On January 20, 2005 George W. Bush was sworn in for a second term. He had successfully eroded our civil liberties with the PATRIOT ACT, gotten us into an oil war with Iraq, and was already starting to rattle sabres with Iran. Virginian Terry McAuliffe was the chair of the DNC during this election. The …
Author Archives: stidmatt
These are the 10 things people don’t realize about elections
George Washington 1. First Past the Post comes with several major flaws. It creates the spoiler effect which means that with more than two candidates no candidate can win a majority, and this can lead to politicians getting elected who most of the voters oppose.2. The only system that is worse for people than First …
Continue reading “These are the 10 things people don’t realize about elections”
2020-2022 election analysis
So, there is a Wikipedia list which shows you the current political party strength in every state in these United States. I downloaded this into a Jupyter notebook today and did some Python magic on it this morning to start to understand what is really going on with the partisan spread in the United States. …
It’s the courts, Stupid!
Yesterday a bunch of Bernie Bros got Souter trending on Twitter, claiming that if Joe Biden is elected we will get a conservative Supreme court Justice. Let’s get some detail on that one: Nominee Year/President Vote Biden’s vote John Paul Stevens 1975, Ford 98-0 Yea Sandra Day O’Connor 1981, Reagan 99-0 Yea William Rehnquist 1986, …
End this epidemic recession now
America is currently spiraling into a recession, and we need to have effective policy as soon as possible to end it. This recession is a classic demand side recession. People are staying home, cutting their spending, which is going to cause both deflation and a reduction in GDP. This is going to inevitably cause layoffs, …
Absentee voting
Across the United States, millions of Americans are going to stand in long lines this year to vote for President, Senators, their Representative, and state and local officials across the country. This has been a tactic used by the Republican party in particular over the last few years to reduce the number of people who …
Updated Presidential Rankings
Ranking of American Presidents I am only ranking Presidents who have served for at least 365 days. For this reason I am excluding William Henry Harrison and James Garfield who died less than a year before their first term is up, and I cannot rank President Biden yet because he hasn’t served a full term …
Elizabeth Warren 2020
Roosevelt and Truman refused to prosecute the corporate CEOs who illegally use labor from the Holocaust. Johnson refused to prosecute Nixon for sabotaging his Vietnam peace talks. Carter covered up everything the Nixon administration did by not prosecuting the crimes he committed. Clinton refused to prosecute the Reagan/Bush administration for the Iran Contra Affair and …
My family’s economic history
I am the first in 4 generations of my family to not become a professional grade school teacher. My grandfather is a veteran. My family fought in Vietnam, World War II, the Civil War, and the Revolutionary War. I work for a state college. You will never find someone with a longer family history of …
The Trump Administration’s attempt to invade Iran is pathetic
Say it with me. Iran is Shiite. Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda are both of the Salafi interpretation of Sunni Islam. There are MANY movements among Sunni Islam, of which the Salafi are just one. The attempt by the current administration to try to paint a connection between Iran and Al Qaeda is patently false …
Continue reading “The Trump Administration’s attempt to invade Iran is pathetic”