October 2016 – Underlore

Forgiveness for Bernie?

Update: 2016-11-12 0953 PM

If You’re a Progressive, Give Thanks That Bernie Sanders Endorsed Hillary and Saved His Movement

The article makes a pretty excellent series of points.

In the second, sadder outcome—the one which actually transpired—his choice to back Clinton was even more important. People in general, but especially people active in American politics today, are loathe to blame themselves for anything. If Sanders had abandoned Clinton, pronounced her brand of governance too corrupt to countenance, and taken his progressive wing with him, angry Democrats would have an easy scapegoat in the wake of the November loss. You can imagine how convenient it would be to dump the blame on Bernie—the defeat was his fault! They would hang the Trump victory on him, pointing to his betrayal, and the takeaway, for many, would be that only a unified (and implicitly centrist) Democratic party could win a general election. Again, progressives would be neutered for the foreseeable future.

It’s starting to look like Bernie was playing the long game after all. Especially with Jill’s awful performance at the polls. Which I did not see coming. The spoiler effect is still real. Maybe it’s better to siege the DNC castle than try to build a new one.

It worked for the Tea Party in their own house.

Long story short I respect Bernie again. I find it much easier to assume he saw this coming than to assume he was conspiratorially forced to back HRC.

Original Piece:

I tell myself that Bernie was threatened. I don’t blame anyone for folding to threats they truly believe. HRC/etc is so corrupt and violent. It’s plausible that they threatened him and his family with unimaginable horror.

But with so much at stake, if you assume any of it is real, voting, political leadership, etc.

Am I wrong to want him to martyr himself and his family?

Is that a fair demand to make of someone who stepped up to lead a super power and a revolution? Someone who stepped up to lead humanity?

Would I fold in his shoes? Absolutely. This isn’t a dick race. The question for me is whether or not it’s fair to both understand and be angry with him for this choice? Especially when the threat is by definition a conspiracy theory.

I want him to have been threatened because if he wasn’t, then I AM betrayed. I have a tiny bit of evidence.

But is that enough? I don’t feel it’s proven, like election fraud has been. http://underlore.com/the-electionfraud-is-real/

And since I want it to be true so much I feel I should hold it to an even higher standard of evidence.

That only makes this harder.

Because even if he was threatened, I’d still be angry and some of it would be anger at him.

I don’t know what they did, so I can’t critique his strategy. But it feels like he could find some compromise, some way around.

I mean lets say he arranges a press conference on topic X and then outs the whole thing live. Would we really believe anything that happened to his fam or him after that a coincidence?

I’m starting to feel like this threat thing is just a comforting fantasy.

I want to forgive Bernie. But it’s starting to feel impossible.

Other thoughts:

Ultimately it doesn’t matter much. The damage is done and even if he came out HRC wouldn’t be harmed by it.

It’s not like I’d want him sanctioned for it it anyway. And we all know that HRC could skin a baby on live TV and still get elected either because election fraud or because good spin. (Russians made me do it. Russian CGI.)

So I guess really it’s an ethical triviality.

Nuclear War, Missile Defense, and the Big Pile of Crap

TL:DR Horse shit. He’s not worried, and missile defense is a pipe dream.

Missile defense is an insane concept. Like in movies where they are like shoot down the nuclear missiles, Ha, no. An icbm goes into orbit and the splits into several smaller missiles. (MIRV) When they return to the atmosphere they are travelling at like Mach 22. Hitting a dumb bullet at that speed would be nuts but if the missile is smart, has radar, has counter measures, and can evade even a little bit it would be pretty much impossible for stuff to catch it. You can’t even do it with a laser because of diffraction. The beam spreads too much over these distances. And if you wait for it to be close, then you’re just showing the intended target with nuclear fuel. At that point it’s not so much defense as mitigation.

So it seems to me that the whole point of these “defense” systems is to provoke. Of course Russia knows all that but they are playing along acting provoked because excuses for more weapons spending because now it’s about the 1% vs everyone else. Putin even mentioned rebuilding the military industrial complex like it’s a good thing XD

That’s the real goal for both sides. Drama and money. Putin is gonna be ready to exploit whichever president he gets. The good news is there won’t be global nuclear war. Ever. At worst some rogue state will nuke a city or two. By the time you get more than two nukes you’re so invested in the system you not longer want to blow it up and you know by then that there is no blowing up just half of it.

It’s again obvious when he brings the cruise missiles into the discussion. Those can be intercepted possibly with a radar guided gun. (Phalanx etc.) He said it himself “sub sonic” that means under mach 1. Fearing a nuclear strike by tomahawk is completely absurd Especially if he’s not lying when he says they’ve caught up.

He rolled his own eyes when he said grave danger. And listen to his tone and look at his body language. Does it convey anything like apprehension? Pshhh. A kid in a school play being threatened with a cardboard sword is more worried. Literally. He’s talking to the press. He doesn’t expect anyone to watch the piece directly. He wants *them* to sell the fear and drama. Because unlike during the cold war this time that same 65 people own both sides.

1984. We’ve always been at war with (insert country name here.) >.>

The “Backstory” Backstory: Underlore’s Cocktail

A while back, while catching up with an old friend, who is into mixing cocktails, a drink got invented. For our amusement he initially named it after me, but I felt that was inappropriate for a number of reasons, not least of which being that I didn’t invent it. X)

However, if he wanted to name it in my honor, then I wanted it to reflect my life’s work, which is of course, this blog and the philosophy behind it.

It’s essentially impossible to actually invent a whole new drink of course, or it’s so easy as to be trivial, depending on perspective. And so what we’re talking about here is basically on the Daiquiri spectrum somewhere. But we believe it is different enough to warrant a name.

While discussing naming, I mentioned how I’d rather it be something based on Underlore, and later on after some thinking he gave me a couple options, among which was “Backstory” and I think that’s a perfect fit.

The contents are lime juice, simple syrup (liquid sugar), white rum, and club soda over ice. The specific guide for the drink is at the bottom of this post. The effect basically is a fizzy limeade with a dash of mind altering pirate fare. 🙂

The name is perfect and thematic in my opinion, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s neat to me that the the Backstory has a backstory. Going deeper, the Backstory has underlore which is Underlore. By underlore I mean the definition I came up with.

Also there are the emergent properties of the name. Think about ordering it: “Yea I’ll have a Backstory, thanks.” That’s just inviting all kinds of awesomeness and conversation, because who doesn’t wanna hear a good backstory?

Also it’s dignified and friendly, which certainly isn’t always the case with drink names.

Having researched a little bit, my opinion is firm now that my friend has indeed invented a new cocktail. And though it’ll always be possible to get a little flack for “just” modifying a daiquiri, I feel that since neither of us remembered what that was at the time, he at the very least deserves credit for independent invention.

The differences are the glass, the ice, the club soda, and white instead of dark rum. If adding club soda, using a different kind of spirit, adding ice, and putting it in a different glass make it a different drink, then it’s a different drink. If not, then, not 🙂

Backstory Ingredients and Preparation

Ten to twelve cracked ice cubes
Two measures white rum
One measure lime juice
One measure simple syrup
Club soda

Put four to six cracked ice cubes into a cocktail shaker. Pour in the rum, lime juice, and simple syrup. Shake vigorously until a frost forms.
Half fill a twelve ounce Collins with cracked ice cubes and strain the cocktail over them. Top up with club soda.
Decorate with lime slice.

Update: /ck/ approved? 🙂

Decision 2016: The Moratorium on Democracy Itself

I have a dilemma.

If I respect democracy, do I agree to throw it out when that’s what we all vote for? Even if that vote is heavily manipulated, despite the fact that every individual voter would personally swear they are making a free choice?

Because what we have here is an overwhelming, if uninformed, vote against democracy. Hillary Clinton supporters clearly have no problem with #ElectionFraud so long as it installs their preferred candidate. Trump supporters I doubt would have any more integrity given the authoritarian leanings of their politics generally, and their tolerance for corporate cheating and corruption on capitalist or social Darwinist grounds.

And then you have the bulk of American citizens who overwhelmingly don’t vote, which is a clear vote against having a say in politics at all.

Perhaps what this election is really about is voting down democracy. Bernie being the last remaining actual democrat, the majority of Americans when presented with the option of him, chose one of the others.

His entire platform is/was populist. And still the vast majority of people either voted in the other party entirely or didn’t vote at all, whether or not you subtract HRC’s votes entirely because #ElectionFraud, that remains true.

It would seem the suspension of democracy is the will of the people. But if the will of the people is manipulated, should I still respect it? But if I respect it, must I then instantly disrespect it as their will is that I ignore their will?

This mess is like the idea of the ultimate meaning of tolerance for intolerance. It’s almost like the trolley problem.

In the end I’m voting for #JillNotHill on the grounds that the choice was not informed or clear. The choice was manipulated. And that so long as we are still officially a democracy for the moment, it is my function to attempt to persuade my peers of my vision of what is best for us all.

And here is my core argument. The democratic primary was a national coup d’état. Most people weren’t even aware of what was at stake, thus the vote against democracy at that time is invalid. Does that matter to people? Time will tell. In any case it left us in a position of choosing between two non-democratic candidates. An overt authoritarian demagogue and an election rigging usurper.

We all know that third parties are usually a symbolic and wasted vote, if not a spoiler vote, but in this case I don’t believe that to be true. Now, I know Jill won’t win. That would be nice, but it’s not going to happen. However, I think getting her 5% or more of the vote is perfectly achievable given the anger independents should feel at being shut out of the process for decades, combined with the recent theft of the democratic primary.

If even half of Bernie’s supporters vote Jill, that would get her the 5% alone. And that 5% means federal funding for the greens and recognition as a legitimate major American political party. This party would allow the 2020 election to be a much more informed vote as the green candidate would be included in televised debates and the media would be forced to recognize them, even more than they recognized Bernie. Which of course wasn’t much given DNC/MSM collusion and corruption, but still it was an appreciable fraction of his due as a major candidate, and orders of magnitude more than Jill Stein or any other third party candidate got.

So here’s my thinking: If you are afraid of Trump and or Hillary, and you live in a deep red or blue state, then you can vote Jill safely because your state’s vote will not be changed by your vote. If you live in a swing state, vote as you feel you must, but realize that either way, Trump or Clinton, our next president will be the most obstructed in American history. Their experience will make Obama’s two terms look like a unanimous mandate by comparison. Whoever wins the next election would have a hard time passing a law affirming that the sky is blue much of the time let alone anything approaching substantive change so really not a lot is on the table comparatively speaking. And certainly it’s nothing we can’t work to fix in 2020.

Even if you completely disagree with Jill’s politics, you should still vote Jill if you want to see democracy itself on the ticket at all in 2020, because Jill isn’t going to win this time and the greens aren’t going to win next time. The objective here is not immediate victory. That option closed when Bernie was forced out. The objective is getting a voice for democracy and independents on stage in 2020. Plus, if you favor a different third party you’ll have helped to show that third parties can reach 5% or better. The reason I choose Jill is not because I agree with the majority of her politics, but because the disenfranchised Bernie Sanders vote does, and they essentially have nowhere to go with their vote. Jill’s actual threshold thus is far less than 5% because she’ll get a good chunk of Bernie’s old vote by default.

Yes, some will be swayed by fear or blind partisan loyalty and vote HRC, but I think many of his voters were non-voters to begin with and when given a choice between staying home or voting for Jill for the long game, will vote for Jill.

So if you want to see some truth in the debates in 2020, if you want democracy to still have a seat at the table, and cliché as this may be, if you believe in the true American way, then you really should vote Jill.

So that’s my advice.

#JillNotHill

The #ElectionFraud is Real

https://twitter.com/hashtag/DNCFraudLawsuit?src=hash

http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/042517cw2.pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6J1ecILnk3UUy1KZ2FUT29iQ1E/view?pref=2&pli=1

Update 2017-01-31 1147 AM: Sadly Jill didn’t even get 1% of the vote. That proves that there is ZERO chance for any third party in the United States thanks to first past the post voting and the spoiler effect.

Original post:

TLDR: My official advice is vote #JillNotHill. It won’t threaten HRC/Trump in Blue/Red states. But with just 5% of the vote, we get a third federally funded party. Unique opportunity because of the Dem’s rigging and the RNC’s failure to destroy Trump.

(more to come)

See also: http://underlore.com/bernie-or-bust/

P.S. I’m a pro nuclear power pro gun leftist. Yes, we exist. @Innomen on twitter.

IPL is Toxic

Truly IPL (Intellectual Property Law) is a complete and toxic mess. I literally can’t imagine a more effectively harmful ideology. Only racism and misused religion seemingly has hurt and killed so many people. And they only stay on top because they are orders of magnitude older.

Just look at the death toll from big pharma’s for profit medical lobbying, and fracking’s hiding behind “trade secret” protections, and then there’s Monsanto doing it’s best to kill all the bees in the name of Round-Up profits and suicide genes aimed at trying to put DRM into the freaking food. All using legal frameworks ruthlessly bolstered and defended psychopathic coders convinced they’ll be patent aristocrats some day.

How many people died last year for want of medical care in the states? As of 2009 the figure was approximately 45,000.

Frankly I suspect the ultimate death toll from IPL is high six figures annually even if you completely ignore opportunity costs.