Strategy for the MidTerms/Voting Techniques

Before we get into this discussion brothas and sistas, I forgot to mention a few things in my “Stop Talking about Russia” piece. That piece is here if you want to read the first 4 arguments I make. Here’s the last two.

5. “Mitt, the 1980’s called, and they want their foreign policy back.”

Obama, Hillary, and every Democrat that appeared on TV during the 2011/2012 election season told Mitt Romney that the 80’s wanted their foreign policy back, because he said that Russia was our number 1 geopolitical enemy. They LITERALLY laughed at him, in his face for thinking the Cold War was still going on. My how times have changed.

6. The DNC refused to let the FBI look at their servers that were “hacked” by Russia. 

Remember in my other piece where I said it was most likely a leak and not a hack? Well the FBI wanted to investigate to, you know, see if Hillary and her squad was lying or not. Especially since Julian Assange, who has never been discredited, says it wasn’t Russia. But for whatever reason, the CIA and FBI, were denied requests to have a look-see. Seems kinda crazy.

So, now that I’ve got that out the way, let’s discuss a winning strategy so we can get this reckless, insane bigot out of the white house along with his #GangGang of senators and congress people. 

1. Voting for progressives who don’t take corporate or PAC money.

2. Voting for Green Party Candidates/3rd Party Candidates 

3. Early voting

If we do those 3 things, we can take back over. It’s all about hitting the streets and exercising our rights. Make sure your candidate of choice takes NO corporate or PAC money. If they do, they are automatically disqualified, because we know as a matter of FACT that politicians who take big money ALWAYS do the bidding of those donors rather than the citizens they represent. Green party candidates and 3rd Party candidates represent progressive ideas, and can win on the local scene which strengthens their ability to run in national campaigns later on. The biggest one of these I’d say is early voting, mail-in ballots, etc. Everyone knows the voting times are outrageous and inconvenient as F. So, as I am doing this year, I will use my mail-in ballot to cast my votes. Do some research and figure out what your best option is, and get to it. The country and the world LITERALLY depends on it.

If Democrats Want to Win Elections

If any elected Democrats are reading this, I have one bit of advice for you if you plan to win these mid-terms and the next Presidential race in 2020. It’s going to sound crazy, but hear me out. 

STOP FOCUSING ON RUSSIA.

There are several reasons why this strategy is failing and less than 1% of the American public even care about this.  I’m gonna list all of the reasons below. 

Also, if you watch CNN, MSNBC, The Young Turks, David Pakman, or Sam Sedar, then prepare to have your mind blown as I debunk all this Russia nonsense.

1. Hillary Clinton’s Biggest Flaw was Her Ties to Russia

Sounds far-fetched? It’s not. You can read this very informative Washington Post article for full details, but the gist of it is this. The Clinton Foundation took a $150,000,000 bribe….excuse me, I mean “donation” from the Kremlin, Bill Clinton received over $500,000 into his personal account, also from the Kremlin, and then relatively soon after the Russian government was granted 20% of ALL uranium production out of the United States. You can probably see why that looks shady.

Also, just a quick side note, remember all that hoopla about Jill Stein being a “Russian puppet” because she was shown in a picture sitting at a table with Puti Pie? How about these?

  

Now, to a rational person, these are just pictures from various meetings. But if we’re gonna keep the same energy, then being in a picture with someone means you are somehow participating in a nefarious scheme with them. You see why this is a bad argument? Let’s move on.

2. Democrats are blaming Trump for the exact same thing Hillary did.

Remember the whole “Trump colluded with Russia by trying to set up a meeting between his son and a Russian lawyer to get dirt on Hillary” thing? Yeah, here’s the issue with that. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been exposed with ACTUAL evidence of doing the same. Paying someone from Ukraine to get dirt on Tiny Hands, who attempted to gain said dirt from the Kremlin to give to Hillary….sounds kinda like what they are blaming the Moron in Chief with doing. Weird right? 

3. Trump has done ZERO policies to help Russia.

Remember the whole “Rex Tillerson is only there because he worked for Exxon and Trump is going to allow him to pursue this deal despite President Obama placing 
sanctions on Russia” thing? Yea…Trump blocked it too. You know how Syria is one of 
Russia’s top allies and we keep bombing the F out of them? Or what about that one time that a US Navy plane and a Russian fighter jet were literally 5 feet away from each other on the RUSSIAN BORDER? None of that sounds like “collusion” to me, rather it sounds like we’re about to be in World War 3 if we don’t chill out. 

4. John Podesta’s e-mails were not a result of a “hack”, rather a leak from inside the DNC

So as the theory goes, Russia somehow hacked into the DNC server, stole thousands of emails and gave them to WikiLeaks in order to help Donald “There’s No Problems Down There Believe Me” Trump win. However, there’s a giant issue with that line of thought. According to this article from The The Nation the rate of speed in which the data was transferred from the server was too fast for anyone to be able to hack it. Also, the timestamp proves that it had to have been done on the east coast of the United States and could not have happened anywhere else. So unless Russia had a mole inside the DNC, this was in all likelihood a disgruntled DNC employee who saw the corruption first hand and decided to blow the whistle like Too $hort. 

5. Every story that gets retracted about Russia/Trump collusion is always proven FALSE.

There have been so many “AHA, WE GOT HIM!” moments, where the story gets broken in such a matter of fact way, only to be retracted later. Here’s a whole list. It’s strange how the story never goes in the other direction. There’s never a “Well it looks like there was no collusion with Russia” article that gets retracted and replaced with a story where there is more evidence in favor of Putin and Trump being BFF’s. It literally ALWAYS goes in the “We proved it!” to “Looks like we need to pull this story, we were wrong” direction.

In conclusion, Democrats need to talk about Medicare for All, Tuition free college/universities, legalizing marijuana, reforming prisons and police departments, raising taxes on corporations and the richest people in the country, reasonable gun legislation, renewable technology, a jobs program, stopping the wars….you know, everything that ISN’T related to Russia. If you keep focusing on Russia and ignoring the real issues, prepare for another 4 years of Trump.

The Ideal President of the USA

If I had the power to create a robot who could somehow run for President of the United States, I would program that robot with 3 particular President’s ideologies to create the closest thing to a “good” president we have ever seen. 

Those 3 individuals are Franklin Roosevelt (FDR from here on out), Jimmy Carter, and Bernie Sanders (I know he was never President, I’m talking strictly ideology here.)

Let’s start with the first person named. And just to get the obvious out of the way, yes minorities were still heavily discriminated against in the eyes of the law during his tenure as President. I’m speaking on this as if it were implemented in modern context, which includes all of the anti-discrimination policies that are in place now. 

With that being said, FDR got Glass-Steagall passed, important regulations that controlled the types of investments banks could make using OUR money, created the Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs for unemployed people, signed the Social Security Act, which created social security benefits, unemployment benefits, and more. He raised taxes on the highest earners in the country, as high as 94% on all income after the $200,000 cap (which in 2012 was the equivalent of about $2.5 Million, so probably higher today in 2018), and brought us into what is known as “The Golden Age of Economic Expansion”. All of these policies were implemented after the Great Depression in order to save America from imploding. You’d think after The Great Recession, we would implement similar policies in order to save those of us who never recovered from the giant crash of 2008.  But for some reason, those policies that saved our country and our industries are viewed as “extreme” or “radical” today. Isn’t that weird (Jimmy Dore voice)?

Let’s move on to someone who most people actually don’t consider to be that great of a President, Jimmy Carter. Now I’m slightly biased in his favor, due to the fact my Great Aunt Bernadine Denning worked for his administration in the Department of Education, so I want to be upfront about that. 

HOWEVER…

It does not negate the fact that his foreign policy is almost unheard of in today’s political climate, where we began two full scale wars in 2001 and 2003 that we ARE STILL INVOLVED IN IN 2018, and our democratic savior Barack Obama dropped more bombs than a Funk Flex tape; expanding that number to 8 (Trump added another country just for good measure, bringing us to a total of 9). Jimmy Carter did the unthinkable and dropped ZERO bombs the entire 4 years he was in office. He also continued to ease tensions with the Soviet Union (completely the opposite of today’s climate where EVERYONE and they momma is saying Russia is responsible for everything bad), and even when the Soviet’s invaded Afghanistan and tensions rose once again, Carter never took military action. He imposed sanctions, announced a boycott of the Soviet hosted Olympics, but never sent troops to the border, like we see today.

Oh yeah, he also orchestrated peace talks between the Egyptian Arabs and the Israeli’s in 1979, granted refuge to 125,000 Cubans who fled the Fidel Castro led dictatorship, and signed a peace treaty with Panama in 1978. 

Lastly, we gotta bring up the Brooklyn homie Bernie Sanders. His social policy is basically the ideal thought process of all Americans. It’s basically, “Don’t hate anybody unless they specifically give you a reason to.” So, bigotry in all forms is basically what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a guy who got locked up for protesting alongside Martin Luther the King (shout out Coming to America), was fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in the early 90’s when NOBODY was (I see you Hillary Clinton), and is one of very few members of Congress who is speaking about legalizing marijuana, reform prisons/police, ending the ILLEGAL offensive wars we are engaged in, and more. Literally all of his social policy positions would make life better for all Americans, not just Christian wypipo, but all religious affiliations (or lack thereof), ethnicities, nationalities, genders (or lack thereof), sexual orientations, etc. The man cares about his people. 

Economics of FDR, Foreign Policy of Jimmy Carter, social policies of Bernie Sanders. Whoever that person is, I will vote for you with hesitation that equals the amount of bombs President Carter dropped. 

Conversation Between White Conservatives and Progressives of Color

A friend of mine, we’ll call him “Steve”, and I have frequent debates about policy. He does not identify as a republican, however most of his ideology lines up with the right wing. 

Likewise, I do not identify as a democrat, but the strong majority of my ideology lines up with the left. We disagree on a lot of important stuff, but this particular piece will be about…race (Queue the scary music.)

So Steve often tells me things like “I grew up in an all Hispanic neighborhood as a member of the only white family in the neighborhood. All the stories I hear about black people being followed around in stores, being treated differently by police, all that happened to me growing up.” 

When he tells me things like that, it is to imply that black people aren’t REALLY treated differently in America, it’s all in our heads because similar things happened to him as a white person. 

Well Steve, I have two responses to that. 

1. You prove the point that minorities are treated differently by authority. Imagine what you, as the minority in your community went through on a large scale. And instead of you being a white minority in one neighborhood, you were the black minority of an entire country. Simply extrapolate that line of thought and you’ll see why you’re proving me right.

2. Empirical data shows otherwise. 

What data is that? Here’s a few links for dat ass…

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

The above link references the “Resume Study”, which finds that when companies look at two resumes, with EVERYTHING BEING THE SAME EXCEPT the way the name sounds. So when Sarah or Becky graduate college with honors and a master’s degree in business, they are WAY more likely to get that new position, versus when Tyeisha applies with the exact same resume, that callback is far less common.

Don’t believe that one? Cool. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2513797/How-online-shopping-reveals-RACIST-Study-finds-internet-customers-likely-buy-black-sellers.html

The link posted above is a study that shows if you have a white hand holding an iPod, selling this item is WAY easier than if you have a black hand holding the exact same object, for the exact same price, in that exact same condition. 

Need more? I got more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60GuNRg

Here’s video of a white man, a white woman, and a black man. What are all three of them doing? Trying to steal a bike. I bet you know what the reactions were from everyone around them…

1. White man attempts to steal a bike, nobody says or does anything. They don’t even really look at him crazy.

2. White woman attempts to steal a bike, and not only did nobody say or do anything to stop her, some people actively tried to assist her.

3. Black man attempts to steal bike, on the same street, in front of the same store, at the same time of day….the police were there within 10 minutes.

So Steve, my friend, unless you can explain the above three facts in a way that doesn’t show any sort of ethnic bias, I think this issue has very little grey area, it’s all black and white (you know damn well the pun was intended.)

The Differences Between the Left and the Right in America

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about political affiliations as of late, trying to wrap my mind around how people could still be right-wingers in 2018. It seems like we have the answers, yet half the country still refuses to accept evidence/facts. 

For example, we know that the golden age of economic expansion happened under FDR’s watch, where the top marginal tax rate was 63%, and rose to 94% for those who made over $200,000 (which in todays’ dollars would be well over $2.5 Million). Yet, when Bernie Sanders proposes raising taxes on the top 10% of “earners”, everyone somehow acts like the country will be bankrupt. 

We have provable verifiable statistics that show black people are 2 times more likely to be killed by a police officer when there is any sort of interaction. Yet, so many people who say they aren’t racist refuse to acknowledge there is a problem. White people and black people use drugs at similar rates, yet black people are arrested for drugs 4X more often. 

But still, nothing to see here, maybe those darkies…er, I mean black people need to get it together and respect authority.

Cognitive dissonance is a very real thing, but even outside of those more obvious examples, there are plenty of people who don’t hate minorities, don’t hate people of color, want people to have healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt them (like in every other western country),  don’t think the Mexicans are stealing their jobs, and believe in science. 

YET THEY STILL VOTE REPUBLICAN.

I think I have figured out the 3 major differences between the left and right wing of the United States (notice I didn’t say Republican/Democrat, because the elected officials are basically all right wing.) 

1. Empathy

2. Macro vs. Micro

3. Immediate Gratification vs. Long Term Sustainability

Empathy I think is the biggest difference between the left and right. And that is not to say that right wing voters don’t have empathy at all, just significantly less than the left. Go policy for policy and you can see what I mean.

Immigration? The right wing pretty much promotes deporting all undocumented immigrants, regardless of their contribution to American society, how long they’ve been here, if they own a home, etc. None of that matters if the question is “Are they here legally?” and the answer is “No.” The left seems to be much more empathetic towards those who, I don’t know, left their country because it’s a literal war zone and they are seeking refuge. Does the left want to allow in all undocumented immigrants all the time for any reason with no borders? Of course not. We also aren’t proposing a blanket ban on anyone who wasn’t born here.

Healthcare? Tax funded college? The number one answer I get from people as to why that is a bad idea is “I shouldn’t have to pay for other peoples stuff.” Here’s the thing about that…you already do.

Insurance for example, everyone pays into a pool of money, and that money is divvied out based on who needs it at the time. If you pay car insurance every month and never get into an accident, guess where your money is going? To the people who crashed their cars. If you’ve never had to call the police, an ambulance, never used a public library, or had kids you sent to a public school, guess what. YOU ARE STILL PAYING FOR EVERYONE ELSE WHO USES THESE THINGS. 

Macro vs. Micro, if you know what these terms mean then this should make perfect sense. Macro meaning big picture, micro meaning small individual effects. So for example, when right wing folks say things like “I know there are so many school shootings, but I’ll never give up MY guns!”, my immediate reaction is “Oh, you don’t really care as long as it doesn’t affect YOU personally.” 

First off, the left is not advocating for any gun confiscation or banning. If you believe that, you’re just wrong. Especially in the black community, we aren’t giving up our tools. But to ignore the fact that statistically speaking, where there are more guns there are more gun related deaths (here’s the Harvard meta analysis to prove it), means YOU DON’T CARE ENOUGH TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM.

Secondly, most elected republicans only become an advocate for any marginalized group when it personally effects them or their family. (The most glaring example of this would be Dick Cheney being TOTALLY against gay marriage, then changing his mind to being in favor of gay marriage after his daughter came out as a lesbian. Somehow, he didn’t think gay people deserved rights until he found out there was someone in his own family that was being affected. Macro vs. Micro.)

The tax cuts will crash the economy sooner rather than later, however as long as the big business execs make their bread NOW, they don’t care what happens later because they’re already all set. That’s where the “Immediate gratification vs. Long term solutions” kicks in. 

For example with climate change, the state of Arizona is proposing a bill that would make it law that we have to begin using renewable technology so we can do important shit like saving the planet. But what are republican congress people saying is the reason we shouldn’t do it? 

“It’ll cost too much.”

But…solar power is cheaper than gas. So…..in the long run it would be MUCH cheaper to switch to a never ending energy source, like the sun, wind, and water. But, it’ll be expensive at first to produce the infrastructure needed, so they say “Agggggh, too expensive, what’re ya gonna do?” Short term gratification vs. long term planning. 

So, although there are levels to this shit, I think these are the basic differences between the left and the right, how we think, and how we vote. If any of this offends you, look in the mirror and really ask yourself “Do I think of how things will affect EVERYONE or just ME and MINE?” “Do I want to gain as much as possible regardless of how it affects others?” “Do I care about what happens later on or do I focus more on the here and now?” 

You might be right, but I’m never wrong.

Impeaching Donald Trump is a Bad Idea

Impeaching Donald Trump is a bad idea.

WAIT, wait, I know. 

I know he’s an insane bigot who has bankrupted his own companies 4 times despite marketing himself as a fantastic businessman, advocated for blanket bans of entire minority groups, stated that the majority population of a certain country are rapists and criminals (he assumes SOME are good people), got caught on camera essentially admitting to sexual assault (“I don’t even wait”), was sued in the 1970’s by the US department of Justice for violating the Fair Housing Act (he refused to rent to black people)https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racism-history , paid off a porn actress with campaign funds to silence her after having an affair, has had evidence uncovered against him pertaining to drug funds being laundered through his Panama hotel https://www.globalwitness.org/fr/press-releases/donald-trump-made-millions-selling-his-name-panama-development-used-launder-drug-money-global-witness-investigation/ , says there are good people on “both sides” of the White Supremacist vs. Not-White Supremacist debate, and made fun of a handicapped reporter. 

HOWEVER…

Mike Pence is worse.

Why, you might ask?

I got you.

He’s the exact same guy minus the mean tweets. 

For example, while “serving” as Governor of Indiana, the city of East Chicago, Indiana had major issues with water contamination. The problems were known for a minimum of 30 years, and was placed on a national list of Most Contaminated Sites in the United States. Mike Pence stated when this brought to his attention (during the 2016 campaign) that “his top priority remained serving the people of his home state”, according to Rewire.

Problem is, not only did Pence do NOTHING to regulate the industries which caused the issues; he never even visited the city. Once. 

Now I ask, what has Donald Trump, or Mike Pence done for Flint, Michigan OR East Chicago, Indiana? The exact same thing. Which is not a damn thing. 

When it comes to women’s rights? He wants abortion illegal under ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. 

LGBTQ rights? He was/is against gay marriage, against trans rights to choose the bathroom of their identity, and thinks sodomy should be illegal. He supported a bill that would JAIL same-sex couples who applied for marriage licenses. He opposed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Need I go on?

De-regulation of Wall Street and giant corporations? He supports it. Privatizing Medicare and social security? He’s with the shits. Invading countries that aren’t a threat, nor have they attacked us? He’s 100% on board.

All I’m saying is, as horrible as Donald Tiny Hands is, and he is MUY HORRIBLE (shout out to my Hispanic homies), Pence is the same dude when it comes to policy, and it might be dangerous to have him as our Commander in Chief given the fact that he appears more sensible and reasonable. Which means he will be able to get these garbage ass draconian policies pushed through way easier than somebody even other Republicans admit is an unhinged maniac. 

So, yes we hate Tiny Hands Trump. As we should. But let’s not get carried away and lose sight of the goal, which is to STOP these terrible policies from passing and reversing the damage he’s doing one election cycle at a time. But getting rid of the symptoms of the problem don’t make the problem disappear. That just pushes the problem out of sight, where we all know it can causes way more damage.