what we need in a pandemic crisis – Waco Tribune-Herald

More than a decade ago, banking and industry bailouts begun during the George W. Bush administration and continuing early into the Barack Obama administration sparked resentment among the masses, cut adrift in recovery efforts after the devastating 2008 recession. This gave rise to the tea party, including a strong faction in Waco. Yet last week lawmakers such as Republican Congressman Bill Flores, elected regionally under the tea party aegis in 2010, backed a $2 trillion bailout package again picking industry winners and losers but this time also making $1,200 payouts to Americans left struggling in an economic calamity worsened still by governmental dithering amidst a bona fide plague. Have any lessons been learned?

Granted, we appreciate the difference in circumstances generating the Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2008 and the CARES Act signed into law Friday by President Trump. The former followed a period of excess and poor judgment infecting everyday folks buying homes they couldnt afford and wildly unregulated Wall Street profiteers and bankers. To quote Republican Sen. Patrick J. Toomey of the pandemic now idling millions of workers and hobbling businesses that, by their nature, defy social distancing: This is more like an act of God or war footing.

Yet President Trump contributed much to the coronavirus pandemic now surging and taking lives in the United States, not only by repeatedly downplaying concerns about spread of the contagion a month ago but failing to consult the National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics. He failed to ignite sufficient production of test kits and let his colossal ego interfere with getting relief to governors showing more resolve and courage. Only Friday did he belatedly sign the Defense Production Act, compelling General Motors to produce thousands more ventilators for a likely surge of coronavirus patients. One wishes the president had taken this crisis as seriously as he did matters at our southern border.

We side with Republicans on scrapping certain out-of-place Democratic ideas, including requiring placement of workers on corporate boards aided by the CARES Act; thats a fight for another time than a full-blown pandemic. However, given billions of dollars in loans and credits, we applaud the insistence by Trump and the Democrats to prohibit stock buybacks, limit executive compensation and ensure half of federal assistance goes toward retaining employees for airlines and other companies benefiting in federal assistance. Yet the tea party lessons of 2009 should hold fast in 2020: We expect Congressman Flores and other lawmakers to exercise aggressive congressional oversight and demand disclosure of implementation of this massive package, as specifically written into the law, to prevent all abuse and waste. This includes an inspector general and an oversight board.

Trump on Friday vowed to ignore portions of the law giving Congress transparency into certain stimulus spending, insisting that such requirements violate the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. Which raises two key questions: Given that Republicans and Democrats just voted for this law, will they now live up to its terms jointly, even if this president resists? And why did the president sign this bill if he was resolved to violate it? Just what we need in a pandemic crisis: a potential constitutional crisis.

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EDITORIAL: Just what we need in a pandemic crisis - Waco Tribune-Herald

Alice In Wonderland: 10 Pieces Of Fan Art The White Queen Would Adore – Screen Rant

Alice in Wonderland is way more than a Disney film, despite most people recognizing it as one. It is a book that widely influenced media. It is a story that can be told over and over in with different twists, settings, and lessons. To some, it is a story about drugs, to others its about imagination, and then there are those who see it as complete nonsense.

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Whatever your thoughts are, there is no escape from Alice and the elements of her story in media. She has become more of a symbol than a character, influencing video games, horror movies, long lyrics, children's books, and much more. So of course there is a lot of fan art for Alice in Wonderland. Here are ten that we found and loved. Check out the links to the artists, as they deserve credit for their amazing work.

The artist for this piece is Aledin, and this art piece was a submission for a challenge with the theme "Fairytales Re-imagined." While Alice in Wonderland is not really a fairytale, it was fairytale enough for the challenge, and the artist did an astounding job.

Alice in Wonderland has been re-imagined a ton, but this is our first time seeing her take on a nurse-role in what appears to be a post-nuclear war.

We absolutely love the colors in this piece. It is gorgeous!

The artist is illustrater UlaFish. This painting was actually done as a thesis for a book cover. It would certainly make us want to pick it up and read! It captures both the whimsy and creepiness of Wonderland. The rabbit's eyes and the Chesire Cat look especially unsettling.

The style of this fan art is quite unique and adorable. We also like that its a card, like Alice is the Ace of Hearts to counter the Queen of Hearts.

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The artist is Saccstry and their art often combines the creepy and the cute. They do a lot of profiles of original young female characters, but combined with bones, blood, and bugs. This Alice fan art is particularly innocent when it comes to the artists' gallery.

This Alice looks like she came out of a Renaissance painting. The artist did a wonderful job with showing movement and trying something new with the symbols of Alice's story. It is interesting to see that she is melting a path to the Queen of Hearts with some hot tea.

The talented artist behind this piece is Cynthia Sheppard. She has done art for big name companies such as Wizards of the Coast!

Can you find the hidden Chesire Cat? We love everything about this art from its style, its setting, and the look of Alice. The mushrooms and trees frame Alice well, and we like that you can find the Chesire Cat hidden in the trees.

This piece was done by Brazilian comic artist, Picolo-kun. Besides Alice in Wonderland, they have also done fan art for Harry Potter, Teen Titans, Kingdom Hearts, My Neighbor Totoro, Frozen, Adventure Time, and much more.

Modernizations of characters never gets old! This Alice is particularly fun. She has a tattoo that recalls her story. While her clothes are modern, they have the same colors as her Disney film outfit. The half-painted rose on her white shirt is also a nice touch. Also, you can never go wrong with modernizing a character by giving them a Starbucks-adjacent beverage.

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The artist is an illustrator named Fernanda Suarez. Like Cynthia Sheppard, he has also worked for big name companies like Plaid Hat Games.

The cool to warm colors on this piece really attract the eye. We love the little details as well, such as Alice's teacup earrings, the painted roses, cards, and the caterpillar on the nose. The artist built this painting from a reference photo of a woman facing the same way but with her hair wrapped up in a turban.

This painting was made by Norway-based digital artist, SandraWinther. Her gallery brand is all female character portraits. Other fan art she has done is for Mulan, Jasmine, Snow White, Ariel, Tiana, Daenerys, Aurora, Anna, Elsa, and more.

We absolutely love the idea behind this piece. To set Alice in Wonderland in a Chinese frame has a lot of creative potential, and this artist ran with it! The colors are vibrant, the outfits are new, and the food at the tea party reflects Chinese culinary. The use of lanterns at the party is also fantastic.

ElinTan is the talented artist behind this piece. While some of her art deals with original characters, she has also done fan art for Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy XIV, How To Train Your Dragon, Dark Souls, and more.

Everything on the table looks delicious. The brightness of the party really strikes a contrast to the cool colors of the forest around them. All the clocks are classic Wonderland aesthetic, but there is something unsettling about them all just hanging in the dark woods.

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The artist is kokotea and their art aesthetic is cute and sometimes chibi. They have done fan art for magical girl anime like Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura.

This art has a pretty unique styleand perspective. It is very doll and plush-like. If you check out the artist, the-crazy-spork, their gallery uses this style a lot. They make characters with delicate small bodies and larger doll-like heads with either really small or no noses. The cute style certainly suites Alice in Wonderland.

Besides Alice in Wonderland, they have done fan art for Sailor Moon and Devil May Cry.

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Staff writer, author of The Awei Series, and cat foster parent. Her favorite films are in the fantasy, horror, and comedy genres. She is particularly a fan of animation.

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Alice In Wonderland: 10 Pieces Of Fan Art The White Queen Would Adore - Screen Rant

Batwoman’s Alice Isn’t Worthy of Redemption | CBR – CBR – Comic Book Resources

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for "Through the Looking-Glass," the latest episode of Batwoman.

There is no denying Alice has had a terribly sad and truly horrific past. She was held hostage by a madman and was psychologically and physically tortured for years. All of that absolutely makes most of her actions if not excusable, but in their own mad way, explainable. Her tortured past especially explains her deeply held and red-hot hatred for Catherine. After all, it was Catherine who convinced the world, and Jacob, to stop looking for Beth, which led to the creation of Alice in the first place.

However, Batwoman's Alice does not deserve a redemption arc. The tragedy of her character is Kate provided many opportunities for redemption, but Alice rejected them all and doubled down on her villainous ways. Now, it is too late.

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Alice lost the privilege of redemption the moment she tortured Mary by murdering Catherine right in front of her. In "A Mad Tea-Party" Alice poisoned both Mary and Catherine and only provided one antidote. The cruelty of this moment is directed at Mary in a completely inexcusable way that proves Alice is beyond the point of no return.

Alice hates Mary because she feels Kate replaced Beth with Mary. This simply is not true. Several times throughout the season, Mary has expressed her frustration that Kate never truly accepted her as a sister. She also says she never wanted to replace Beth, but she wanted to build her own relationship with Kate yet never felt embraced by her. Alice being so cruel to Mary for essentially no reason shows she has crossed too far over the line to ever be redeemed.

There are parts ofAlice's character that are compelling and would be interesting to see play out in a redemption story. The problem is most of them were corrupted beyond forgiveness when Catherine died in Mary's arms. For example, her relationship with Mouse is quite endearing. They are two children who suffered their whole lives but found a sanctuary in their friendship. It is a genuinely sweet idea. But, this relationship is also tainted by the murder of Catherine. Mouse wore a mask and pretended to be Jacob in order to poison Mary and Catherine, therefore coloring their whole relationship with the same, non redeemable, brush.

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Alice is so desperate for Kate to accept and join her, but she is clearly more interested in her life of crime and chaos than in that relationship. She only wants Kate on her terms and will not accept anything less. Her love for her sister is a sympathetic component of her character and could have been the source of her redemption, just as Kate had wanted from the start. However, Alice threw that away in favor of killing Catherine. Not only did she torture Mary in that moment, but she also framed Jacob. Kate was deeply troubled by Jacob's imprisonment, and it only further alienated Alice from Kate.

In "How Queer Everything Is Today" at the tea party Mouse and Alice have at Catherine's grave, Mouse confronts Alice andlays out the factsthat Kate will never accept Alice after what she has done. While Alice continues to be a villain, Kate will never truly be her sister again. Alice's response to this is to further desecrate Catherine's grave and dig the knife in deeper. She continues to show how selfish, remorseless, and beyond redemption she really is when she will not even admit it is her own fault her relationship with Kate is rapidly deteriorating.

"Off With Her Head" explores some of the painful details about Beth's time with the Cartwright's on the farm. Alice left Cartwright for Kate with a note about "Mommy Dearest." She knew their mother would be a particularly sensitive emotional trigger to Kate because it was exactly that which turned Beth into Alice. She knew Kate would push for the truth about what the note meant, and she knew that it would push Kate to do something impulsive and driven by blind hatred rather than justice. She does not deliver Cartwright for justice; she delivers him as part of her sick game.

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In "Through the Looking-Glass," Alice confirms she is past the point of redemption. She brags to Kate that she manipulated the situation with Cartwright and goaded Kate into killing him. She says she wants to prove Kate is just like her. After a majority of the season has consisted of Kate doing everything she can to bring out Beth and find the redeemable qualities in Alice, Alice has no interest in changing her ways. She further cementsthe fact that she is beyond the point of redemption whichhas been clear ever since she tortured Mary.

In the beginning, Alice had all the components for a compelling redemption arc. Now, it is too late, and she is well beyond deserving a redemption. She has caused too much pain and suffering and burned too many bridges. She is past the point of no return. Now that she is locked away in Arkham, maybe she will learn that error of her ways and receive the treatment she desperately needs, but even that will not be enough to atone for her sins.

Created by Caroline Dries and developed by Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, Batwoman stars Ruby Rose, Rachel Skarsten, Meagan Tandy, Camrus Johnson, Dougray Scott, Elizabeth Anweis and Nicole Kang. The series airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

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Margaret Lockyer was born in raised in Brampton, Ontario. She has a degree in English and History with honours in Apocalyptic literature from the University of Prince Edward Island where she also played varsity ice hockey. She also has a diploma in Writing for Film & Television from Vancouver Film School. She likes practicing yoga, talking about movies, and petting dogs.

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Batwoman's Alice Isn't Worthy of Redemption | CBR - CBR - Comic Book Resources