Conservative mindset

Might makes right. If someone isn’t doing well, then it is inherently their fault.

Social redistribution is counter to both of these ideas.

Military spending backs up the idea of might makes right.

If my actions impact someone else, that means I was more mighty, hence in the right.

Civil rights are contrary to the idea of might makes right and radical self responsibility.

 

This also explains why military aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia is good and economic development aid in the form of mosquito nets is bad. Giving weapons is part of expanding our might. According to conservative logic these other countries should have built economies which build those systems. They dont necessarily need to be privately funded. Case in point: bank bailouts are good, stimulus checks are bad. Bailouts of large companies increase might of the few, who can then  continue to support your campaigns, increasing your power, which follows might makes right. Widespread stimulus spread opportunity around, reducing your overall advantage, violating might makes right.

This also explains why Republicans will NEVER propose a law to protect private retirement accounts from many ways employers fuck over their employees, such as not letting you change your retirement strategy after you set up your account. Such a law would violate personal responsibility because in the Republican worldview you should have done your research and gotten a better contract in the beginning, even if you were a 22 year old first generation college graduate. They also will continue to say social security OASI is bad, but never propose a better plan because it would be the government regulating private contracts, which violates personal responsibility.

Absentee Voting and Voting Machines

  • Blue means everyone uses Absentee voting
  • Green means everyone has the option to use absentee voting
  • Yellow means you need an excuse to use absentee voting and there is a paper trail
  • Red means you need an excuse to use absentee voting and there is no paper trail

To put this in more perspective:

  • 61.4% of representatives are from the green and blue areas
  • 22% of representatives are from the red areas
  • 17% of representatives are from the yellow areas

Most Americans probably don’t understand that the majority of us already have the right to use mail in voting. We need to exercise this right and ensure that as many Americans as possible are able to vote.

Call to action: If you know progressives in Michigan, Wisconsin, or Florida, ask them if they are registered to vote absentee. If Joe Biden wins those three states Trump will not be able to be reelected. If we work hard to make sure we drive the vote count as high as possible by ensuring every eligible voter exercises their right than it will be impossible for the Republicans to win.

The current PaddyPower betting pool state by state is betting the electoral college map will look like this:

If we vote, this can happen.

Assuming that the states which do not have a paper trail vote for Trump, and the remaining states have the results of the current PaddyPower analysis, that leaves us with the following map:


Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

 

This is why I am optimistic about this election.

Sources:

75 years of peace

As of last month, Western Europe has been at peace for 75 years. I wrote a piece on my previous blog which looked at a list of wars involving France on my previous blog before I made my switch to WordPress. What this blog fails to analyze is how all of these wars are related, and I can’t find an article which really looks at the truly major wars in Europe.

To make this list, and to truly understand the history of the largest wars in European History, I am going to list only the wars which have involved England (or the UK), France, and at least one predecessor state to Germany. Any war involving these three is clearly one of the most important in the area.

  • World War II (1939-1945) 75 years
  • World War I (1914-1919) 20 years
  • Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) 99 years
  • War of the French Revolution (1793-1802) 1 year
  • American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) 10 years
  • Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) 12 years
  • War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) 8 years
  • War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718-1720) 20 years
  • War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) 4 years
  • Nine Years’ War (1688-1697) 4 years
  • Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667) 30 years
  • Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)
  • Eighty Years’ War (1566-1648) 19 years
  • Italian War (1551-1559) 7 years
  • Italian War (1542-1546) 5 years
  • War of the League of Cognac (1528-1529) 13 years
  • Italian War (1521-1526) 2 years
  • War of the League of Cambrai (1508-1516) 5 years
  • First Italian War (1494-1498) 10 years
  • Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) 45 years
  • Anglo-French War (1213-1214) 123 years

The Anglo-French War was the first war which directly involved the English, French, and at least one state of the Holy Roman Empire.

Before these wars was obviously the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066. The Vikings were raiding across all of Europe and as far as North America. This era started on 8 June 793 AD when Charlemagne was still alive. The century before Charlemagne had a series of wars where the Franks became the dominant force in modern-day France, Germany, and Benelux.

The 5th and 6th centuries were of course the era where Germanic tribes (such as the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, etc.) were raiding across Western Europe during the fall of the Western Roman Empire after the empire was divided in 395 AD.

There were no conflicts between 395 AD and 1213 AD which involved the Germans, French, and English all at once. There were obviously many wars in this era, but they were primarily local.

Before 130 BC France was dominated by Celtic tribes known as the Gauls, and there were no empires or states as we would recognize today with a strong central state in this area.

France was the first of today’s nation states to fully form under the leadership which would rule them until the 1790s. The Middle Ages can be described with the Roman Empire holding relatively strong in modern day Greece and Turkey, the French where they are today, fighting with England who was ruled by Viking and French monarchs, Germany and most of Italy were a loose collection of city states known as the Holy Roman Empire, and until the 1200s Spain was dominated by Islam.

Through all of this time there was the idea of the restoration of the Roman Empire. France saw itself as the legal successor state to Charlemagne for fairly obvious reasons. The Holy Roman Empire also saw itself as a successor because the first Holy Roman Emperor was Charlemagne, crowned by the Pope himself on Christmas day 800. The English crown held territory on mainland Europe for most of the time from 1066 until 1837 with the Kingdom of Hanover. England continues to hold the islands of Guernsey, Jersey, and Sark as a symbol of their former continental holdings to this day. With all three having in essence claims over the entire former Roman Empire this was obviously a recipe for war.

Germans have a historic practice of dividing lands among the King’s sons when the King dies. This was one of several factors which led to a significant fracturing and rapid increase in the number of states which made up the Holy Roman Empire. It wasn’t until the Napoleonic wars that the number of microstates significantly shrank to a point that it started to look like today. With so many different states fighting with each other, particularly Brandenburg, Austria, Saxony, and Bavaria near the end of the Holy Roman Empire, war was practically inevitable.

Everything changed with Napoleon. The number of microstates significantly shrunk following the exile of Napoleon in 1815. There were only several large German speaking states in what is now modern Germany, along with the largest of them all being Austria. Prussia had significantly grown to include many lands which had formerly been part of Poland-Lithuania, outside of the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. The German Confederation existed during an era of immense social upheaval, with a balance of power between the states. It ended with a dispute between the two great houses of Hohenzollern and Hapsburg fighting a war about whose right was to rule and in 1866 the short lived German Confederation was formed. Only 5 years later they united with Baden and Bavaria to form the German Empire which lasted until World War I. The monarchs of many of the former members of the Holy Roman Empire maintained their titles and some power under the German Empire until it was disbanded at the end of World War I.

This is why if you really want to define history, Europe is in a completely different political era before and after World War I. World War II was without a doubt a direct response to World War I, and after World War II the Allies were divided between capitalist and communist. Despite animosity and proxy wars around the world (Vietnam and Korea being the most notable) Europe stayed out of international conflict on the peninsula up to the present date. The European Coal and Steel Community was formed on 23 July 1952, bringing West Germany, France, Italy, and Benelux into an economic organization. The European Economic Community was formed in 1958 which brought in Spain, Greece, Ireland, and the United Kingdom over the next 20 years. This increase in trade is a real life implementation of Complex Interdependence, which is the theory that countries which trade with one another are less likely to go to war. With the economic benefits of trading with one another, the costs of going to war is greater than any potential benefit. From this, countries are more likely to seek out diplomatic solutions to disagreements, which is what we are seeing in Europe. The European Community was formed on 1 January 1993 and the European Union was formed on 1 November 1993. It has now grown to include 27 member states, and is a major power in the world.

There are many debates which can be made about the European Union. The response to the depression was the biggest test of the European Central Bank, and there are challenges which come as a consequence of all of the most developed countries in that part of the world being members. European laws impact every part of life, including massive benefits such as the free movement of people. As a government, the powers it holds are vast, and can be used for either good or evil, like any democracy in the world. In terms of its success, it has managed to keep a strong economy in the face of turmoil, with the standard cyclical depressions like almost any advanced economy in the world (looking at you Australia). But the biggest success of the European Union has to be the lack of international wars on the peninsula for the last 75 years. This is without a doubt the longest period without war in the region in recorded history.

Even in the darkness we are in now, with protesters being shot at by police as an epidemic rages across the United States and the world, we have hit an anniversary of incredible importance. The 75th anniversary of the end of World War II is a reminder in this time of darkness that evil will always lose. Things will get better, as long as we work towards justice. This progress can be permanent, and in the long run, peace and justice can indeed win. This is worth defending and commemorating and fully understanding the full importance of this great peace.

How to not create a democracy

Three things connect the Reign of Terror, Third Reich, Great Purge, and Great Leap Forward:
1. The people in power claimed they were helping the working class by targeting the “bourgeois”.
2. Their claim of who they were targeting was absolutely bullshit. Most of the people killed in these 4 events were impoverished.
3. Not one of them led to democracy. All four led to forced labor. All were unnecessary and completely avoidable acts of pure evil.
In memory of our loved ones.
In memory of our ancestors.
Lest we forget.

Tara Reade case

Here are some notes about the Tara Reade case which I have pulled together.

I studied game theory in college, so I am extensively using it in this article.

I went back and forth on whether I should publish it, but I believe this is important to give a game theory analysis based on the facts at hand. Game theory can help us know the truth of what really happened.

  • Many progressive leaders do not believe her. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ro Khanna, Pramlia Jayapal, and more have continued to endorse or have since endorsed Biden despite these allegations. They depend on the feminist vote in order to keep their seats and with practically every single progressive politician willing to put their entire careers on the line when they depend on the feminist vote. Every single one of them understands that if proof of Tara Reade’s accusations comes out, their political careers are over. If the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus believed that she was telling the truth, or even the possibility of it, they would know they would personally lose their next elections if they were to continue to support Biden. If there was any sliver of a doubt in their minds Tara Reade is telling the truth than they would revoke their endorsement. These are politicians who can butt heads with Biden on many issues, and often criticize him for not going as far as they like. They must be extremely confident on this one.
  • Tara Reade claimed there was a Senate report. Biden looked for the report and couldn’t find a copy, and the Secretary of the Senate (who was appointed by the Republicans, which is important) refused to look for him. There are three variables at play, here, whether Tara Reade is telling the truth, whether the report exists (which if she was telling the truth, according to her it does), and whether the Secretary of the Senate will do his job. Also, if the report exists, Tara Reade definitely has a copy, and she could choose to release it. Here is a decision tree of what we are looking at. I’m using the tools I learned when I studied game theory in college. The numbers at the end are scores
    • Tara Reade is telling the truth
      • Report exists
        • Secretary looks for it or Tara Reade releases it. This proves Tara Reade is telling the truth, and Joe Biden will have to drop out. Tara Reade 1, Joe Biden -1
        • Secretary does not look for it and Tara Reade chooses not to release it. This would mean that the Republicans are helping to cover up for Joe Biden. Also, what benefit does Tara Reade have in witholding evidence to convince people of her credibility? This is extremely unlikely. Tara Reade 0, Joe Biden 0
      • Report does not exist
        • Impossible combination, because that would mean Tara Reade was lying when she said the report exists. Tara Reade NA, Joe Biden NA
    • Joe Biden is telling the truth
      • Report exists
        • Impossible combination, because if the report exists, Tara Reade is telling the truth and Joe Biden is lying. Tara Reade NA, Joe Biden NA
      • Report does not exist
        • Secretary looks for it. This will prove Tara Reade was lying about the existence of the report and help Biden win. This is also the scenario if Tara Reade confesses she doesn’t have the report. Tara Reade -1, Joe Biden 1
        • Secretary does not look for it. The secretary refuses to confirm or deny the existence of report, and closure to the case. Tara Reade refuses to confess that she doesn’t have the report. The case will linger. It will continue to impact the Presidential election. Tara Reade 1, Joe Biden -1
  • Where the event supposedly took place was in a busy hallway with no alcoves near the offices of some of the most powerful people on the planet.
  • If Tara Reade made a report she should personally have a copy of it, which she should be able to make a scan of and send to the media. She claims it exists. Where is it? Why is she leaving us hanging assuming she is telling the truth? What does she have to gain? This makes no logical sense.
  • The early nineties was not an era free of sexual assault cases in the national news. Anita Hill spoke out against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. There is no doubt that she was telling the truth in any reasonable person’s mind. She was consistent, there were numerous other people who worked for Clarence Thomas when he was a judge of the DC Circuit who confirmed her claims.
  • No one else who worked for Joe Biden has come forward. Most sexual predators will have multiple people come forward. This does not disprove her, but it is highly unlikely that he would have made only one in his life.
  • The Senate Office claims that any release of material would violate The Government Employee Rights Act of 1991. There is no such section in that law.
  • When she got an interview in 2019 she said she didn’t consider the acts toward her sexualization. Why would she downright deny what she is now claiming a year before now?
  • If her allegation is true, she is potentially looking at a multi-million dollar settlement. It doesn’t make sense that she would have trouble finding a lawyer. A sexual assault lawyer who is known to donate to Trump’s campaign is bizarre.
  • High-profile sexual assault instances generally come with other reports soon after. It’s been a month and no one else has accused Biden of sexual assault. This is unusual.
  • Other former Biden staffers have trouble believing Tara Reade when interviewed.

This article from Vox details how one female reporter struggled with this story.

But also, what is this?

This behavior is at best fishy. This was just one day after Super Tuesday. If she had come out two days earlier, it could have decimated Joe Biden’s numbers and significantly changed the primary.

This response is was powerful.

If she came out in early March, or even late January with her story, she could have almost completely handed the nomination to Bernie Sanders. But NO, she is tweeting this type of bologna after Bernie Sanders had no chance of winning enough votes. If she truly supported Bernie, why wait until March 25th when he was too far behind in delegates?

This doesn’t make any sense if she is telling the truth.

Or perhaps it is all just coincidence.

Tara Reade telling the truth, report does exist Joe Biden telling the truth, report does not exist
Tara Reade confirms report’s existence R: 1

B: -1

 R: -1

B: 1
Tara Reade does not confirm the report’s existence R: 0

B: 0

 R: 1

B: -1

Why We Aren’t Getting Any Stimulus

  1. America’s retirement system is woefully inadequate for the majority of Americans. After paying 12.4% of their income into Social Security, the average American doesn’t have any money left over to save in an index fund. This means the majority of Americans both struggle in retirement and have no rainy day fund for if they lose their job before they retire.
  2. Amway and other Multi-Level Marketing scams donate billions to the Republican Party.
  3. Betsy DeVos becomes the Secretary of Education to undermine our education system. The DeVos family made their billions from Amway. By having fewer college graduates, Amway has more people they can prey upon. It also gives this predatory industry a voice at the table of every cabinet meeting.
  4. America hits a recession and the Federal Government provides only a one time payment to average Americans. The $4 trillion stimulus package ($6000 per capita) mostly goes to large companies.
  5. Small businesses have to lay off their employees, and many shut down permanently.
  6. Millions of Americans are out of work and without any money saved due to our inadequate retirement system, regressive tax code, and lack of aid to average Americans. Because of this, millions of Americans are looking for anything to pay their bills.
  7. Multi-Level Marketing companies target the millions of Americans who are unemployed and unable to pay their bills, knowing full and well that they will make BILLIONS off of people struggling, and that it is going to be a long time until our economy restructures due to a lack of a functioning government.
  8. Wages are driven down and for a time the largest companies who got bailed out are able to pay lower labor costs.
  9. Banks don’t have money to lend out to new businesses, slowing the growth of our economy, keeping the competition for labor at a minimum, which drives wages down.
  10. Small companies are going to have a hard time finding customers without any stimulus boosting our demand curve, making starting a business a daunting task. Getting investment without customers is impossible.
I despise every company whose business model is built on harming people.
Thank God we avoided Hillary Clinton’s emails.
In November we will choose whether we will elect a man who is downplaying the extent of the damage of this epidemic, and using this opportunity to eliminate the competition for the businesses he and his cabinet own.
Our alternative is to vote for the man who was Vice President when health care was expanded to include disabled Americans.
Remember to vote for Joe Biden in November.

Why we aren’t getting any stimulus

  1. America’s retirement system is woefully inadequate for the majority of Americans. After paying 13.4% of their income into Social Security, the average American doesn’t have any money left over to save in an index fund. This means the majority of Americans both struggle in retirement and have no rainy day fund for if they lose their job before they retire.
  2. Amway and other Multi-Level Marketing scams donate billions to the Republican Party.
  3. Betsy DeVos becomes the Secretary of Education to undermine our education system. The DeVos family made their billions from Amway. By having fewer college graduates, Amway has more people they can prey upon. It also gives this predatory industry a voice at the table of every cabinet meeting.
  4. America hits a recession and the Federal Government provides only a one time payment to average Americans. The $4 trillion stimulus package ($6000 per capita) mostly goes to large companies.
  5. Small businesses have to lay off their employees, and many shut down permanently.
  6. Millions of Americans are out of work and without any money saved due to our inadequate retirement system, regressive tax code, and lack of aid to average Americans. Because of this, millions of Americans are looking for anything to pay their bills.
  7. Multi-Level Marketing companies target the millions of Americans who are unemployed and unable to pay their bills, knowing full and well that they will make BILLIONS off of people struggling, and that it is going to be a long time until our economy restructures due to a lack of a functioning government.
  8. Wages are driven down and for a time the largest companies who got bailed out are able to pay lower labor costs.
  9. Banks don’t have money to lend out to new businesses, slowing the growth of our economy, keeping the competition for labor at a minimum, which drives wages down.
  10. Small companies are going to have a hard time finding customers without any stimulus boosting our demand curve, making starting a business a daunting task. Getting investment without customers is impossible.
I despise every company whose business model is built on harming people.
Thank God we avoided Hillary Clinton’s emails.
In November we will choose whether we will elect a man who is downplaying the extent of the damage of this epidemic, and using this opportunity to eliminate the competition for the businesses he and his cabinet own.
Our alternative is to vote for the man who was Vice President when health care was expanded to include disabled Americans.
Remember to vote for Joe Biden in November.

General Lee was no hero

Ike was wrong about General Lee. Lee was a slaveholder and had no loyalty to these United States. As soon as Virginia seceded from the Union, Lee saw nothing wrong with being the leading general in the war which killed more American soldiers than any other war.
He was a veteran of the Mexian American War, but in my opinion when he decided to lay arms against his country because of his conflict of interest as a slaveholder, he lost all honor.
If I had an array of men responsible for killing more American soldiers than any other, General Lee would have to be on that list.
Ike having a picture of General Lee in the White House is a slap in the face to every family like mine who lost loved ones defending the United States in the Civil War.
Respect the troops.

https://youtu.be/mOrtOlU8f9Y

Jen Perelman for Congress

On January 20, 2005 George W. Bush was sworn in for a second term. He had successfully eroded our civil liberties with the PATRIOT ACT, gotten us into an oil war with Iraq, and was already starting to rattle sabres with Iran. Virginian Terry McAuliffe was the chair of the DNC during this election. The Republican party gained another 4 seats in the Senate for  a total of 55 seats and another 5 seats in the House for a total of 232 seats. Terry McAuliffe was then replaced as the chair of the DNC by Vermonter Howard Dean. In 2006 we got the House, along with 6 governorships, and in 2008 we got the first Democratic trifecta since 2 January 1995. The future looked very bright. We had a young and popular President who supports universal health care, free community college, and expanding AMTRAK. If this wasn’t good enough, he also was the first person of color in the office. He preserved more land than any other President in history, and he wouldn’t have been able to do any of that if it wasn’t for Chair Howard Dean’s leadership. We had a majority of State Legislatures, briefly had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, and over 300 seats in the House. Howard Dean had done a phenomenal job of historic proportions.

In a fairly unorthodox move, he stepped down after providing the biggest victory for progressive politicians in American history and he was replaced by Virginian Tim Kaine. A few things went very wrong at that point. Democratic politicians who did not cooperate on major issues, including health care, education, and transportation, were not held accountable for their votes by the party. As a consequence there was no party unity on major issues and the Republicans got a majority of governorships in a census year as well as a majority in the House. By doing this, they were able to gerrymander many different states, guaranteeing continued Republican dominance of the House for the next 8 years.

Kaine rightfully stepped down after that defeat which he had engineered. He engineered it by continuing to support Democrats who stepped away from the party line, which made a lot of voters feel like there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. By giving them that much leeway, he significantly weakened President Obama and many voters, myself included, feel betrayed to this day. Tim Kaine significantly contributed to the animosity of the Democratic National Committee by Progressives by allowing too much leeway for members of Congress. We live in a country which uses first past the post, and because of this we have a two party system. We don’t have a third party to hold conservative Democrats accountable. If he had held Democrats accountable by guaranteeing that they will be primaried if they do not support the President, they would have towed the line and we could have gotten a majority in 2010 by expanding our turnout.

He was replaced with Floridian Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She followed Tim Kaine’s strategy which follows four major tenants:

  1. Do not support state legislative races. They need to raise money first on their own in order to get any support. This is what I heard from my party leaders in my local legislative district.
  2. Members of Congress have almost complete leeway in how they vote. If a Democrat votes against the party line, oh well.
  3. Do not rile Republicans. This means if they decide to gerrymander states and erode federal laws regarding voting rights and other critical laws, that is their right in our Jacksonian democracy. Do not exercise our power to bring rogue states in line with Federal law using the courts.
  4. We must appeal to the median voter.

In 2014 we lost the Senate as a result of these policies, and as a direct consequence of Wasserman Schultz’s utter incompetence and fear of doing something meaningful, combined with having Tim Kaine as Vice President, whose biggest legacy is the Speakership of both John Boehner and Paul Ryan, Hillary Clinton lost the Presidency in 2016. As a consequence of the actions of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are probably both going to be on the Supreme Court until around 2050.

After working in politics for 5 years, my conclusion from talking to thousands of voters is that median voter theorem is complete bullshit.

Also, a consequence of having some political experience under my belt is I believe very strongly that every inaction when you are in a position of power is itself an action.

She is still in the House today after engineering the election of Donald Trump through her cowardice. I do not believe she is qualified to be a canvasser for the Democrats or any left of fascist initiative after her gross incompetence and negligence put us in this situation.

Fortunately, for the people in her home district, there is a fantastic opportunity to end the career of the person who put Donald Trump in power through her actions. Over the last week on her twitter account, Jen Perelman has endorsed paid family leave, has spoken out about moderates trying to rehabilitate the image of the war criminal George W. Bush, she is the co-chair of her local League of Women Voters, and an attorney.

But most importantly, she did not engineer the election of Donald Trump.

If you are able, please donate to her campaign today https://secure.actblue.com/donate/jen2020.

If you are able to donate or not, please follow her on her Twitter @JENFL23.