A five-state race

All right, let’s break down the Republican math, since the mainstream media appears determined to avoid analyzing the numbers in any manner that is even remotely relevant to future events. I’m using a corrected and updated version of the spreadsheet created by a reader here, Frank B. Luke. According to the latest reports on CNN, Trump has 385 delegates and Cruz has 298.

There are the following delegates up for grabs in the next 10 days. The next seven “states” are proportional:

23 PR
19 HI
32 ID
59 MI
40 MS
69 IL
19 DC

271 total

Let’s be conservative and give both Trump and Cruz a minimum of 40 percent of the delegates apiece, or 108. (On Saturday, the day of his big “loss” to Cruz, Cruz took 57 percent and Trump took 44 percent). Now the score is: Trump 493 and Cruz 406. Next comes the big showdown on March 15, winner-takes-all for three states and one territory.

52 MO
99 FL
66 OH
09 (Northern Marianas)

If Trump takes all four, which is currently more likely than not, thhis minimum expected delegate count to 719. Trump will then only need 518 more, 193 of which he can expect to get in a worst-case proportional distribution. (Remember, he can reasonably anticipate more than 108 we assigned him from the 271 available proportional-state delegates; based on the polls, 162 would be a more reasonable estimate.) So, that means to clinch the nomination, he will need somewhere between 271 and 325 delegates from the 606 that remain in the winner-takes-all states, 172 of which are in California.

TL;DR: If Trump wins Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California, plus one state from the following list (Arizona, Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin), he wins the nomination. Period. Nothing else matters.

This is why Cruz should spend the week telling his supporters to vote for Rubio in Florida and Kasich in Ohio. But he won’t, because his so-called strategists are far more concerned with what they call optics than they are about actual tactics.

It should be amusing to see how many pundits and analysts suddenly start talking about the significance of the difference between winner-takes-all and proportional states without ever mentioning the source. Because despite all of their endless opining, none of them have bothered to work any of this out.

Perception vs perspective

The anti-Trumpkins are strutting around the Internet and bellowing about how Ted Cruz blew away Donald Trump in the two states he won and narrowly lost to Trump in the two states Trump won. And that’s true, if you’re dumb enough to look only at the reported percentages rather than the actual numbers involved.

In Kansas and Maine, Cruz beat Trump by 18,145 and 2,480 votes, respectively. In Kentucky and Louisiana, Trump beat Cruz by 10,866 and 9,781 votes. So, Cruz actually lost to Trump on the overall vote count by a grand total of 22 votes, which is a) a dead heat and b) as irrelevant as who won what state.

On the delegate side, Cruz took 64 delegates to Trump’s 49. This, too, changed nothing, because Trump’s ability to reach the required number of delegates before the convention is going to be solely determined by the 391 delegates awarded by the winner-takes-all states so long as he can take 30 percent or more of the distribute-delegate states. Since he took 49 of the 112 delegates allocated yesterday, or 44 percent, Trump remains ahead of the game; the only real significance of Saturday was the implosion of Rubio.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a great night for Cruz, but it was a great night because it showed he is the only alternative to Trump, not because it demonstrated that his popularity had exploded or that he could actually beat Trump. The key result for him on Saturday was Rubio’s demise, who really should drop out of the race on Monday, and presumably, endorse Cruz before getting humiliated in his home state, virtually ensuring Trump’s nomination, and becoming entirely irrelevant.

Since Florida (99) and Ohio (66) account for nearly half of the remaining winner-takes-all delegates, Cruz has to prevent Trump from winning at least one of those states on March 15th. If Trump wins both, it will be extremely difficult to prevent him from collecting the additional 694 delegates he needs even if Cruz wins all of the proportional-distribution states.

The dilemma for Cruz is that if Rubio and Kasich drop out, it increases his slim chance of beating Trump in one of the two critical states. But if they stay in, they will continue to reduce the amount of proportional delegates that Trump collects. Cruz already knows he isn’t likely to get enough delegates himself, so his winning strategy is to try to stop Trump, not to try to win himself.

Game theory says that Cruz needs to get Rubio and Kasich out of the race and get their endorsements right now so they can campaign for him and help him poach either Florida or Ohio. Whether they are in or out, Trump is going to surpass the 30 percent threshold in the proportional states. Since Cruz was at 21 percent in Ohio and 12 percent in Florida, the key to the nomination is Kasich, not Rubio. And presumably, Kasich knows this, which is why he has stayed in the race up until now.

If I’m Trump, I’m making a deal with Kasich to get his endorsement and strike for the kill. Anything short of VP should be on the table. If I’m Kasich, I’m getting out of the race before Wednesday and cashing in at my peak value. And if I’m Cruz, I’m arranging for a quiet telephone call with Trump to see if what he’s willing to offer in exchange for an endorsement. There is a three-way Prisoner’s Dilemma here, as the first candidate to endorse Trump is the one who is the most valuable to him. Alternatively, Cruz should tell his supporters to vote Rubio in Florida and Kasich in Ohio.

On a side note, it’s interesting how this campaign has been largely consistent with the socio-sexual interpretation of the candidates from the start. It’s down to Sigma against Alpha, and the outcome will largely depend upon whom can do a better job of assembling popular support versus working the system. The situation appears to strongly favor the Alpha, but it is always dangerous to expect a Sigma to do the obvious or to count him out.

I am nagged by one serious doubt concerning what I’ve been told about Ted Cruz, and it’s not related to the obvious one concerning the extent to which he is the Goldman Sachs-preferred, CFR-approved candidate. If, as we are told, the establishment hates him so much more than Trump, why has Cruz been overperforming so dramatically in the states where the GOPe has more influence in the process.

I expect that we will soon learn whether Cruz fans have been telling the truth about whether the Republican establishment prefers him to Trump or not. If Fox and various GOP figures immediately begin fawning all over Cruz once Rubio withdraws, we will know they were, at the very least, incorrect.

Combined Arms, Take Two, turn three

While the battle to the east is fast, brutal, and direct, with the big-gunned tanks blowing holes in each other at an alarming rate, the 1st Panzer Division has recovered from its initial setbacks and is beginning to make some headway by outflanking the Soviet’s western defenses. This is the situation after the end of Turn 3. The second turn.

The most important action was the armor battle in the east (top). My Tiger first took out the T-34 at the crossroads it had already acquired, then, with a nearly 500-meter side shot, killed the Stalin that had traversed the big northeastern hill and took out my Panther guarding the northern road. Three kills in three turns for the crew, but in doing so, the Tiger left its much weaker side armor exposed to the AT gun in the village. Fortunately the 57L gun missed its first shot and although the second shot hit, it didn’t penetrate the Tiger’s armor.

The combination of the second Tiger, the Panther, and the infantry all pounding away at the Guards platoon defending the eastern approach to the village killed the leader and two of the three squads, but the Soviet commander somehow managed to extricate the surviving squad safely, thereby preventing me from rapidly exploiting my chosen schwerpunkt. That squad fell back and reclaimed the first building I’d taken, but soon found itself surrounded on three sides as the troops I’d sent around the southern side of the village moved in and took possession two of the buildings there. They kept the well-led Soviet platoon that was established in the village occupied while the German officer leading the assault headed north to try to take out the anti-tank gun before it could kill the Tiger with a third shot.

In the west, the key development was the immediate rallying of my surviving infantry platoon combined with the two Panthers taking out the T-34 on the north side of the building. Also, the assault engineers who rushed the building in the center were able to break the two Soviet squads that had been holding the nearby hill, catching them out in the open as they tried to fall back to the village. And to the southwest, lacking any infantry support, the one T-34 proved unable to stop the dispersed platoon that was seeking to link up with the panzergrenadiers attacking the village from the southeast.

All in all, it was a very favorable series of three half-turns for the attacking Germans, and although the battle isn’t over, I feel quite confident that I’ll be able to secure the necessary nine buildings well before Turn 7. I was able to crack the village in the east while simultaneously flanking his massed firepower in the west to the north and south, which was exactly what I intended.

Semi-super Saturday results

This is an open thread to discuss the results of the Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maine primaries. Decision Desk has the live results.

Looks like a split. Cruz takes Maine and Kansas, Trump takes Kentucky and Louisiana. Rubio didn’t even make it to Florida.

One would think the GOPe would learn something from the repeated failure of their anointed ones. After Bush, Dole, Bush, Mcain, and Romney, they don’t have much in the way of either support or respect any longer.

Compost Everything: the movie

The 2016 Home Grown Food Summit is coming up in just a few days. It features a bunch of presentations by expert gardeners, farmers, herbalists and homesteaders, including Castalia author David the Good, who decided to use the opportunity as a chance to directly demonstrate some of the crazy composting methods in Compost Everything by creating Compost Everything: The Movie.

No word on whether he actually demonstrates the use of human corpses to feed his zucchini or not. But if you want to find out, sign up and see the all the presentations for free.

Why he left the conservative movement

A lifelong conservative Republican informs the conservative media why he is no longer a conservative:

Let me say up front that I am a life-long Republican and conservative. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have voted in every presidential and midterm election since 1988. I have never in my life considered myself anything but a conservative. I am pained to admit that the conservative media and many conservatives’ reaction to Donald Trump has caused me to no longer consider myself part of the movement. I would suggest to you that if you have lost people like me, and I am not alone, you might want to reconsider your reaction to Donald Trump. Let me explain why.

First, I spent the last 20 years watching the conservative media in Washington endorse and urge me to vote for one candidate after another who made a mockery of conservative principles and values. Everyone talks about how thankful we are for the Citizens’ United decision but seems to have forgotten how we were urged to vote for the coauthor of the law that the decision overturned. In 2012, we were told to vote for Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts liberal who proudly signed an individual insurance mandate into law and refused to repudiate the decision. Before that, there was George W. Bush, the man who decided it was America’s duty to bring democracy to the Middle East (more about him later). And before that, there was Bob Dole, the man who gave us the Americans with Disabilities Act. I, of course, voted for those candidates and do not regret doing so. I, however, am self-aware enough to realize I voted for them because I will vote for virtually anyone to keep the Left out of power and not because I thought them to be the best or even really a conservative choice. Given this history, the conservative media’s claims that the Republican party must reject Donald Trump because he is not a “conservative” are pathetic and ridiculous to those of us who are old enough to remember the last 25 years.

Second, it doesn’t appear to me that conservatives calling on people to reject Trump have any idea what it actually means to be a “conservative.” The word seems to have become a brand that some people attach to a set of partisan policy preferences, rather than the set of underlying principles about government and society it once was. Conservatism has become a dog’s breakfast of Wilsonian internationalism brought over from the Democratic Party after the New Left took it over, coupled with fanatical libertarian economics and religiously-driven positions on various culture war issues. No one seems to have any idea or concern for how these positions are consistent or reflect anything other than a general hatred for Democrats and the Left.

TL;DR: He is an American nationalist who rejects cuckservatism.

For many years, people on both sides of the political spectrum have repeatedly tried to label me a conservative. If you look back to the very beginning, to my first column on WND after 9/11, I have steadfastly resisted that label because I have always known that I do not share an outlook with those who proudly wear it.

I am a nationalist, I am a traditionalist, I am a Christian, and I am right-wing, but I am most definitely not a conservative. I never was and I never will be.

The reason is this: conservatives are nothing more than progressives in slow motion.

The author, a veteran, proceeds to address the neoconning of conservatism, as reflected in conservatism’s newfound enthusiasm for violently exporting what it deceptively calls “democracy” around the world:

Third, there is the issue of the war on Islamic extremism. Let me say upfront that, as a veteran of two foreign deployments in this war, I speak with some moral authority on it. So please do not lecture me on the need to sacrifice for one’s country or the nature of the threat that we face. I have gotten on that plane twice and have the medals and t-shirt to prove it. And, as a member of the one percent who have actually put my life on the line in these wars movement conservatives consider so vital, my question for you and every other conservatives is just when the hell did being conservative mean thinking the US has some kind of a duty to save foreign nations from themselves or bring our form of democratic republicanism to them by force? I fully understand the sad necessity to fight wars and I do not believe in “blow back” or any of the other nonsense that says the world will leave us alone if only we will do that same. At the same time, I cannot for the life of me understand how conservatives of all people convinced themselves that the solution to the 9-11 attacks was to forcibly create democracy in the Islamic world. I have even less explanations for how — 15 years and 10,000 plus lives later — conservatives refuse to examine their actions and expect the country to send more of its young to bleed and die over there to save the Iraqis who are clearly too slovenly and corrupt to save themselves.

The lowest moment of the election was when Trump said what everyone in the country knows: that invading Iraq was a mistake. Rather than engaging the question with honest self-reflection, all of the so called “conservatives” responded with the usual “How dare he?” Worse, they let Jeb Bush claim that Bush “kept us safe.” I can assure you that President Bush didn’t keep me safe. Do I and the other people in the military not count? Sure, we signed up to give our lives for our country and I will never regret doing so. But doesn’t our commitment require a corresponding responsibility on the part of the president to only expect us to do so when it is both necessary and in the national interest?

And since when is bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan so much in the national interest that it is worth killing or maiming 50,000 Americans to try and achieve?

Devastating. Absolutely devastating.

Hey, parent, leave the kids offline

Some of you will recall that I have repeatedly urged everyone here to stop posting pictures of your children on social media. I consider it to be a reprehensible violation of their privacy and an abrogation of one’s parental responsibilities in two ways: it robs them of the ability to make their own decisions and it risks exposing them to unwanted attention and potential danger. Worse, it does so for nothing more than to feed the short-term attention-seeking fix of narcissistic parents.

This is not a new subject. Back in 2009, I wrote:

Never, ever, put pictures of children up on the Internet. Not on Facebook, not on invitation-only Live Journals, and certainly not on public blogs. It’s not only reprehensibly stupid, it is completely disrespectful of a child’s right to make his own decisions about his public profile in the future. True, sometimes this is unavoidable, such as when a child happens to be in the news for one reason or another. But barring that, no responsible parent should ever upload a picture of a child to the Internet, no matter how proud one might happen to be.

I repeated that again three years ago:

Don’t put pictures of your kids on Facebook or Instagram.  It’s stupid.  It’s obnoxious.  It’s thoughtless and self-centered.  And it’s their life, not yours, that you’re putting on public display.

And, of course, there is absolutely no excuse for ever putting a picture of another family’s child on social media, for any reason. So, you can’t say you weren’t warned, as it appears the law in some countries is finally beginning to catch up to the obvious privacy violations involved.

French parents are being warned to stop posting pictures of children on social networks in case their offspring later sue them for breaching their right to privacy or jeopardising their security.

Under France’s stringent privacy laws, parents could face penalties as severe as a year in prison and a fine of €45,000 (£35,000) if convicted of publicising intimate details of the private lives of others — including their children – without their consent.

Eric Delcroix, an expert on internet law and ethics, said: “In a few years, children could easily take their parents to court for publishing photos of them when they were younger.”

Grown-ups who sue their parents for breaching their right to privacy as children could obtain substantial compensation awards, according to French legal experts.

I won’t have any sympathy for the parents who find themselves getting hoist by their own narcissistic petard in the future. They will whine and cry about their ungrateful children, who will rightly respond: “why should I harbor any concern for your financial interests when you demonstrably didn’t give a damn about my legal and moral right to not be put on display to the world like a pet or a trophy?”

Ever seen Deliverance, Mr. Beck?

“I don’t know what I would have done if I was sitting in Cruz or
Rubio’s shoes. I can’t say it that way. If I were on the
stage, I would have said, ‘have you been listening to him tonight? Have
you been listening to what I say about him? I believe these things. If I was close enough and had a knife, the stabbing just wouldn’t stop.”
– Glenn Beck

Dear Mr. Beck,

Have you ever seen Deliverance? Yeah, that’s your fat piggy ass for the rest of your life if you try to stab Mr. Trump.

Sincerely,
America

The message and the harbinger

Trump is merely one harbinger of nationalism rising across the West in response to the traitorous globalist elite:

This side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump tends to be portrayed as something of a unique event. He’s broken every rule, slaughtered every sacred cow, and defied every political prediction: He’s stronger than ever. To explain him, many American commentators, particularly his critics, have suggested that the Republican presidential contender has latched onto some specific quirk in America’s national psyche, or identified an inherent weakness in the U.S. political system or failing on the part of its current political parties….

But from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the Donald Trump story looks very different. From the perspective of many anxious op-ed writers in Western Europe, Trump isn’t an anomaly. Instead, he’s part of a dramatic populist surge occurring across Western democracies at the moment, on both the political left and the right.

“From Spain to Sweden to Poland, populist protest parties are spreading,” wrote Josef Joffe last month in the German newspaper Die Zeit. All that differs is the terminology: “In America the ‘mainstream media’ is the enemy. Here it is [called] the ‘Lügenpresse [lying press].’ Here they rage against ‘those at the top,’ there against the ‘elites.’”

“In nearly every European country they are on the move now, the little Trumps,” declared Evelyn Roll in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, warning against the dangers of nationalism.

“We have Marine Le Pen. They have Trump,” agreed Le Monde’s Alain Frachon. Le Pen, who heads France’s Front National, often draws these comparisons, given her similar nationalist and anti-immigration posture. But others point to Viktor Orban in Hungary or the politicians in Germany’s “Alternative for Germany” party, a group opposed to immigration and the European Union that is expected to gain ground in the next election.

Of course, not every European observer is anxious as a result of these developments. My concern is that they are too little, too late, and that the allied elites will be able to use the anti-democratic rules of representative democracy to stifle the nationalist rise.

Because, as I have repeatedly warned, if the nationalists can’t succeed through the rules of representative democracy, the ultranationalists are going to succeed through force. Because open nationalist dictatorships in the interests of the nations will be vastly preferred by the various publics to hidden globalist dictatorship in the interests of the international elite.

And if the nationalists are stopped, that is the choice that will be presented to the nations of the West.

The death of conservatism

Mike Cernovich explains how the pro-American mask has been stripped away from the globalists formerly known as conservatives:

Nationalism v. Globalism: The Death of Conservatism.

Trump’s rise has been met with cries that he is not a “true conservative.” The once-prestigious National Review devoted an entire issue crying about Trump. Called Against Trump, the issue brought in attacks from pro-war neocons and even the mentally-unstable Glen Beck.

What attacks on Trump failed to do was define conservatism. No one has been able to explain why waging wars on foreign soils or increasing federal spending more than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson, as George w. Bush did, was conservative. No one has explained how socialized medicine, which Mitt Roney enacted as government of Massachusetts, is conservative.

Question begging aside, Trump is not a “true conservative,” and in fact conservatism in the U.S. is dead.

Trump is a nationalist, which is a loaded term worthy of definition.

Nationalism derives from the root nation. A nationalist puts the interests of his own country, and by extension countrymen, above the interests of other nations. A nationalist puts America first. Nationalists will work with other countries, but only when in the best interest of the United States.

You’d think that the President of the United States would by definition be a nationalist. Nation is in the title of the job description. Yet mainstream conservatives have drifted away from nationalism and towards globalism.

To a globalist, Americans are no different from a Nigerian. If someone in a foreign land is able to do a job much cheaper than an American worker, then those jobs should be offshored. Americans, according to globalists, do not deserve to exist as an identity.

Globalists thus favor open borders, even though increased immigration lowers the wages of native-born Americans while increasing crimes. Marco Rubio, the darling of conservative elites, even sought to open America’s borders.

As part of the Gang of 8 (so named because 8 United State senators joined forces to bring a new world order to the U.S.), Rubio also sought to increase the number of migrants from Syria by millions. That the migrants from Syrian tend to be overwhelmingly men of prime-fighting age means nothing to Rubio or other globalists. America has no right to exist as a nation under the globalist worldview.

Trump rejected globalism with a powerful statement: Build the Wall. By building a wall, Trump meant the U.S. must erect a border between the United States and Mexico, as illegal immigrants, including drug dealers and even Islamic terrorists, poured across in the tens-of-millions. Building a wall is a powerful representation of nationalism.

“A nation cannot exist without a border,” Trump declared. A nation is it borders because a nation is its people. When you allow people who hate American values like freedom of speech, free enterprise, and tolerance for religion, you change the nation for the worse.

Mainstream conservatives, again, are globalists. They believe Americans do not have a right to exist as a people, and that America does not have the right to exist as a nation. Some my call that statement extreme, but if you do not define your borders or control who comes to America, as they do in Israel, how can you claim to be pro-America?

There is more, considerably more, there. A fair amount of it will be familiar to you if you have read Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America, but Mike puts his uniquely energetic spin on the matter. Read the whole thing.

And then ask yourself, how can any American, real or propositional, claim to be conservative when he actively opposes the conservation of America?