On the upside, it appears my several decade devotion to the Fallout video game series is going to come in handy.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?
Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.
Their freedom requires your slavery.
Not all heroes wear capes.
It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.
Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.
Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.
fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)
Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.
I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
Good lord, these people are nuts.
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
T R E 4 5 O N
But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
Only Democrats have agency, apparently.
It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.
Let’s not be the monsters we hate.
Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.
Hot air and ill-informed banter
Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.
Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.
Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?
D58826
dick Poleman’s take :http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/national-interest/item/98752-the-primal-scream-and-what-it-means
donnah
I’m still shellshocked.
For a real assessment of a Trump presidency, I suggest people go watch the clip from Richard Engel on NBC last night. Just google it. Bonechilling.
I feel like I’ve been hollowed out with a rusty scoop. I will need some time to recover and think about what half of the country just did to themselves and to the rest of us. I’m not ready to buck up, rally ’round the flag or put a smile on my face.
Just gimme some time.
Corner Stone
Republican’s own it all now. All the things the Trump voters said they wanted. They’re going to get it good and hard, just like the rest of.
Jumbo with a 76
I can stop crying for about an hour at a time. Then it resumes. I’m a 37 year old man who grew up in Missouri.
cmorenc
BTW: where did all the etc. buttons go on the comment-writing box? They’ve intermittently been missing the last few days, including starting sometime overnight.
Did Russian hackers get into Balloon-Juice too? If so, we’re even more fucked than we thought on this dark day.
Corner Stone
I have come to truly despise Kasie Hunt.
Droppy
Someone as dumb as Palin, as disengaged with policy as GW Bush, as dishonest as the worst used car salesman you’ve ever dealt with, as ungracious as the most spoiled teenage brat you’ve ever known, as megalomaniacal as Hitler (I know! I said it already!) and as psychotic as most serial abusers is in charge of our military, including our nuclear weapons. Even without the complete disaster he is going to make out of our domestic policy, that is enough to put me over the edge. I just don’t see any reason not to despair.
JPL
Mike Luckovich
http://luckovich.blog.myajc.com/2016/11/08/1109-mike-luckovich-omg/
Trinity
When my sister and brother-in-law told my niece (12) and nephew (9) this morning the kids started sobbing. My nephew kept saying he didn’t want a wall between us and Mexico. My niece is panicked about her Muslim friend and kept asking if they could please stay in America.
I keep fluctuating between feeling numb, shocked, angry, and absolute terror.
DC is really odd this morning too. People on the train looked spooked.
Corner Stone
I wish President Obama would truly go into NFTG mode, fire Comey and all my other vengeful heartfelt desires. I know he will not, he’s too decent a man. But damn, do I wish.
Also too, not only did they pay no price for not holding a hearing on a SCOTUS nominee, the country rewarded them for that specific obstruction.
The Truffle
I live in NYC and everyone is devastated.
After this, I will never trust Nate effing Silver or any pollster ever again.
Alain the site fixer
@cmorenc: not sure. I see them now. Perhaps load last night was making it wonky.
Gelfling 545
I suppose there will be a certain bitter amusement to be had as the Trump voters begin to realize what they have brought down on themselves but it will be amusement bought too dearly. I’ve already had it up to HERE with the white working class bs. I am wwc as are the large number of my family & friends. We did not do this. White supremacy is more like. Still, walking the dog this am I felt embarassed to meet my black and immigrant neighbors. They have every reason to be mistrustful now.
Keith G
@Corner Stone: If I wasn’t so involved with the need for the US government to be effective, the future angst of Trump’s red hat wearing supporters would be entertaining to behold.
I felt the same way when W was given the office. I had family (fiscal conservatives) who were thrilled. I told them squarely that Bush was an empty suit who would not do well. I had no idea. But soon enough they were over W. At least none of them were Trump supporters.
AnnaN
I am curious and blue re:
1) What happens to Trump Corp while he is president? I assume it is squirreled away in a trust?
2) Is there a realistic expectation that he WON’T do something impeachable in the next two years? And what is the probability that the Congressional Repubs will be behind such a movement?
manyakitty
Add projectile vomiting to “The Scream” and you’ll get an idea about how I look right now.
laura
Reading up on how this happens, and what comes next.
It happened here.
The Six.
Rise of the third Reich.
We’re in for perilous times. It is a dark, dark day.
Yeats.
The decameron.
Bailey
@The Truffle:
Why? Nate isn’t a pollster. He can just analyze the polling data that comes in. And, frankly, while everyone was freaking out about Nate, he was probably most correct of the analysts unlike Sam Wang who clung to a ridiculous 99% likelihood model.
Alain the site fixer
@AnnaN: he doesn’t have to do that. Plus he has so much foreign business that almost any foreign affairs issue will affect his business. Even hands off he can see that. He’s a walking conflict of interest.
Thoroughly Pizzled
I don’t know what to do. I worked for two years to help implement the ACA. People I met are going to die. I’ll regroup eventually but now I’m just trying to stay afloat.
Mobil RoonieRoo
I’m completely numb. The tears periodically flow but I am still too shocked for real crying. I can’t do any news sites. Balloon-juice is the only place I am letting myself go.
Ruckus
@Trinity:
I would think so. I’d bet most of them work for the federal government or work closely with it. I’d bet they are wondering if they will have a job in 6 months. I’d be for a not insignificant number of them the answer is no. This is a fairly large disruption of the order of the country and I’d bet that will make a lot of us in that same boat in a not all that significant amount of time. Major change usually does that.
Shalimar
If Republican politicians actually believe all the evil shit they have been saying about Hillary Clinton for 30 years, she is going to prison for the rest of her life. My bet is they know it was all propaganda and won’t ever mention her name again now that she is done in politics.
Gin & Tonic
Copied from Twitter: Mitt Romney got 60.9 million votes and lost bigly. Donald Trump got 58.1 million and is crushing Hillz. Our side stayed home in droves.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@AnnaN:
It’s going to be one big rolling Constitutional crisis after another since the new guy has no idea what it even is, and will have no one around him who does either, or cares. All the alarms were going off and all the gates were flashing, and the country just drove right through them into a train. This is an extinction level event.
Ruckus
@AnnaN:
#1. I believe there are laws about this but laws are made to be changed.
#2. What could he do that congress would impeach him for? You think he might stand up and say it was all a prank he and Bill worked up and fuck the haters who voted for him?
Shalimar
@AnnaN: There is zero chance that Trump won’t do something impeachable by February. And no, Republicans won’t care. He could rape a child during a press conference and his supporters would say she deserved it.
oldster
Yeah, this feels like a bigger punch in the gut than 9/11 did.
Back then, I knew that America would fight back, somehow, with the most powerful military on earth. I knew the terrorists were out there, relatively few, and relatively weak.
Now the people who hate us for our freedoms are inside the house, and in control of that military.
I don’t even know yet what fighting back can look like. But I’m not going to make nice.
I heard from a well-meaning liberal friend this morning who assured me that we need to do more to reach out to Trump voters and listen to the other side.
She sounded exactly like a cringing victim of spousal abuse, whimpering “it must be my fault that he beats me–I’m sure I did something wrong to make him mad.”
I reject that stance. When Obama won in 2008, the other side immediately went into Massive Resistance mode. They did not reach out to the winners in 2008 or 2012. They remained intransigent, and refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency. And they paid no price for it.
I will never recognize the legitimacy of this presidency. Whether I pay a price for it or not.
MobiusKlein
@Alain the site fixer: the election was not about any tangible fact, policy, or conflict of interest. That analysis is dead.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Truffle: Silver and Wang aren’t pollsters. They work with the polling data gathered from others. It’s not on them.
sherparick
@AnnaN: Nope, he is going to continue to oversee it while his kids run it. How can he do it? Because he is Trump, and Great, and IOKIYR. Frankly, he and his cronies are going to be stealing like crazy the next 4 (or more years). It is one reason they will go all out to eviscerate the vote of the minority vote in the Democratic Party and suppress dissenting press voices. They know they will be guilty of such crimes that they can never lose power. Trump’s models are Nixon and Putin, but he does not intend to commit what he considers Nixon’s mistakes.
shawn
@Shalimar:
I can’t believe that the GOP would actually be dumb enough to try to prosecute her. All they’d be doing is setting a miserable precedent that would come back to bite a bunch of them next time they lose power.
But then again, I didn’t think half the country would be willing to embrace or at least overlook Trump’s awfulness and complete lack of competency just to stick it to ‘the establishment’, so my predictions probably aren’t worth anything.
enplaned
@Gin & Tonic: @Gin & Tonic: That’s it right there. Lack of enthusiasm. Highly compromised candidate, uniquely susceptible to the message of Trump (which was unlike any message a conventional GOPer would have used), failed to fight back enough on the non-crazy things he said, focused only on the temperament issue.
Hillary Clinton lost to Obama in 2008 — did us all a huge favor. Fucked us completely by insisting on running in 2016. Obama’s legacy is now toast, complete wreckage. His Presidential library will be a shrine to a bygone era from which little will remain. Sign up now for your nostalgic last year in the ACA.
Ruckus
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
This. Very fucking unfortunately.
And who is going to stop him? I think that is the one big issue that people feared and is the one that will haunt us for decades, those of us still around that is. He has control, if for no other reason than stupidity, of the entire federal government.
mai naem mobile
@Shalimar: I am going to say this again. They are not done with the Clintons. Trust me, they’ll be all over the foundation now because that’s what GOP pigs do. I also fully expect all the big Hilz supporters to go through colonospic IRS audits. I hope Beyonce,Katy Perry,Mark Cuban,Jon Bon Jovi etc have super clean tax docs because the GOP always actually does what they accuse the Dems of doing.
enplaned
@Omnes Omnibus: Silver does look way better than Wang. Silver, for some reason, had an inkling that something was wrong with the data. Wang took it as it came. Silver got a ton of flack for it, but turned out to be on the money.
Bigger problem for both of them is that if polls, going forward, are for whatever reason becoming less and less accurate, then the raw material on which those guys depend is not going to be useful anymore.
sherparick
@Bailey: For the same reason the King cut off the head of the messenger who brought bad news.
The Scream pretty wells cover how I feel.
Rick
enplaned
@shawn: I think all such statements (“I don’t believe that X would ever do Y”) are increasingly rash.
enplaned
@mai naem mobile: The lesson they GOP learned is they lost control of them when they were unable to follow thru on promises. Well, this is a promise they have the ability to follow thru. If I were the Clintons, I’d spend my time offshore from now on. Yes, political exiles from the US — another exciting sign of our emergence as the world’s largest banana republic.
shawn
@enplaned: Without a doubt. I guess I just keep looking for some basic logic to situations where many people are happy to just run with their raw emotions.
Shalimar
@mai naem mobile: I do see that side of it. However, they said positive things about Clinton generally when she was Secretary of State and they were focused on Obama. Now that she has lost, she is not the enemy they need to vilify. Whoever they consider the biggest threat in 2020 will become the new target, imo. You could very well be right though.
Bess
Don’t blame Wang and Silver. The campaign internal polls didn’t pick up the problem.
I suspect the polls fairly accurately measured people’s feelings/opinions. But they didn’t measure whether people would get off their asses and vote.
vtr
Say, John, you’re former military. Can you recommend a clear, concise reference explaining just what unilateral action, any president – Trump for instance – can take without Congressional approval? Like wantonly nuking North Korea, for instance. I’m praying there are considerable restraints.
Judge Crater
We shouldn’t fool ourselves and believe that Donald Trump won’t do exactly what he has said he will. The wall, the roundup of hispanics, the exclusion of Muslims, the abrogation of trade agreements, the big stick diplomacy, the shredding of regulations, the capture of the federal bureaucracy, the deep sixing of health care and the tilting of government policy toward corporations and the rich will all happen. And more. What white America voted for was to kick the poor, scary brown people, lazy bureaucrats and urban latte drinkers in the teeth.
Trump will have his pound of flesh. Times ten.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
The fallout has begun. I’m losing one of my aides because her husband is losing his job, because the right to work Rethugs won southern Illinois. His pension was wiped out in last night’s market crash Another of my coworkers just lost two years of work to secure funding for kids with autism in the state. Others are scrambling for work outside the special education setting, knowing that funding is about to implode.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
Turnout by Democrats was more like a mid-term election year than a presidential election. And a lot of Trump-curious voters rolled the dice.
I think it came up snake-eyes. I expect a lot of buyer’s remorse
p.a.
I expect to be corrected ’cause I never made it to statistics, but I believe part of the issue with the polling was they polled the tRump Bump for opinions, but built their models on past turnout. Why they didn’t show as ‘likely voter’, and why HRC underperformed BHO, will be coming out in next few days of data digging.
catclub
@sherparick: @sherparick:
The first thing they mention is repealing Dodd-Frank. I still wonder how repealing the ACA is going to work.
The Truffle
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: I hope you are right. When these Trumpkins don’t get the jobs they were promised or the America they were promised…
I’m just so angry. And I will never trust Silver again.
cmorenc
@catclub:
IMHO repealing the ACA “root and branch” is going to prove considerably more difficult to pull off than it seemed as either a campaign slogan or political stance for the GOP while they lacked the power to actually pull that off. Most key consumer-side individual parts of the ACA were actually quite popular, even if the act as a whole was not, in part because it still left insurance companies in the driver’s seat in critical ways and in part because well, “Obama” care.
GrandJury
@AnnaN: I fully expect Trump to be impreached. Republicans hate him and want Pence running things.
jonas
@The Truffle: Silver was actually catching a lot of grief the past couple of weeks for suggesting the race was a lot closer that people were assuming. To be sure, he still thought HRC would win because that’s what the polling data was really showing, but he was sounding some cautious notes. Turns out he was right.
bluehill
A few disconnected thoughts through the haze:
1. The markets have recovered a lot after the steep selloff last night. The dow is down 70 or so, which is a relatively mild down day and a lot better than down 800. So at least right now, the markets aren’t predicting another recession. In some ways probably a relief rally from election uncertainty and concern about what Trump is going to do hasn’t sunk in yet. Same thing happened after Brexit and the markets actually went higher. If there is a good and bad about globalization, may be one good is that regional problems are shared globally to varying degrees and that can act as an additional buffer (trying my best here).
2. I have wondered what would cause Chaffetz and some of the other repubs to return to Trump after disavowing him when the polls at that time showed that Clinton would likely win. I wonder if Bannon et al shared win them their plans to turnout the white vote or their internal polling.
3. I characterized this election to my friends as a potential revolution but one at the ballot box. As bad as it I think it’s preferable to a real one. Doesn’t mean it can’t get worse, but we do have a system of checks and balances which should hopefully allow for a cooling off period.
cmorenc
@bluehill:
A worrisome part of the chit from the GOP sweep of federal government Chaffetz is going to try insistently hard to collect upon is dismantling much of the landholdings of the federal BLM and returning at least effective control to states (which translates to: giving control of its use over to ranchers and natural resource exploitation by oil, gas, and mining companies). I wouldn’t put it past Chaffetz to attempt to persuade Trump to un-declare some national monuments established by Clinton and Obama.
bluehill
@cmorenc: Ugh, yes, this could be an outcome. If Trump’s election represents a re-prioritization of needs, I think we could see regulations that affected labor rolled back at the cost of the environment.
Juju
@Corner Stone: I am right there with you. As I said last night, that woman gets right up my nose.
? Martin
@The Truffle:
Nate was the only one explaining how this outcome was possible – that because of the high undecideds and the uncertainty of turnout that the polls could be systematically wrong. A lot of people shouted him down for it, and shouted me down for explaining/defending that.
SW
Looks like we get to live through the Susan Sarandon theory of politics. I thought she was crazy but now I am going to have to pray that she was right.
JustRuss
@Gin & Tonic: Credit where it’s due: Our liberal media, that spent more time covering Clinton’s damn emails than just about all the other issues combined. It was like 2000 all over again, but worse.
CB
@oldster:
“Yeah, this feels like a bigger punch in the gut than 9/11 did.”
Let’s maybe get some perspective and dial it back just a touch. Because no.
waysel
@JustRuss: This.
waysel
@CB: Not no. Yes. And it’s much bigger. CB, see what you think 6 months from now, 2 years from now. I very much hope I’m wrong.
The Truffle
@Corner Stone: I hope that Ruth Bader Ginsburg can hold on for another four years.
Pinacacci
still here, at this