The Great Purple State

In this episode, Conall and Emerson discuss the recent 2020 presidential election and the fallout from it. We discuss why former Vice President Biden was able to defeat incumbent President Trump and why Trump has been lying  about the election's integrity and launching scores of groundless lawsuits instead of accepting his electoral loss and conceding. We also discuss the greater implications of this for the long term health and integrity for any sort of democratic government in America going forward. 

Sources cited and other useful sources: 
3rd Circuit Court of Appeals decision, conservative judge categorically rejecting Trump campaign's lies about Pennsylvania's election - https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20417624-document-1
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's op-ed in USA Today affirming Georgia's election's integrity - https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/11/25/georgia-secretary-of-state-election-integrity-2020-column/6407586002/
Wisconsin Election Commission resource - affirms the integrity of Wisconsin's election - https://elections.wi.gov/node/7241
538 article on social isolation and how it's found to correlate with stronger support for Trump - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/could-social-alienation-among-some-trump-supporters-help-explain-why-polls-underestimated-trump-again/

In this episode (originally meant to be a shorter blurb, ended up being more of a standard podcast), we make the case as to why Bernie Sanders is a better choice than Joe Biden to not only defeat Donald Trump, but address the structural issues in American society that helped him rise to power. From healthcare to climate, we make the case as to why Bernie best fits the precarious moment we find ourselves in. 

In this blurb (a shorter podcast on a topic of interest), Conall and Emerson discuss the presidential candidacy of mega billionaire and former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg. We explain how we think he's trying to buy an election by saturating the airwaves and internet with hundreds of millions in ad buys, alongside doing things like *literally* paying social media influencers to post pro-Bloomberg content. 

We also note many of his policy positions like his support of the racial profiling of stop-and-frisk while he was Mayor of NYC, along with his opposition to a minimum wage increase and his derision of trans rights, among other things...  

In short, we make the case for why you shouldn't vote for Bloomberg. 

NOTE: this podcast was recorded February 21, the day before Bernie's big win in Nevada.

In this second episode to a two part mini series, Conall and Emerson discuss the role played by Customs and Border Protection and the Border Patrol in enforcing President Trump's immigration policies, and the squalid conditions in the CBP detention centers at the border that made such large headlines back in the summer. Among other things, we explore why conditions had deteriorated to such an extent at these facilities, and whether or not the phrase "concentration camp" can be said to apply. We use extensive accounts of Border Patrol agents and the Department of Homeland Security itself to corroborate the awful conditions at these facilities. 

Later in the episode, we go into an in-depth exploration of Stephen Miller's influence on Trump's immigration policies, and how he's been able to last so long in a White House filled with chaos and turnover. 

CORRECTIONS: At around the 1 hour mark, Conall got the refugee intake number set by the president for 2020 wrong. It's 18,000 refugees, down from 30,000 in 2019 and down even more from a record high of 110,000 under President Obama in 2016. 

At around the 55 minute mark, Conall implies that Honduras borders Mexico - it's close to Mexico, but does not actually border it. 

MAIN SOURCES CONSULTED (not a comprehensive list): 
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-border-patrol-agent-reveals-what-its-really-like-to-guard-migrant-children - Anonymous Border Patrol agent account 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/world/americas/rio-grande-drowning-father-daughter.html - Article explores the impact left by the deaths of Oscar and Valeria Martinez on their family in El Salvador

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/07/06/us/migrants-border-patrol-clint.html - Deep dive into the conditions at the Clint, Texas CBP facility 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/us/politics/border-center-migrant-detention.html - Article on the DHS's own report documenting CBP detention center conditions 


https://www.vox.com/2018/6/20/17484546/executive-order-family-separation-flores-settlement-agreement-immigration - Good explanation of Flores Agreement

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/06/26/photo-drowned-migrant-child-recalls-an-image-that-shocked-world/ - Discusses parallels between Oscar and Valeria Martinez' deaths and the death of the young Syrian child, Alan Kurdi in 2015. 

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/cbp-security-agency/ - Explores Trump administration's designation of CBP as a "security agency", making it immune to FOIA requests 

In the Great Purple State's first ever blurb - a shorter and punchier podcast on a topic of interest - Conall and Emerson discuss the power to wage and declare war and how this power is divided between Congress and the President. We analyze some notable moments in the history of the struggle for war power between the legislature and the executive, such as President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the War Powers Act of 1973. We also examine the prospect of war between the US and Iran in the aftermath of Qasem Soliemani's assassination, and the serious life or death consequences that such a war could have.

(The clip that plays at around the 10 minute mark is from the movie Lincoln (2012). 

(Note: At one point Conall refers to CBP as Customs and Border Patrol. I misspoke - it's Customs and Border Protection, of which Border Patrol is a subagency)

In this episode, Conall and Emerson analyze the Trump administration's embrace of hard line, xenophobic immigration policies and the controversial agency (ICE) tasked with enforcing many of them. We also note the intellectual architect of these policies, Stephen Miller, and the role he's played in pushing for all of Trump's signature immigration policies, including family separation. 

This is the first episode in a two part series discussing Trump's immigration policies and the agencies who enforce them. Next episode, we discuss Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

In this episode, Conall and Emerson do a deep dive into Trump’s 2020 re-election bid, while also analyzing the state of the 2020 Democratic primary. Conall explains the electoral strategy of Trump's 2020 campaign, and we also discuss the shifting demographics that we so often hear of - and what their political implications are. We emphasize that because of that wonderfully undemocratic institution known as the Electoral College, the election will center on 6 states in particular - Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and of course... Wisconsin. 

Conall also articulates his view that anti-Trump sentiment is an underrated force, which is a big reason why he thinks any of the top contenders has a good shot at beating him.

Finally, Conall and Emerson discuss ways to get involved such as working with a local union or canvassing in your neighborhood. Oh, and we have a fantastic outro, if you feel so inclined to stay for that... 

(Factual correction from Conall: I misspoke and said the census is taken every year. I meant to say every decade!) 

In this episode, Emerson and Conall discuss the history and function of that much-discussed institution, the Electoral College. We analyze why it was adopted as a compromise measure by the Constitutional Convention of 1787 (and how the most important author of the Constitution, James Madison, favored a popular vote for electing the president). 

We also note that the Electoral College does not, in fact, protect small states and that it incentivizes presidential campaigns to narrowly focus on a dozen or fewer states in general election campaigns - in a country of 50 states, most states get ignored by campaigns in the general election owing to them not being competitive. In the last month before the 2016 election, for example, Hillary and Trump spent the vast majority of their time in just a few states: FL, OH, MI, PA, NC - all with populations of 10 million or more. Florida, the perennial swing state, is the 3rd most populated state in the country! 

Finally, we discuss the prospect of abolishing the Electoral College, remedies for accomplishing this, and what that would change about conducting presidential campaigns. 

CORRECTION: Conall misspeaks and says the Nazi T4 program targeting disabled people ended in 1949. He meant to say 1941. However, the program did continue in less centralized  fashion until the end of the war until 1945.

In this final episode of a 3 part series on the history of concentration camps and the Holocaust (also known as the Shoah in Hebrew, meaning “catastrophe”), Conall and Emerson analyze why the Nazis adopted a policy of total genocide against Europe’s Jews. From the cruel methods used to the conference that led to the finalization of the Holocaust, we explore why the Holocaust happened and the series of policy decisions made by various Nazi officials that led to it. 

We tell the stories of those victimized - those who survived, and those who didn’t - from a small, anonymous Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto to the resistance fighter Samuel Willenberg to the young writer Anne Frank. We also look at the supreme moral example set by the likes of Chiune Sugihara and Oskar Schindler in saving Jews from the Holocaust. Finally, we reflect on humanity - and the responsibility the legacy of the Holocaust leaves to us to create a better world. 

Conall and Emerson break down the initial years of the Nazi camp system. We discuss at length the political trajectory and worldview of Adolf Hitler, the first 8 or so years of Hitler being in power, and how the Nazi regime he oversaw expanded the usage and purposes of the concentration camp system as the years passed. We also analyze how the agenda of the Nazi state morphed from persecuting the Jews to outright murdering them, especially with the outbreak of the Second World War. 

Another important thing we look at is the POW camp system ran by the Wehrmacht for captured Soviet prisoners of war, and the devastating toll this took on the Soviet prisoners of war imprisoned there (~3,100,000 would end up dying). 

We decided to expand this series to 3 episodes - our final episode will cover the last 4 years of the camp system, from 1941 to 1945, when the camp system was retooled to commit total genocide against Europe's Jewish population in the Holocaust.