#except for the ones who ended up getting the most media attention (see: bernie and biden)

[britneyshakespeare]

this is my honest exhausted political hot take on the biden resignation situation. i don't fuckin care that we didn't get a dem primary

[slickbackdani]

We need to talk about Michael Bloomberg. Now, his commercials you’re forced to see everywhere will tell you that he’s either a progressive firebrand or a caring centrist who will offer a more polite alternative to those mean old Bernie Bros. That said, a cursory look at Bloomer’s policies and rhetoric will tell you a different story: namely, that of a lifelong conservative Republican trying to buy the Democratic nomination.

* His “stop and frisk” policy has made it easier for police officers to get away with harassing and profiling people of color, and he defended this with a racist lie about most NYC criminals being black anyway (which has been proven wrong.)

* Similarly, he’s claimed that the 2008 economic recession was because he was no longer allowed to discriminate against minorities in housing.

* He’s also authorized surveillance of Muslim communities in flagrant defiance of every Constitutional right guaranteed to them.

* He’s described transgender women as “a man in a dress sharing a bathroom with your daughter.” Seriously.

* He has a long documented history of refusing to raise the minimum wage.

* He’s openly balked at universal healthcare, raising taxes on the wealthy, making college tuition free, and legalizing pot.

* He has over 40 sexual harassment and assault allegations against him from throughout his entire political career — not helped by his well-documented friendships with Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein.

* He banned Big Gulps in NYC, an act of petty authoritarianism disguised as civic concern.

The only substantial difference between Bloomer and Tronald Dump is that Dump is honest about being a greedy, bigoted tyrant, while Bloomer hides it behind dog whistles and concern trolling. Dump ran a candidacy on invective and hatred, while Bloomer is running one on phony positivity and “let’s all come together” schmaltz. Dump was so outrageous in his rallies and interviews that the media and RNC had no choice but to pay attention to him (or so they claim.) Bloomer is shelling out millions of dollars to flood the airwaves with ads and bribe the DNC into letting him on the debate stage.

That last one, by the way, ended up being Bloomer’s biggest mistake yet: buying into his own hype, the privileged asshole who spent most of his life surrounded by fawning yes-men probably waltzed onto that Nevada debate stage expecting everyone else to bend the knee... except that ended up not happening. Instead, he spent most of the debate cringing and squirming while everyone else took turns blasting him for being a terrible politician and worse human being, his few attempts to justify himself being drowned out by the audience booing. He tried to fall back on some old rhetorical tricks — like the “I worked very hard to get what I have” rich guy cliche, and accusing Bernie Sanders of being a communist like this is still the Goddamned 1950s — but much like a criminal trying to shoot Superman, nothing worked.

On that night, Bloomer perhaps learned what Howard Schultz learned when he threatened to run as a third-party candidate back in January 2019: just because you’re rich, that doesn’t mean we owe you jack shit.

You’re probably wondering, why is such a staunch conservative like Bloomberg running as a Democrat? Because he realizes that the Republican Party is not fashionable anymore. The Trump presidency and subsequent rise of the alt-right were the final nails in the coffin for the GOP’s reputation as the sober, pragmatic counterpart to those starry-eyed radicals on the left (a reputation that was already dying a slow and painful death thanks to the Bush/Cheney administration, the 2008 recession, the increased prominence of the hate-filled propaganda spewed by Alex Jones and Fox News, and the ludicrous antics of the Koch-funded Tea Party movement.)

Bloomer realizes that the only way for him to gain power is to run as a Democrat and pretend to have been one of us this whole time. He is cynically assuming that everyone will see his ads and be convinced, and that nobody will look at his record. He thinks that, if he’s “civil” and “respectable” enough, the media will fawn all over him and the Dem party will fall in line just because his name isn’t Donald Trump.

If the Nevada debate showed us anything, it’s that the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party are very well capable of unifying for a common goal. To that end, I’m calling on all liberals and Democrats, whether you’re a centrist in the vein of Biden and Klobuchar or if you’re a social democrat/Bernie Bro like myself: we have to come together, rise up, and show the elitist billionaire oligarch Michael Bloomberg that it doesn’t matter how many ads he shoves down our throats. It doesn’t matter how happy and smiley his bullshit feel-good campaign rhetoric is. We will not allow him to buy our democracy.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Last week, former Vice President Joe Biden was not the Democratic candidate who was mentioned in the most online news stories, marking the first time he has failed to claim that title since at least early June, when FiveThirtyEight began tracking online news coverage. According to data from Media Cloud,1 Biden dropped from first to third place last week, trailing closely behind Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in terms of online stories that mentioned their names as a percentage of stories mentioning any Democratic 2020 candidate. But Biden was still the most-talked-about candidate on cable news, according to data from the TV News Archive, which chops cable news coverage from the three networks we monitor — CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — into 15-second clips.2

Biden’s media dominance waned last week — at least online

Share of 15-second cable news clips mentioning each candidate vs. share of online stories mentioning each candidate in a Media Cloud search

Cable TV clips the week of … online stories the week of … Candidate July 7 July 14 diff July 7 July 14 diff Bernie Sanders 12.1% 25.3% +13.2 31.8% 39.7% +7.9 Elizabeth Warren 13.6 18.3 +4.7 32.6 38.8 +6.2 Joe Biden 50.6 39.6 -11.0 41.2 37.2 -4.1 Kamala Harris 22.8 20.3 -2.5 31.1 32.3 +1.2 Pete Buttigieg 6.3 5.2 -1.1 16.1 19.8 +3.7 Cory Booker 3.5 5.7 +2.2 11.8 16.1 +4.2 Bill de Blasio 2.2 3.3 +1.1 11.6 15.7 +4.2 Kirsten Gillibrand 1.0 1.7 +0.7 7.9 13.2 +5.3 Julian Castro 1.2 2.8 +1.6 8.0 10.5 +2.5 Amy Klobuchar 1.9 2.4 +0.6 7.4 9.7 +2.2 Jay Inslee 0.9 0.9 +0.0 5.3 7.2 +1.9 Beto O’Rourke 2.1 4.1 +2.0 4.1 6.9 +2.7 John Hickenlooper 0.2 1.0 +0.7 3.5 6.6 +3.1 Tulsi Gabbard 0.1 1.2 +1.2 4.1 6.2 +2.1 Steve Bullock 0.2 2.4 +2.2 2.9 6.2 +3.3 Marianne Williamson 0.1 0.9 +0.8 3.8 6.1 +2.2 Andrew Yang 0.6 1.1 +0.5 3.7 6.0 +2.4 Michael Bennet 0.7 0.7 +0.0 3.2 5.5 +2.2 John Delaney 0.2 1.2 +1.0 2.7 5.4 +2.7 Tim Ryan 0.3 1.1 +0.8 2.2 5.4 +3.3 Eric Swalwell 3.6 — — 8.0 — — Seth Moulton 0.1 0.2 +0.1 2.6 3.8 +1.2 Joe Sestak 0.0 0.0 +0.0 1.1 2.0 +0.9 Mike Gravel 0.0 0.0 +0.0 1.4 1.9 +0.5

Includes all candidates that qualify as “major” in FiveThirtyEight’s rubric. Each network’s daily news coverage is chopped up into 15-second clips, and each clip that includes a candidate’s name is counted as one mention. For both cable and online news, our search queries look for an exact match for each candidate’s name, except for Julian Castro, for whom our search query is “Julian Castro” OR “Julián Castro.” Media Cloud searches use two of the database’s publication lists: “top online news” and “digital native” publications.

Sources: Internet Archive’s Television News Archive via the GDELT Project, Media Cloud

This isn’t the first time Biden’s media dominance has been challenged. The week following the first Democratic debate, Sen. Kamala Harris came close to unseating Biden as the most-mentioned candidate in both cable and online news, though she ultimately came up short. Biden has held the top spot in cable news mentions since he launched his campaign in April, and in online news, he was less than 3 percentage points out of first place last week, so despite his drop in the rankings, he still got a similar share of coverage to Sanders and Warren.

It’s too soon to say whether Biden has been permanently unseated or if he’s just temporarily getting slightly less attention. We’ll be watching the numbers leading into and following the second Democratic debate to see if Biden will finally have to start sharing the media spotlight with the rest of the field or if he will once again be able to keep the bulk of the coverage focused on himself. Stay tuned!

Check out the data behind this series and check back each week for an update on which candidates are getting the most coverage on cable and online.

[badmousestuff-blog]

The problem with Free Speech (Script)

One day I was helping out with the Free Palestine stall on Church Street. About an hour in a young dude came up to me, and gave us the usual conservative drivel.

He told me that he couldn’t support the left, because to him we were against free speech. Right below me were flyers detailing the extent of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians, and how little the world still hears about their plight. He stated that he wasn’t interested in our campaign, and bid me farewell. For, of course we must have our standards.

(Rowan Atkinson speech)

There’s never been a more unshakeable dogma in my lifetime than that of Freedom of Speech.

The real test of a country’s standards is if it allows people to criticise one another, especially the regime. The foundation of Liberty and Freedom and Friberty, is the story of free expression, after all, if you want to know who has the power, just look at which group you’re not allowed to criticise. Right?

Well no, I’m here to say that Free Speech isn’t just some base, flatline, monolith from which all societies are to be judged like an angelical truth, its a political concept, thought up by human beings, subject to critique, and frankly is in great need of one.

Let’s start with something simple.

Your concept that Free Speech is good, is only possible if your opponent also agrees with you, i.e. they’re not going to kill you if you disagree.

So therefore if your opponent doesn’t ?? and will use aggression against you, then you can’t really argue for free speech can you?

The conditions around you need to be such that nobody is going to die.

Right, whats next, oh I gotta do the Hitler bit, right…

Y’know the story, Weiner Republic, Full suffrage, large democracy, massive instability and debt caused from the prior war, enter the Nazis, and the German Communist party. Yes everyone seems to forget that the Commies were there too, headed by Ernst Thalmann, and at their peak gained 16% of the vote in 1932. Whilst Ernst was forward in his Anti-Fascism, the Social Democrats, and their newspapers, didn’t seem to understand the concept of a united front, they refused to confront the Fascists in an effective manner and simultaneously denounced the KDP as being a bunch of Muscovites, sporting the famous Iron Front symbol, The third arrow originally meant Anti-Communism, mind.

The SPD’s failure to effectively confront Fascism aided Hitler’s rise to power, sent the KDP underground, and Ernst to 11 years in the hole, followed by a firing squad.

So don’t tell me free-speech exists in vacuum, it doesn’t. In this video we’ll ask the necessary further questions.

Who dictates the media, who controls which advertisements we see, which views are more profitable? Does the removal of speech in given scenarios serve a common good? And if the enlightenment was correct why did Liberalism fail in its mission?

(Rowan Atkinson)

This clip was one of the first main intro points for me as well as many others into the realm of Super Free Speech, and it’s strange looking back just how dated it is. It’s not like we didn’t have the arguments back then, but moreso that nobody really cared, we were all swept up in the dogma, to challenge free speech would be on the same level as strangling a baby.

Anybody can go around today and talk about the joy of free speech, but it means nothing to a person who has no power with that speech, Freedom to Beg? That's not a freedom; that’s institutionalised sadism.

I’m not a believer in Maslow’s hierarchy but hypothetically, this really wouldn’t go number 2, it’d be right down at number… 27. Why do I say this? Well in the words of some philosophy guy people say I look like, “No rights matter if you’re dead”.

Food, Water, Healthcare, and Housing. These are all things you need in order to survive, in other words fulfil the other things that we consider ‘rights’ - rights that are worth struggling for. And despite the fact that the millions end up dying from the lack of these rights, even when they’re universally agreed upon, ever notice how this struggle goes very very quiet… Suspiciously quiet.

Sargon on the Socialists

I wonder…??? I wonder why the left seems to be largely committed to these causes, it’s something you find scantly addressed in the middle and right spheres with the exception of private individual charity (OSCAR WILDE), and Carl may find himself wondering why it is that these ideologies can barely create a solid solidarity towards these topics.

You might be a Liberal and say “Yeah yeah, I support that too though” but fact remains there’s no confidence here.

I see no outpouring of condemnation coming from you when Politicians like Bolsonaro press forward their restrictive measures, unlike what you have to say about this powerless Redhead. Why is that?

Count Dankula, who interestingly I had a couple scuffles with a while back without realising it, last year taught his dog to do a Hitler Salute, and he got fined £800. Now that’s probably one of the most petty excuses for a sentencing I’ll admit, but again this isn’t about whether it was justified, it’s about people’s standards.

Dankula received enormous support from, well, everyone, and he’s now more famous than he ever previously was, enough to be at the forefront of the free-speech festival later that year, and even use his fame to help push the emergence of UKIP. This is attention that people would pay top dollar for, way more than £800. He should be proud that he got a court hearing.

Frankly, me and my colleagues didn’t really care about this whole thing too much, just ask my IWW friend who I was with when this all went down. What happened around the same time that did catch some of our attention though was the plight of the J20 protesters who got arrested back during Trump’s inauguration.

Some of these people are on the butchers list to serve 60 year sentences for standing against a president who’s, a real dick, like I get the whole Liberal opposition is fucking corny but still he’s a dick, they’ve all been dicks, he’s just continuing what every dick who ever stood on centre stage ever started, this is America, you think Bernie’s going to save you? You think reforming the democrats can change the number one imperialist power?

Apologies. If you’re at all concerned that I didn’t give a toss about Dankula’s pug joke, if you’ve ever had friends like him this stuff isn’t too surprising, I know these are highly political times but a guy who votes UKIP is really not our number one concern right now.

I didn’t give a toss, but I know somebody who did, Mike Stuchbury, who you’ll remember from his childish twitter ramblings and dealings with Watson. Who proclaimed that the left needs to stand with Free Speech, A free-speech that is largely in the teat of Right-leaning discourse.

Sargon who was there with him, earlier that year got de-platformed by lefty-liberals in his debate with Muke.

The dogma is enforcing itself here, the left is all supposed to throw up our hands in swich liquor, of which vertu engendered is the flour, and decide Whether we should allow freedom of speech to our enemies, or not allow it, when the actual thing we should be doing, is taking hold of the narrative and putting forward our own ideas as the new talking point of discussion, instead of fucking Nazi Pug.

“Hey, you, what gives you the right to determine the narrative?”

Thats a good question, the hegemonic propaganda of our status quo is already setting the narrative, Noam Chomsky “I’m bored bye”

How can I make this more interesting… Ah ha…

IT’S TIME FOR FILM THEORY!!1 WOOOO

-

The Pursuit of Happiness.

In 2006 Will Smith told the story of Chris Gardner, a black man who struggled through poverty, separation, and fatherhood whilst living in San Francisco.

He gets an internship with a sales company and despite having to put up with a lot, by the end of the film he passes and at this point, we’re supposed to feel happy and redeemed, but to those who’ve watched it (surely I’m not alone) was it really a happy ending?

I’ll say that I walked out of the viewing feeling very uncomfortable and sour, but why is that?

Well for starters, that Internship he got was a 6 month unpaid one, in the most expensive US city might have something to do with it.

Then he’s got to deal with his wife leaving him, then he’s got to take care of his son, then he loses his source of income, then he’s got to deal with eviction, sleeping rough, not sleeping at all, by the end of the movie sure he gets his redemption but the message of ‘when life gives you lemons, just keep getting pummelled with those lemons and don’t ask why’ ultimately seems hollow.

Contrast that a more traditionally Anti-establishment film which was made by a literal Communist, where the exploiters are treated as they should be and thats what comes across on screen, with surprise horse-dick, and while Happiness doesn’t treat them like saints, they sure don’t come across as devils either.

6 months of free labour he and 19 other people who did not make the cut that they are effectively giving away for free.

What about those other 19 people, who ever tells their story?

The way his superiors always act like total dicks pushing him around and getting him to be their lobby boy, they lost nothing. And now he’s going to work for them.

Is the message here supposed to be “Well if this guy can survive the moon falling on him, what the hell are you complaining about?” Actually yeah, I think that consciously or not, this is what’s being said… Don’t worry we’re getting to the point of all this.

The extent of exploitation is naked, yet in the way the movie is presented I’m inclined to agree to this, and take it into my home, and sleep with it.

Now name me as many pieces of media that regurgitate this same old theme of rags to riches through adversity, to look at the man on centre stage, yet pay no attention to the millions locked in a cage.

Sure, say it how you will, Art is merely what you make of it and there’s not necessarily any devious agenda being pursued at any time. That’s one perspective I guess, another might be that there’s no such thing as Art for Arts sake, it all gears itself to differing political lines.

In a society based on private, individual enterprise, it's no surprise that Art would also foster themes that would support society as the normal and natural, even if they appear on the surface as radical.

Case in point, well the entire Hollywood Catalog.

On the Waterfront is literally Mccarthyism on celluloid, The People vs Larry Flynt guises pornification and billionairedom with a story of libel and freedom of speech.

And ironically enough probably the worst offender is, well I’m gonna lose some of you now, Billy Elliot, the Movie.

In which 2/3rds of the way through Billy’s dad strike breaks as a way to pay for his son to go to a prestigious arts school, y’know rather than maybe having him stay and use his skills to improve, embolden and enliven the downtrodden community, rather than leaving it to die.

Jackie’s very sympathetic in his devotion towards his son, except Striking is caring for your family, you’re fighting for a better future, together, as one, and it’s thrown away in favour of a much more individualistic get out of your circumstances, go and live your dream.

Now I’ve read Lee Hall, I know he didn’t intend for this to come through, but he is also no more aloof than any of us, we’re all susceptible to this ‘Common Culture’.

Just see the way our ‘Common Culture’ infiltrates into how Communism is talked about, in 2015’s Trumbo. The Hollywood screenwriter who was blacklisted for 2 decades for being a member of Communist Party.

Could make for some groundbreaking stuff right?...

Well no, instead we’re left with a film that focuses entirely on freedom of expression, which is ironic because if they represented him truthfully it would’ve resulted in a much more nuanced movie.

All we get is a 2 minute scene talking about Communist ethics and god its done in the most sanitised, unradical, storybook tale way possible, that doesn’t in any possible regard represent who the actual Dalton Trumbo was.

“If a book or play or film is produced which is harmful to the best interests of the working class, that work and its author should and must be attacked in the sharpest possible terms.”

I think I have a case that profit incentives are steering the way in which media is presented…

We have no problem pointing out the subtle propaganda messages in Soviet children’s cartoons (Cheburashka) but reverse that onto our society, prepare for some awkward stares.

You may argue that none of what I’ve just spoken about here has anything to do with censorship of free expression but this is the problem, our notions of censorship are stuck firmly behind the Berlin wall, and thats far too simplistic not to mention outdated.

Undoubtably Coca-cola has a far greater reach of expression than I ever will be able to ascertain, what says who can speak on a public forum, decide the content of a documentary, of a publication, of a movie, or a political campaign?

If a book is blacklisted by all publishers for political reasons, what difference does it make having 1 publishing house or 100?

If 90% of the movie market alone is controlled by just 7 companies, what kind of advice is “Just start your own business”.

If we want to talk about the free flow of expression and information, what little are these flyers (Free Palestine) when Zionism has a whole nation, and 2 continents supporting it?

This is the kind of expression we’re dealing with today, not the voices of individuals, but of multinationals. The fact that we had in any way an outpouring of sympathies towards one of these companies, Sony, for having their movie The Interview possibly censored by DPRK agents is a testament to how lost in the plot we have become.

And if by chance the media cannot direct the status quo by monopoly, it brings out its tried and tested method.

Commodify it.

I present to you Guerrillero Heroico, this photograph was allowed such free spread not simply because its bloody badass, but because there was no IP designated upon it, by Korda’s intention as a Communist himself he agreed with the free-flow of art. And what did this result in at the behest of Capitalist Corporations? The pastiche of revolution, to be bought and sold many times over.

Take any form of media, word, an expression, it will be hoisted away, slapped on a shirt, and sold back to you at a handsome price. You cannot escape this.

The moment that this (my tattoo) becomes the new Che it loses all its power, resistance is reduced to at worst LARPing, at best Nerd Fandom, and the winners are the profiteers.

If profit is the aim of the game, the speech that is supported will inevitably favour that which nurtures the economy, not destroys it, unless in farce. Speech ain’t a level base of which a country is determined by, its an apparatus held by those that dictate the game.

This is why there is a necessity for us to control the narrative, control the message, because if we don’t, they’re still going to.

-

Obligations:

When armies with unequal numbers go into battle, a draw is a defeat for the lesser side.

Make believe it or not Radical Centrist politics have their political leanings as well, even if just by effect.

Look I like free speech, I love it, I’m a goddamn youtuber, but I’m not stupid, I know what’s coming, I know that groups would try and silence me if they could. That’s politics.

You might go “All we’re talking about is the legal sphere”. Firstly the legal is the political, pure ideology to say otherwise, but second it’s difficult for you to call yourself a fighter for free speech when as I’ve explained there’s sooo much more to it than simply the judicial.

Many proponents will even side-step the judicial boundaries anyway when monopoly becomes involved, and if I have to explain how Monopoly is not an externality of our system but an inherent part of accumulation then… sigh.

Strange how we’re usually all skeptical of an Economic Free Market but the Free marketplace of ideas unlocks your inner Libertarian.

Its when I see stuff like this that I begin wondering if this is all just a trend that will eventually die off when people realise the complexities of their circumstances. I remember just a few years ago how many Libertarians were speaking the merits of free speech until they discovered that methodological individualism wasn’t actually achieving their goals. I count down the days when Lauren Southern finally calls for limits on speech just like her limits on borders. After all freedom is not free it must be defended right?

And btw folks usually aren’t as brave to actively advocate limits so they’ll always present justifications, such as that these views are mental disorders, or they’ll destroy civilisation, or these people are Degenerates.

This is a historic moment in political discourse, at this point ultimately we’re interested in picking sides, and you’ll do this just as much as anyone will.

On the left we like to talk a lot about Left Unity. I’m not necessarily against the idea, but a lot of the time people make a religion out of it, glossing over the fact that many aspects of various factions (???) contradict. It might not be immediately obvious, but when push comes to shove these conflicts become very apparent. There are some principles in which each side certainly doesn’t see eye to eye.

“Politics is pervasive, everything is political and the choice to remain apolitical is usually just an endorsement of the status quo”

If it wasn’t obvious, I’m a Communist, yeah yeah say what you want, I believe in the liberation of those who do all the work through armed struggle based upon material conditions. I’m going to therefore be in favour of real mass culture, the stuff that gets people focused on achieving liberating aims instead of just appealing to markets. Its for this reason that I’m not interested in defending the views of right-wing nationalists, fascists, reactionaries… my enemies in other words, the ideas largely speaking which regress the people and they’re not interested in defending me either, wouldn’t expect them to.

If all you’re talking about is the centre, you’re gonna get flanked, sorry.

You might bump in when I denounce Dankula stating “His punishment showcases the system is at fault” and I would agree. This system is at fault, its been at fault since before our constitution was written, and it’ll never stop being at fault until you solve the contradictions.

Liberalism did fail, its ideals never came to fruition and that’s the reason why Socialists bring forth the praxis to achieve it, sometimes that’ll involve using words, sometimes it’ll involve lots and lots of guns, but let me tell you, you can’t always fight a war by playing nice, sometimes you have to use a diversity of tactics to achieve it.

Maybe we need 11 of them? (Shows book)

But thats more of a material answer and I know that most you don’t give a crap about some dead Chinese guy., but getting back to the original idea about responsibilities behind our speech, well, here’s something to think about.

So… here goes nothing.

If you’re a straight white male aged 11-16 in the UK and weren’t brought up to fit into the standard male dynamic, chances are you got picked on, sometimes a lot, sometimes that’s every day, not necessarily violence but words from numerous mouths are highly unnerving.

I did not have a particularly fun time adolescence. Every day was horrible, I never had a feeling going in that this would be exciting or, this would be a day where things would be different, everyday was a total black smudge with no end in sight.

Unlike other people, I never got to have a group that I fit into, so I had no escape, nothing to take my mind off things.

Looking back I don’t know why I bothered going in, I wasn’t getting amazing grades anyway.

When I went to Drama school and other clubs on the weekends and after school, I would also get picked on, but it wasn’t in spite, it was just general, friendly teasing. But there wasn’t a difference in my mind, because when you’ve had to deal with so much constant abuse, and paranoia, and humiliation 30 hours a week, it fucks you up.

So when Id say to the weekend buds “I dont like this” theyd go “Oh come on man its just a bit of fun, its okay, dont worry about it, its just a joke, its all okay”

Back then I didn’t have the nerve, I just put up with it, but if I could go back, Id say. No, actually its not Okay, because you don’t know for the life of me how much I have had to deal with this shit, to me that doesn’t come across like you’re being funny, like your laughing with me, it comes across like you’re a psychopath who wants to get pleasure out of my misfortune.

Of course the response to this would be obvious “Well what am I supposed to do? Just talk to you like a robot. You should just get over it, leave it in the past. Your making it harder for everyone” or some other faux-victimised response.

And sometimes y’know they might be right, maybe I should’ve not made worse a bad situation, but fact remains I still bleed.

To you, this is just having fun and games, to you and your other friends its normal, but to me its a threat.

Now today you can call me what you want I don’t care, I’m out of that place now and I’m all the better for it,

But even though some 7 or 8 years since then I’ve been able to recover, I still carry a hangover of it all, and it affected my decisions later on in life sometimes to a dire extent,

Its had the effect of making me feel both distrustful of people, and also like Im a burden to be around other people,

I never feel I should hang around for too long, I never want to take chances in friendship for fear I’ll embarrass myself, I say one thing out of tempo and suddenly flashbacks and an enormous shadow of mordor conjures over me. And I think most of all its been very difficult for me to express my emotions because I used to do it a hell of a lot.

Those 5 years were the single handed worst years of my life. And if you were at any point responsible for adding to that devastation and humiliation, then a large part of me wants to lash your goddamn skull inside out.

Because as trivial and generic as my story may be, that part of my life has been stolen from me, and those 5 years I will never get back.

So what’s the point of all this?

“Ossidents are sometimes surprised that, instead of buying a dress for their wife, the colonized buy a transistor radio. They shouldn't be, the colonized are convinced their fate is in the balance. They live in a doomsday atmosphere and nothing must elude them”

I want you to place the relatively minor experiences I received as a child, and translate those into other groups, victims of domestic abuse, victims of colonialism, racism, sexism, queer phobia. Like I said I’m out of that place now, but others aren’t, for many people they still live day to day in this ever pressing struggle, trying to just tell people “Please, just don’t do this”.

It’s not okay. But maybe together you’ll help me out with solving these problems?

My conclusion to this is simple,

Free Speech is not just something you can fling around to score political points, it doesn’t materialise simply because we all decide it should. If we want free-speech we need to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

We need to be sure that the conditions in society don’t proliferate toxic ideas that might even lead to the downfall of said society.

This very Tattoo that 90 years ago would’ve been Anti-Communist as hell has become a Pan-Left symbol against Fascism. Its living proof that with the correct methods the conditions of words, symbols, ideas can be resolved.

When class struggle subsides, when our social divides have been solved, when the conflict doesn’t oppose the existence of certain folks, then maybe, we can well and truly say that we can have free speech, and we’ll stand at a comedy show and yell “Yes, lets talk about those BEEP BEEEEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP” and be met with cheering applause from all sides. But until then, Don’t be a dick.

[anissapierce]

Rewatched Fire island while sewing patches into the inside of the thighs of my work jeans and trying to distract myself from the fact that ill be alone in the house for a month with me and the dogs and i paid special attn to max

So here are some notes about the movie n max thoughts.

:readmore:

So they all met in Williamsburg, keegan and luke were the only ones who knew each other before. We Dont know wht jobs Max,Keegan and Luke have.

Max seems pretty ... Neo-liberal? Noah describes him as "sweet" and "supersmart" but "a little uptight"

The Atwood memoir he's reading is important to note but he's probably the most... Well academically book smart than the rest and i don't think from what we know about his character that he was reading it bc he agrees w her politics or worldview. He is actually the first person we see call into question the fact that noah is kowtowing to norms by maintaining the body he does . "why would you confirm to this community's toxic body standards?" noah as the narrator agrees with him and owns up to being a "class traitor".

"and this why straight people hate us" hints towards max himself buying into the structure of respectability politics but honestly im not reading too much into the line because its often something tht lgbt folks will throw around without actually meaning it.

"its actually a logistical nightmare if you want to fuck on this island,at least if you want to do it indoors,no privacy anywhere"

This plus generally everything else show that Max is a private person,giving a narrative reason why we nvr see him kiss,fawn or fuck anybody onscreen. That doesn't excuse that Max is a part of a long line of characters who are desexualized for being Fat,Black and/or Gay,in Max's case him being all three is pretty rare in film or tv but its not rare for characters that are like him to not get fleshed out narratively.

"have you heard of ticks? How bout their best friends? Lyme disease" is why he doesn't wanna fuck outdoors so we know hes prudent

"oh my god i think i saw a tick in my room"

He is technically the reason that Noah's phone ends up in the pool bc he does come running out of the house and bumping into him. But i do like the fact that Noah trying to convince everyone to look on the bright side means he doesnt seem angry or even resentful of Max?

"itll give you the chance to unplug from social media" Max trying to look on the bright side is pretty sweet considering the others responses are pretty blaming (Luke) or just kind of offering sad looks.

Says a lot that his response to "the island will always be there, " is: "except for the whole climate change thing". Like if something being said and it isnt true he is going to speak up abt it. ( I think there is an issue of the Fat friend in various media being the buttoned up bookish school marm type)

"im not sure this is what the gay liberation front imagined for us" another line of him judging others based on respectability politics

" I texted him but it went to green, maybe hes right although you're more likely to be murdered in your own home" Max being the one to text him when he was off his mind the night before on who-knows-what shows that he's probably the one whos usually rallying the troops n making sur everyone got home safe. (Esp considering the fact tht he usually doesnt partake in the drugs that the rest of the guys do)

Once again cant help dropping tidbits, trying to reassure the others and himself that howie probably wasnt murdered statistically speaking.

"Calm down Bernie Sanders i love the pantry small businesses are the lifeblood of this country " probably the most neo-lib weve heard him get but he doesn't object to luke n keegan stealing so like , he's prob more left leaning than his lines indicate

"we have to go direct sunlight...raw chicken..."

Good to know that someone is paying attention to food safety

"i didnt prepare for an extra person so ..." And hes annoyed about dex being invited over?

"not you two salivating over a basic white guy again "

Love Max as the voice of a pragmatic audience member

A random note but luke is shown in the bg of the getting ready scene gesturing to Noah to see how he should take the G..... And uhh he disregards noah gesturing differently. So that explains a lil that they planted the seed of Luke getting beyond fucked up

[patriotsnet]

Can Republicans Vote In Iowa Caucus

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/can-republicans-vote-in-iowa-caucus/

Can Republicans Vote In Iowa Caucus

Former Massachusetts Governor Takes Narrow Victory In First Republican Party Vote To Determine Who Will Challenge Barack Obama In November

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney hugs his wife Ann at his Iowa Caucus night rally in Des Moines.

Omar karmi

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA // Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney may have won the inaugural contest to determine who will be Barack Obama’s main challenger in this year’s US presidential elections.

Iowa vote

Obama campaign warns of ‘extremist’ Republicans. Read article

But his victory in the Iowa caucuses by the narrowest of margins – eight votes out of 122,255 ballots cast – shows that his Republican Party is anything but certain about what kind of candidate it wants to challenge Mr Obama in November.

Mr Romney may consider himself to have the advantage, and the millionaire businessman will certainly try to paint himself as the only candidate with broad enough appeal to mount a serious challenge to Mr Obama.

Nevertheless, his hair-breadth’s victory mirrors a party that is hardly united in passion behind him. His appeal appears to lie in the cold-blooded perception that the economy would be safe in his hands were he president.

Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, who took a surprising second place in Iowa, will continue to appeal to America’s religious conservative voters as the campaigns move to other states. His focus on family values helped him in Iowa where the evangelical Christian vote is a significant bloc.

“In many ways, Iowa is about who has to quit,” Mr Muller said.

okarmi@thenational.ae

The Iowa Caucuses Are Separated Out For Democrats And Republicans And They Each Do Things Pretty Differently

The process of “caucusing” on both sides takes roughly an hour or so in the evening. 

For the Republicans, the process is generally considered to be simpler. Those in the caucus meetings are called activists, and they gather in groups to make their campaign. This is all in preparation for the final pitch. It can be pretty informal at times with candidates’ names written on pieces of paper, or some opting for a more formal . The votes are counted by chosen representatives and then sent along to Iowa’s GOP headquarters where the final numbers are kept. 

For the Democrats, it’s not that simple. 

First of all, there are no secret ballots for the Democrats and those attending Iowa caucus gatherings will be asked to physically move to a section of the room devoted to their candidate. 

Some end up in uncommitted groups if they can’t make a decision. At this point, groups must have at least 15% of the people that came to that caucus location in their group to remain in the running. This is called being “viable.” 

If a group isn’t considered viable at that point, attendees can either move to a group that is or try to convince others to join them. Once all the low-performing candidates have been weeded out and each group accounts for at least 15% of the room, delegates are awarded.  The more support a candidate has during a caucus, the more delegates they are allocated. 

The Iowa Caucuses Are On: Republicans Say Early Political Trips Reinforce Plans For 2024 Caucus

USA TODAY

Bloomberg

Mike Pompeo rattled off a list of his accomplishments as Secretary of State under former President Donald Trump, touted his Midwest roots and took nearly an hour of questions from a roomful of eager Iowa Republicans. 

“We put America first, and we got it right,” he told the group of about 100 people who sipped coffee and finished plates of eggs and toast at the Machine Shed restaurant in Urbandale Friday.

It was part of Pompeo’s two-day swing through Iowa to help support the party in a state where Republicans nearly swept the board in the last election cycle and no major candidates have yet announced their intentions for the next one.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election, all eyes are on Iowa. Get updates of all things Iowa politics delivered to your inbox.

The subtext of his visit, however, is not 2022 but 2024.

Pompeo has hinted at a possible run for president, and his early forays into Iowa are yet another data point signaling the Republican presidential shadow primary has already begun.

“I see a lot of cameras in the back. I think there’s going to be some big announcement,” Pompeo joked, alluding to as much. “We’re in Iowa and all.”

Two other potential contenders — GOP Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina — have also announced trips to Iowa next month. Others, like former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, visited the state to help Republicans campaign late last year. 

Iowa Democrats Want To Be Fair To Candidates But Also Have A Clear Winner The Result Is A Mess

The funny or perhaps maddening aspect to all this is that the Iowa caucus results barely matter to the true way Democrats choose their nominee: national convention delegates.

This year, Iowa has 41 of those pledged delegates — about 1 percent of the national total. And since they’re allotted proportionally based on the above results, it’s tough for any candidate to rack up a big lead there.

But the caucuses’ big impact on the race has little to do with delegates anyway. It’s all about the perceptions of the political world. The media, party insiders, donors, activists, the candidates themselves, and even voters elsewhere look at what can be relatively small differences in Iowa results — and come to conclusions about which candidates have “won” or “lost.”

You’ll notice that in our hypothetical precinct results, though, we got three different results for who “won”:

For the pre-realignment total, Sanders had the most votes.

For the final vote total, Biden had the most.

For state delegate equivalents, Sanders and Biden were tied.

Of course, the result didn’t change that much; Biden and Sanders were the top two candidates and are close to each other in all three metrics. But the state delegate equivalent formula means that discrepancies from the vote total may — will — be introduced in each those 1,600-plus precincts. If one candidate ends up being systematically disadvantaged by these discrepancies, a different metric could mean a different “winner.”

Dc Dispatch: Biden Signs Rural Mental Health Bill Republicans Vote Against Jan 6 Commission

The U.S. Capitol.

Ahead of the July 4th holiday, members of Iowa’s congressional delegation led the passage of a veteran’s mental health bill, visited Iowa in a glimpse of what the 2024 caucus cycle might look like and voted on whether to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Here’s what you missed in D.C. this week:

Biden signs rural mental health bill named for Iowa veteran

President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a bill to establish new mental health programs for rural veterans. Rep. Cindy Axne, a Democrat, was the bill’s sponsor. Reps. Ashley Hinson, Randy Feenstra and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, all Republicans, joined her as co-sponsors on the legislation.

The bill is named for Sergeant Brandon Ketchum, an Iowa native and Army veteran who died by suicide in 2016. Ketchum was turned away by the Iowa City Veterans Administration Medical Center when he sought in-patient care.

“Brandon asked for help but was turned away because of a lack of resources,” Axne said in a May speech on the House floor. “We must make sure — in his memory and for the sake of others still serving — that when our soldiers return home, they can get the treatment they need.”

House votes to create select committee on Jan. 6 insurrection

Iowa’s senators attend GOP event in Sioux Center

Grassley also spoke in favor of the 60-vote filibuster rule in the Senate. He argued that the filibuster is the only way to ensure bipartisanship in Washington.

House passes INVEST in America Act

Iowa Caucuses Explained: What They Are Why They Don’t Really Matter And Why We Care Anyway

After months of media hype and TV debates and the ups-and-downs of polling, the long political warmup is over. The race for the presidency will finally get under way Feb. 1 when real voters make real choices in Iowa, the first state on the complicated U.S. election calendar. The Iowa caucuses are quirky, different for each party, and attract international attention. Adrian Morrow and Paul Koring explain what’s going on

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign event in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

JIM YOUNG/REUTERS

The Iowa Caucuses Are More About Gaining Momentum In The Race Than Predicting A Nominee

Did you know that every president since Jimmy Carter has been in the top three at the Iowa caucuses? Yes, it’s true. Well, save for when Tom Harkin of Iowa ran back in 1992. But, this is all to guide you to my point, that the Iowa caucuses are more of a mechanism to sort of speed the race up. It’s a way to gain momentum, rather than a solid predictor of who is going to be the nominee for each party, and go on to win the presidency. 

Gop Anger At Barack Obama Washington Hillary Clinton Dc Republicans The Establishment

Iowa’s record-setting Democratic turnout in 2008 has been attributed in part to an unpopular president and a party’s frustration at being locked out of the White House for eight years.

Republican George W. Bush’s job approval was just 34 percent at the end of his term. A GOP groundswell is possible now that the tables are turned, and a Democrat with 44 percent approval occupies the White House.

Except for George H. W. Bush, no party has kept the White House three terms in a row since World War I, Goldford noted. Republicans believe that the “two-terms-and-you’re-out dynamic” points to a GOP victory in the general election, he said.

WHERE IN IOWA?:  Track presidential campaign visits across the state

Curl: President Trump First Ever To Win Republican And Democratic Caucuses In Iowa

A perfect storm had rolled in just in time for the state’s first-in-the-nation vote on the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. A newly, apparently untested app meant to ease communication among precinct chiefs during the caucuses failed completely, with the app designers blaming “coding issues.” A failsafe backstop — having precinct chiefs simply phone in the results to the state party headquarters — also failed, with workers being too busy to answer the calls.

The whole mess was a terrible start for Democrats vying to replace President Trump in the White House. Memes immediately exploded across the internet, with one being repeated often: The Democrats want to run the country, but they can’t even hold a caucus in the cornfields.

For the record, the Republicans also held their caucuses in Iowa on Monday. While they garnered little media coverage, Trump blew out his primary rivals, winning more than 97% of the vote over former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld and former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh, who each came in with about 1% each.

In many ways, Trump won both caucuses. And he knew it. He took to Twitter early to needle Democrats for their pathetic efforts in Iowa.

“The Democrat Party in Iowa really messed up, but the Republican Party did not. I had the largest re-election vote in the history of that great state, by far, beating President Obama’s previous record by a lot. Also, 97% Plus of the vote! Thank you Iowa!” Trump wrote first thing in the morning.

Countdown To Iowa: A Caucus Guide For What To Know About America’s First Vote

Caucuses are only the first stage in key voting states’ selection process and provide a litmus test for which party candidates could fare well in the primaries

Explainer: how the confusing Iowa caucuses actually work

Last modified on Wed 26 Feb 2020 18.01 GMT

The Iowa caucuses are a unique political institution that play a crucial role in the American primary process. However, they aren’t particularly intuitive to understand or follow.

What time do the caucuses start?

The caucuses start at 7pm local time on Monday, but campaigns encourage their supporters to show up half an hour early.

How do the caucuses unfold?

Very different rules govern the Democratic and Republican caucuses:

Republicans have a relatively straightforward process, in which they cast secret ballots in their precinct caucuses – church halls, school buildings.

Read more

Can unregistered voters take part?

Any Iowan who will be over the age of 18 at the time of the presidential election can participate. Attendees can register on the night at the caucuses and can switch their party affiliation there as well. This means a Democrat can go to the Republican caucuses and vice versa. Four years ago, 121,503 people showed up to the 2012 Republican caucuses. Democrats have traditionally had higher turnout and, in their last competitive caucus in 2008, 239,872 people attended.

What happens then?

A simple guide to the Hawkeye state caucuses.

How are delegates decided?

Where will the candidates be on the night?

Once The Voting Is Over Its Time To Translate Those Results Into Delegates

Delegates, after all, are the point of presidential primaries and caucuses. It’s delegates, not the sheer number of votes, that political parties count to determine who will be their nominee.

After the alignments, the viable candidates will be allocated what’s called “State Delegate Equivalents,” according to their performance at that site.

These delegates, through a process involving Democratic Party math and the state convention, will eventually correlate to the number of national delegates a candidate gets at the national conventions.

The Iowa Democratic Party doesn’t declare a winner, but historically the person with the most SDEs has been considered the winner. However, with the first- and second-round results being reported out this year, it’s conceivable candidates could have more opportunities to spin the results in their favor.

Registered Republican voters show up at their caucus site, hear some speeches and vote for their preferred candidate. The votes are counted and the delegates are elected to the county convention based on the proportion of support a candidate receives.

Despite several state Republican parties canceling their 2020 primaries because an incumbent is running for reelection, Iowa Republicans will hold their caucus on Feb. 3.

The Difference Between A Republican And Democratic 2020 Caucus Experience

IOWA — Precinct locations throughout Siouxland are geared up to open their doors for caucus-goers Monday night.

The process of caucusing can be confusing since it differs so much from a primary vote.

There are many Democratic candidates to choose from, 11 to be exact, and Democratic caucuses different from Republican.

Democrats have an open vote.

For comparison: during the primaries, you simply vote but in the caucus, you have a discussion and then vote.

You physically vote with your body, and you move to certain parts of the room to show which candidate you support.

So, after each campaign makes its pitch, Democrats split up into “preference groups”, which support a specific candidate. But, unless a “preference group” is made up of at least 15% of the people at that caucus, the group isn’t viable.

Those supporters can choose to re-align and support another candidate that’s still “viable” and what some may not know is that undecided could be one of those viable groups

“If a group of undecided people align together and they are above 15%, then yeah, they have to stay with that group of undecided,” said Theresa Weaber-Basye, Co-Chair for Precinct 10. “And they could make their decision further down the road as to where their vote will go.”

While the Democrats have a large ballot of candidates to choose from, it’s different for the Republicans.

Votes are then counted and winner takes all.

To learn more about how a caucus works,

Iowa Is Not The Only State That Conducts Caucuses Instead Of Primaries

Caucuses are different from primaries for a number of reasons. You do not simply show up, check a box, and leave with an “I voted” sticker.

The process can take hours, as voters gather at a venue to hear out supporters of various candidates, debate issues, and ultimately come to a conclusion about which person will make the best presidential nominee. Voters select delegates who will represent them at the party’s annual convention in the summer.

When voters arrive at the venue, which can be anywhere from a high school gymnasium to a restaurant, supporters of certain candidates break off into groups, including groups for undecided voters. Then voters, who are typically activists and very politically engaged, will plead their case to everyone about why their preferred candidate is the best choice.

With a large field of candidates and a diverse spectrum of ideology in the Democratic race, this could take all night. On Monday night’s Iowa caucuses, the process stretched into the next day due to the errors in reporting the results. By Tuesday afternoon, Iowa’s results still hadn’t been released.

Most caucuses have a threshold to earn delegates, meaning that a candidate might need 15% or more of the votes to be awarded delegates. For instance, Ted Cruz earned eight delegates in the 2017 Iowa caucuses, while Donald Trump and Marco Rubio each earned seven, respectively.

The states with caucuses are:

Iowa 

The US territories conducting caucuses are:

What Are The Iowa Caucuses And How Do They Work All You Need To Know

The midwestern state is the first to vote in the presidential primary race. So what are caucuses, and how do they work? Here’s your guide to the night

The Iowa caucuses take place on Monday 3 February, kicking off the long process of nominating a Democratic presidential candidate who will eventually take on Donald Trump in November’s US election.

The primary race is made up of a series of contests called primaries and caucuses that take place in all 50 states plus Washington DC and outlying territories, by which the parties select their presidential nominee from the candidates who are running.

The goal in these contests is for candidates is to amass support from voters that translates into a majority of delegates, whose job it is to nominate a presidential candidate at the party conventions in July and August.

When it comes to choosing a presidential candidate, Iowa traditionally goes first. Though Iowa has relatively few delegates, it is highly influential because it gives Americans their first chance to see what support the candidates have, and a win could provide a vital boost in momentum, as it did for Barack Obama in 2008.

Democratic and Republican caucuses will take place on Monday evening, but because Trump does not face any serious competition from his challengers for the nomination, all eyes will be on the Democratic contenders this year.

County District State Convention And National Convention Delegates

Total pledged delegates 41

A total of 11,402 county convention delegates are elected according to the procedure described above across 1,678 precinct caucuses and 87 satellite caucuses. They will then go to their local county convention on March 21, to choose 2,107 district and state delegates who are pledged to support presidential candidates according to the proportional state delegate equivalents result of the caucuses. These elected districts and state delegates will subsequently go to the district conventions on April 25 and state convention on June 13 . In total, 41 pledged national convention delegates are elected for the 2020 Democratic National Convention with their pledged support being determined proportionally to the presidential candidate’s total number of SDEs won statewide and in each of the state’s four congressional districts; but only for those presidential candidates who manage to qualify by winning at least a 15% share of the SDEs statewide or in the specific district. Meaning that all presidential candidates winning less than a 15% share of SDEs statewide and in CD1, CD2, CD3, CD4, will win 0 pledged national convention delegates.

Why Does Such A Small Homogeneous State Get Such An Oversized Role

Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status is the end result of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which was marred by conflict in the convention hall, and racial and Vietnam War protests and violence in the streets. Party leaders decided to turn away from a top-down process of selecting nominees and instead move toward a voter-driven process that was viewed as more democratic. Iowa had long held caucuses, but the state’s months-long delegate selection process resulted in it being selected to go first. Republicans soon followed suit.

The caucuses have long drawn criticism. They take place at a set time in the evening, so they preclude the participation of some Iowans, such as night shift workers. The new Democratic satellite caucuses are designed to address this.

The number of participants is dismally low. In 2016 — a contest when both the Democratic and Republican nominations were up for grabs — fewer than 358,000 Iowans caucused, less than 16% of those eligible to vote.

To put that number in perspective, more than 8.5 million Californians voted in the two parties’ 2016 presidential primaries, or 47.7% of the state’s registered voters. Iowa caucus supporters argue that it is critical for candidates to be able to make their case to voters in person, and in states that don’t require massive media buys.

Democrats increasingly worried about the prospect of Bernie Sanders winning their nomination are pushing harder to block him, galvanizing his backers in the process.

Presidential Caucuses Are Complicated Why Do Some States Use Them

Politics

As the 2020 presidential nomination season kicks off in February, it won’t start with a primary — where voters go to their polling place and cast a secret ballot — but with caucuses. While the vast majority of states hold primary elections, a few use these more complicated events to show their preferences for candidates.

In recent years, some states have ditched caucuses for primaries, but Iowa, Nevada and Wyoming are holdouts. So why choose a caucus?

Party caucuses have been used in various forms in the United States since the 1800s to address a range of political topics. In Iowa’s case, caucuses not only allow activists and voters to make a case for their preferred candidate, but also to talk about issues that could be incorporated into the state party platform, said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor with Drake University in Iowa.

They also attract enthusiastic party members. Caucusing requires passion and a strong connection to a particular candidate, in contrast to the simple and private act of marking a ballot in a primary. “ make candidates and potential candidates talk to voters as real, live, individual human beings,” Goldford said. Candidates meet with voters in a more personal way, he added, rather than using them as “campaign props.” Especially in early caucus states, a relatively small group of people wields a lot of power to influence average voters around the country.

Are The Iowa Caucuses Predictive Of Who Will Win The White House

Maybe. But probably not. Among Democrats, the winner of the caucuses has won the nomination in seven out of the 10 contested races since 1972. But only two candidates — Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama — have gone on to win the White House. Among Republicans, the caucus winner has won the nomination in three of eight contested contests, but only won the White House once: George W. Bush in 2000.

The caucuses definitely have had their moments, allowing candidates to prove theirviability. Among the top examples is Obama in 2008. His ability to win the caucuses — beating John Edwards and Hillary Clinton in an overwhelmingly white state — helped dispel doubts that the United States could elect a black president.

Record Turnout Means Big Numbers For Everyone Not Just Trump

More than 180,000 Republicans caucused Monday night, shattering the 2012 record of 121,503 people. According to entrance polling from The New York Times, 45% of those Republican caucusgoers were participating in the process for the first time.

Many predicted record turnout primarily would benefit Trump, suggesting Trump would inspire people who had not previously been engaged in the political process.

And that held true — to a degree.

Thirty percent of those first-time caucusgoers were supporting Trump. But Rubio and Cruz also benefited, earning 22% and 23% of those voters respectively, effectively stopping Trump from running away with it.

“Even though the Trump people were able to bring some new voters to the polls, they just couldn’t overcome a groundswell of Republicans who now have a good reason to go out and vote,” said Bryan English, Cruz’s state director, noting Cruz’s attractiveness to the GOP base.

[claremal-one]

What Are The X-Factors That Could Change The Results In Iowa?

Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Our last politics chat before the 2020 Democratic primary kicks off!! And we’re talking Election X factors! Or what things we should be looking at, besides the polls (and our forecast), that could affect who wins on Monday?

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): To me, in a race that is so close, the number of precincts in which a candidate is either ahead or falling short of the viability threshold – 15 percent at most caucus sites — seems like it could be really important for what happens on Monday. Because say, someone like Bernie Sanders, if his support is concentrated in more urban areas or college towns, does that mean someone like Joe Biden could get more delegate support because he has backing across more rural areas? I don’t know.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Yeah, and related to that point: The polls only measure voters’ initial preferences. But caucusgoers are allowed to realign if their candidate doesn’t meet the viability threshold, and then, of course, the delegates awarded are based on that post-realignment total.

In other words, the polls can’t really tell us exactly how votes will translate into delegates. So it will matter whose support is distributed the most efficiently.

sarahf: (Quick side note: For the first time, raw vote tallies from the first and second alignments will be released publicly, as well as the state delegate equivalents that a candidate earns. In the past, the party only reported the delegate tallies.)

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): Well, and an interesting question along those lines, Geoffrey, is how much will turnout shape the final narrative? In the past, when raw vote totals weren’t released, candidates like Sanders didn’t have as much of an incentive to run up their numbers in places like college towns where they have lots of densely concentrated support. This year, that will be different, and it could make for some confusion when the delegate counts and the raw votes are in.

I’m also curious to see what kind of horse-trading will go on in the caucuses themselves!

geoffrey.skelley: Definitely true, Amelia. I’m looking forward to the possibility of a scenario where Sanders wins the post-realignment raw vote total, but Biden wins the delegate count.

ameliatd: That’s one of the things that makes caucuses so fascinating and unpredictable — people are literally trying to convince each other to join their side as it’s happening.

sarahf: And you’ll be there to see it in action, Amelia! That ought to be wild.

ameliatd: Yes! I will be on the ground at a precinct in Iowa City, which I think will be one of the hubs for a potential Warren/Sanders showdown. My Monday night is going to be full of drama.

sarahf: But play out that scenario you just mentioned, a little bit more, Geoff. How could it work that Sanders wins more votes, but Biden wins more delegates (and therefore Iowa)?

geoffrey.skelley: Basically, every precinct is worth a certain number of state delegate equivalents, which is used to determine delegate allocation for national delegates. So if you get particularly high turnout at a precinct near, say, the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Johnson County, that precinct’s value for delegate purposes is already set based on a calculation determined by the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial Democratic vote share in that precinct. So if Sanders gets like 500 of 600 voters there, it might have the same delegate value as Biden dominating in a different precinct with 150 voters if they are worth the same number of state delegate equivalents. In the 2016 caucuses, for instance, Hillary Clinton swept all 1.6 SDEs in a Waterloo, Iowa, precinct that had 141 people show up, while Sanders got 1.6 of 1.8 SDEs in an Iowa City precinct that had 646 participants. We can’t know what the “popular vote” was in those precincts in 2016 — that’s available for the first time this year — but the delegate value for the two candidates was pretty much the same, even though one precinct had far higher turnout.

nrakich: I’m curious — which of those measures will you guys be paying the most attention to?

sarahf: I mean … I find the whole “both sides could claim victory on caucus night” a bit disingenuous, or at the very least, there should be a heavy burden on the media to report it responsibly. Because you can’t claim victory from the pre-alignment vote total!! That’s not how caucuses work. (Now you can have quibbles with why Iowa caucuses in the first place sure, but this whole sowing confusion narrative bothers me. Let’s not sow confusion!)

nrakich: Why not, Sarah?

That’s the popular vote!

That’s how almost every other state does it, i.e., primary states.

It is the most small-d democratic.

sarahf: That’s true, but Iowa isn’t a primary state! And maybe caucuses should be banned for the reasons you outline (it is really time consuming to caucus), but it’s not like how the winner in Iowa is determined has changed. It’s still based on the number of state delegate equivalents a candidate wins, we’ll just get to see more inside the process, which as a journalist, I’m 100 percent in favor of. More data always, please.

But that means as journalists we have a responsibility to talk about the three different vote totals in the context of how they work within a caucus, e.g. don’t read too much into the pre-alignment vote, because this will change (not every candidate will have enough support to make it to the next round of voting). That vote is the most small-d democratic, as you say, but it’s also not how caucuses work, so we shouldn’t feed into that narrative! Although, I’m sure some candidates will. But whatever. Report the process; don’t sow confusion.

nrakich: My short argument for why the initial preference numbers are the most important is that they’re the best representation of how voters feel — kind of like a massive poll. The state delegate equivalents might matter more for delegate selection, but Iowa is a small state — the number of delegates a candidate gets there is less important than the momentum/vote of confidence he/she receives.

geoffrey.skelley: Right, Nathaniel — in fact, AAPOR (the American Association for Public Opinion Research) recommends that journalists compare poll results from this cycle to those pre-realignment numbers when considering the accuracy of polls.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Here’s a pulled-out question, not related to thresholds: Is there anything that could happen in this last weekend to sway things one way or the other for voters still on the bubble? Is it good for the Democrats that all these senators aren’t going to be in the Senate for a drawn-out impeachment trial after all?

ameliatd: I have to imagine, Clare, that the senators are pretty excited about the prospect of getting back to Iowa. They’ve had surrogates campaigning on their behalf, but having the actual candidate there seems like a much better recipe for firing up their supporters — and that enthusiasm can really matter in the caucuses.

clare.malone: Another x-factor to mention: Could some big-name establishment Democrat speak out against Sanders? That sort of stuff has been floating around the past couple of weeks in news stories. It’s the kind of thing you could see happening on a Sunday show or a cable interview over the weekend.

sarahf: I mean, that’s a great question. In theory, Iowa always has at least a few polling surprises, but it’s also kind of hard for me to see Buttigieg, Warren or Amy Klobuchar making a big comeback at this point.

I know, never say never. But it’s hard for me to see this path — don’t @ me!!

Someone from the Democratic establishment speaking out against Sanders, on the other hand … that could be

.

Except Democrats would be smart to not have the spokesperson be Hillary Clinton. I feel like that Hollywood Reporter story about that new documentary where she dished on Sanders, and what it was like working with him in Congress, just fired up his base more than it actually hurt him.

nrakich: I don’t know if any figure in the party is big enough to matter, unless their last name is Obama.

And I don’t think either of the Obamas is going to weigh in at this point.

Mayyyybe if Sanders wins the first few states and he becomes the favorite to win the nomination …

geoffrey.skelley: Which could definitely happen — if he wins Iowa, he’ll be favored in New Hampshire and probably Nevada, too.

ameliatd: It would make sense to me if it were that the big establishment figures were biding their time to see how Sanders does in Iowa, and holding their fire until then.

clare.malone: I think the polling surprise is a great point, Sarah.

And considering the big Des Moines Register poll didn’t drop this weekend, we’re kind of in the dark as to where things could be headed. Hazard any guesses on potential surprises?

sarahf: I mean, we expect a few polls later today, but I was surprised in this last week that Buttigieg and Warren didn’t see more of an uptick. If anything, Warren actually ticked down more in our forecast this week despite the endorsement from the Des Moines Register, which should have helped her at least somewhat in the polls.

If anything, Klobuchar has started to do better. Granted she only has a 3 percent chance of winning the most votes in Iowa, but that’s been an interesting development to me anyways.

I mean … if anyone other than Sanders and Biden are in the top two at the end of the night on Monday, that’s an x-factor, right?

ameliatd: It’s all because of Klobuchar’s hot dish, Sarah. Never doubt the power of tater tots!

sarahf: Lol, that article.

nrakich: Klobuchar doing well would be an x-factor because I’m not sure there is room for FIVE front-runners. If Klobuchar surges, in my mind, someone like Buttigieg would have to crater.

As a reminder, we have never seen more than three candidates get more than 15 percent (the threshold required to get delegates) in any state before.

geoffrey.skelley: Definitely agree that it would be surprising if Biden or Sanders were not in the top two, but that’s certainly a possibility. With voters’ second-choice picks being really important in Iowa, I don’t want to totally discount anyone in the top four from winning, or anyone in the top five — so Klobuchar, too — from ending up in second or third.

And right now, we have three polling above 15 percent in Iowa and Warren just under that at 14 percent. Plus, Klobuchar is now right at 10 percent in our polling average.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): In some ways, I wonder if the buzz about Sanders’s potential to win Iowa and that victory catapulting him to the nomination happened a week or so too early for him. And it allowed his opponents within the party to hit him fairly hard, with an argument (electability) that Democratic voters really care about.

clare.malone: Ooooh, I like this take.

Interesting fodder!

And the idea that a person can have a “week too early” surge seems like a very Iowa phenom.

nrakich: It’s amazing how the timing of an election can matter. Random choices like whether the Iowa caucuses were this week or last week can make a big difference in who potentially gets elected leader of the free world.

ameliatd: Well, and a scenario like that could be especially helpful for Biden is that his supporters are generally older and perhaps more likely to caucus, too — although some of those folks aren’t necessarily regular caucusgoers.

perry: Buttigieg is even trying to get former Republicans to go to the caucuses. Those people are not going to support Sanders or Warren as a second choice.

geoffrey.skelley: Actually, age is one of the big questions about the caucus electorate — some polls have people under 50 making up as much as 47 percent of the electorate, which would be good news for Sanders, while others have it much lower than that. This has ramifications for each candidate’s poll numbers, but especially Sanders and Biden because their support at the age poles (oldest and youngest) are opposite of one another.

sarahf: So OK, say Sanders doesn’t win — because as Perry says, he peaked too early — does that put him a few points behind Biden … and Warren? Is there still room for her to be thought of as a moderate alternative to Sanders?

Perry: If the turnout is screwed young, I think Bernie will win. He really needs the electorate to be younger.

geoffrey.skelley: If Warren remains viable in most places, that actually could be quite bad for Sanders. And that’s because she’s the one whose backers are most likely to pick Sanders as their second choice. As the most recent Iowa State/Civiqs poll showed, 33 percent of Warren backers picked Sanders as their second choice, whereas no more than 11 percent of the other leading candidates’ backers chose Sanders as their top second choice.

nrakich: I mean, not to be that guy, Sarah, but in 80 percent of simulations in our model, Sanders could do anything from surge to 43 percent of the vote to drop to 11 percent in Iowa. And yeah, if he falls that far, he could finish below several other candidates (for the record, Warren’s range of outcomes in the 80-percent confidence interval is 3 percent to 31 percent).

ameliatd: I’m also really curious as to what will happen in places like Iowa City, which Bernie won handily in 2016. Obviously, a lot of 2016 Sanders’s voters are already supporting other candidates. But is it possible that all of the sudden focus on Bernie actually energizes his young lefty supporters and juices turnout even more?

Or, to answer your question, Sarah, maybe the attacks on Bernie prompt some progressive folks — the people who actually live and work in college towns, not the students — to give Warren a second look.

geoffrey.skelley: Thing is, because each precinct has a pre-assigned value based on the 2016-2018 Democratic vote, how much you can gain from juiced turnout near college campuses could be limited if it’s in select precincts.

nrakich: Right, which is why the actual preferences of Iowa voters is all that matters

sarahf: Lol, what about the possibility for technical glitches and the fact that Iowa is kind of sort of going to be making it easier to caucus this time around?

Do you think that’s an x-factor at all?

ameliatd: I’m a little skeptical of whether the satellite caucuses are actually going to make things easier. There are not that many of them, and they’re mostly in the middle of the day or the evening.

Of course, there will be a caucus in Tblisi, Georgia, which could really be what gives one of the candidates their edge.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, you still have to gather for a couple hours in the evening. Not like having ~12 hours to show up for 20 minutes and cast a ballot.

ameliatd: Or drop your ballot in the mail!

geoffrey.skelley: So I’m not expecting turnout to be crazy high.

nrakich: I think the overarching thing to remember here is that caucuses are always going to be harder to vote in than primaries. This article, about how difficult it can be for people with physical disabilities to caucus, really stuck with me.

#BanTheCaucus

sarahf: OK, rapid fire, final X-factors going into Monday. What do you think is super important to keep an eye on? I still think there’s got to be some kind of polling surprise that we just don’t know about yet, or wasn’t caught because there were a lot less polls this time around. …

nrakich: I think it will be whether the media makes a big deal out of “so-and-so winning Iowa,” even if he or she wins by just a fraction of a percentage point. To me, that is better thought of as a tie, but the way cable news tends to frame things as winners and losers could have a real impact on the narrative of which campaign is surging and which is struggling going into New Hampshire.

For instance, if Warren and Biden effectively tie, I think it will be spun as a win for Warren but a loss for Biden, and I don’t think it should be.

geoffrey.skelley: Relatedly, I’m interested in the possibility of having super ambiguous results because we will have three different outcomes to look at — first preference, final preference and state delegate equivalents, the last of which actually determines delegate counts.

ameliatd: I’m going to be a broken record but — turnout! Who shows up, and where? Whose supporters are most jazzed up and enthusiastic? That’s something that’s harder to predict/see until the caucuses are actually happening.

perry: What I’m looking for, before Monday night, are any clear urgings from really prominent Democrats to not back Sanders. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave clearly anti-Sanders remarks on Friday, but they didn’t get much attention and she didn’t use his name.) Also, I’m watching for some of the lower-tier candidates to point their supporters to all get behind a second-choice person. (This would not be done by the candidate or their top staffers directly, but more under the radar.) So would most Yang/Gabbard supporters get behind Sanders? Klobuchar backers to Biden? The most interesting questions to me are whether Warren supporters, in places where she is not viable, mostly go to Sanders and in places where Buttigieg is not viable, if his supporters mostly go to Biden.

from Clare Malone – FiveThirtyEight https://ift.tt/2UfQbSp

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[blockheadbrands]

Commander-in-Cannabis: How Will Trump and Biden Approach Marijuana Policy?

Raj Chander of High Times Reports:

The dust has finally settled in the 2020 Democratic primary. A contest that once had over 20 candidates—including two different mayors of New York City—effectively ended April 8, when Bernie Sanders announced he was suspending his campaign. Five days later, Sanders endorsed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for November’s election.

For better or worse, the presidential race is down to Trump vs. Biden. What does this mean for the future of cannabis, and how will that affect the election? Where does the coronavirus fit into the picture?

We spoke to industry experts and influencers to get their predictions on cannabis’ role in what may be the most important election in a generation.    

Between a Demagogue and a Hard Place  

First, to state the obvious: This isn’t a great outcome for marijuana advocates. Of the major candidates in the Democratic race, Biden was the only besides Michael Bloomberg not to support the removal of cannabis from the DEA’s list of controlled substances. As recently as November 2019, Biden questioned whether marijuana was a gateway drug—though he has since denied believing that myth.

As for Trump, his wishy-washy views on cannabis have been well-documented over the years of his campaign and presidency. If it’s possible to glean a coherent message from The Donald’s past statements, we’d guess he’s okay with medical but unsure about federal legalization. But in a bad sign for the industry, the latest addition to the rotating band of charlatans and bucket-climbing crabs he calls advisors is press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who once penned an op-ed claiming America’s youth was being “martyred” by legalization in Colorado. 

Will Covid-19 be a Boon for the Industry?

If the most unpredictable president in history wasn’t enough of a wildcard for the future of cannabis, the novel coronavirus has kicked the uncertainty up a notch. Thousands of Americans have died and over 22 million have filed for unemployment so far. Experts believe the worst of the economic fallout is yet to come. With a few weeks of press conferences and state lockdowns, the fate of legal cannabis went from one of the biggest question marks of this year to one of many big question marks. 

Meanwhile, medical and recreational cannabis businesses in every state except Massachusetts have been deemed essential and/or allowed to operate. Some are now limited to delivery or curbside service and must tightly control in-store foot traffic, but unlike millions of restaurants, bars and coffee shops, most are still open.

Morgan Fox, Media Relations Director for the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA), said via email that even before the coronavirus, marijuana was getting more interest than ever before in this election cycle.

“We are also seeing that the public profile for cannabis is growing as it helps maintain consistent healthcare access during the present public health crisis,” said Fox in an email to High Times.

“I would expect cannabis policy to get a lot more attention before the election, as well as to see some evolution in the candidates’ positions,” he continued.

Low-Hanging Nugs

You don’t need to be an industry insider to realize that legalization is popular. Pew reported this past November that 67% of Americans support legalizing marijuana, a new record. In a severely wounded economy where cannabis is already a fast-selling essential item, could the creation of a national market act as a salve to stop the bleeding? CEOs of weed conglomerates think so, as do policy experts in the industry.  

“People push winning policies, not candidates,” said Maritza Perez, director of the Drug Policy Alliance’s Office of National Affairs, when asked about the remaining two presidential candidates’ lukewarm positions on cannabis.

“People across demographic groups and ideological beliefs support marijuana legalization, meaning that it’s only a matter of time before legal marijuana becomes the law of the land, despite who is in the White House,” she added.

Fox agreed: “Given the overwhelming support nationally for making cannabis legal for adults, anyone who embraces that position will see an increase in support.” 

In an era of hyperpartisanship where a national consensus is nearly impossible, supporting legalization seems like an easy popularity hack for candidates who could both use the help.

But there’s a disconnect between that optimism and the public stances of the two men running for president, especially Biden—whose foundational role in creating some of the most devastating drug laws in American history has been well-documented in the media. 

Hey Joe, Where You Going With That…Cannabis Policy? 

If legalization is a safe bet for persuading a national electorate, it’s a slam dunk on the left. Given the current Grand Canyon-esque gulf between the moderate and super-liberal factions of the Democratic party, logic might lead us to project that any candidate looking to bridge the gap could use cannabis as a unifying issue.

So far, signs don’t point to Biden adopting that approach. Though Sen. Sanders recently announced the formation of a working group with the former VP on a number of important policy issues, marijuana legalization was not included. Even if Biden does come around on cannabis, not everyone is in a rush to trust someone who is commonly referred to as the “architect” of America’s failed drug war.

“I’d say look at his past to know where he’s going,” said Kia Jackson, founder of the Black Experience in Cannabis, the first Congressional event to highlight the struggles of people of color in hemp and cannabis. “If he was a major proponent for the War on Drugs for thirty years, what will make him so different now? Even his language [now] is not very inclusive,” she said.

“I think we can expect a lot of pressure on Biden to improve his policy stance on cannabis,” predicted Fox when prompted about the presumptive Democratic nominee, “particularly given the increasing recognition of cannabis.”

Unprecedented times mean an unprecedented election. Could it lead to another new precedent—legal cannabis? Much has changed recently, but one thing remains the same: the answer to that question is largely controlled by white men in their 70s.

TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE ON HIGH TIMES, CLICK HERE. 

https://hightimes.com/news/politics/commander-cannabis-how-will-trump-biden-approach-marijuana-policy/

[businessliveme]

Must read: 10 Books on Thinking About Thinking

(Bloomberg Opinion) –Thanksgiving is behind us, Christmas is around the corner and the rest of the long, dark winter lies ahead — and that means peak reading season is upon us.

So here are a few books I will read, or at least start. What attracted me to these books is how they approach thinking about thinking: Each tries to tease out why our general understanding on a subject is so often wrong; they explore better cognitive frameworks that could help us comprehend issues more clearly; they consider unique perspectives in securities trading, national security, genetics and artificial intelligence. On to the reading:

No. 1. “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst” by Robert M. Sapolsky.

The professor of biology and neurological sciences at Stanford University (and a MacArthur Fellowship winner in 1987) takes a deep examination into the most basic question of human behavior: Why do we do the things we do?

Read: Why Vinyl, Books and Magazines Will Never Go Away

He probes the things that influence and determine behavior: neurology, endocrinology, structural development of the nervous system, culture, ecology and the millions of years of evolution. Why we do what we do turns out to be even more complicated than you might have imagined.

No. 2. “The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator” by Timothy C. Winegard.

Forget sharks, terrorists or guns: Mosquitoes have killed more people than all other factors in history combined. Of the 108 billion humans who have ever lived, almost half — 52 billion — have died from mosquito-borne illnesses. For 190 million years, the mosquito has been waging a war against the rest of the planet, and for all of that history we have been fighting a mostly losing battle.

This has long been one of my very favorite topics; I am thrilled there is finally a book dedicated to it.

No. 3. “The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution” by Gregory Zuckerman.

This is my nominee for finance book of the year: I read it, reviewed it and interviewed the author for Masters in Business. All that’s left is to reread it slowly and deliberately, with no purpose other to enjoy the tale of how one brilliant man saw the markets in a different way from everyone else.

Read: How Dogs and People Ended Up Ruling the World

No. 4. “Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity” by Jamie Metzl.

What will happen to children, lifespans, the plant and the animal world when humans begin to retool the world’s genetic code? Metzl tackles the risks and potential rewards to tinkering with the determinants of life as if they’re just another piece of software.

No. 5. “Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do” by Jennifer L. Eberhardt.

Investors know that unconscious bias is at work all the time, undermining our goals. What we may not realize is how bias infects our visual perception, attention, memory and actions. The author suggests solutions to managing our biases, but I remain skeptical we can get past our own error-prone nature.

No. 6. “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” by David Epstein.

Among top performers, specialization is the exception, not the rule. That’s the startling conclusion of Epstein, a journalist with Sports Illustrated and ProPublica. Considering some of the world’s most successful athletes, artists, inventors, scientists and business people, he found that it was the generalists who excelled, not the specialists.

No. 7. “The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War” by Ben Macintyre.

What colleagues, institutions and competitors do you trust? How does counterintelligence and disinformation affect how we make decisions? These issues are explored in this nonfiction tale of the three-way Cold War game of espionage between the U.S., the U.K. and the Soviet Union.

No. 8. “Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion” by Jia Tolentino.

Tolentino looks at the basic building blocks of social media and how we use it to deceive not so much others as ourselves. This series of essays tracks among other things the evolution of the internet from a band of enthusiastic geeks and hackers to the trolls and agents of agitprop that have taken over.

Read: Top 10 innovations revolutionising healthcare sector

No. 9. “Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know” by Malcolm Gladwell.

Communication breakdown is the focus in this tour of errors, miscommunication and lies. One of our era’s most engaging storytellers, Gladwell roams from Fidel Castro to Bernie Madoff and lots of folks in between. His big premise: the default condition of our species is to assume others tell the truth. This makes all of us vulnerable to the deceptions of politicians, salespeople and con artists.

No. 10. “Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence,” by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.

What happens if we rethink the concept of artificial intelligence as a drop in the cost of prediction? That is the question tackled by the three authors of this book, all economists at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. The conclusion is that AI, instead of complicating human affairs, may improve decision-making.

The post Must read: 10 Books on Thinking About Thinking appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

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[foursproutwealth-blog]

Daniel Greenfield: "Guns Are How A Civil War Ends... Politics Is How It Starts"

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/daniel-greenfield-guns-are-how-a-civil-war-ends-politics-is-how-it-starts/

Daniel Greenfield: "Guns Are How A Civil War Ends... Politics Is How It Starts"

Authored by Daniel Greenfield via Sultan Knish blog,

(The following is the speech that I delivered this Sunday at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention in Myrtle Beach. My appreciation to Joe Dugan and everyone involved in organizing it and making it a reality once again. And to Don Neuen and Donna Fiducia of Cowboy Logic Radio for the introduction. And to anyone and everyone still fighting the good fight.)

Full Transcript below:

This is a civil war.

There aren’t any soldiers marching on Charleston… or Myrtle Beach. Nobody’s getting shot in the streets. Except in Chicago… and Baltimore, Detroit and Washington D.C.

But that’s not a civil war. It’s just what happens when Democrats run a city into the ground. And then they dig a hole in the ground so they can bury it even deeper.

If you look deep enough into that great big Democrat hole, you might even see where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.

But it’s not guns that make a civil war. It’s politics.

Guns are how a civil war ends. Politics is how it begins.

How do civil wars happen?

Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge.

That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.

I know you’re all thinking about President Trump.

He won and the establishment, the media, the democrats, rejected the results. They came up with a whole bunch of conspiracy theories to explain why he didn’t really win. It was the Russians. And the FBI. And sexism, Obama, Bernie Sanders and white people.

It’s easier to make a list of the things that Hillary Clinton doesn’t blame for losing the election. It’s going to be a short list.

A really short list. Herself.

The Mueller investigation is about removing President Trump from office and overturning the results of an election. We all know that. But it’s not the first time they’ve done this.

The first time a Republican president was elected this century, they said he didn’t really win. The Supreme Court gave him the election. There’s a pattern here.

Trump didn’t really win the election. Bush didn’t really win the election. Every time a Republican president won an election this century, the Democrats insist he didn’t really win.

Now say a third Republican president wins an election in say, 2024.

What are the odds that they’ll say that he didn’t really win? Right now, it looks like 100 percent.

What do sure odds of the Dems rejecting the next Republican president really mean? It means they don’t accept the results of any election that they don’t win.

It means they don’t believe that transfers of power in this country are determined by elections.

That’s a civil war.

There’s no shooting. At least not unless you count the attempt to kill a bunch of Republicans at a charity baseball game practice. But the Democrats have rejected our system of government.

This isn’t dissent. It’s not disagreement.

You can hate the other party. You can think they’re the worst thing that ever happened to the country. But then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections that you don’t win, what you want is a dictatorship.

Your very own dictatorship.

The only legitimate exercise of power in this country, according to the left, is its own. Whenever Republicans exercise power, it’s inherently illegitimate.

The attacks on Trump show that elections don’t matter to the left.

Republicans can win an election, but they have a major flaw. They’re not leftists.

That’s what the leftist dictatorship looks like.

The left lost Congress. They lost the White House. So what did they do? They began trying to run the country through Federal judges and bureaucrats.

Every time that a Federal judge issues an order saying that the President of the United States can’t scratch his own back without his say so, that’s the civil war.

Our system of government is based on the constitution, but that’s not the system that runs this country.

The left’s system is that any part of government that it runs gets total and unlimited power over the country.

If it’s in the White House, then the president can do anything. And I mean anything. He can have his own amnesty for illegal aliens. He can fine you for not having health insurance. His power is unlimited.

He’s a dictator.

But when Republicans get into the White House, suddenly the President can’t do anything. He isn’t even allowed to undo the illegal alien amnesty that his predecessor illegally invented.

A Democrat in the White House has “discretion” to completely decide every aspect of immigration policy. A Republican doesn’t even have the “discretion” to reverse him.

That’s how the game is played. That’s how our country is run.

When Democrats control the Senate, then Harry Reid and his boys and girls are the sane, wise heads that keep the crazy guys in the House in check.

But when Republicans control the Senate, then it’s an outmoded body inspired by racism.

When Democrats run the Supreme Court, then it has the power to decide everything in the country. But when Republicans control the Supreme Court, it’s a dangerous body that no one should pay attention to.

When a Democrat is in the White House, states aren’t even allowed to enforce immigration law. But when a Republican is in the White House, states can create their own immigration laws.

Under Obama, a state wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom without asking permission. But under Trump, Jerry Brown can go around saying that California is an independent republic and sign treaties with other countries.

The Constitution has something to say about that.

Whether it’s Federal or State, Executive, Legislative or Judiciary, the left moves power around to run the country. If it controls an institution, then that institution is suddenly the supreme power in the land.

This is what I call a moving dictatorship.

There isn’t one guy in a room somewhere issuing the orders. Instead there’s a network of them. And the network moves around.

If the guys and girls in the network win elections, they can do it from the White House. If they lose the White House, they’ll do it from Congress. If they don’t have either one, they’ll use the Supreme Court.

If they don’t have either the White House, Congress or the Supreme Court, they’re screwed. Right?

Nope.

They just go on issuing them through circuit courts and the bureaucracy. State governments announce that they’re independent republics. Corporations begin threatening and suing the government.

There’s no consistent legal standard. Only a political one.

Under Obama, states weren’t allowed to enforce immigration laws. That was the job of the Federal government. And the states weren’t allowed to interfere with the job that the Feds weren’t doing.

Okay.

Now Trump comes into office and starts enforcing immigration laws again. And California announces it’s a sanctuary state and passes a law punishing businesses that cooperate with Federal immigration enforcement.

So what do we have here?

It’s illegal for states to enforce immigration law because that’s the province of the Federal government. But it’s legal for states to ban the Federal government from enforcing immigration law.

The only consistent pattern here is that the left decided to make it illegal to enforce immigration law.

It may do that sometimes under the guise of Federal power or states rights. But those are just fronts. The only consistent thing is that leftist policies are mandatory and opposing them is illegal.

Everything else is just a song and dance routine.

That’s how it works. It’s the moving dictatorship. It’s the tyranny of the network.

You can’t pin it down. There’s no one office or one guy. It’s a network of them. It’s an ideological dictatorship. Some people call it the deep state. But that doesn’t even begin to capture what it is.

To understand it, you have to think about things like the Cold War and Communist infiltration.

A better term than Deep State is Shadow Government.

Parts of the Shadow Government aren’t even in the government. They are wherever the left holds power. It can be in the non-profit sector and among major corporations. Power gets moved around like a New York City shell game. Where’s the quarter? Nope, it’s not there anymore.

The shadow government is an ideological network. These days it calls itself by a hashtag #Resistance. Under any name, it runs the country. Most of the time we don’t realize that. When things are normal, when there’s a Democrat in the White House or a bunch of Democrats in Congress, it’s business as usual.

Even with most Republican presidents, you didn’t notice anything too out of the ordinary. Sure, the Democrats got their way most of the time. But that’s how the game is usually played.

It’s only when someone came on the scene who didn’t play the game by the same rules, that the network exposed itself. The shadow government emerged out of hiding and came for Trump.

And that’s the civil war.

This is a war over who runs the country. Do the people who vote run the country or does this network that can lose an election, but still get its agenda through, run the country?

We’ve been having this fight for a while. But this century things have escalated.

They escalated a whole lot after Trump’s win because the network isn’t pretending anymore. It sees the opportunity to delegitimize the whole idea of elections.

Now the network isn’t running the country from cover. It’s actually out here trying to overturn the results of an election and remove the president from office.

It’s rejected the victories of two Republican presidents this century.

And if we don’t stand up and confront it, and expose it for what it is, it’s going to go on doing it in every election. And eventually Federal judges are going to gain enough power that they really will overturn elections.

It happens in other countries. If you think it can’t happen here, you haven’t been paying attention to the left.

Right now, Federal judges are declaring that President Trump isn’t allowed to govern because his Tweets show he’s a racist. How long until they say that a president isn’t even allowed to take office because they don’t like his views?

That’s where we’re headed.

Civil wars swing around a very basic question. The most basic question of them all. Who runs the country?

Is it me? Is it you? Is it Grandma? Or is it bunch of people who made running the government into their career?

America was founded on getting away from professional government. The British monarchy was a professional government. Like all professional governments, it was hereditary. Professional classes eventually decide to pass down their privileges to their kids.

America was different. We had a volunteer government. That’s what the Founding Fathers built.

This is a civil war between volunteer governments elected by the people and professional governments elected by… well… uh… themselves.

Of the establishment, by the establishment and for the establishment.

You know, the people who always say they know better, no matter how many times they screw up, because they’re the professionals. They’ve been in Washington D.C. politics since they were in diapers.

Freedom can only exist under a volunteer government. Because everyone is in charge. Power belongs to the people.

A professional government is going to have to stamp out freedom sooner or later. Freedom under a professional government can only be a fiction. Whenever the people disagree with the professionals, they’re going to have to get put down. That’s just how it is. No matter how it’s disguised, a professional government is tyranny.

Ours is really well disguised, but if it walks like a duck and locks you up like a duck, it’s a tyranny.

Now what’s the left.

Forget all the deep answers. The left is a professional government.

It’s whole idea is that everything needs to be controlled by a big central government to make society just. That means everything from your soda sizes to whether you can mow your lawn needs to be decided in Washington D.C.

Volunteer governments are unjust. Professional governments are fair. That’s the credo of the left.

Its network, the one we were just discussing, it takes over professional governments because it shares their basic ideas. Professional governments, no matter who runs them, are convinced that everything should run through the professionals. And the professionals are usually lefties. If they aren’t, they will be.

Just ask Mueller and establishment guys like him.

What infuriates professional government more than anything else? An amateur, someone like President Trump who didn’t spend his entire adult life practicing to be president, taking over the job.

President Trump is what volunteer government is all about.

When you’re a government professional, you’re invested in keeping the system going. But when you’re a volunteer, you can do all the things that the experts tell you can’t be done. You can look at the mess we’re in with fresh eyes and do the common sense things that President Trump is doing.

And common sense is the enemy of government professionals. It’s why Trump is such a threat.

A Republican government professional would be bad enough. But a Republican government volunteer does that thing you’re not supposed to do in government… think differently.

Professional government is a guild. Like medieval guilds. You can’t serve in if you’re not a member. If you haven’t been indoctrinated into its arcane rituals. If you aren’t in the club.

And Trump isn’t in the club. He brought in a bunch of people who aren’t in the club with him.

Now we’re seeing what the pros do when amateurs try to walk in on them. They spy on them, they investigate them and they send them to jail. They use the tools of power to bring them down.

That’s not a free country.

It’s not a free country when FBI agents who support Hillary take out an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the election. It’s not a free country when Obama officials engage in massive unmasking of the opposition. It’s not a free country when the media responds to the other guy winning by trying to ban the conservative media that supported him from social media. It’s not a free country when all of the above collude together to overturn an election because the guy who wasn’t supposed to win, won.

We’re in a civil war between conservative volunteer government and leftist professional government.

The pros have made it clear that they’re not going to accept election results anymore. They’re just going to make us do whatever they want. They’re in charge and we better do what they say.

That’s the war we’re in. And it’s important that we understand that.

Because this isn’t a shooting war yet. And I don’t want to see it become one.

And before the shooting starts, civil wars are fought with arguments. To win, you have to understand what the big picture argument is. It’s easy to get bogged down in arguments that don’t matter or won’t really change anything.

This is the argument that changes everything.

Do we have a government of the people and by the people? Or do we have a tyranny of the professionals?

The Democrats try to dress up this argument in leftist social justice babble. Those fights are worth having. But sometimes we need to pull back the curtain on what this is really about.

They’ve tried to rig the system. They’ve done it by gerrymandering, by changing the demographics of entire states through immigration, by abusing the judiciary and by a thousand different tricks.

But civil wars come down to an easy question. Who runs the country?

They’ve given us their answer and we need to give them our answer.

Both sides talk about taking back the country. But who are they taking it back for?

The left uses identity politics. It puts supposed representatives of entire identity groups up front. We’re taking the country back for women and for black people, and so on and so forth…

But nobody elected their representatives.

Identity groups don’t vote for leaders. All the black people in the country never voted to make Shaun King al Al Sharpton their representative. And women sure as hell didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton.

What we have in America is a representative government. A representative government makes freedom possible because it actually represents people, instead of representing ideas.

The left’s identity politics only represents ideas. Nobody gets to vote on them.

Instead the left puts out representatives from different identity politics groups, there’s your gay guy, there’s three women, there’s a black man, as fronts for their professional government system.

When they’re taking back the country, it’s always for professional government. It’s never for the people.

When conservatives fight to take back the country, it’s for the people. It’s for volunteer government the way that the Founding Fathers wanted it to be.

This is a civil war over whether the American people are going to govern themselves. Or are they going to be governed.

Are we going to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people… or are we going to have a government.

The kind of government that most countries have where a few special people decide what’s best for everyone.

We tried that kind of government under the British monarchy. And we had a revolution because we didn’t like it.

But that revolution was met with a counterrevolution by the left. The left wants a monarchy. It wants King Obama or Queen Oprah.

It wants to end government of the people, by the people and for the people. That’s what they’re fighting for. That’s what we’re fighting against. The stakes are as big as they’re ever going to get. Do elections matter anymore?

I live in the state of Ronald Reagan. I can go visit the Ronald Reagan Library any time I want to. But today California has one party elections. There are lots of elections and propositions. There’s all the theater of democracy, but none of the substance. Its political system is as free and open as the Soviet Union.

And that can be America.

The Trump years are going to decide if America survives. When his time in office is done, we’re either going to be California or a free nation once again.

The civil war is out in the open now and we need to fight the good fight. And we must fight to win.

[foursprout-blog]

Daniel Greenfield: "Guns Are How A Civil War Ends... Politics Is How It Starts"

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/daniel-greenfield-guns-are-how-a-civil-war-ends-politics-is-how-it-starts/

Daniel Greenfield: "Guns Are How A Civil War Ends... Politics Is How It Starts"

Authored by Daniel Greenfield via Sultan Knish blog,

(The following is the speech that I delivered this Sunday at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention in Myrtle Beach. My appreciation to Joe Dugan and everyone involved in organizing it and making it a reality once again. And to Don Neuen and Donna Fiducia of Cowboy Logic Radio for the introduction. And to anyone and everyone still fighting the good fight.)

Full Transcript below:

This is a civil war.

There aren’t any soldiers marching on Charleston… or Myrtle Beach. Nobody’s getting shot in the streets. Except in Chicago… and Baltimore, Detroit and Washington D.C.

But that’s not a civil war. It’s just what happens when Democrats run a city into the ground. And then they dig a hole in the ground so they can bury it even deeper.

If you look deep enough into that great big Democrat hole, you might even see where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.

But it’s not guns that make a civil war. It’s politics.

Guns are how a civil war ends. Politics is how it begins.

How do civil wars happen?

Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge.

That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.

I know you’re all thinking about President Trump.

He won and the establishment, the media, the democrats, rejected the results. They came up with a whole bunch of conspiracy theories to explain why he didn’t really win. It was the Russians. And the FBI. And sexism, Obama, Bernie Sanders and white people.

It’s easier to make a list of the things that Hillary Clinton doesn’t blame for losing the election. It’s going to be a short list.

A really short list. Herself.

The Mueller investigation is about removing President Trump from office and overturning the results of an election. We all know that. But it’s not the first time they’ve done this.

The first time a Republican president was elected this century, they said he didn’t really win. The Supreme Court gave him the election. There’s a pattern here.

Trump didn’t really win the election. Bush didn’t really win the election. Every time a Republican president won an election this century, the Democrats insist he didn’t really win.

Now say a third Republican president wins an election in say, 2024.

What are the odds that they’ll say that he didn’t really win? Right now, it looks like 100 percent.

What do sure odds of the Dems rejecting the next Republican president really mean? It means they don’t accept the results of any election that they don’t win.

It means they don’t believe that transfers of power in this country are determined by elections.

That’s a civil war.

There’s no shooting. At least not unless you count the attempt to kill a bunch of Republicans at a charity baseball game practice. But the Democrats have rejected our system of government.

This isn’t dissent. It’s not disagreement.

You can hate the other party. You can think they’re the worst thing that ever happened to the country. But then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections that you don’t win, what you want is a dictatorship.

Your very own dictatorship.

The only legitimate exercise of power in this country, according to the left, is its own. Whenever Republicans exercise power, it’s inherently illegitimate.

The attacks on Trump show that elections don’t matter to the left.

Republicans can win an election, but they have a major flaw. They’re not leftists.

That’s what the leftist dictatorship looks like.

The left lost Congress. They lost the White House. So what did they do? They began trying to run the country through Federal judges and bureaucrats.

Every time that a Federal judge issues an order saying that the President of the United States can’t scratch his own back without his say so, that’s the civil war.

Our system of government is based on the constitution, but that’s not the system that runs this country.

The left’s system is that any part of government that it runs gets total and unlimited power over the country.

If it’s in the White House, then the president can do anything. And I mean anything. He can have his own amnesty for illegal aliens. He can fine you for not having health insurance. His power is unlimited.

He’s a dictator.

But when Republicans get into the White House, suddenly the President can’t do anything. He isn’t even allowed to undo the illegal alien amnesty that his predecessor illegally invented.

A Democrat in the White House has “discretion” to completely decide every aspect of immigration policy. A Republican doesn’t even have the “discretion” to reverse him.

That’s how the game is played. That’s how our country is run.

When Democrats control the Senate, then Harry Reid and his boys and girls are the sane, wise heads that keep the crazy guys in the House in check.

But when Republicans control the Senate, then it’s an outmoded body inspired by racism.

When Democrats run the Supreme Court, then it has the power to decide everything in the country. But when Republicans control the Supreme Court, it’s a dangerous body that no one should pay attention to.

When a Democrat is in the White House, states aren’t even allowed to enforce immigration law. But when a Republican is in the White House, states can create their own immigration laws.

Under Obama, a state wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom without asking permission. But under Trump, Jerry Brown can go around saying that California is an independent republic and sign treaties with other countries.

The Constitution has something to say about that.

Whether it’s Federal or State, Executive, Legislative or Judiciary, the left moves power around to run the country. If it controls an institution, then that institution is suddenly the supreme power in the land.

This is what I call a moving dictatorship.

There isn’t one guy in a room somewhere issuing the orders. Instead there’s a network of them. And the network moves around.

If the guys and girls in the network win elections, they can do it from the White House. If they lose the White House, they’ll do it from Congress. If they don’t have either one, they’ll use the Supreme Court.

If they don’t have either the White House, Congress or the Supreme Court, they’re screwed. Right?

Nope.

They just go on issuing them through circuit courts and the bureaucracy. State governments announce that they’re independent republics. Corporations begin threatening and suing the government.

There’s no consistent legal standard. Only a political one.

Under Obama, states weren’t allowed to enforce immigration laws. That was the job of the Federal government. And the states weren’t allowed to interfere with the job that the Feds weren’t doing.

Okay.

Now Trump comes into office and starts enforcing immigration laws again. And California announces it’s a sanctuary state and passes a law punishing businesses that cooperate with Federal immigration enforcement.

So what do we have here?

It’s illegal for states to enforce immigration law because that’s the province of the Federal government. But it’s legal for states to ban the Federal government from enforcing immigration law.

The only consistent pattern here is that the left decided to make it illegal to enforce immigration law.

It may do that sometimes under the guise of Federal power or states rights. But those are just fronts. The only consistent thing is that leftist policies are mandatory and opposing them is illegal.

Everything else is just a song and dance routine.

That’s how it works. It’s the moving dictatorship. It’s the tyranny of the network.

You can’t pin it down. There’s no one office or one guy. It’s a network of them. It’s an ideological dictatorship. Some people call it the deep state. But that doesn’t even begin to capture what it is.

To understand it, you have to think about things like the Cold War and Communist infiltration.

A better term than Deep State is Shadow Government.

Parts of the Shadow Government aren’t even in the government. They are wherever the left holds power. It can be in the non-profit sector and among major corporations. Power gets moved around like a New York City shell game. Where’s the quarter? Nope, it’s not there anymore.

The shadow government is an ideological network. These days it calls itself by a hashtag #Resistance. Under any name, it runs the country. Most of the time we don’t realize that. When things are normal, when there’s a Democrat in the White House or a bunch of Democrats in Congress, it’s business as usual.

Even with most Republican presidents, you didn’t notice anything too out of the ordinary. Sure, the Democrats got their way most of the time. But that’s how the game is usually played.

It’s only when someone came on the scene who didn’t play the game by the same rules, that the network exposed itself. The shadow government emerged out of hiding and came for Trump.

And that’s the civil war.

This is a war over who runs the country. Do the people who vote run the country or does this network that can lose an election, but still get its agenda through, run the country?

We’ve been having this fight for a while. But this century things have escalated.

They escalated a whole lot after Trump’s win because the network isn’t pretending anymore. It sees the opportunity to delegitimize the whole idea of elections.

Now the network isn’t running the country from cover. It’s actually out here trying to overturn the results of an election and remove the president from office.

It’s rejected the victories of two Republican presidents this century.

And if we don’t stand up and confront it, and expose it for what it is, it’s going to go on doing it in every election. And eventually Federal judges are going to gain enough power that they really will overturn elections.

It happens in other countries. If you think it can’t happen here, you haven’t been paying attention to the left.

Right now, Federal judges are declaring that President Trump isn’t allowed to govern because his Tweets show he’s a racist. How long until they say that a president isn’t even allowed to take office because they don’t like his views?

That’s where we’re headed.

Civil wars swing around a very basic question. The most basic question of them all. Who runs the country?

Is it me? Is it you? Is it Grandma? Or is it bunch of people who made running the government into their career?

America was founded on getting away from professional government. The British monarchy was a professional government. Like all professional governments, it was hereditary. Professional classes eventually decide to pass down their privileges to their kids.

America was different. We had a volunteer government. That’s what the Founding Fathers built.

This is a civil war between volunteer governments elected by the people and professional governments elected by… well… uh… themselves.

Of the establishment, by the establishment and for the establishment.

You know, the people who always say they know better, no matter how many times they screw up, because they’re the professionals. They’ve been in Washington D.C. politics since they were in diapers.

Freedom can only exist under a volunteer government. Because everyone is in charge. Power belongs to the people.

A professional government is going to have to stamp out freedom sooner or later. Freedom under a professional government can only be a fiction. Whenever the people disagree with the professionals, they’re going to have to get put down. That’s just how it is. No matter how it’s disguised, a professional government is tyranny.

Ours is really well disguised, but if it walks like a duck and locks you up like a duck, it’s a tyranny.

Now what’s the left.

Forget all the deep answers. The left is a professional government.

It’s whole idea is that everything needs to be controlled by a big central government to make society just. That means everything from your soda sizes to whether you can mow your lawn needs to be decided in Washington D.C.

Volunteer governments are unjust. Professional governments are fair. That’s the credo of the left.

Its network, the one we were just discussing, it takes over professional governments because it shares their basic ideas. Professional governments, no matter who runs them, are convinced that everything should run through the professionals. And the professionals are usually lefties. If they aren’t, they will be.

Just ask Mueller and establishment guys like him.

What infuriates professional government more than anything else? An amateur, someone like President Trump who didn’t spend his entire adult life practicing to be president, taking over the job.

President Trump is what volunteer government is all about.

When you’re a government professional, you’re invested in keeping the system going. But when you’re a volunteer, you can do all the things that the experts tell you can’t be done. You can look at the mess we’re in with fresh eyes and do the common sense things that President Trump is doing.

And common sense is the enemy of government professionals. It’s why Trump is such a threat.

A Republican government professional would be bad enough. But a Republican government volunteer does that thing you’re not supposed to do in government… think differently.

Professional government is a guild. Like medieval guilds. You can’t serve in if you’re not a member. If you haven’t been indoctrinated into its arcane rituals. If you aren’t in the club.

And Trump isn’t in the club. He brought in a bunch of people who aren’t in the club with him.

Now we’re seeing what the pros do when amateurs try to walk in on them. They spy on them, they investigate them and they send them to jail. They use the tools of power to bring them down.

That’s not a free country.

It’s not a free country when FBI agents who support Hillary take out an “insurance policy” against Trump winning the election. It’s not a free country when Obama officials engage in massive unmasking of the opposition. It’s not a free country when the media responds to the other guy winning by trying to ban the conservative media that supported him from social media. It’s not a free country when all of the above collude together to overturn an election because the guy who wasn’t supposed to win, won.

We’re in a civil war between conservative volunteer government and leftist professional government.

The pros have made it clear that they’re not going to accept election results anymore. They’re just going to make us do whatever they want. They’re in charge and we better do what they say.

That’s the war we’re in. And it’s important that we understand that.

Because this isn’t a shooting war yet. And I don’t want to see it become one.

And before the shooting starts, civil wars are fought with arguments. To win, you have to understand what the big picture argument is. It’s easy to get bogged down in arguments that don’t matter or won’t really change anything.

This is the argument that changes everything.

Do we have a government of the people and by the people? Or do we have a tyranny of the professionals?

The Democrats try to dress up this argument in leftist social justice babble. Those fights are worth having. But sometimes we need to pull back the curtain on what this is really about.

They’ve tried to rig the system. They’ve done it by gerrymandering, by changing the demographics of entire states through immigration, by abusing the judiciary and by a thousand different tricks.

But civil wars come down to an easy question. Who runs the country?

They’ve given us their answer and we need to give them our answer.

Both sides talk about taking back the country. But who are they taking it back for?

The left uses identity politics. It puts supposed representatives of entire identity groups up front. We’re taking the country back for women and for black people, and so on and so forth…

But nobody elected their representatives.

Identity groups don’t vote for leaders. All the black people in the country never voted to make Shaun King al Al Sharpton their representative. And women sure as hell didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton.

What we have in America is a representative government. A representative government makes freedom possible because it actually represents people, instead of representing ideas.

The left’s identity politics only represents ideas. Nobody gets to vote on them.

Instead the left puts out representatives from different identity politics groups, there’s your gay guy, there’s three women, there’s a black man, as fronts for their professional government system.

When they’re taking back the country, it’s always for professional government. It’s never for the people.

When conservatives fight to take back the country, it’s for the people. It’s for volunteer government the way that the Founding Fathers wanted it to be.

This is a civil war over whether the American people are going to govern themselves. Or are they going to be governed.

Are we going to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people… or are we going to have a government.

The kind of government that most countries have where a few special people decide what’s best for everyone.

We tried that kind of government under the British monarchy. And we had a revolution because we didn’t like it.

But that revolution was met with a counterrevolution by the left. The left wants a monarchy. It wants King Obama or Queen Oprah.

It wants to end government of the people, by the people and for the people. That’s what they’re fighting for. That’s what we’re fighting against. The stakes are as big as they’re ever going to get. Do elections matter anymore?

I live in the state of Ronald Reagan. I can go visit the Ronald Reagan Library any time I want to. But today California has one party elections. There are lots of elections and propositions. There’s all the theater of democracy, but none of the substance. Its political system is as free and open as the Soviet Union.

And that can be America.

The Trump years are going to decide if America survives. When his time in office is done, we’re either going to be California or a free nation once again.

The civil war is out in the open now and we need to fight the good fight. And we must fight to win.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Our last politics chat before the 2020 Democratic primary kicks off!! And we’re talking Election X factors! Or what things we should be looking at, besides the polls (and our forecast), that could affect who wins on Monday?

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): To me, in a race that is so close, the number of precincts in which a candidate is either ahead or falling short of the viability threshold – 15 percent at most caucus sites — seems like it could be really important for what happens on Monday. Because say, someone like Bernie Sanders, if his support is concentrated in more urban areas or college towns, does that mean someone like Joe Biden could get more delegate support because he has backing across more rural areas? I don’t know.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Yeah, and related to that point: The polls only measure voters’ initial preferences. But caucusgoers are allowed to realign if their candidate doesn’t meet the viability threshold, and then, of course, the delegates awarded are based on that post-realignment total.

In other words, the polls can’t really tell us exactly how votes will translate into delegates. So it will matter whose support is distributed the most efficiently.

sarahf: (Quick side note: For the first time, raw vote tallies from the first and second alignments will be released publicly, as well as the state delegate equivalents that a candidate earns. In the past, the party only reported the delegate tallies.)

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): Well, and an interesting question along those lines, Geoffrey, is how much will turnout shape the final narrative? In the past, when raw vote totals weren’t released, candidates like Sanders didn’t have as much of an incentive to run up their numbers in places like college towns where they have lots of densely concentrated support. This year, that will be different, and it could make for some confusion when the delegate counts and the raw votes are in.

I’m also curious to see what kind of horse-trading will go on in the caucuses themselves!

geoffrey.skelley: Definitely true, Amelia. I’m looking forward to the possibility of a scenario where Sanders wins the post-realignment raw vote total, but Biden wins the delegate count.

ameliatd: That’s one of the things that makes caucuses so fascinating and unpredictable — people are literally trying to convince each other to join their side as it’s happening.

sarahf: And you’ll be there to see it in action, Amelia! That ought to be wild.

ameliatd: Yes! I will be on the ground at a precinct in Iowa City, which I think will be one of the hubs for a potential Warren/Sanders showdown. My Monday night is going to be full of drama.

sarahf: But play out that scenario you just mentioned, a little bit more, Geoff. How could it work that Sanders wins more votes, but Biden wins more delegates (and therefore Iowa)?

geoffrey.skelley: Basically, every precinct is worth a certain number of state delegate equivalents, which is used to determine delegate allocation for national delegates. So if you get particularly high turnout at a precinct near, say, the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Johnson County, that precinct’s value for delegate purposes is already set based on a calculation determined by the 2016 presidential and 2018 gubernatorial Democratic vote share in that precinct. So if Sanders gets like 500 of 600 voters there, it might have the same delegate value as Biden dominating in a different precinct with 150 voters if they are worth the same number of state delegate equivalents. In the 2016 caucuses, for instance, Hillary Clinton swept all 1.6 SDEs in a Waterloo, Iowa, precinct that had 141 people show up, while Sanders got 1.6 of 1.8 SDEs in an Iowa City precinct that had 646 participants. We can’t know what the “popular vote” was in those precincts in 2016 — that’s available for the first time this year — but the delegate value for the two candidates was pretty much the same, even though one precinct had far higher turnout.

nrakich: I’m curious — which of those measures will you guys be paying the most attention to?

sarahf: I mean … I find the whole “both sides could claim victory on caucus night” a bit disingenuous, or at the very least, there should be a heavy burden on the media to report it responsibly. Because you can’t claim victory from the pre-alignment vote total!! That’s not how caucuses work. (Now you can have quibbles with why Iowa caucuses in the first place sure, but this whole sowing confusion narrative bothers me. Let’s not sow confusion!)

nrakich: Why not, Sarah?

That’s the popular vote!

That’s how almost every other state does it, i.e., primary states.

It is the most small-d democratic.

sarahf: That’s true, but Iowa isn’t a primary state! And maybe caucuses should be banned for the reasons you outline (it is really time consuming to caucus), but it’s not like how the winner in Iowa is determined has changed. It’s still based on the number of state delegate equivalents a candidate wins, we’ll just get to see more inside the process, which as a journalist, I’m 100 percent in favor of. More data always, please.

But that means as journalists we have a responsibility to talk about the three different vote totals in the context of how they work within a caucus, e.g. don’t read too much into the pre-alignment vote, because this will change (not every candidate will have enough support to make it to the next round of voting). That vote is the most small-d democratic, as you say, but it’s also not how caucuses work, so we shouldn’t feed into that narrative! Although, I’m sure some candidates will. But whatever. Report the process; don’t sow confusion.

nrakich: My short argument for why the initial preference numbers are the most important is that they’re the best representation of how voters feel — kind of like a massive poll. The state delegate equivalents might matter more for delegate selection, but Iowa is a small state — the number of delegates a candidate gets there is less important than the momentum/vote of confidence he/she receives.

geoffrey.skelley: Right, Nathaniel — in fact, AAPOR (the American Association for Public Opinion Research) recommends that journalists compare poll results from this cycle to those pre-realignment numbers when considering the accuracy of polls.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Here’s a pulled-out question, not related to thresholds: Is there anything that could happen in this last weekend to sway things one way or the other for voters still on the bubble? Is it good for the Democrats that all these senators aren’t going to be in the Senate for a drawn-out impeachment trial after all?

ameliatd: I have to imagine, Clare, that the senators are pretty excited about the prospect of getting back to Iowa. They’ve had surrogates campaigning on their behalf, but having the actual candidate there seems like a much better recipe for firing up their supporters — and that enthusiasm can really matter in the caucuses.

clare.malone: Another x-factor to mention: Could some big-name establishment Democrat speak out against Sanders? That sort of stuff has been floating around the past couple of weeks in news stories. It’s the kind of thing you could see happening on a Sunday show or a cable interview over the weekend.

sarahf: I mean, that’s a great question. In theory, Iowa always has at least a few polling surprises, but it’s also kind of hard for me to see Buttigieg, Warren or Amy Klobuchar making a big comeback at this point.

I know, never say never. But it’s hard for me to see this path — don’t @ me!!

Someone from the Democratic establishment speaking out against Sanders, on the other hand … that could be

.

Except Democrats would be smart to not have the spokesperson be Hillary Clinton. I feel like that Hollywood Reporter story about that new documentary where she dished on Sanders, and what it was like working with him in Congress, just fired up his base more than it actually hurt him.

nrakich: I don’t know if any figure in the party is big enough to matter, unless their last name is Obama.

And I don’t think either of the Obamas is going to weigh in at this point.

Mayyyybe if Sanders wins the first few states and he becomes the favorite to win the nomination …

geoffrey.skelley: Which could definitely happen — if he wins Iowa, he’ll be favored in New Hampshire and probably Nevada, too.

ameliatd: It would make sense to me if it were that the big establishment figures were biding their time to see how Sanders does in Iowa, and holding their fire until then.

clare.malone: I think the polling surprise is a great point, Sarah.

And considering the big Des Moines Register poll didn’t drop this weekend, we’re kind of in the dark as to where things could be headed. Hazard any guesses on potential surprises?

sarahf: I mean, we expect a few polls later today, but I was surprised in this last week that Buttigieg and Warren didn’t see more of an uptick. If anything, Warren actually ticked down more in our forecast this week despite the endorsement from the Des Moines Register, which should have helped her at least somewhat in the polls.

If anything, Klobuchar has started to do better. Granted she only has a 3 percent chance of winning the most votes in Iowa, but that’s been an interesting development to me anyways.

I mean … if anyone other than Sanders and Biden are in the top two at the end of the night on Monday, that’s an x-factor, right?

ameliatd: It’s all because of Klobuchar’s hot dish, Sarah. Never doubt the power of tater tots!

sarahf: Lol, that article.

nrakich: Klobuchar doing well would be an x-factor because I’m not sure there is room for FIVE front-runners. If Klobuchar surges, in my mind, someone like Buttigieg would have to crater.

As a reminder, we have never seen more than three candidates get more than 15 percent (the threshold required to get delegates) in any state before.

geoffrey.skelley: Definitely agree that it would be surprising if Biden or Sanders were not in the top two, but that’s certainly a possibility. With voters’ second-choice picks being really important in Iowa, I don’t want to totally discount anyone in the top four from winning, or anyone in the top five — so Klobuchar, too — from ending up in second or third.

And right now, we have three polling above 15 percent in Iowa and Warren just under that at 14 percent. Plus, Klobuchar is now right at 10 percent in our polling average.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): In some ways, I wonder if the buzz about Sanders’s potential to win Iowa and that victory catapulting him to the nomination happened a week or so too early for him. And it allowed his opponents within the party to hit him fairly hard, with an argument (electability) that Democratic voters really care about.

clare.malone: Ooooh, I like this take.

Interesting fodder!

And the idea that a person can have a “week too early” surge seems like a very Iowa phenom.

nrakich: It’s amazing how the timing of an election can matter. Random choices like whether the Iowa caucuses were this week or last week can make a big difference in who potentially gets elected leader of the free world.

ameliatd: Well, and a scenario like that could be especially helpful for Biden is that his supporters are generally older and perhaps more likely to caucus, too — although some of those folks aren’t necessarily regular caucusgoers.

perry: Buttigieg is even trying to get former Republicans to go to the caucuses. Those people are not going to support Sanders or Warren as a second choice.

geoffrey.skelley: Actually, age is one of the big questions about the caucus electorate — some polls have people under 50 making up as much as 47 percent of the electorate, which would be good news for Sanders, while others have it much lower than that. This has ramifications for each candidate’s poll numbers, but especially Sanders and Biden because their support at the age poles (oldest and youngest) are opposite of one another.

sarahf: So OK, say Sanders doesn’t win — because as Perry says, he peaked too early — does that put him a few points behind Biden … and Warren? Is there still room for her to be thought of as a moderate alternative to Sanders?

Perry: If the turnout is screwed young, I think Bernie will win. He really needs the electorate to be younger.

geoffrey.skelley: If Warren remains viable in most places, that actually could be quite bad for Sanders. And that’s because she’s the one whose backers are most likely to pick Sanders as their second choice. As the most recent Iowa State/Civiqs poll showed, 33 percent of Warren backers picked Sanders as their second choice, whereas no more than 11 percent of the other leading candidates’ backers chose Sanders as their top second choice.

nrakich: I mean, not to be that guy, Sarah, but in 80 percent of simulations in our model, Sanders could do anything from surge to 43 percent of the vote to drop to 11 percent in Iowa. And yeah, if he falls that far, he could finish below several other candidates (for the record, Warren’s range of outcomes in the 80-percent confidence interval is 3 percent to 31 percent).

ameliatd: I’m also really curious as to what will happen in places like Iowa City, which Bernie won handily in 2016. Obviously, a lot of 2016 Sanders’s voters are already supporting other candidates. But is it possible that all of the sudden focus on Bernie actually energizes his young lefty supporters and juices turnout even more?

Or, to answer your question, Sarah, maybe the attacks on Bernie prompt some progressive folks — the people who actually live and work in college towns, not the students — to give Warren a second look.

geoffrey.skelley: Thing is, because each precinct has a pre-assigned value based on the 2016-2018 Democratic vote, how much you can gain from juiced turnout near college campuses could be limited if it’s in select precincts.

nrakich: Right, which is why the actual preferences of Iowa voters is all that matters

sarahf: Lol, what about the possibility for technical glitches and the fact that Iowa is kind of sort of going to be making it easier to caucus this time around?

Do you think that’s an x-factor at all?

ameliatd: I’m a little skeptical of whether the satellite caucuses are actually going to make things easier. There are not that many of them, and they’re mostly in the middle of the day or the evening.

Of course, there will be a caucus in Tblisi, Georgia, which could really be what gives one of the candidates their edge.

geoffrey.skelley: Yeah, you still have to gather for a couple hours in the evening. Not like having ~12 hours to show up for 20 minutes and cast a ballot.

ameliatd: Or drop your ballot in the mail!

geoffrey.skelley: So I’m not expecting turnout to be crazy high.

nrakich: I think the overarching thing to remember here is that caucuses are always going to be harder to vote in than primaries. This article, about how difficult it can be for people with physical disabilities to caucus, really stuck with me.

#BanTheCaucus

sarahf: OK, rapid fire, final X-factors going into Monday. What do you think is super important to keep an eye on? I still think there’s got to be some kind of polling surprise that we just don’t know about yet, or wasn’t caught because there were a lot less polls this time around. …

nrakich: I think it will be whether the media makes a big deal out of “so-and-so winning Iowa,” even if he or she wins by just a fraction of a percentage point. To me, that is better thought of as a tie, but the way cable news tends to frame things as winners and losers could have a real impact on the narrative of which campaign is surging and which is struggling going into New Hampshire.

For instance, if Warren and Biden effectively tie, I think it will be spun as a win for Warren but a loss for Biden, and I don’t think it should be.

geoffrey.skelley: Relatedly, I’m interested in the possibility of having super ambiguous results because we will have three different outcomes to look at — first preference, final preference and state delegate equivalents, the last of which actually determines delegate counts.

ameliatd: I’m going to be a broken record but — turnout! Who shows up, and where? Whose supporters are most jazzed up and enthusiastic? That’s something that’s harder to predict/see until the caucuses are actually happening.

perry: What I’m looking for, before Monday night, are any clear urgings from really prominent Democrats to not back Sanders. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave clearly anti-Sanders remarks on Friday, but they didn’t get much attention and she didn’t use his name.) Also, I’m watching for some of the lower-tier candidates to point their supporters to all get behind a second-choice person. (This would not be done by the candidate or their top staffers directly, but more under the radar.) So would most Yang/Gabbard supporters get behind Sanders? Klobuchar backers to Biden? The most interesting questions to me are whether Warren supporters, in places where she is not viable, mostly go to Sanders and in places where Buttigieg is not viable, if his supporters mostly go to Biden.

[nedsecondline]

There's a #TrumpRussia confession in plain sight

really

At about 11:14pm on November 6th, 2012, enough states were called for President Obama that he was declared the winner of the election by NBC News. That was quickly followed up by a similar call on Fox News and finally by CNN. At 11:29pm, Donald Trump blasted out the following defiant tweet:

We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012

Somewhere in Russia, Konstantin Rykov saw Trump’s tweet pop up in his Twitter feed.

Almost exactly four years later, on November 12th, 2016, Mr. Rykov explained what happened next in a pair of Facebook posts. In the first post, Rykov explained how he first made contact with Trump:

[Trump] lifted his plane to the sky and flew between New York and DC, calling the whole world through his twitter — to start a march on Washington!

Without a moment’s thought, I wrote him a reply, which sounded like this in Russian: “I’m ready. What should I do?”

Suddenly! There was a thin squeak of warning in the DM.

It was a message from Donald Trump. More precisely a picture. In the picture he was sitting in the armchair of his jet, smiling cheerfully and showing me the thumb of his right hand.

In the second post, Rykov explained how things went from there:

What was our idea with Donald Trump?

For four years and two days .. it was necessary to get to everyone in the brain and grab all possible means of mass perception of reality. Ensure the victory of Donald in the election of the US President. Then create a political alliance between the United States, France, Russia (and a number of other states) and establish a new world order.

Our idea was insane, but realizable.

In order to understand everything for the beginning, it was necessary to “digitize” all possible types of modern man.

Donald decided to invite for this task — the special scientific department of the “Cambridge University.”

British scientists from Cambridge Analytica suggested making 5,000 existing human psychotypes — the “ideal image” of a possible Trump supporter. Then .. put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone.

Then it was only necessary to upload this data to information flows and social networks. And we began to look for those who would have coped with this task better than others.

At the very beginning of the brave and romantic [story] was not very much. A pair of hacker groups, civil journalists from WikiLeaks and political strategist Mikhail Kovalev.

The next step was to develop a system for transferring tasks and information, so that no intelligence and NSA could burn it.

Keep in mind that this was all written just four days after Trump was elected. It was before people started asking questions about Cambridge Analytica or targeted social media ads. Mr. Rykov might have been boasting as he spiked the football in the end zone, perhaps even elevating or exaggerating his role. What he didn’t think at that point, however, is that he had any reason to hide what he’d done.

You probably want to know who this guy is, and that’s understandable. If he’s just some dude on the internet, then his claims are of some interest but maybe hard to gauge as to their importance.

Let’s flash-forward to October 2015, just after the very first debate between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. In a piece David Drucker wrote for the conservative Washington Examiner called Putin Loves Donald Trump, Mr. Rykov plays a lead role:

Kremlin mouthpiece Konstantin Rykov said Wednesday in a Twitter post that Trump won the first Democratic presidential debate, held Tuesday in Las Vegas. In that tweet, Rykov linked to a Russian language, pro-Trump website with a Russian domain, www.Trump2016.ru, that he is likely behind. Until a few weeks ago, Rykov’s Twitter home page featured Trump and his 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

Western sources who monitor Russian politics told the Washington Examiner that Rykov is a propagandist arm of the Putin government machine. “Rykov is considered to be one of the leading pro-Kremlin bloggers in Russia,” said Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Obama who is now a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution think tank. “As you can see from his Twitter feed, he is very active. And he loves Trump.”

One source told Drucker that Rykov was a “chief voice and troll for the Kremlin on Twitter.” His Wikipedia page describes him as “one of the first professional Russian Internet producers” who began working in 2002 as the “head of the Internet department of the First Channel of the state television.” In addition to that, he actually served in the Duma, Russia’s parliament, as a member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia political party. But this is what most concerns me:

Rykov has created a series of websites, similar to Trump2016.ru, or used his Twitter page to post opinions on international politics. He often promotes rightwing political figures; for instance, he has previous promoted the National Front, a French nationalist political party, and its leaders, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and his daughter, Marine Le Pen. Rykov also uses events to draw favorable comparisons to Kremlin policy, such as likening Scotland’s independence movement to Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

The international political figures that Rykov plays up, said the source, “tend to express views that are more friendly to the Kremlin,” at least as far as Moscow is concerned. These figures also tend to be “supportive of engagement” with Russia, if not outright apologists for what others describe as Putin’s aggressive foreign policy and repressive measures at home.

I recommend approaching the work of Nafeez Ahmed with some skepticism, but I do have to give him credit for the comprehensiveness with which his crowdsourced INSURGE Intelligence group investigated Vladimir Putin’s ties to Europe’s far-right and neo-nazi political parties. There’s an absolute correspondence between those who Putin favors (and Mr. Rykov promotes) and the parties and figures that got chummy with the Trump campaign. In addition to Marine Le Pen who showed up at Trump Tower in January to raise money with fascist fixer George “Guido” Lombardi, there’s Nigel Farage of Britain’s UKIP party, who dined with Steve Bannon in the White House in late February before meeting in early March with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. There’s Viktor Orbán in Hungary who was paid special attention during the campaign by Trump associates Carter Page and J.D. Gordon. There’s the Austrian Freedom Party that boasted of meeting with Michael Flynn. This excerpt was published on December 20th, 2016:

On Monday, the leaders of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party traveled to Moscow and signed a “working agreement” with Russia’s ruling United Russia party. In announcing the pact, Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache mentioned that he also met with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s designated national security adviser, in Trump Tower a few weeks ago. “Internationally, the Freedom Party continues to gain in influence,” he wrote. Norbert Hofer, the Freedom Party candidate who recently lost his bid for Austria’s presidency, traveled to Moscow with Strache.

The Freedom Party, founded by ex-Nazis in the 1950s, is one of several far-right, anti-immigrant parties gaining popularity throughout Europe. After signing the cooperative agreement, Strache offered to act as “a neutral and reliable intermediary and partner” between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin.

I recently had a commenter at my blog scoff at the idea that Vladimir Putin would want to promote Naziism in Europe after all that Russian suffered from the fascists in the 20th Century. It may seen counterintuitive, but the facts are indisputable. Putin has been buddying up to Europe’s far right, loaning them money, hacking their political opponents, providing clandestine assistance of all kinds, and promoting them quite openly in Russia media. Russia encouraged the Brexit movement in the United Kingdom, and they obviously sided with Trump.

The far right in Europe is uncontroversially working hand in glove with Russian intelligence, so it’s highly relevant that the far right in Europe has increasingly close ties to the far right in the United States. A prime example of this is Frank Gaffney who served as the chief foreign policy adviser to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign and then went on to enthusiastically stump for Trump.

Konstantin Rykov has been a key player in all of this, so when he says that he partnered with Trump beginning back on election night in 2012 and that together they came up with a plan to pay Cambridge Analytica to create “5,000 existing human psychotypes — the ‘ideal image’ of a possible Trump supporter and then  “put this image back on all psychotypes and thus pick up a universal key to anyone and everyone,” I think we ought to take it seriously.

When Rykov made these statements, we didn’t know how Cambridge Analytica had been utilized or how they targeted users on Facebook in key districts in swing states in order to maximize Trump’s support.  In retrospect, what Rykov was saying now makes a lot of sense and fits in with what we know.

Even Fox News recently reported that Cambridge Analytica sought to work with WikiLeaks in obtaining and releasing illegally hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s server. In Rykov’s telling, the initial conspiracy also involved “a pair of hacker groups” (presumably Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear) and a political strategist named Mikhail Kovalev. I can’t find much online about this Mr. Kovalev except a little fragment from a paywalled January Economist article about Moscow power players toasting President Trump’s inauguration: “We hope that Marine Le Pen will win next,” said Mikhail Kovalev, one of the party’s organisers, sporting a Trump-Pence baseball cap.

What it looks like to me is that on November 12th, 2016, Konstantin Rykov posted pretty close to a full confession in Facebook. We’ve spent over a year since then trying to piece together what happened, but there’s a strong sense in which he already told us.

Could he possibly have made such boasts without having any knowledge of what would soon be divulged or discovered about Russian hacking and collusion between Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica or the work that was done by Cambridge Analytica and how it was utilized on social media?

Of course not.  His boasts were rooted in facts and inside knowledge.

Trump is no different from far right European stooges like Viktor Orbán and Nigel Farage. They’re all in league together and we now have a nice roadmap for laying out the entire conspiracy.

[joshuazev]

On laugh tracks:

Here we are in sunny Los Angeles in the heat of the day in late summer.  Cars plug the intersections taking unprotected left turns to get where they need to be on time, the homeless take turns flashing their breasts and their testicles before throwing their thumbs up to hitchhike their next ride, the Dodger fans are happy, the smog hangs over like a semi superficial cloud and La La Land lobbyists are still claiming their false victory.  On every corner of every block there is a podium and on each podium there is a comic doing his latest shtick.  It’s 24/7 here in La La.  Some people are practicing bits, others are doing 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and several others are practicing their specials.  How do they get on the podium you might ask?  Well, the neighborhoods nominate the stand-ups.  With so many people up there at all hours of the day, you would think there was a struggle to get your own spot, but two days ago there was a city wide movement called “Everyone can be a comedian” that has taken the city by storm.  An unwise individual and obsessed fan might try to star search in the Hills or the gated communities thinking that that’s where all the established and famous comedians live, but they would be mistaken.  For one, the homes of every gated community were burned to the ground just one month ago when some of the most savage wild fires southern California had ever seen ravaged some of LA’s most exclusive areas.  if that wasn’t bad enough it’s been several months since there was a city wide closure of LA’s comedy clubs, with the exception of two, but now they are no longer clubs, anyway.  

“The Comedy Store” used to be one of the staples of the LA stand up scene, debuting up and comers and surviving as a popular stomping ground for well known comedians to work on their new acts.  Since it’s closure it has been remade into an actual store with a product that sells itself.  For the past several months “The Comedy Store” has sold everything from ingredients to pills to drugs to mannerisms, some cheap and some sickeningly expensive.  Some memorabilia can be found here, but by and larger there are elements in stock.  For example, a best seller this week has been “Woody Allen self-deprecation.”  Last week it was “Chris Tucker cocaine.”  Last month it was “Dave Chapelle irreverence” and the month before was “imitations by Frank Caliendo.”  None of this has survived without its share of controversy.  When it was found out by the comedians that their gifts were being sold and trivialized there were lawsuits galore.  Eddie Murphy sued in the several of millions because someone has bought his laugh.  That was his property, he said.  Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon issued a joint lawsuit because their accents were being sold.  The Comedy store had already left its imprint in all of their lives but this wasn’t right, they thought collectively.  And another thing.  How were all of these things being obtained?  How were they being manufactured?  Who was accessing their comedy “super powers?”  Was it being created in a lab?  Was it genetically the same?  Synthetic?  Artificial?  There was a story in the news the other day, which reviewed an interaction JB Smoove had had with someone that bought his delivery.  (Despite selling their product, the Comedy Store does allow every comedian access to the emails and phone numbers of the people that had purchased their items).  What JB Smoove saw in person when he went to go see the purchaser doing stand up was both disturbing and liberating.  For one, the delivery this guy had was uncanny.  It was just like his.  Sounded the same.  Got the laughs.  He was liberated however because the smallest iota of it was robotic.  He almost could have sworn he detected a glitch, like the delivery this man bought could have the recipe for almost everything, but at the end of the day it was missing one thing…it wasn’t him.  So despite feeling a little bitter that what was solely his wasn’t solely his anymore, he felt comforted that the important part of it was.

After the backlash started to die down, life carried on as usual.  Yet, the seasoned comedians wondered: Was this spotlight on comedy a good thing?  Should everyone attempt to be a comedian?  There was an over-saturation that LA had never seen before.  Nobody cared about seeing the stars because their performances were seen as old tricks.  It was like one great big open mic except everyone was getting exposure and it was all equal.  Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, Cedric the Entertainer, and Steve Harvey held a meeting with the owners of the new Comedy Store and the city council the other day to discuss the sale of dead comedians, in particular Bernie Mac and Robin Williams.  The Store was selling “Robin Williams stream of consciousness” and “Bernie Mac stage presence” and in the opinions of these friends of the late comedians, this was unfair to their families and to comedians themselves.  When the city council and the Comedy Store agreed that there wasn’t anything wrong about selling their gifts—relating it to the retro sale of Michael Jordan’s sneakers—the comedians all agreed that their was something that needed to be corrected.  This was a breach of the entire comedy world and this could not stand.  So, famous comedians alike started a coalition trying to close the Comedy Store, but they quickly noticed that the fans they loved and appreciated, who had supported their rise and continued during their peak, were now their greatest enemies.  Nobody wanted the factory to shut down because everyone enjoyed being funny and possessing these gifts that they had always dreamt of having.  The well known comedians were getting restless, too.  There main source of income was essentially shut off completely.  Nobody was interested in them.  Nobody was buying their specials and there were no offers for new ones.  They couldn’t even tour anymore because all of their acts had been duplicated and had gone viral in social media.  

The comedians collective had a decision to make and it was a relatively easy one.  They needed to shut down the Comedy store and they needed to put a stop once and for all to “Everyone can be a comedian.”

Disclaimer:  Deus Ex Machina last paragraph.

With a caravan of about 15 cars, each of them packed with comedians (just imagine a van with Martin Lawrence cursing out the impending mission and driving, Jim Carrey sitting passenger doing his manic thing, Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman and Wanda Sykes in the middle and Kevin Hart and Bill Burr backseat driving) they all met in front and parked around the entrance on Sunset Blvd.  With roughly 80 comedians in attendance it was hard to keep their attempt inconspicuous.  Even though it was about 3AM on a Tuesday, they caught the attention of a few passerbys, who didn’t necessarily recognize all of them but were drawn to the large number of people gathered in front of The Comedy Store at this time of night.  Before they knew what hit them, there were pictures surfacing on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.  They knew they didn’t have much time.  With Aziz Ansari leading the way, they spent the next two minutes using two battering rams Katt Williams had provided.  The doors fell with a thud and the comedians flooded the entrance with gasoline and matches.  Several of them were dumbfounded just seeing themselves being sold on the shelves.  They took turns picking up their product with wide eyes and disgust.  Others were stuck in an odd trance looking at the unbelievable amount of TV screens playing their specials.  Finally, they just couldn’t take it anymore.  20 gallons of gasoline poured in the main room.  Matches lit and flicked.  The whoosh of fire.  The comedians ran out of the Comedy Store, which was now completely engulfed in flames.  Louis CK tripped and fell and didn’t make it out.  They took turns chanting “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, we don’t need no water let the motherfucker burn…BURN MOTHAFUCKA!  BURRRRNNNN!”  The Comedy Store was no more.

The next day a text thread was started by Chris Rock, who added Kevin Hart, David Spade, and Adam Sandler, who then added Hassan Minahj, Aziz Ansari, who then added Jamie Foxx, DL Hughley, and George Lopez.  Finally all 80 of the comedians participated were talking to one another and they all noticed one thing that they had never experienced before.  They weren’t funny.  

By removing the Comedy Store they had effectively eliminated the main threat to their comedy, but in so doing…had taken the comedy out of themselves.

The End  

[patriotsnet]

Are Any Other Republicans Running For President

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-any-other-republicans-running-for-president/

Are Any Other Republicans Running For President

Senator Bob Corker Of Tennessee

Like Flake, Corker also has announced he won’t seek re-election. The decision has Tennessee voters speculating the junior senator may be eyeing the Oval Office, according to WTVC.

Corker also has been critical of the president, telling reporters, “The president not been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful,” in August.

In September, after he announced his retirement, Corker was coy about his future plans.

“If there’s an opportunity for me to make a difference in some other way I’m sure that I would look at it,” he said.

Eight Republican 2024 Candidates Speak In Texas Next Week But Not Trump

Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, April 30 – A Republican Party event in Texas next week will hear from eight potential candidates for the party’s presidential nomination in 2024, without former President Donald Trump, a source involved in the planning said on Friday.

The May 7 event at a hotel in Austin is being co-hosted by U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to thank donors who helped fund a voter registration drive and get-out-the-vote efforts in the state.

High-profile Republican politicians who are considering whether to seek the party’s nomination in 2024 are expected to speak to the crowd of about 200 donors.

They include former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and U.S. senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and Rick Scott, the source said.

The event comes as Republicans wrestle with whether to try to move past Trump in the next election cycle or fall in line behind him. Trump told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that he was “100%” considering another run after losing in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump was not invited to Texas, the source said. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was invited but was unable to attend, the source said.

Many Republican insiders doubt Trump will follow through on his musings about running for president in 2024, leaving a void that other party leaders will seek to fill.

Us Ambassador To The United Nations

For more information on Haley’s tenure as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, please visit: Nikki Haley .

President Donald Trump announced Haley as his nominee for U.N. ambassador on November 23, 2016. On January 24, 2017, the voted 96-4 to confirm Haley as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Sens. Bernie Sanders , Chris Coons , Tom Udall , and Martin Heinrich were the only senators to vote against her confirmation.

On October 9, 2018, Haley announced that she would resign from the position at the end of the year to take a break from public service. She formally resigned on December 31, 2018.

Early Presidential Primaries Aren’t Unusual Trump Races Are

It’s not unique to have a presidential race start this early. The difference this time is that so many of the candidates are waiting on an an ex-president who lost his reelection bid.

“It’s not unusual for people to start running for president right after the presidential election,” said John J. Pitney, Jr., a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California.

“The unusual part is Trump,” Pitney said. “The defeated former president possibly going for another try, and still having such a grip on the party.”

More:OnPolitics: It’s official. Trump can run for office in 2024.

Back in 1996, Republicans wanting to run for president did not worry about whether ex-President George H.W. Bush, defeated in 1992, would come out of retirement. Nor were Democrats in 1984 concerned about a comeback from ex-President Jimmy Carter, who had lost his reelection bid four years before.

Trump, however, remains popular with Republicans, despite his election protests that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and were designed to overturn his loss to Biden. The events of Jan. 6 are likely to be an oft-referenced election issue by Democrats in 2022 and 2024.

The Democratic-led U.S. House impeached Trump for inciting a riot, with the support of 10 House Republicans. Senate Democrats were unable to muster the two-thirds vote necessary to convict Trump, though seven Republican senators did vote against the outgoing president.

Trump Remains The Center Of Attention

So much of the Republican Party’s future revolves around Trump and whether he will run again in 2024 – and whether his campaigning for conservative allies in 2022 congressional and state elections will split the party.

The former president is even hosting one of the events at this weekend’s retreat, a Saturday night dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Other retreat activities will take place at the Four Seasons resort hotel, about four miles south of Mar-a-Lago.

More:Exclusive: Defeated and impeached, Trump still commands the loyalty of the GOP’s voters

Trump, who remains popular with Republican voters despite his election loss to President Joe Biden and the chaos that surrounded it, has repeatedly said it is too early to decide whether he will run again in 2024.

But Trump plans to get involved in the the 2022 races, targeting Republicans who supported impeaching him over the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol or otherwise opposed his efforts to overturn the election.

Trump’s endorsements of favored candidates in Republican primaries threaten to split the Republican Party. His 2022 activity also means it could be years before he announces what he will do in 2024, effectively freezing the Republican presidential race.

Still, some Republicans are doing the kinds of things future presidential candidates do, regardless of whether Trump has announced.

In Gop Poll From Hell Republicans Say They Want Donald Trump Jr To Be President In 2024

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A recurring nightmare among millions of Americans is that come 2024, Donald Trump will forget the fact that he actually being president, decide to run again, and win. Seriously, can you think of a more horrifying scenario, except perhaps falling through a sidewalk into a rat-filled chasm, which some people might still prefer? We maintain that you cannot. But an equally terrifying, skin-crawling situation would definitely be to turn on the TV on January 20, 2025, and see Donald Trump Jr. being sworn in as president of the United States, which a number of Republican voters apparently actually want to happen.

The poll, which was conducted between July 6 and 8, did not include Donald Trump Senior, who maintains an inexplicable grip on voters despite the mass-death stuff, an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and a mental state that suggests he should be in a home or studied by a team of Swiss doctors.

And the fact that Don Jr. came out on top is not where the scary news ends. Because apparently if Republicans can’t have Sheep Killer over here, their second-favorite choice is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the man currently responsible for :

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What Is A Voter

The , which took effect January 1, 2011, created “voter-nominated” offices. The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committees, or local offices.

Most of the offices that were previously known as “partisan” are now known as “voter-nominated” offices. Voter-nominated offices are state constitutional offices, state legislative offices, and U.S. congressional offices. The only “partisan offices” now are the offices of U.S. President and county central committee.

How Are Presidential Primary Elections Conducted In California

Qualified political parties in California may hold presidential primaries in one of two ways:

Closed presidential primary – only voters indicating a preference for a party may vote for that party’s presidential nominee.

Modified-closed presidential primary – the party also allows voters who did not state a party preference to vote for that party’s presidential nominee.

If a qualified political party chooses to hold a modified-closed presidential primary, the party must notify the California Secretary of State no later than the 135th day before Election Day.

Voters who registered to vote without stating a political party preference are known as No Party Preference voters. For information on NPP voters voting in a presidential primary election, please see our webpage on No Party Preference Information.

Florida Gov Ron Desantis

DeSantis, 42, has quickly emerged as a Republican rising star. He finished second in the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll in February behind Trump, and some see him as the best positioned heir to the Trump mantle.

If Trump doesn’t run again, “I think he’s the odds-on favorite to be the next president,” Florida Republican Party chair and state Sen. Joe Gruters told NBC News of DeSantis.

DeSantis’ appeal is due in part to his combative relationship with the news media — he regularly spars with journalists, interrupting or pushing back against their questions in a way Trump fans would appreciate — and also because of his handling of the pandemic.

In a recent Wall Street Journal , DeSantis wrote that Florida’s less-restrictive response to COVID-19 bucked faulty intel from “the elites” and the state still ended up with “comparatively low unemployment, and per capita COVID mortality below the national average.” Florida’s COVID-19 death rate per 100,000 people is similar to California and Ohio, and so far, about 33,500 Floridians have died from the virus. New research in the American Journal of Public Health suggests the state is undercounting COVID-19 deaths.

Whos Running For President In 2020

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge President Trump in the 2020 race.

The field of Democratic presidential candidates was historically large, but all others have dropped out. Mr. Trump had also picked up a few Republican challengers, but they have also ended their campaigns.

Running

Has run for president twice .

Is known for his down-to-earth personality and his ability to connect with working-class voters.

His eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president are a major selling point for many Democrats.

Signature issues: Restoring America’s standing on the global stage; adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act; strengthening economic protections for low-income workers in industries like manufacturing and fast food.

Main legislative accomplishment as president: a that chiefly benefited corporations and wealthy investors.

Has focused on undoing the policies of the Obama administration, including on health care, environmental regulation and immigration.

Was impeached by the House of Representatives for seeking to pressure Ukraine to smear his political rivals, but was acquitted by the Senate.

Signature issues: Restricting immigration and building a wall at the Mexican border; renegotiating or canceling international deals on trade, arms control and climate change; withdrawing American troops from overseas.

Ended his second bid for the Democratic nomination in April 2020, after a series of losses to Mr. Biden.

Which Republicans Will Run For President In 2024

There are many well-known possible contenders.

Republicans are waiting to see who wins the upcoming presidential elections and how the  crisis evolves before candidates toss their hats in the ring for the 2024 presidential nomination.

Will presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden wrestle the White House? Will the country see a coronavirus vaccine by January? Will schools reopen in the fall? Above all, does President Trump crash and burn or stage a Truman-style comeback?

“If  Donald Trump wins, we’ll continue to see a lot more of, maybe even more so of, what the Republican party feels they are now. If it happens to be former Vice President Biden winning the White House, then I think we’re going to see the Republican party, sort of, retract and look to see what they need to be moving forward,” Jason Mollica, professor at American University and part of the Fox News Radio launching team, said. “It will have to be a new Republican party … that combines the old form of reaching across the aisle and looking at the new realities of what is ahead.”

If Trump doesn’t win a new term, Mollica and other experts agreed that the party will have to come up with someone who not only embraces Trump’s modern political ideals like abortion revisions and reforming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , but also represents the traditional Republican policies including free trade and gun rights.

GOP politicians considering running in 2024 must also examine the scope of the results. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence

Historically, experience as Veep isn’t a bad launching pad for the presidency. Six former vice presidents went on to become president, including, of course, President Joe Biden, and an additional five won their party’s nomination. For 61-year-old Pence, though, the upside of his time as vice president is more of an open question.

Trump’s 2020 pollster Tony Fabrizio found that if the former president doesn’t run in the 2024 election, his supporters most to Pence, DeSantis and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, so there is plenty of support there. But on Jan. 6, when Pence announced Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, he complicated things.

“He’s got this tricky position,” said Steven Webster, and assistant professor of political science at Indiana University Bloomington. “I think increasingly the base of the Republican Party is aligned with Donald Trump, and Mike Pence is really seen with hostility by Trump’s base, simply for performing his constitutional duty on the 6th.”

Pence appears to be well aware of the predicament. Earlier this month, he published an voicing his concern over supposed voting irregularities in the 2020 election, though he didn’t mention any specifically. Trump’s own administration said the election was “the most secure in American history.”

Pence and his wife, Karen, have three children. Pence is a former conservative radio host who served seven terms in the U.S. House before becoming governor of Indiana.

General Election Candidates On Five Or More Ballots

In addition to Biden, Hawkins, Jorgensen, and Trump, the following candidates have qualified to appear on five or more ballots:

Roque De La Fuente   Gloria La Riva   Jade Simmons   Jesse Ventura/Cynthia McKinney   Sheila Tittle   Kyle Kenley Kopitke   Ricki Sue King/Dayna Chandler  

Incumbents are bolded and underlined The results have been certified.

Total votes: 158,379,904

0 states have not been called.

Former President Donald Trump

The biggest question mark for Republicans is if Trump will run for president in 2024. He hasn’t exactly “frozen” the field, since Republicans are already positioning themselves to run, but perhaps he’s refrigerated it a bit?

“Trump is the 800-pound gorilla,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor. “Trump has got command of the organs of the party and is going to have an enormous amount of resources and name ID and the ability to throw these rallies in the fall of 2022. I think that sets him up very well to being pole position for 2024 if he wants.”

Trump, 74, is currently bettors’ top candidate on PredictIt, an online prediction market, and he’s also led in several early polls, including a February Morning Consult/Politico poll. The poll found 54% of Republican voters would back Trump if the 2024 primary were held today. Those kinds of numbers would mean game over in a primary, but they also suggest many Republicans are eager for a new face.

During a recent podcast interview, Trump said he would make his decision on whether he will run in the 2024 presidential election “sometime later,” and after being asked which Republicans he thought represented the future of the party, he listed off some of the politicians you’ll see later on this list, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.

What Is The Role Of The Electoral College

During the general electionGeneral Election: a final election for a political office with a limited list of candidates., Americans go to their polling place Polling Place: the location in which you cast your vote. to cast their vote for president. But the tally of those votes—the popular vote—does not determine the winner. Instead, presidential elections use the Electoral College. To win the election, a candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes. In the event no candidate receives a majority, the House of Representatives chooses the president and the Senate chooses the vice president.

Trump Challengers: 10 Republicans Who Could Run For President In 2020

Ryan Sit Donald TrumpMike PenceBen SasseBob Corker

President Donald Trump faced down a crowded field of GOP presidential hopefuls in 2016 as a political outsider, but he could see a packed stage of Republican challengers again in 2020—only as an incumbent this time.

Trump made few political friends during his ascent to the White House. He made headlines making fun of his competition, doling out nicknames—”low energy Jeb Bush,” “Little Marco Rubio,” “Lyin’ Ted Cruz”—along the way. The president’s diplomatic dexterity hasn’t noticeably improved much since taking office. Senators Rubio and Cruz have improved their relationship with Trump since his inauguration, but other lawmakers from within his party have emerged as outspoken critics, fueling speculation he may face a stiff presidential primary race in 2020.

Here are 10 Republicans who may challenge Trump:

Republicans That Are Coming For Trump In 2020

While Trump has been a supes entertaining president, a lot of people are saying “I can’t even” to his potential second term. Before Trump was even sworn in as president, he had people considering running against him, but what’s interesting is that that we might even see republicans running for president against him. Both Obama and Dubya Bush didn’t have primary challengers from their own party in re-election years. In fact, their party stood behind them in part because incumbent presidents have a better chance of election, therefore keeping the party in power. Trump is no ordinary politician though, tbh I’m not even sure if he can be considered one at all. So maybe that’s why many members of the GOP have been happy to allude to Republican challengers in 2020. Here’s the list of GOP challengers who may get to say “you’re fired” to the Don in 2020.

Republican Hopefuls Will Need To Lay The Groundwork For Potential Campaigns Of Their Own Without Alienating The President And His Supporters

WASHINGTON—President Trump’s public and private musings about running again in 2024 are scrambling the calculus for the large field of fellow Republicans considering bids.

Most hopefuls have been quick to show deference. But it’s unclear whether Mr. Trump, who refuses to concede his loss to President-elect Joe Biden, will follow through, and rivals either way will likely seek ways to remain viable. Prospective GOP candidates don’t want to risk alienating Mr. Trump’s base by appearing to push him aside, but they also don’t want to be left unprepared if he decides not to run.

“For the last 20 years everyone who has run for president has always started off pretending like they weren’t. You can still do that with the possibility of Trump running again,” said Republican strategist Todd Harris. The 2024 election, he added, “could be the first time loyalty to Trump and political ambition are put on a collision course.”

Mr. Trump—who managed to get more than 74 million votes in his losing effort this year—demonstrated his grip on the party base with Saturday’s rally in Georgia for two senators locked in tight runoff elections. “Four more years, four more years,” a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd chanted. He is raising millions of dollars for a newly formed political committee that can fund future campaign activity.

What Do Party Preferences Mean When Listed With Candidates’ Names On The Ballot What Are The Qualified Political Parties And Abbreviations Of Those Party Names

The term “party preference” is now used in place of the term “party affiliation.” A candidate must indicate his or her preference or lack of preference for a qualified political party. If the candidate has a qualified political party preference that qualified political party will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot. If a candidate does not have a qualified political party preference, “Party Preference: None” will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot.

Similarly, voters who were previously known as “decline-to-state” voters are now known as having “no party preference” or known as “NPP” voters.

Abbreviations for the qualified political parties are:

DEM = Democratic Party

Why Some Senate Democrats Voted Against Raising The Minimum Wage

All Videos

It’s been a while, so the rules are as follows: Four rounds, so between the five of us, 20 potential 2024 Republican nominees, and we’ll be doing a ? snake-style ? draft. And remember, the goal is to pick the actual nominee.

The order is:

And I used to determine the order .

geoffrey.skelley :I get the boring pick.

sarah: It’s so funny to me that everyone thinks there is already an obvious choice for 2024. ?

alex :Don’t steal my pick, Nathaniel!

nrakich :I’m stealing it, Alex!

Related:Ignore What Potential 2024 Presidential Candidates Say. Watch What They Do. Read more. »

sarah: Alright, Geoffrey. You’re up!! What is this obvious pick of yours? 

alex: ?

geoffrey.skelley: The Republican Party is currently the party of one Donald J. Trump. So while we’re still a couple years away from presidential campaign announcements, I think I have to pick the former president. 

It’s too early to go crazy about polls, but Morning Consult found in February that 59 percent of Republicans want Trump to have a major role in the party, and a majority also said they’d support him in a primary against many of the leading GOP alternatives. 

The last time a defeated president ran as a party’s nominee four years later was in 1892, when Democrat Grover Cleveland ran again after losing reelection in 1888. Perhaps we’re due for another comeback. Trump himself is teasing a run, so I’m going to take the idea seriously.

But OK, you’re up, Nathaniel!

sarah: OK, Alex, you’re up!

And Whats The Vibe On This

Honestly, I would love to see Pence face off with Trump and finally tell him how he really feels. I imagine it’d be like when I got blackout at office happy hour and told my annoying coworker that she has the personality of someone who requires people to wear condoms for handjobs. Anyway, Pence is a homophobic skim milk enthusiast, and I don’t want him to be prez, but I do want to see him lose his shit.

Heads up, you need to keep up with the news. It’s not cute anymore. That’s why we’ve created a 5x weekly newsletter called The ‘Sup that will explain all the news of the week in a hilarious af way. Because if we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying. 

Results Of The 2020 Republican Party Presidential Primaries

Republican National Convention

  First place by first-instance vote

  Donald Trump

Below is a detailed tally of the results of the 2020 Republican Party presidential primary elections in the United States. In most U.S. states outside New Hampshire, votes for write-in candidates remain untallied.

Primary elections and can be binding or nonbinding in allocating to the respective state delegations to the Republican National Convention. But the actual election of the delegates can be at a later date. Delegates are elected at conventions, from submitted by the candidates, selected by the party’s state chairman or at committee meetings or elected directly at the party’s caucuses and primaries. Until the delegates are apportioned, the delegate numbers are by nature projections, but it is only in the states with nonbinding caucuses where they are not allocated at the primary or caucus date.

[contextreviews]

Disgovernance and Resistance

Josh Cook on Jesse Ball’s The Curfew

When we read, we read with our memories. Jesse Ball was already an important author in my reading life by the time I read The Curfew, but whereas his earlier books explore more amorphous ideas like our relationship to imagination, the nature of storytelling, and the bounds of reality, The Curfew explores something more direct and tangible. It was like Ball shot an arrow into my memories of political activism and pinned a question that had dominated my thinking for years: how do we intentionally change the world for the better?

The rented yellow school bus was freezing. Frigid February air rushed in through popped interior rivets. I was on my way back to Burlington, VT from New York City where I had joined thousands of people on February 15, 2003 to protest the coming Iraq War. We were supposed to gather in a delineated zone—a cordoned-off area where our Constitutional right to peaceful assembly would not be superseded by the muscular application of local traffic, vagrancy, and other statutes—near the U.N. building where Colin Powell was giving his now infamous speech, but we never got there. Didn't get within five blocks. The streets were clogged with people, and not just in New York. Around the world millions of people were joined in one of the biggest moments of protest in decades all with one clear message: There is no justification for a war with Iraq. We and the people of Iraq will be recovering from that war for decades.

It wasn't my first protest. I'd been to D.C. to protest the exploitative policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. I'd been to the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia to protest United States interference in democratically elected governments. I'd stood with a dozen people at the top of Church St. to protest the war in Afghanistan because “terrorism” is a technique and you can't wage war on a technique. More generally, I wrote a political column in my college's newspaper, participated in the poli sci club, organized events, thought, talked, wrote, and voted.

After I graduated, the nature of my efforts to make the world a better place changed. I didn't have as much time or resources for organizing and protesting. Besides, I had begun to wonder whether our techniques for creating directed, intentional social change towards a more just and humanist society were working. Protests seemed to be more about emotional catharsis (which is not a bad thing) than about changing policy. Any progress seemed to be two steps forward, one and a half steps back.

But we did not stop trying. Social media arrived. The undercurrent of violent racism corroding our law enforcement and devastating the African-American community was finally brought to the attention of (some) white people with #BlackLivesMatter. Occupy Wall Street changed the conversation about income inequality in America and opened up new possibilities for protest and social change, from the flashy occupations, to the quiet but powerful Rolling Jubilee. We watched Republicans start to break our system of government because the nation had the audacity to elect a black man as President—twice!—and we watched that same black man, despite the malicious opposition of Republicans, stitch the economy back together, extract us from unwinnable wars, improve our national health care system, end don't ask don't tell, and lay the executive groundwork for major advances in economic, social, and environmental justice. Later, those on the left, the engine for so much of that change, found another piston in Bernie Sanders. By the Democratic National Convention, the Democratic party had adopted the most progressive platform since the New Deal. I started thinking about how we removed the ability of Republicans to obstruct progress and how to keep pressure on mainstream Democrats to make good on their progressive promises.

The problem of social change—of how to improve the world in the ways you want it to improve—might be intractable, and in the end, those who struggle for change might be left with vague adages like “Don't take anything off the table, do what sustains and energizes you, and try not to hurt anybody else, especially those weaker than you.” I've spent the bulk of my adult intellectual and political life thinking about the problem of social change. On November 9th, the problem changed from the intractability of social change to the necessity of resistance.

Books change with the world in which you read them, and images and ideas from The Curfew that once spoke to protesting for social change, now speak to resistance. William Drysdale, the protagonist of The Curfew, is a violin virtuoso who can no longer play. Instead, he finds work helping people compose epitaphs for their gravestones. An oppressive, coup-installed government has banned all performance, music, and dissent and enforces a vague but deadly nightly curfew. The government's will is imposed by secret police. Dissenters disappear in the night. William himself was left to care for his daughter alone when his wife is disappeared. It is a gray, dour, cowed world, but there is resistance. William's friend, Gerard, entices him to a meeting with the promise of information about William's wife, but the larger purpose of the meeting is to spread “the method of disgovernance.”

It's not a movement. It's barely a group. But it is a revolution.

There is tension at the meeting, an “enforced jocularity,” and some contraband, but there are no posters, no agendas, no manifestos, no mimeograph machines or photocopiers. There are no speeches, no exhortations to action, no exchanges of activist literature. No weapons. If the secret police burst in, they wouldn't find a revolutionary cell, but a tedious party. It's not a movement. It's barely a group. But it is a revolution.

Gerard explains the method of disgovernance to William: “It is simple enough to describe in a phrase or two the whole extent of it. Any member of the government, any member of the police, of the secret police are all targets. You live your life and do nothing out of the ordinary. But if at some moment, you find yourself in a position to harm one of these targets, you do. Then you continue as if nothing happened.”

There is no leader to hobble the movement with hubris. No message to be distorted by the mainstream media. No fashion to be co-opted by corporations. No entry point for lobbyists or FBI infiltrators. No one to pressure into erodible compromise. No legislators. No executives. No proposed legislation to be poisoned by riders and amendments or killed in committee before anyone is forced to expose their true allegiance in a public vote. No one to bribe. No one to corrupt. No one to imprison. No one to kill because you can't kill a technique.

Gerard continues his description: “You never go out of your way to make such an opportunity come to pass. Not even one step out of your way. And yet, without exception, the targets must each day place themselves in danger before the citizenry, and cause such opportunities to exist. One doesn't prepare oneself except mentally.” No plans. No materials. No literature. No manifestos. The method is invisible to power because all power can see are random acts of violence. And once the government recognizes the revolution, who can they attack? Everyone? As Gerard explains, it is a “...war with no participants.” In the end, no matter the salary, no matter the other inducements, no matter the promises of protection and the seduction of ultimate power, no one will join the secret police. Tyrants, even the most cunning and most violent, all have the same fundamental and inescapable weakness: Without volunteers, they are just one person.

Once we are introduced to the method of disgovernance we realize The Curfew is filled with revolution. An old woman is shot for pushing someone in front of a bus, someone is nearly hit by a car, another man is killed by a brick, and “[o]ne could assume, therefore, that if a building was on fire then it might well be a police station.”

By reducing revolution and resistance to a fundamental unit that does not have the flaws, seams, and weaknesses of other techniques for change listed above, the method of disgovernance, a technique of random acts of violence, is compelling. All the revolution needs to sustain itself and succeed is to spread the idea and either people have the will to enact it at a level that is effective or they won't. The burden on revolutionaries is reduced to their individual preparation to act, spreading the method, and convincing people to adopt it. Given the intractability of social change and our new urgency to act, the method of disgovernance or some form of it feels transferable to our world.

In most dystopian fiction, targets are relatively obvious. Whether orcs, stormtroopers, or soldiers, we know who the targets are by their uniforms. But in the world of The Curfew, the government uses secret police: plain-clothed officers disguised to observe unobserved, to inform without being identified, to act with impunity and anonymity. You couldn't spot one in a line-up and you certainly couldn't spot one in a crowded train station.

Gerard answers the problem of identification this way: “You err on the side of false positives. Everyone shifts their behavior to simple routines, and the secret police are forced to become visible, simply to do their work.” The secret police reveal themselves when they arrest people, or are out after curfew without fear, or ask questions whose answers would be useful to the government. Their uniforms are woven by their actions. For Gerard, it is better to risk harming an innocent than wait for absolute certainty, but this is just a technique. Anybody can establish their own rubric and make their own decision. Gerard might err on the side of false positives, but nobody else has to.

In America today, some of the “targets” are public figures, individuals who must put their faces and names on their actions, and, as in the world of The Curfew, our targets clothe themselves in their actions. They become targets when they ask for the names of people who worked on climate change for the Environmental Protection Agency or on women's issues in the State Department. They become targets when they assign executive power over departments to people specifically designed to destroy them, cover up potential crimes and collusion, celebrate in Trump what they condemn in Clinton, line up to catch the scraps of wealth from the coming kleptocracy, and take the moment of Trump's tainted, electoral college victory to spray paint swastikas on public spaces. We are awash in targets. Some of them will have security paid for by our own tax dollars between us and them, but some of them will be on our train or across from us at the dinner table.

But the concept of “harm” is trickier for us. In The Curfew, the secret police shoot people in the street, beat them to death, make them disappear. Since the secret police are murderers, most will accept the ethical validity of a wide range of harm. But, as yet, the violence of the Trumpocracy and the existing sources of injustice it will strengthen and maintain, are at one or two removes. It is unlikely that anyone in the Trumpocracy will order the assassination or jailing of an opponent, swing a club, or pull a trigger. Rather, their body count will come from people who lose access to health care and die of preventable diseases, women who are forced to perform unsafe abortions or carry dangerous pregnancies to term, African-Americans murdered by the police because of the absence of law enforcement reforms, immigrants deported back to lethal situations, people of color killed by mob violence and the Dylan Roots that will take making “America Great Again” into their own gun slathered hands, and, of course, the thousands—or perhaps millions—of people who will die from the effects of climate change. One of the primary motivations for organizing resistance to Trump is to prevent, as much as possible, the harm he can do. But how?              

All works of art seek to establish some kind of applicability, whether it is as direct as we see in The Curfew, or more abstract, esoteric, dialectic, or self-referential. Literature argues for its own relevance. In The Curfew, Ball cultivates a comfort with death and violence before introducing the method of disgovernance, creating in the reader an atypical acceptance of random acts of deadly violence.

The novel opens with a violent and confusing scene, “There was a great deal of shouting and then a shot...An old woman was bleeding hunched over a bench. Two men were standing fifty feet away, one holding a gun. Some ten feet from the bench, a man was lying underneath the wheels of a truck, which seemed to have injured him, perhaps irreparably.” Despite the two dead bodies, this opening passage is disconcertingly passive. There was a “shot” and one man was “holding a gun,” but, in the prose, no one “shoots the old woman.” Furthermore, the other man wasn't “run over by a truck” but is simply “lying beneath the wheels” and he isn't mortally wounded or dead, he just “seemed” to be “injured...perhaps irreparably.” This first scene in the book is one of significant violence, but Ball uses a series of passive constructions to dim that violence, so the bloodshed does not feel as visceral as it should.

After this opening, we shadow William Drysdale on his work day. Violence follows him as he goes from assignment to assignment, including: “I was walking under the bridge on Seventh. There was a shout and she came down, hit not twenty feet in front of me.” Furthermore, as an epitaphorist, every job is an assertion of death. His first stone is for a man who died at 92, his second is for a nine-year-old girl who was beheaded by a slate tile thrown from the roof by the wind (or perhaps by a hand at a different target), and his third is for a butcher's father (a person whose day job is the parceling of corpses). He then meets with the parents and widow of a young man who “died in the night, two weeks ago...—There is no body. The body was taken—a political disappearance by the government. His final assignment for the day is with a fisherman who has chosen to compose his gravestone on what he considers his happiest day. It is the fisherman's third stone. Even the most directly affirmative moment in the book is affirmed by death.

In the world of The Curfew, violence is the fundamental unit of resistance, but the violence in our world is very different, especially when considered in light of likely targets and the persistence (at least at time of writing) of other norms, conventions, checks and balances, and laws that ostensibly prevent acts of violence on both sides of governing conflicts. Furthermore, American resistance, even revolution, has decided on a commitment to nonviolent actions, even when oppressors resort to violence. For a whole range of historic, moral, even practical reasons, causing “harm” does not seem like our fundamental unit of resistance. But, as the characters in The Curfew do, we should find a fundamental unit of resistance for our world and build from there.

Instead of harm, our unit of resistance should be refusal: the fundamental “no.” Our method of disgovernance under Trump could be: “Whenever a representative or surrogate of the Trump administration or the Republican Party it now leads asks you something, you refuse.” Don't perform at or attend his events, or serve in his administration, or vote for any of the policies offered by Republicans, or join him for a photo op. Refuse to let them speak at your college and if the administration invites them anyway refuse to attend. Refuse to let them eat at your restaurant or shop at your store. Refuse to let them hold rallies at your venues.

Part of the value of having a fundamental unit of resistance is that it allows us to, as thoughtfully as possible, respond to people who are comfortable acting thoughtlessly. The barrage of legislation and hearings and executive orders along with the constant stream of scandalous tweets and reports, combine to make it almost impossible to respond with any kind of thought to anything Trump and the Republicans are doing. I'm sure that is, at least in part, a tactic designed to overwhelm opposition and, in part, the hubris of believing without doubt or nuance in your own rightness. But, if our basic unit is refusal, we at least have something we can instantly respond with.

Obviously, those of us who are not members of Congress, business leaders, or celebrities in some field, will have few options for directly refusing the Trump administration, but, that to me is part of the strength of a fundamental unit of resistance. It is simply a base. Just like the characters in The Curfew, we are able to sculpt our own actions to our own circumstances.

Resistance is, in essence, a reaction, and one of the challenges we'll face—especially if one of the chambers of Congress is not flipped in 2018—is discovering and discerning what the fuck we should do on the fly. But even though resistance must always be flexible, must be new when the threat is new, must find ways to both respond and be one step ahead, a base is useful. I suspect, over the next months, as Trump establishes his patterns and as those who have studied resistance more than I begin and continue to lay out theory and ideas, this base will grow in sophistication, but we can start with responding to every request from the Trump administration with “I refuse.”

My desk is cluttered with books, unopened mail, receipts, scraps of paper I've written notes on, notebooks, and coffee mugs. My phone notifies me that I have a text from Daily Action or Planned Parenthood telling me who of my elected officials I should call today and why. From the text messages, Make 5 Calls, Flippable, Swing Left, the people I follow on Twitter, and the dozens of emails I get, I'll decide what small action in the resistance I will take today. Maybe it will be subscribing to one of the newspapers working to expose the corruption and malfeasance of the administration or a donation to one of the organizations mitigating its impact, like the ACLU or MIRA or the Southern Poverty Law Center, or I'll support one of the Democrats running for the House in a special election in some way, or I'll badger friends and family in Maine who are represented in Congress by Republicans to make calls, send emails, and visit offices. It may be taking care of myself with a day off social media and a long walk so I don't burn out. It may be working on this essay.

...the method of disgovernance is a lifestyle. Resistance must be as well.

Hiding behind the idea of “harm,” behind all the violence, perhaps even behind Ball's own lyricism, the method of disgovernance makes another powerful statement about resistance, one I was only able to hear after revisiting these ideas and after six months of thinking of myself as part of the resistance: the method of disgovernance is a lifestyle. Resistance must be as well. The term “lifestyle” can be intimidating, but resistance as a lifestyle doesn't mean giving your life to the resistance. We resist, in part, so we and other people can live around idiosyncratic sources of joy. Consider “reading as a lifestyle,” for example. As readers, we still go to work, have dinner, get drunk, binge watch TV, and fritter away our lives on social media. We still sleep, go out on dates, miss the train, forget our keys, and get a bagel in the afternoon after swearing that salad at lunch was enough. And yet, we make time to read, to visit the bookstore, talk to booksellers, rate books online, research reviews, and maybe even join a book club. We do other things during our day, but no day feels complete if we haven't done at least a little reading.

I don't know if we'll be able to prevent the rise of fascism in the United States and I have even less faith that we will be able to prevent Trump from doing irreparable harm to our world, but we must fight nonetheless. We must turn the world of our experience to the problem of resistance. For me, that world is quite often books, and from The Curfew I've built my fundamental refusal. And no day feels complete if I haven't done at least a little resisting. 

Josh Cook is the author of the Kirkus-starred novel, AN EXAGGERATED MURDER, published by Melville House in March 2015. His fiction and other work has appeared in The Coe Review, Epicenter Magazine, The Owen Wister Review, Barge, Plume Poetry Anthology 2012 and 2013, and elsewhere. He was a finalist in the 2011 and 2012 Cupboard Fiction Contest. His criticism has appeared in the Huffington Post Books, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Fiction Advocate, Bookslut, The Millions, The Rumpus and elsewhere. He is a bookseller with Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA.

The Curfew by Jesse Ball • Vintage Contemporaries, 2011 • 194 pages