Understanding History is the Key to a Better Future.

Posted on by Tim

I am told that there is a proverbial phrase among the Inuit: ‘A long time ago, in the future.’ Let the children see our history and maybe it will help to shape the future.

~Romeo LeBlanc

If you’ve been following my public social media pages on Facebook or my semi-private companion discussion group, over the last decade or so, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been increasingly sharing more and more information from historians. These range from the profanity laced lessons of James Fell to the almost daily deep dives of Professor Heather Cox Richardson to guide us as we discuss our #Culturalinertia and how to change it where necessary.

It is vital to understand our history to understand what we have experienced, overcome, endured, or accepted in order to get to where we are today.

How else can we recognize whether the problems we are facing now are a new trend, a resurgence of an old problem we believed conquered and forgotten, or something so deeply entrenched in the inertia of our culture that we barely even recognize it as a problem anymore unless it directly affects us or someone we care deeply enough about to wake up and take notice.

Today, on NPR’s Fresh Air, host Terry Gross interviewed the leader of one of the best deep-dive investigative journalism teams of this era, Rachel Maddow.

If you can find the time for nothing else this week, please, I implore you, set aside the 43 minutes to listen to this important interview.

The purpose of the interview is a discussion revolving around Ms. Maddow’s 9 part podcast entitled “Ultra.” It is an Apple podcast available on iTunes. The historical story Ms. Maddow weaves together in the series has already had its movie rights optioned by Steven Spielberg.

In the podcast’s 9 episodes, Ms. Maddow explores a period of American history between World War I and World War II. “The all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power. When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to… to cover their tracks.” It documents the history of sitting members of Congress conspiring with a known Nazi agent to implement Hitler’s plot to overthrow the American government before we could enter World War II. Insurrectionists criminally charged with plotting to end American democracy for good. Justice Department prosecutors under crushing political pressure. 

If you do find the time to listen to the whole podcast series, when it is over, it will be impossible not to see all the direct links and parallels of the “America First” efforts of those sitting congress members and their most famous spokesman Charles Lindbergh with the modern “America First” movement and its most famous spokesman Donald Trump.

Whether you listen to the whole series or not, after you listen to the interview, please, I implore you, join me in a resolution for the coming year and then forever after.

Let us resolve to stop using words like “unprecedented” and “unbelievable” for things that have already happened, are still happening, and will keep happening until we put an end to them.

Refuse to allow the normalization of things that must be corrected by dismissing them as one-off anomalies that will self-correct if we just have enough patience and blind-faith trust in the centuries old systems that allow them to keep recurring.

Let us fully embrace the most important tool we have for making a better future, a true deep understanding of the history that has lead to our present.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

~Benjamin Cardozo

It’s All So Simple; Really, But Simple Ain’t Always Easy.

Posted on by Tim

Over the past few weeks a lot of different news has been breaking, and the press and the people responsible for it want us all to view each instance as a separate, isolated, and unrelated occurrence, they are not. We have to put some pieces together to put them all in context with each other. If we do that, Things get pretty clear, and the solutions present themselves.

First, lets review a bit of well documented history, that is undisputed by anyone reputable enough to put forth any dispute of merit.

Several years back, multiple foreign interests saw a celebrity conman as a useful idiot they could put in power to serve their interests. They pursued several methods of doing so, ego stoking, funneling money through the NRA, employing a social media troll farm for influence, using hackers to attack our political party offices and election systems, and more. The son of a Supreme Court Justice Antony Kennedy funneled roughly a billion dollars of their money through Deutsche Bank loans that no legitimate bank officer would approve. And, they were successful beyond their wildest dreams.

Their useful idiot became the President of the United States, despite losing the general election by a considerable margin. He spent the next four years stoking racial hatred and political violence. He filled three seats on the Supreme Court with religious zealot personal loyalists with a combination of multiple ethics complaints and inexperience on the bench. One of those seats belonged to Justice Kennedy, who retired early just so this man could appoint his replacement while the Republican party controlled the approval process. He then went on to become personal responsible for more the deaths of more than half a million Americans by seizing on an opportunity to weaponize a global pandemic he thought would be limited to more urban, liberal areas, and controlled before it could spread. His inner circle of kleptrocrats used that opportunity to make a ton of money in illegal and/or unethical investments as they mishandled the national response and created an economic crises. Eventually, though, their misinformation efforts and anti-science, anti-knowledge campaigns backfired, and the virus started taking an even heavier toll on their own support base as vaccines became available. Then when it became clear he wasn’t going to be re-elected, he attempted to lead a violent overthrow of our Congressional system, and seize power for himself. He failed, but he succeeded in further dividing the country with violence, racism, and bigotry. In the process, the Republican senate made a mockery of not just one, but two impeachment trials to protect him.

Now we have a Supreme Court, one third of which was appointed by a violent insurrectionist, rewriting long established and settled law, starting with abortion rights.

During his tenure, the Republicans in state governments around the country have been passing hundreds of voter suppression laws and laws rolling back civil rights, social services, and more.

Republicans are hoping the compromised Supreme Court will uphold their efforts.

Then, after winning back the Presidency, as well as the House and Senate majorities, Democrats wasted nearly a year before pursing real investigations of those that planned and instigated the insurrection attempt, especially those still serving as Congressional peers. They held off on the trials of insurrectionists and cut deals that allowed them to plead out to non-felony charges to avoid more serious punishment, including the, at least temporary, loss of their own voting rights.

Worse yet, the allowed two of their own Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, to hold the ability to achieve justice and make good on promises of progress hostage for their own personal gain.

The real solutions are simple, and should be bipartisan, if one party wasn’t actively trying to weaponize willful ignorance and hateful bigotry in order to entrench us all in corporate feudalism.

But, simple isn’t always easy.

Here are the things that need to be done now:

Close Ranks and Unify

The Democrat Party leadership needs to steamroll Manchin and Sinema, by taking some lessons of the Republicans to heart.

Schumer and Durbin need to tell them to get in line and do away with the filibuster in order to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For The People Act.

If the two refuse, then Schumer should strip them of all their Committee seats, severely hindering their power to influence legislation in development. They should eliminate all party support for their re-elections and divert it to candidates who will primary them and vote with the party on these vital issues.

Many people think that the threat of doing so will force them to switch parties, but this won’t happen. Neither of them will switch because doing so puts McConnell back in the Majority Leadership seat and eliminates both or their personal gain leverage as they become the 51st or 52nd member of the Republican majority and of no use at all to McConnell in passing or obstructing anything. They are two self centered and self serving to willingly render themselves irrelevant.

Get them in line and pass the bills required to make sure everything else being accomplished right now remains a lasting accomplishment, and not just a brief respite in the eye of the storm.

Fix The Court

Biden assembled nearly 3 dozen experts to form a commission in response to demands from Democrats to restore what they called ideological “balance” on the currently tainted court. They offered him a 300 page research paper that offers no specific recommendations.

So, here are my recommendations for what must be done:

Change the number of Supreme Court Justices is so there is a one to one ratio of Justices to US Appellate Court Districts.

That number is currently 13. Set term limits to be two times the number of judges, so 26 years.

Appoint one new judge every two years to replace the longest serving judge. If a judge dies or retires early, the President would then nominate, with Congressional approval, a temporary replacement to fill the seat until it would have come up in rotation, at which time the temporary nominee could be reconfirmed for their own term or replaced as scheduled.

This would prevent any one administration from being able to hold an imbalanced sway over the court for generations to follow.

Achieve Accountability

Censure and eject all those who participated in the planning and execution of the January 6th insurrection from both the House and Senate, and any governmental/state agency that they are currently working within.

Hold trials for all those who participated in the planning and execution of that insurrection, on the proper felony charges. Expedite the trials.

Disqualify all of them that are currently running for state and federal offices across the nation from ever holding political office again.

There is established legal precedent for all of the above.

Move On

For years now, we have been fighting against a small group of kleptocrats put in power by an adversarial foreign government to undermine democracy, dismantle the US government, and erode our international influence. And they have weaponized uninformed outrage, racism, religious bigotry, and misogyny to accomplish it.

If you take the time to look at all they have done, with that in mind, every single decision they have made over the last several years makes perfect sense.

Only by accomplishing the things outlined above can we begin to address our collective moral injury as a nation and society and begin to heal from the damage they have caused.

This is how we address the ongoing #StochasticTerrorism of the Republican party and begin to course correct our #Culturalinertia.

It’s Been A Busy Week

Posted on by Tim

Four days ago, for a variety of reasons, I posted a farewell message to my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/timsnews) after nine years of dedicating my blood, sweat, and tears to keeping it going well, and doing so with no real compensation.

There were several private personal issues that played into the decision of how I need to allocate my time and effort going forward, but those were all secondary to the fact that at the beginning of 2016, this page was reaching nearly half a million individual users a day.   Now, with nearly twice as many followers as then, it barely reaches 5,000 a week.  This is a direct result of Facebook’s (now Meta’s) algorithms intentionally quashing the voice of progressive and/or humanist advocates.

As a result of all of this, and other changes to how the Facebook user interface works, the page has evolved a few times over the years, going from a place of user engaged discussion and debate of meaningful issues, to me just posting brief commentary on specific news links, and the few people that still engaged doing so simply by clicking a generalized emoticon reaction button instead of processing their thoughts on the issue for a meaningful response.

Since posting that message, quite a few people who have never openly engaged before let me know publicly and privately how much the page has meant to them, that meant a lot.

Also, several extremely major news stories broke each validating much of my efforts here over the last few years.

Trump’s Chief of Staff published a new book exposing that Trump tested positive for COVID 3 days prior to his live debate with Biden in 2020.  Meaning that he was “patient zero” for the Super Spreader event celebrating his appointment of Amy Cohen Barrett to the Supreme Court and several other events that week, all of which he attended unmasked while hugging the guests.  It also shows that his crowding Biden’s personal space during the debate was an intentional and malicious effort attempting to infect Biden.  And every one of his immediate family members and staff, unmasked in the audience, were doing something similar.   After backlash from Trump, the author, said in a news interview that his own book was “Fake News.”

A former ranking member of the DOJ choose to plead the 5th in front of a Congressional committee rather than answer questions that would expose his own criminal involvement in the January 6th insurrection.   This has been handed over to the current AG for Contempt of Congress charges.

Meanwhile a Supreme Court bench sent the signal that it fully intends to strip women of what remaining personal health autonomy they already have, and in the process set the new precedent for states to completely disregard any and all federal laws and regulations they choose.

You might remember Trump in his debate with Hillary Clinton declaring that he would fill the bench with judges that would overturn Roe v. Wade.   And here we are.

Despite the fact that during his confirmation to the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh convinced Sen. Susan Collins that he thought a woman’s right to an abortion was “settled law” calling the court cases affirming it “precedent on precedent” that could not be casually overturned.  And during her own confirmation, Amy Coney Barrett told senators that laws could not be undone simply by personal beliefs, including her own.

In both cases Senators like Susan Collins choose to believe their lies under oath, rather than see the reality of their previous rulings and opinions and op-ed papers, and Trump’s stated intent and confirm them anyway.

As a result, we now have a Supreme Court bench, one third of which, was appointed by a man who attempted to lead a violent overthrow of our government, actively reinterpreting Constitutional law and legal precedent from a fascist White Nationalist perspective.

The legal team Trump assembled to wage his “Stop the Steal” court battles has turned on each other so deeply that they’re publicly exposing each others crimes, and all are now under investigation.  They also lost a major ruling in Michigan as a result of these frivolous lawsuits.   And outlets like Fox News and NewsMax are tearing themselves apart trying to figure out who they’re supposed to support and who they’re supposed to attack.

During this brief four day span, we also learned that the mother of the latest school shooting wrote an open later in 2016 to Trump thanking him for giving her the right to bear arms.  The weapon the boy used was only purchased by the father four days before the methodical and deliberate massacre.   This was a direct result of the incessant #StochasticTerrorism efforts from Trump and his supporters.  The young man is now being charged as an adult with murder and terrorism charges.  His parents are both being charged with involuntary manslaughter as well.

And over the years, each and every one of those things was predicted by the posts on this page, and then discussed again as they were happening in real time.   This, along with your heartfelt responses, further validated my work and effort here and helped me come to a realization.

I started the Facebook page and this blog site for me, they were a place for me to process my thoughts on important and difficult issues, which over the years evolved into an attempt to combat willful ignorance by keeping myself and others informed.   One of the key ways I found to do that was to expose the aspects of our #culturalinertia that were holding us back as a society offering suggestions on how we need to shift them in the proper direction.   At the same time writing about it and informing others became a form of personal therapy to work through my own “Moral Injury.”  If you don’t know what that is, you should.   I strongly believe that we as a collective society are all suffering from this shared PTSD.   Learn more here:  https://www.ptsd.va.gov/…/cooccurring/moral_injury.asp=

So, I realize now, I need to keep doing my writing and sharing it with anyone that I can reach, which means instead of shutting the page down, it is time for it to evolve once again.

I will keep this page open, along with my Twitter page @timelytopics.  Of late, I have been over-posting to Facebook and under-posting to Twitter.  To solve both those issues, instead of posting so many different news articles with their own separate lead in comments, I will be writing a couple cumulative blog entries on this WordPress page https://tims-news.com/ and posting the links to these social media accounts, you can follow on whichever of the three platforms you prefer.

These blog entries will be more similar in structure to the postings I have shared with you recently from Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, and I will allow more of my personal writing voice to be present in my commentary on the issues (as all of my blog posts have done) than my postings here normally have contained.  Expect to find a lot more humor and sarcasm embedded that those of you that don’t know me personally are accustomed to from me.

If you appreciate the work and effort, and are willing to make a donation to cover the expenses of the news subscriptions I use to keep the information here flowing, you can do so at either PayPal: paypal.me/timelytopics or Venmo: timelytopics@gmail.com

Space, The Final Frontier

Posted on by Tim

Space has been in the news quite a bit recently as the world’s richest men vie for control of the future of space travel.

Jeff Bezos already wants to open an office park offering wealthy executives the most expensive business commute in history and an exclusive place to shop for things that have to be shipped up from Earth on the same transports. His ultimate goal is for this “Orbital Reef” business park to replace the International Space Station (ISS).

Elon Musk wants to avoid paying taxes that would be used by the current Presidential administration to improve life here on Earth, especially in the United States, because he wants to use that money instead to “get humanity to Mars and preserve the light of consciousness.”

Major nations that used to control the world’s access to space are already outsourcing their space travel and satellite repair and maintenance needs to the companies run by these men. Just this month Russia announced it will be contracting SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft to transport Russian cosmonauts between Earth and the current ISS until their participation on the station comes to an end. Meanwhile, the companies run by Bezos and Musk are embroiled in legal battle over providing contract services to the United States’ NASA.

Private companies like Verizon are already lining up to pay these companies to place their own communication satellites into orbit, a service that used to be handled by NASA.

All this has been happening, while China has reportedly launched a new satellite that analysts say can be used as a weapon capable of grabbing and crushing they do not control.

Throughout these developments, we have heard remarkably little from former President Trump’s overhyped U.S. Space Force.

Various news sources have been busy reporting on multiple different aspects of all of this, but there remain a few aspects and connections to other news that they all seem to be trying hard to avoid exploring.

The details hidden in those gaps; though, are innately obvious to those who have followed science fiction stories, novels, and movies over the years.

To us, it is not at all surprising that there has been a strong resurgence of dangerous fascist right-wing Nationalism as we are on the verge of both true space travel capabilities and the beginning of true multinational climate disasters.

As contention for dwindling non-renewable resources escalate, control of the territories that still have reserves of such resources will be guaranteed global superiority, if they can successfully defend them.

Later, when the resources have been depleted the only option for survival will be escape.

At that point the nation or corporation that control access to space travel and the ability to create food and water in space will also control the policy, priorities, and governance of any future the human race may have beyond Earth.

Nations and borders on any individual planet are rendered meaningless when commerce and survival become dependent upon space travel, even more so when it extends beyond orbital spaceships to interplanetary or interstellar travel.

While the culmination of this is not likely to come about in my lifetime, it is entirely possible that these issues will reach their critical peaks within the lifetime of my own children.

Georgia demoted McConnell; what comes next?

Posted on by Tim

Joe Biden will begin his presidency with a legislative majority in both the House and Senate for the first two years of his presidency.

Democrats need to take a lesson from the Republicans who have proven themselves wholly unfit to govern, and use that majority to its full effect to put out a full and complete repudiation of McConnell and Trump’s legislative policy.

First priority, after correcting the COVID Vaccination rollout, should be appointing an Attorney General who will investigate and prosecute the crimes committed by the Trump administration.

Second priority should be addressing their assault on the judicial branch of government through impeachment, where possible, of his appointments and by adding seats to the Supreme Court bench to eliminate the Republican majority and the power of the three Trump appointed Justices.

While all that is happening, rebuilding the CDC, reconnecting with the WHO and UN, treating white supremacy militias as domestic terrorism cells, releasing the caged immigrants and returning their abducted kids back to them, rejoining the Paris Accords, police reform, and ending funding to the border wall should all be taken care of.

Improving the ACA and working toward a single payer health care system needs to begin. 

A national minimum wage that provides a living wage, tied to inflation rates needs to be established.

And, the government needs to make a massive commitment to national infrastructure including job training and placement programs to create and fill the jobs necessary, not just to repair and maintain the current infrastructure, but to also upgrade it for the future.

Biden may not be the progressive I wanted, but he is an improvement over Trump, he will assemble a competent cabinet and empower them to lead without heavy handed micromanagement, and he will sign the bills put in front of him by a Democrat majority congress.

This means he will be as progressive as the Congress we, as voters, give him.

So, while we expect him to get to work on repairing the damage of the McConnell/Trump era, we need to get to work on the 2022 midterm elections to provide him an even stronger congressional support system to write the policies and create the budgets we want signed by the President.

The incredible work to drive record breaking voter registration and turnout to defeat Trump and flip the Senate was just the first step, not the end game. Don’t sacrifice the momentum. This is our opportunity to truly start checking and correcting our #Culturalinertia.

A Field Guide to Changing the #Culturalinertia – Part 1

Posted on by Tim

This is not about the candidates for President this election cycle, but the people voting in the election.

Over the years, this blog, and the accompanying Facebook discussion page, have contained an ongoing theme of identifying and discussing ways to address the aspects of our culture we cling to consciously or subconsciously to hold us back. We have been calling this our Cultural Inertia.

An evaluation of the current election results so far has proven to me that I need to approach discussing our #Culturalinertia a bit differently. Over the next several months, I will be posting an ongoing, and cumulative guide on how we need to start dealing with this. Each post will give us the next step to begin working on to make dramatic overall shifts.

As of the time of this writing, 68.6 million people, and counting, have voted for at least four more years of malevolent incompetence, lies, criminality, fascism, racism, sexism, religious bigotry, and weaponization of faux (and real) Christianity through legislation. That’s over 5.5 million more than voted for Trump in 2016.

We can’t not have a serious talk about this.

We cannot truly have freedom in a multicultural society while any of these people remain in positions of power and influence over the lives of others and adhere to these belief systems. Whether that power and influence comes from the office of the presidency, elected or appointed members of government, judges, doctors, nurses, police, first responders, loan approval officers, Neighborhood Watch groups, Home Owners’ Associations, or anywhere else is irrelevant. What matters is that the power to oppress must be removed from the people that would take advantage of it.

Which brings us to:

Step 1

Stop watching what’s happening and passively saying and thinking that “This isn’t America” or “This isn’t my America.”

Because this is America.

This is the America we have always had.

Trump didn’t change the hearts and minds of half of American voters. He simply gave them permission to be open about it to others.

Some still cannot bring themselves to openly admit their believes, so they lied to the poll takers, and their friends, and their family and said they would vote against him. Then they went in the voting centers and pulled the levers, punched the tickets, placed their mark, and pressed the buttons to select his name on the ballot anyway.

As Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station recently stated:

This is the America people of color have been telling us we were part of since its founding.

What Trump has done for the rest of us is remove the blinders so we can no longer pretend we don’t see it happening all around us.

We now know we have neighbors and family members who are among those who adhere to these abhorrent ideologies.

So, what can you do about it?

Start telling yourself, “This isn’t the America I want in the future,” and start actively working to change it by aggressively standing up and calling it out every single time you see it.

No matter who is doing it.

Be Bold. Be relentless. Be uncompromising.

Do not back down.

Do it online and offline, in public and in private.

Don’t fall into the trap of maintaining negative peace. Don’t avoid the necessary conflict to resolve a problem at the expense of allowing the problem to fester, spread, and worsen.

Do not agree to disagree on matters of human and civil rights.

Do not accept that we are all entitled to our opinions when challenging an opinion that is harmful or detrimental to others.

“Get in good trouble.” ~U.S. Rep. John Lewis

Focus on that step for a while, and then I’ll give you Step 2.

A Deep Dive Into the Numbers

Posted on by Tim

My nephew, who turns 16 this year, is a math wiz, and loves statistical analysis, he has also taken a strong interest in modern politics.

Last week he took on the task to analyze polls and historical data to predict how the electoral college plays out. This is his work…

DC, Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Maryland, California, New York, Rhode Island, Delaware, Washington, Connecticut, Maine’s 1st District, New Jersey, Oregon, and Illinois are very safe for Biden, with current polling averages by FiveThirtyEight showing him up 15 points or more. These states combined are 183 electoral votes.

On the other hand, Nebraska’s 3rd District, Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Idaho, North Dakota, Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Dakota are very safe for Trump, with current polling averages by FiveThirtyEight showing him up 15 points or more. These states combined are 63 electoral votes.

Likely Biden States:

New Mexico and Colorado haven’t always been blue, but these last 3 presidential elections they certainly have. With some positive polling for Biden in these states this election, it seems very unlikely that these states go to Trump.

Virginia is a red state, right? Wrong. Much like New Mexico and Colorado, Virginia has gone blue the last 3 presidential elections. While in 2016 Clinton’s vice president pick Kaine was from Virginia, it is hard to truly know how much of an effect that had. Whatever the case was, Virginia is polling strong for Biden this year.

Maine has voted Democrat for the last 7 presidential elections, and doesn’t seem to be stopping this year, with Biden having an apprixmately 14 point lead over Trump in the polling averages.

New Hampshire seems relatively solidly in Biden’s favor, even with it having been considered a swing state in the past, and being relatively close last year.

Minnesota went to Clinton last election, and this election it doesn’t seem likely that that story will be different. Biden leads Trump by over 9 points in this state, and with Clinton having won this state in 2016, it seems very likely Biden will keep this state.

Michigan and Wisconsin are part of a group of 3 key states that will likely help decide the election, along with Pennsylvania. In this prediction, they will be called the rust belt. Michigan and Wisconsin certainly are the most blue of the rust belt, and were extremely close states (especially Michigan) in the 2016 election, even though they had gone to Trump in the end. This year, Biden has an 8 point lead in these states, which makes it seem likely Biden will win these states.

Likely Trump States:

Nebraska has voted red for many years, and is unlikely to change this year. This state would likely be safe if it weren’t for FiveThirtyEight showing Trump up by only a bit under 10 points.

Tennessee is likely to go to Trump, as Trump has a solid lead of just under 13 points.

In Utah, Trump is ahead by under 11 points. As with many of the other red states in the likely column, this state has been solidly Republican for many elections.

Nebraska’s 1st district does not have a lot of info around it. However, there is one poll listed on FiveThiryEight showing Trump up 2 points. However, last election Republicans won Nebraska’s 1st district by over 20 points. Therefore, this district will be considered likely in this prediction.

Kansas is also a reliable vote for Republicans, having voted for them in the last 13 presidential elections. While it doesn’t seem likely it will flip, it is up only just over 10 points for the Republicans.

Indiana mostly votes red, although they did vote blue in 2008. Granted, Republicans did win Indiana by a bit under 20 points in 2016. Either way, Trump is up nearly 10 points over Biden in Indiana.

Even with the Republicans winning Missouri by almost 20 points in 2016, the polls show it surprisingly close in comparison at an approximately 7 point lead for Trump.

Montana is a surprising case, having the Republicans win by over 20 points in 2016, to leading in the polls by just under 5 points, and it’s been narrowing up recently.

South Carolina, unlike their neighbor to the north (more on that later), is still likely to go red this election, with Trump up around 7.5 points.

Alaska is an interesting case, as this is one of Trump’s best times in the polls over the last few months, with a bit under an 8 point lead. Yes, a nearly 8 point lead is good compared to the rest of Trump’s polls this year in Alaska, the state that went to Trump by over 25 points in 2016.

It is amazing to see many of these likely Republican states not safe. It really goes to show Biden’s power this election. States like Alaska or Nebraska shouldn’t be this close, but they are.

Lean Biden States:

Pennsylvania is the other state in the rust belt. This state is considered by many to be the key state, and is shown to be the most likely tipping point state by FiveThirtyEight. This is good news for Biden, as he is ahead nearly 5 points in Pennsylvania polling.

Nevada was a swing state that went to Clinton last election, and this election seems fairly favorable for Biden, with nearly a 5 point lead over Trump.

Arizona has actually become more blue over the years, with only an approximately 3.5 point victory for Trump in 2016, whereas it was much larger for Republicans in 2012 and 2008. This year, Biden is actually polling ahead of Trump in Arizona, with a lead of nearly 3 points. This state seems like it will go to the Democrats, but it could go either way.

Ah yes, Florida, home of close elections. Trump won it by just over a point in 2016, Obama won it by just under a point in 2012, Obama won it by just under 3 points in 2008, Bush won it by 5 points in 2004, and let’s not discuss the 2000 election. In general, Florida tends to be a close state, and it seems like it will continue that tradition this year. Currently, Biden is leading by around 2 points in the polls in Florida. With Florida’s history, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it go either way, but for the moment it seems to be going to Biden.

North Carolina is another one of those states that have classically tended to be Republican, but now seem to be Democrat. Admittedly, North Carolina did go to Obama in 2008, although barely. This year, Biden has almost a 2 point advantage over Trump according to polling. This still isn’t enough to overcome the polling error from 2016, but this year isn’t 2016.

Georgia has swung back and forth in the polls this election, but currently Biden, surprisingly enough, is ahead over a point in polling data. In the last few elections, Democrats have lost by about 5 or more points in Georgia, so it is impressive to see Biden ahead this year.

Biden seems ahead in Maine’s 2nd district (he has a 3.2 point lead), but due to less polls it’s harder to say for certain. What can be said for certain is that in 2016 Trump won by nearly 10 points, while in 2012 Obama won by over 8 points.

In Nebraska’s 2nd District, it also seems like Biden will win, with a 4.5 point lead.

Lean Trump States:

While Texas has been going more and more blue over the last few years, it seems unlikely that this election is the year that it fully goes blue. Trump has an admittedly low 1 point lead over Biden, but it still seems likely it will go Republican. Given current trends, maybe next presidential election will be the one where we see Texas go blue.

Tilt Trump States:

Ohio’s prediction is honestly tragic. For the last 14 presidential elections, Ohio has voted for the winner of the election. However, this year, it seems to have shifted too far to the right. Currently Trump is ahead 0.8 points in the polls in Ohio, although in general it seems like Biden will win the election, which would break Ohio’s streak. We will see though, as it is a close race in Ohio.

Iowa has been the weirdest state to watch during the making of this prediction. It has been fluctuating back and forth between the 2 candidates for the last month. It has settled to be Biden territory for most of October, but now it has jumped up into being a Trump state. This state is really hard to call either direction, but as Election Day is just around the corner, and Trump has a lead of 1.6 points, it seems it will go to Trump. That being said, early voting was occurring while Biden was in the lead in the polls, so it could swing to Biden. It seems likely this will be the closest state of them all.

And that has been every state! Based on this prediction, here are the predicted results: Biden 351, Trump 187. However, as this prediction does list states based on their likelihood to go to each candidate, included below is what would happen if certain levels of change from the prediction would happen.

To clarify, the wave scenarios outlined below are based on what would happen if various levels of change in the prediction happened, with a blue wave meaning Democrats win tilt Republican states, a blue tsunami meaning Democrats win lean Republican states, and a blue blow-out meaning Democrats win likely Republican states. This also goes for the red waves, but in the favor of the Republicans. This is why the red wave has no change, as there are no tilt Democrat states in this prediction.

Blue Blow-Out: Biden 475, Trump 63


Blue Tsunami: Biden 413, Trump 125


Blue Wave: Biden 375, Trump 163


Standard Prediction: Biden 351, Trump 187


Red Wave: Biden 351, Trump 187


Red Tsunami: Biden 252, Trump 286


Red Blow-Out: Biden 183, Trump 355

Some of the sources:


FiveThirtyEight Forecast: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/


FiveThirtyEight Polls: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/


FiveThirtyEight 2016 Data: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/


Historical Results:

https://www.270towin.com/historical-presidential-elections/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election#

(and various other Wikipedia articles)

If you wish to see a map form of this prediction, go to this link:

https://www.yapms.com/app/?m=4frs

Looking To The Future Through A Hindsight Filter

Posted on by Tim

We are now in our 8th month of dealing with COVID-19 in the US and the 11th month since China first began publicly acknowledging their outbreak and taking large scale preventative measures.

While we don’t, yet, have a cure or reliable vaccine ready for mass distribution, we do have a pretty clear understanding of the science outlining how we can minimize its infectious spread.

This along with the material leaked by various congressional and White House staff members (current and former), the rhetoric and sources being disproved by those leaks, and the physical confessions of criminal intent Woodward suppressed for half a year offer us the wisdom of hindsight.

What is clear to anyone looking at the whole picture is that Republican politicians bet big on the hope that refusing to allow the proper steps to be taken in time would kill off a massive segment of the already elderly, infirm, impoverished, and marginalized minority community members in a natural biological warfare eugenics scheme before it could reach their cloistered and fortified ranks.

They weaponized the willful ignorance of their racist supporters to hasten the process and used #StochasticTerrorism to whip them into a frenzy.

They did this while accelerating their long term efforts to strip access to health care away from the millions they want to eliminate.

They even managed to fabricate an economic crisis that escalated the risk to those lower income workers in societally essential, but underappreciated and underpaid jobs. Making them choose a death by pandemic illness or homelessness due to loss of income.  And they created an imbalanced stimulus package to benefit the employers and companies that were abandoning their workers by the 10s of thousands.

All to eliminate a huge segment of their opposition voting base and protect their dying grasp on the levers of power in our nation.

Horrifically, they were largely successful. A quarter of a million Americans died, millions more fell ill – many permanently, and tens of millions dropped further into poverty and face homelessness in their near future.

But they weren’t successful enough. The people were galvanized instead of broken. We began using social media to organize large scale resistance and defeat the propaganda spin. They prepared en masse to reclaim democracy.

This increased resistance threatening the decades of work the Republicans spent gerrymandering and redlining districts and suppressing votes by every legal and illegal means possible, forced them to take larger, faster, more obvious steps toward establishing a fascist kleptocracy under the influence and control of an adversarial foreign power.

If they had managed to kill more, and crush the resistive spirit of enough of the rest of us, faster, they would have immediately adopted the necessary protocols to stop the spread of the disease to save themselves.

But, we persevered for too long, and the illness reached them before they could secure victory over their own citizenry and constituents. Now it is too late to admit their intent openly without their own violent supporters being forced to realize how they were being used and being disregarded and discarded along with everyone else in the process.

So they have to maintain the lie at any and all costs, even as they begin to suffer the same detrimental health effects and possible deaths within their own gilded halls sequestered from the masses.

And that is where we are now.

The only way we begin to recover is to sweep everyone who has supported, protected, enabled, and emboldened this presidential administration from every level of our federal, state, and local governments.

Then we can work on passing some new laws, abolishing some old ones, and begin correcting the course of our #Culturalinertia. It will be generations before we are done, especially if Trump and McConnell secure a 6-3 imbalance on the Supreme Court.

We will never complete the journey unless we decide right now to take every possible step necessary to begin it.

The first step is making sure your ballot is properly submitted between now and November 3rd.

No Excuses

Posted on by Tim

It is imperative that, this November, you remember that the first reported case of COVID-19 occurred in China in mid-November of 2019. A few months prior the Trump administration had terminated the position of the CDC doctor embedded with China’s version of the CDC to provide us with an early warning of any outbreaks there. This was after disbanding all of the people and protocols that President Obama had put in place to deal with such pandemic outbreaks during the early states of the Ebola epidemic. It was also after cutting funding to the CDC and diverting much of it’s remaining funding toward an idiotic border wall.

U.S. Intelligence officials were aware of the outbreak in China and began briefing Trump in December of last year, but he; himself, admits that he doesn’t give credence to their agencies nor does he read all of their briefing reports.

You can be sure that when Trump was briefed, so were the House and Senate intelligence, foreign affairs, and commerce committees. Yet the Republicans on those committees continued repeating Trump’s lies and dismissals to conservative media audiences.

In January, major American retailers began taking note of the situations developing with their supply chains in China. H.E.B, one of our nation’s leading grocery chains, began preparing then for what they expected to become a national shelter in place order similar to the regional quarantines already starting in Wuhan and other regions of China at that time.

The first case of COVID-19 was reported in the U.S. on January 20, of this year.

Still our government would do nothing.

Trump would spend the following two months downplaying it and decrying it as a hoax and partisan diversion instead of handling it.

As Americans continue to suffer and die due to this illness, and others experience loss of income and economic devestation due to our delays in responding appropriately as well as the malevolent incompetence of our presidential administration, Trump is playing games with their lives, demanding fealty from opposition party governors before helping the citizens of the nation as a whole.

First he told them to get their own medical supplies, then he outbid them for those same supplies with federal funds so he could control which states could and could not get them based on whether their governors openly support or oppose his politics and policies.

Now it is March 29th, and this is where we are at:

Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The fact that New York is home to nearly half of the United States’ reported COVID-19 infections is not so much an indication of them as a “hot spot” of illness but of testing.

Realtime states at: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

With that lack of testing across the rest of the nation, the U.S. is still averaging 374 infections per million people of population and 7 deaths per million. And those are just with the cases we have tested and reported.

The respective global averages are 86.9 and 4.1.

We are nearly double the global average death rate and quadruple the global average infection rate based on available testing data.

Realtime stats at: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

That is a failure of both a populace that refuses to comply for the common good and a for profit health care system.

Dealing with it doesn’t have to tank our national economy, that is a failure of a system we have accepted despite being based on feudal lords and Robber Barons.

This pandemic, and our response (or lack thereof) to it, is trying to teach us some important #Culturalinertia lessons.

Will we be willing to learn them and change direction as we come out of the stall, or will we just start ourselves right back down the same path, racing blindly and unprepared toward the next preventable crisis?

As a start, if you are still alive in November of this year, you better damn well find a way to vote. Not just for the office of president, but for every position at every level of government. Everyone involved in protecting, enabling, or participating in this malevolent incompetence must be removed from any positions of power over the lives of the rest of us.

The Trump/DeVos Illusion of Choice

Posted on by Tim
There was a moment in Trump’s 2020 State of the Union that specifically deeply bothered me as a parent concerned for the future of our nation.
I have until this point refrained from discussing it because I wanted to fully evaluate and organize my thoughts on the situation prior to putting them forth here.

sotu
With the additional information presented in this article I have the final piece I need to give you a more informed explanation of why I took issue with it.
“Janiyah and Stephanie are in the gallery this evening,” Trump said. “But there is more to their story. Janiyah, I am pleased to inform you that your long wait is over. I can proudly announce tonight that an Opportunity Scholarship has become available, it is going to you, and you will soon be heading to the school of your choice.”
During the speech Trump used the moment to create the optics of granting a young girl of color an educational scholarship with the pretense of proving he is not racist and that the government is helping people of color, just prior to giving one of our nations most infamous and politically influential racists the Medal of Freedom.
We now know; however, that it truly was just manufactured optics and not anything to actually benefit this young woman or anyone else. That was the final piece I was missing.
Trump stood there as part of his state of the union attacking the public school system which he called “Government schools.” Instead of putting five billion dollars into the federal funding of those schools, the quality of which the government is directly responsible, he announced that they would put that money toward selectively helping certain kids opt out of the public school system for privatized schools.
They are not going to help this young girl get a quality education nor are they intending to use the selective government funding (created to undermine the governmental educational system) to pay for what they did offer her.
Instead the Secretary of Education is going to personally pay for a single year of her education after which she and her family will have to find a way to continue paying on their own or she will have to return to those underfunded “government schools.” All this, while funneling a significant portion of that aforementioned five billion dollar government program into the private school system in which DeVos is personally, privately invested.

charter
Source: New York Times

Trump and DeVos are not offering a choice of education. They are taking direct steps to continue under-funding and devaluing public school education in order to pilfer the government funds they created under the pretense of offering a choice. In order to do so they are putting their racism on open display by using a false display of helping a youth of color with the intent of discarding her once her usefulness has been served. The end result is creating an educational system where all funding and quality is out of the reach of the masses and available only to those with the money and resources to buy their way in and the favored few they personally select to elevate and separate from the rest. They are making every effort to keep the rest of those masses they consider undesirable and unworthy under-educated so they won’t have the ability to develop the resources needed to rise up, resist, demand and force change.