Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Bark louder, little dog.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

I was promised a recession.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Ya Think?!?!?!?!

Reader Interactions

293Comments

  1. 1.

    Trentrunner

    After everything that the media got so, so wrong this cycle, Chuck Toddler’s pearl-clutching tweet might just send me over the cliff:

    This is no a small thing for Hillary Clinton to publicly and formally blame the FBI director for her defeat.

    Hey, Chuck: Is it maybe just possibly a bigger fucking thing is the FBI director IS responsible for that defeat?

  4. 4.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Trentrunner: Todd should, perhaps, spend a few minutes speaking with his colleagues Tamron Hall and Rachel Maddow. Both of them have been near tears on multiple occasions this week and I’ve thought on more than one occasion that Hall was going to lose her composure on air. I thought Maddow was going to last night. Joy Ann Reid seems to have gone right into angry opposition mode, as have O’Donnell and Hayes.

  6. 6.

    WarMunchkin

    @Trentrunner: The data supports her declaration, from what people who work for polling orgs tell me. Future Dem candidates will need to expect an FBI that will leak compromising letters as standard operating procedure.

  7. 7.

    JPL

    So Trump who lives in a gilded penthouse, call those covering him elites. How interesting, maybe someone should compare their incomes. Yeah that won’t happen because he will never release his taxes.

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I made my friend turn NPR off when I rode in her car. I am also on a news blackout. They’re totally useless.

    And, as I said in a thread below, I’m back at the “anger” stage of my grief. Fuck these fucking white supremacists and their fucking fuckery. I am taking our country back from them, and shoving a boot up their asses while I’m at it.

  9. 9.

    Corner Stone

    Fuck these fucking people. They were hated on and physically threatened, intimated, etc. And they just kept normalizing this fucking asshole.
    Dutifully bleating back what he was saying, and congratulating themselves when they had the moment of guts to say, “And that isn’t true. The cameras show his crowds”.
    Then not doing a god damned bit of actual reporting. Where the fuck are his tax returns? Anything? Any fucking thing?

  10. 10.

    schrodinger's cat

    Democrats need their own news network. Can we crowdfund it. Get Bezos on board. WashPost was one of the few bright spots in the coverage. NYT was the worst. I have deleted all my NYT bookmarks, and I refuse to click on any of their link.

  11. 11.

    SFAW

    @efgoldman:

    Well, it’s not as if they had any history of fucking over the Dem candidate — leading to the election of a Republican who, as it turned out, actually WAS a lot worse than the Dem — from which they might have learned something

    As long as history began in 2001.

  12. 12.

    Hunter Gathers

    @Adam L Silverman: Like Todd cares. Making like a circus seal on his knees before Trump, Ryan and McConnell guarantees that he’ll be the host of Meet The Press from now until the Vogons take pity on us and destroy the planet to make way for the intergalactic highway.

  13. 13.

    Corner Stone

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Joy Ann Reid seems to have gone right into angry opposition mode

    You’re damn right she has. She had it lit this morning. And I expect to see more in the near future.

  14. 14.

    Gin & Tonic

    Adam you were writing about the security clearance process the other night. Let’s say someone like Manafort is tapped, he fills out that form, the FBI guys review the info and say “um, no.” Does the president or the head of the FBI or the AG have the ability to overturn that? If they do, is there any public record that that happened?

    I suspect that the old and possibly now obsolete theory behind this is that someone elected to POTUS or cleared to be AG is prima facie a patriot and not an agent of a hostile foreign power. But we are in a new world now.

  18. 18.

    Durin Dal

    Well, he can’t stay in the White House obviously -too many germs. President, first ladies, hired help, visitors with sick children… mandatory installation of antibacterial dispensers at every door, paid for with funds from the Trump Foundation.

  19. 19.

    JMG

    Sooner or later, people in a Trump crowd will commit violence against an NBC reporter. Todd will excuse that, too. All TV news, national and local, is kissing up and kicking down. Don’t watch it. Tell people not to watch it. It’s poison for democracy.

  25. 25.

    Mary G

    That is a good analysis. He always made a huge deal about his press cameras not showing the crowd, and I read a few mutters here and there about how he wouldn’t let the cameras out of the pen, so how could they, but I never thought about how different the reporters would look to the supporters in terms of haircuts, etc.

  26. 26.

    clay

    Any analysis of the election result that neglects to mention: 1) one campaign colluding with foreign powers, and 2) rogue federal agents dishonestly placing their thumb on the scale, is not worth paying attention to.

    (Also, 3) Hillary won the popular vote, and 4) the repeal of the Voting Rights Act, and…)

  29. 29.

    WarMunchkin

    @schrodinger’s cat: The NYT just equated Obama’s decision whether or not only prosecute Bush Administration officials over torture with Trump deciding whether or not to have a special prosecutor for Hillary.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    @WarMunchkin:

    The NYT just equated Obama’s decision whether or not only prosecute Bush Administration officials over torture with Trump deciding whether or not to have a special prosecutor for Hillary.

    Fucking Pinch, what an asshole. Punch should have strangled him in his crib. Maybe asked Kay Graham to help.

  34. 34.

    Kryptik

    @WarMunchkin:

    Because those are just totally similar situations with similar consequences.

    Fuck you, NYT. Kiss my whole ass and my dogs’ too. No, wait, cancel that, I don’t want them to get rabid dipshit disease.

  38. 38.

    Underpaid Propagandist

    I won’t read or watch news. Forever. I’ll check in on blogs like this or a few others once or twice a day.
    I want to dump my cable, Time Warner (now Spectrum), but unfortunately I’m addicted to my local NYC baseball team and hockey teams.
    Any suggestions on what’s a non-evil Internet provider and how I may be able to get local feeds?
    Thanks.

  39. 39.

    boatboy_srq

    @efgoldman: Agreed. Something tells me the cable-cutting will continue apace.

    What is it about great ideas from a sole entrepreneur (I’m thinking Ted Turner here, but there are obviously others) that when they’re turned over to committee they go straight down the toilet? The only thing that seems to have benefited from collaboration of late is Star Wars.

  40. 40.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    For the first time, I just posted a not-quite-GBCW Facebook message. I will lurk, most likely, but I want to disengage from “liking” or commenting or putting up my own posts, at least for a couple of weeks. It’s as much discipline for me as anything else. (And I’ve been told, although I don’t know this for a fact, that if you refrain from interacting on FB, all the annoying ads and clickbait articles just eventually disappear. So that would be nice.)

  42. 42.

    Corner Stone

    And Karen Tumulty in Toddler’s tweet thread saying HRC’s supporters blaming media for loss and if Trump had lost his supporters would be blaming media.
    They do not get this, what they have done.

  43. 43.

    Timurid

    @efgoldman:

    The Village is just a bunch of lace curtain white supremacists.
    Their only regret is that their hero is quickly proving to be a totally inadequate Führer… not that they weren’t given dozens of opportunities to figure that out during the election.

  45. 45.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Hunter Gathers: I fully expect that access is going to be cut off. The traveling press pool is the second major indicator. That Trump told the media during the primary that he was going to continue to treat them badly and use them as a foil is the first. I’ve seen hints and intimations that Mark Halperin is under consideration for Press Secretary. That would make sense, especially given the fact that Megyn Kelly waited until Wednesday to inform everyone in her new book that the Trump campaign was paying reporters and media personalities with gifts for favorable coverage. MSNBC and Bloomberg have an obligation to disclose what, if any gifts, Halperin got and when he got it. Aside from this I expect to see the press access get constrained more and more. It will be one of the signs that we know that the Trump Administration and the GOP Congressional majorities are going down the route of what the Russians call Sovereign Democracy.
    https://www2.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/ponars/pm_0396.pdf

    The first year of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s second term has been
    disastrous. A series of crises has occurred, from the assassination of
    Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov in Grozny in May 2004, to the
    widespread demonstrations against the government’s seriously flawed
    attempt to replace social and other benefits with cash payments. Fighters
    staged raids in Grozny and Ingushetia, the government provoked a minor
    banking crisis, the Kremlin suffered humiliation and failure in its attempts
    to influence elections in Abkhazia and Ukraine, and a battle has raged
    inside the Kremlin for control of Yukos. All these have demonstrated the
    ineffectiveness of the managed democracy (MD) regime construct.

    However, rather than reassessing its ineffective efforts to manage
    democracy, the Kremlin went forward with a package of political reforms
    and other moves, thereby further increasing management by nondemocratic
    means, while trying at the same time to deflect critics with the
    slogan of sovereign democracy. These changes include electoral reform, a
    tightening of control over political parties and civil society, the
    appointment of governors instead of their direct election, and also a
    number of youth, media, and public relations projects. Sovereign
    democracy is simply a new brand name for managed and centralized
    political development and can be considered to be the highest (and last?)
    stage of MD. The Kremlin, when inventing the new term, had in mind two
    basic features of sovereign democracy: the primacy of sovereignty over
    democracy and a sovereign Russian democratic institutional development
    which does not correspond to Western standards.

  46. 46.

    WarMunchkin

    @Mnemosyne:

    And people on the left will cheer on a special prosecutor for Hillary because they hated Obama’s decision on torture.

    Ok, we’re not that dumb… I think. Uh.

    @SFAW: I don’t think we need a television news network, but we absolutely need a way to hijack targeted brand engagement strategies on behalf of the Democratic Party, especially rural and suburban so-called “fly-over” communities. I don’t mean that necessarily to grab the basket of persuadables in one shot, but for the Democratic Party long term. The Republicans have been dousing this country with AM Radio bile for decades, and we’ve had no consistent answer. It can be sending e-mails and articles about issues people care about and building trust with Democratic Party aligned brands over time.

  47. 47.

    Elie

    @Trentrunner:

    I actually think that its important for Hillary to stop being so polite and call things out. Who knows, its not likely, but she might need to be a voice of opposition at some point. Its extremely important to pin these guys to the wall with the reality of what was done not to HER but to our system and the correct role of that powerful agency. The head of Defense, Ash Carter put out a statement yesterday stating that he would brook no shenanigans and would keep his agency out of politics and partisan manipulation. His tone was simple and clear and to me, a rebuke to Comey.
    Listen folks, what Comey did was very very bad. It cannot be forgotten. We cannot/must not be polite in opposition but be ready to scream from the rooftops. Our democracy, such as it is these days, is in extreme peril and sitting around talking about “moving on” is bullshit!

  49. 49.

    Emerald

    @schrodinger’s cat: Me too. None of it. I’m reading BJ and the folks I follow on Twitter (I can control that mostly). I’m not even watching Rachel. I would try Joy Reid if I were awake at that time on a Saturday morning, but I’m normally not.

    I do read the pootie diaries on the GOS every day.

    I can’t take it. I can’t imagine ever going back to it—and I’m a former news junkie with the stuff on all the time.

    They betrayed us and they betrayed our country for their clicks and their egos and their cash. Basta!

  50. 50.

    JMG

    @Gin & Tonic: The FBI would leak, Guaranteed. And President Trump would have his first dire crisis. No President can exist without the at least toleration of the deep state. Why do you think Obama decided to let torture go?

  53. 53.

    schrodinger's cat

    @WarMunchkin: We do need our own newspapers and networks. That’s the first thing Indian nationalists did in their struggle against the British, start their own newspapers. We let MSM tell our story, when they are nothing but stooges of the Republican party.

  54. 54.

    Timurid

    @Corner Stone:

    By this point, most of the foot soldiers in the press pen probably want to stab Trump in the eye with a hacksaw blade. But they care about keeping their jobs more than punishing the person who bullied them, so they’ll keep writing whatever their bosses tell them. The alpha Villagers are a different story…

  55. 55.

    Kryptik

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    “Goodbye Cruel World” – a.k.a. the permanent mic drop. Complete cutting of ties and withdrawal from whatever platform or location you just GBCW’d on.

    EDIT: Named so for the usual melodramaticism involved that’s usually invoked by its namesake phrase.

  56. 56.

    schrodinger's cat

    @WarMunchkin: We do need our own newspapers and networks. That’s the first thing Indian nationalists did in their struggle against the British, start their own newspapers. We let MSM tell our story, when they are nothing but stooges of the Republican party, and let them set the narrative.
    They serve their paymasters not us. Every fucking debate had a question on deficit. Coincidence, I think not.

  57. 57.

    SFAW

    @WarMunchkin:

    Yeah, except the Left failed at radio, too.

    I’m not savvy enough about alternate platforms — social media? Something else? — to know what would be most effective for reaching the non-wingnuts, persuadables, and various “Dem-curious” persons. But I know (well, I guess it’s “I think I know”) that the traditional media have not been fertile ground for left-wing/liberal messaging.

  58. 58.

    CZanne

    @WarMunchkin: … I’d like to believe that. But something went wrong with our polling data at the state level. I think it was a combination of a bad model, and samples too small in the states, and some poll-fucking. The alt-right spent a considerable effort telling their people to lie to pollsters or not respond to them. (I think this explains the exit poll to result mismatch, though we need to do actual analysis on the full, certified results. The counting software, especially in places where it’s fully proprietary, still worries this stats geek and her developer spouse. As a proof of concept, it’s been demonstrated multiple times that the code can be altered.) The neon toxicity told his lemmings not to believe the polls. It doesn’t actually take much to introduce statistical noise when the polling is running on small samples.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @WarMunchkin:

    We need a Breitbart.com. Not a bunch of lying liars, but a website with constantly updated stories that people can put in their Facebook feeds.

    We need propaganda. Propaganda has gotten a bad name, but it doesn’t have to be full of lies. Hang on, I’ll be right back with yet another link to my all-time favorite propaganda film, “Don’t Be A Sucker.” It’s 100 percent propaganda that’s also completely true.

  60. 60.

    Elie

    @Mnemosyne:

    I think that they potentially would make a huge mistake to go after Hillary. And Lordy, she could make them pay a deep price for it as she rallied opposition — While she is not a natural in charismaland, I think she could find that tone that could actually form a focus of opposition to this regime. (I am going to start calling this the Trump regime, not administration)

  62. 62.

    Kathleen

    @Trentrunner: I tweeted back that the Hillary Hatred was past its sell by and he and his buddies should start a reality show to name their next Democratic Demon.

  64. 64.

    frosty

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    I am in a total media blackout except for BJ and TPM. I just can’t take the MSM bullshit any more.
    Reply

    Welcome to the party. For me it;s BJ and the Guardian. I can’t remember the last time I watched any news on the TV. Watching the towers fall, probably Katrina. Oh, and watching Rove go apeshit with Megyn Kelly on election night 2012. That was sweet.

  65. 65.

    Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)

    @Mnemosyne: The Deep State will hold…..and will be used to crush dissent and hunt down citizens.

    FUCK THE GREY LADY…SHE’S DEAD.

    There are plenty of liberal podcasts people can listen to so they aren’t stuck with NPR in their cars- Bob & Chez, The Bugle, Keeping It 1600, etc.

    The only blogs I’m checking are BJ and LGM. Also became a member of The Daily Banter today. Free Speech TV also has Stephanie Miller…

    Lots of places beside the MSM we can use. As far as I’m concerned, the only channels I’ll be watching is the Weather Channel, and the cartoon channels for the kid. Fuck the local news, too, with their bullshit. Looking at you, Good Day Columbus.

  66. 66.

    Corner Stone

    @Adam L Silverman:

    clips with Malcolm Nance and Naveed Jamali in a future post.

    I am somewhat ashamed to say that I have seen Malcolm Nance several times on these shows and have at times scoffed that he may have been going a little much in his analysis. But, god damn me for that. He had his shit right on it and we have not seen the last of what is coming, if his summary continues to become our truth.

  67. 67.

    Elie

    @CZanne:

    As a proof of concept, it’s been demonstrated multiple times that the code can be altered.)

    This is what I have heard but Major, major, major, one of the commenters ere told me no, it was not possible to do but you are saying it IS.

    Somewhere along the line here, the Clintons, or NSA/CIA have to do some sort of analysis of what went down here from the perspective of IT interference potentially by the Russians. Sure, could it be other things too? Of course, but this must be investigated thoroughly by every western democracy that hopes to remain free. It is without a doubt, an area of great vulnerability and mystery….

  68. 68.

    clay

    @Elie: I think that if they actually tried to prosecute Hillary, it would backfire hugely. Sure, it would rile up the deplorables, but I don’t think most of Trump’s voters really want to see that happen, and I actually think it might shake the media out of their stupor. Most talking heads I saw were fairly appalled when he threatened to arrest her during the debate.

  69. 69.

    Emerald

    @Mnemosyne: Either Obama has to pardon her for doing nothing wrong, or she has to flee the country.

    She cannot allow herself to become a prop in a rigged show trial. It would just support the fascism. I can see her maybe going along with it because she knows she’s innocent and nobody, after $100 million and 25 years of investigations, has ever been able to find anything she ever did wrong, but this would be different. They will manufacture evidence and will not let her speak. She cannot participate.

  70. 70.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    I also have stopped all media filtered information. CSPAN or nothing. They’re actively whitewashing everything every minute, normalizing and mainlining white supremacy with every passing day. SHUT THEM OFF. Find out who lives in your community instead. It’s way past time for white people to work on being woke. Without doing that work, nothing progressive will ever happen in this country ever again.

  71. 71.

    Mnemosyne

    @WarMunchkin:

    Found it! “Don’t Be A Sucker.”

    @clay:

    Did you read DailyKos at any point during this election?

    Plus, we don’t need a bunch of amateurs, frankly. We need professional, paid propagandists for the Democratic message. Not the left’s message, which gets too easily diluted into How The Democrats Threw Us Under the Bus Today. The Democrats’ message.

  75. 75.

    Mnemosyne

    @CZanne:

    Don’t discount the voter suppression fuckery. In addition to the Voter ID blocks, people were removed from the voting rolls. We potentially have thousands of people who intended to vote for Hillary but were presented from doing so. They would show up in polls as “yes” votes but they would not have cast those votes.

  76. 76.

    JPL

    @Mnemosyne: Breitbart came to fame for being racist. There was a group of white supremacists that needed a leader. Democrats tend to focus and policies, so it’s difficult to form the same type of cult.

  77. 77.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman

    It will be one of the signs that we know that the Trump Administration and the GOP Congressional majorities.

    Oh, shit. You do have a unique, if worrying, perspective on this blog. I learn a lot. Sometimes I wish I didn’t.

  78. 78.

    Elie

    @Emerald:

    I think she could be a beacon as well — If she had it in her heart to do it, she could be a rallying cry for opposition. They could of course jail her, but that would put them into a territory that would not work and folks would be in the streets 24/7.

  79. 79.

    Schlemazel

    @Hunter Gathers:
    It is a hyperspace bypass (to be pedantic) I know because I pray every day that today is the day the Vogons appear above our planet. They can even read us some of their poetry if they like.

  81. 81.

    Hunter Gathers

    @Adam L Silverman: Their fecklessness will lead directly to their demise. After Guliani’s Justice Department sues them into bankruptcy, the only headlines they’ll be able to print will be ‘Trump: Great President or Greatest President?’

  83. 83.

    Mnemosyne

    @frosty:

    Oh, and watching Rove go apeshit with Megyn Kelly on election night 2012. That was sweet.

    You know why he went apeshit that night? Because the very plan we saw carried out on Tuesday was in play, and he was infuriated that it didn’t work.

    They went back to the drawing board, tightened up the voting restrictions even more, and here we are. This was Rove’s design.

    No one should be mistaken about this: this was planned and executed long before Trump was the nominee. He just happened to be the beneficiary.

  84. 84.

    WarMunchkin

    @clay: I’d say Vox.com is closer to being our propaganda outlet than DailyKos. DK is fundamentally a community site rather than anything else.

    What I mean by using a brand-engagement strategy is that we need to figure out how to send information to people that they want and get metrics for every voter, all the time, based on how engaged they are with a particular issue, whether it’s an issue in their community or their state or the nation. And once we figure that out, we have to continuously send information to them and keep them engaged with it.

    Campaigns already do this, it’s just that it collapses after a Presidential election on the Democratic side. Even HRC’s campaign attempted to do this – I signed up for Wonks for Hillary and got a few policy related e-mails from them.

  86. 86.

    clay

    @Mnemosyne: I admit I only started going back to Kos during the last few weeks of the campaign, but it didn’t seem much different than it always had. Can you offer a more specific criticism of it?

    I take your point about professional vs amateur, but professionals have to be paid by someone, and until we don’t have our own Rupert Murdoch who’s willing to bankroll an entire cable channel until it makes a profit.

  87. 87.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Clearance adjudication is supposed to be done on what is called “whole of the person” evaluation. So everything on the SF 86 will have to be vetted and verified and the investigators will talk to people you’ve identified as references, as well as people you’ve worked with, and then people that both of those group recommend that you may not know the investigators are talking to. And they do background checks on those people – nothing super invasive, but they have to verify they are who they say they are, don’t have anything compromising them, etc. Basically they are looking for anything that either demonstrates that you are already compromised/could be compromised and that you are unlikely to betray the US/violate classification and distribute classified material. For a lot of these at the highest levels there is also what’s called a life style polygraph. And even if you get, for instance, a Top Secret and are also deemed acceptable for a Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI – the highest level clearance) there are different gradations. For instance, some with TS/SCIs are classified so that the TS has to be current for the SCI access to be granted. For others, who’s TSs and SCIs were done at different times they’re classified so that as long as the SCI is current (as in hasn’t past its renewal date) they can be read on at the discretion of the Special Security Officer. Though there aren’t too many SSOs that are going to be flexible like that in a post Snowden world.

    For someone like Manafort, and several others, there are going to be, I think, three issues: 1) Can he fill out the form without having to fraudulently answer some of the questions? 2) Will his foreign business and financial connections make it impossible for him to be deemed safe to receive a clearance? (I think this is going to be a problem for Flynn, Page, and a bunch of other of these folks too), and 3) Can he pass the polygraph? I don’t think Manafort can get through all three.

    Now my understanding has always been that if the highest person in the chain of command wants someone cleared, if there are some concerns, then because its whole of person assessment, they will, sometimes, still be cleared. If the President decides that he wants Manafort cleared, will it happen even if he can’t get through the Single Source Background Check and Lifestyle Polygraph (SSBI and LP) process? I don’t know. We are, to some extent, in uncharted territory. I do know that since both Hanson and Ames, and now Snowden and the other contractor from last month, the counterintelligence folks and the security clearance folks do not take chances. These people are professionals, there singular jobs/responsibility is ensuring that America’s secrets are kept secret. I do not see them being suborned, nor do I see them being easy to purge and replaced.

    The other way this can work is that these things take forever. Despite legislation passed by Congress that told the clearance folks that they had to have SSBIs done within (I think) ( months whenever possible and Personal Periodic Reviews (PPRs/PRs) done within 4-6 month, they also cut the budgets for investigators, investigations, etc. And the more foreign contacts you have, and the more time you’ve spent out of the country detailed on your SF 86, the longer it takes even under normal conditions. I have a former student who is now the Deputy Director of an Army program. His PR was begun in August of 2014. Its still not done. That’s two years and three months! So the clearance folks could just slow walk everything. And because you currently have a clearance isn’t a guarantee that it will go with you. For instance, even though they have to do the SF 86s, members of the House and Senate get clearances as a result of being elected like the President and Vice President. If they leave the Senate or House because they’re taking an Executive Branch position, the clearance will be pulled and reviewed.

    Hope that helps.

  88. 88.

    Kathleen

    @SFAW: I think Air America failed because it was owned and managed by people who knew nothing about radio or programming. Most of it was just bad radio. The only experienced radio people on air as I remember were Randi Rhodes and Mark Reilly, Marc Maron’s co host on morning drive. It deserved to die. While I don’t listen to Stephanie Miller much she is definitely a radio professional who knows how to mix politics and entertainment/comedy. And she’s lasted a long time.

  90. 90.

    delk

    I’ve culled all news media as well. On November 1st I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Not that there is any good time to have that diagnosis, the week before the election was pretty shitty timing, lol. I’m staying off of a lot of places because I really don’t need the anger or anguish at this time.

    Netflix, dog time, and low sodium cookbooks are ruling my world.

  93. 93.

    Mnemosyne

    @JPL:

    Breitbart’s been dead for years. It’s his propaganda site I’m talking about.

    I don’t think we need a person to coalesce around, but if you think of one, let me know. Obama can’t do it, but we need someone who can draw eyeballs.

  95. 95.

    Poopyman

    @Elie:

    Somewhere along the line here, the Clintons, or NSA/CIA have to do some sort of analysis of what went down here from the perspective of IT interference potentially by the Russians.

    Sadly, the only (Federal) agency currently authorized for this sort of investigation within the United States is the FBI.

  97. 97.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JMG: They attacked the CNN producer with the camera the Saturday night before the election when he was trying to get actual imagery of the supposed “gun” wielder.

  98. 98.

    Schlemazel

    @Kathleen:
    GAWD how I miss media whores online!

    “We wanted to bring the media to its knees but discovered they were already there”

  101. 101.

    frosty

    @frosty:

    For me it;s BJ and the Guardian.

    Well, it’s actually a bit more. I was reading Washington Monthly back when it was a magazine in the 70s and Fallows was getting his start there. Recently picked it up again online. The Booman. Charlie Pierce. Gin and Tacos. And when I need a snarky laugh, Wonkette, of course.

    But TV and newspapers? Nah. I gave up my decades long subscription to the Baltimore Sun after the Trib bought them and ruined the paper.

  102. 102.

    Mnemosyne

    @clay:

    DailyKos was hard hit by the Hillary vs Bernie wars. There’s no consensus or agreement about much of anything.

    We desperately need a simple message that will be sent out through all outlets without being filtered. And not done by a bunch of amateurs.

  103. 103.

    JPL

    @Mnemosyne: I know Breitbart’s dead. All I was saying is they built the site around a cohesive white supremacy cult, and then expanded that to other whites on social media. Most of the articles are not any different than Russia Today. We tend to deal with facts and we live in an age where facts are harder to sell.
    I do think that it’s time to call a lie, a lie.

  106. 106.

    Emerald

    @Elie: See that’s what I’m afraid of. People in the streets 24/7 is the exact excuse he needs to start a major crackdown with the military and the police.

    People are gonna get killed.

    And Hillary has endured quite enough I think. I can see her becoming a major spokesperson for our side, but not under the threat of a kangaroo court show trial.

  108. 108.

    SFAW

    @Schlemazel:

    They can even read us some of their poetry if they like.

    Cole, Adam, Anne Laurie! If you read this, please consider the above statement sufficient to the banhammer.

    Although I guess I should be grateful that Schlemazel spared us “Vogon poetry read by the Ferret-Headed Shitgibbon,” so that’s something.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @WarMunchkin:

    The NYT just equated Obama’s decision whether or not only prosecute Bush Administration officials over torture with Trump deciding whether or not to have a special prosecutor for Hillary.

    The most amazing part of that is the NYTimes is still focused on Hillary Clinton’s emails rather than FBI interference with an election.

    They’re wacky about Clinton. They have to get a grip. Jesus Christ. Are they planning on pursuing this woman until she dies of old age?

    The email obsession continues after she lost the election. It’s absurd. Now it’s about validating their obsession with the emails. Emails: Year Two, We Were Right to Focus on the Emails.

  110. 110.

    frosty

    @Mnemosyne:

    Because the very plan we saw carried out on Tuesday was in play, and he was infuriated that it didn’t work.

    I expect you’re right.

  111. 111.

    Kathleen

    @Schlemazel: I was late to a thread the other day with a comment you posted about working for Joe Karth. In the mid 60’s I was a “Karth Girl” (a group of us wore red dresses with sashes and performed at different DFL events). I played my guitar and we all sang. Many of us same girls performed in support of Tom Byrne when he ran for mayor of St. Paul. Brought back fond memories of my St. Paul days.

  113. 113.

    Kathleen

    @frosty: Booman and Pierce get on my last nerve now. I used to enjoy them awhile back but I don’t find their analysis very insightful anymore.

  114. 114.

    Emerald

    @Mnemosyne: Yeppers. That is exactly right.

    But boy howdy, if it turns out that the Russkies had a hand in skewing the actual results . . .

    Although I dunno how we’re gonna investigate that before Jan 20th. With this FBI?

  118. 118.

    Adam L Silverman

    @frosty: My whole point since Wednesday is that panic/freaking out isn’t useful. Being upset? Sure. Being angry? Yes. Being scared? Definitely. Panicking? Nope, self defeating. That does not mean I am not very, very concerned. The short course on strategy and policy is that 1) strategy is about aligning ends, ways, and means, 2) personalities matter and relationships matter, and 3) personnel is policy.

    By putting Pence in charge of transition we get #3 and because of his personality and his relationships, its going to show us who gets the positions, which will further demonstrate to us what the policies most likely will be. The only good news is they seem to be rather clueless as to how things work. The questions to the current WH senior personnel about how many of the current WH personnel stay for the new Administration is telling. The answer is none of them.

  120. 120.

    Mnemosyne

    @JPL:

    As I said above, propaganda doesn’t have to be lies. Watch the short film I linked to above. There are no lies in it (well, Jim Crow was in effect in half the country, but anyway …)

    Here’s my first thought: something like Upworthy, but for Democratic priorities. New factories opening, new immigrants’s stories, happy shiny news (brought to you by the Democratic Party). We know from studies that Democratic voters want to stay positive. Let’s give that to them.

  123. 123.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Yes, technically he is the final say on what is and is not classified in the US. During the Bush 43 Administration, President Bush also gave VP Cheney that authority, which, as we now know, was not a good idea.

  124. 124.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @SFAW: Until Wednesday? You’ve a stronger stomach than I.

    I gave up on them years ago. Somewhere in year three of their fascination with Voter Fraud, ergo two years before they ever said vote suppression.

    Fuck em.

  126. 126.

    frosty

    @Kathleen: I started out with Kos and got the “last nerve” effect from them a few years ago. I agree somewhat about Booman and Pierce, but there’s still enough nuggets to keep reading. Forgot to mention TPM, too. The site wandered in the wilderness for awhile but Josh was on top of this election

    All IMHO of course..

  127. 127.

    JPL

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks. The damage the republicans can do to our safety net, will last decades. The damage they can do to freedom of the press and net neutrality will change the face of our country. The reason I added net neutrality is because Comcast and AT&T will be more than willing to slow down sites, that Trump doesn’t like, if it increases profits. It’s a new form of burning books.

  128. 128.

    Aleta

    Extraterrestrials could take control of DC and the US might not feel as utter horribly changed as I fear it is about to be. (Mood took a turn for the worse today.)

  129. 129.

    Tenar Darell

    @WarMunchkin: okay, yeah. 1. Citation please 2. Because this just made sure I’m never going to subscribe to that particular rag but I’d like to read the article to confirm. 3. WaPo it is.

  132. 132.

    khead

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Now my understanding has always been that if the highest person in the chain of command wants someone cleared, if there are some concerns, then because its whole of person assessment, they will, sometimes, still be cleared. If the President decides that he wants Manafort cleared, will it happen even if he can’t get through the Single Source Background Check and Lifestyle Polygraph (SSBI and LP) process? I don’t know.

    You only needed this paragraph. Without the “sometimes”, “will it happen” and “I don’t know” parts.

  133. 133.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: Honestly, it’ll be interesting to see how the media corporations, or rather the corporations that own the media and control the access, break.

  135. 135.

    maryQ

    Boy the hard-hitting journalism drawing attention to Trump’s authoritarian tendencies is just soooooo timely.
    Fuck these bastards.

  137. 137.

    Kay

    These people are terrifying. They’re casually discussing a political prosecution now. One more supposedly cherished norm out the window.

    A month ago it was “Donald Trump wants to lock up his political opponent! Outrage!” Now it’s “let’s discuss how Donald Trump goes about locking up his political opponent- is there precedent? ” They’re careening downhill. It gets worse every day. There is no bottom to this.

  138. 138.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman:

    My whole point since Wednesday is that panic/freaking out isn’t useful.

    That’s been my attitude too. The media, the bloggers, BJ commenters (love ya all!) are flipping all over the spectrum on what’s gonna happen. My take? Nobody knows. Trump didn’t do policy, and when he did, he was a weathervane. We don’t know what he thinks or what he’ll do, so there’s no point speculating until there’s a fact or two to deal with.

    The only thing I’m certain of is that he’ll do whatever it is gets the most approval for Trump. That’s the narcissist MO, which we’ve seen enough evidence for.

  141. 141.

    stinger

    @schrodinger’s cat: Yes, she did, and I thought at the time she was turning out to be a good one, a real reporter. Nope. Just where her loved ones are concerned, like Nancy Reagan with stem cell research (might have benefited her husband), Dick Cheney with gay rights (benefit his daughter), my brother with SSDI for his wife (all others on welfare are lazy slackers). Republicans only have empathy for their immediate family; can’t seem to drum any up for strangers.

  142. 142.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kathleen:

    IMO, that’s part of our problem — we have a left/liberal media, but they wander all over the fucking place and they tend to be pretty focused on the negative. We need a media source that will stay focused like a laser on the positive.

    Someone in one of the other threads talked about a study s/he had seen that said that Democratic voters love positivity. They hate negative campaigns so much that they punish Democratic politicians for them, even if the Democrat is the victim. That is most likely yet another piece in the puzzle of What The Hell Happened on Tuesday?

    So, instead of fighting that, let’s go with it. IMO, Hillary’s campaign did a great job of broadcasting a positive message, but she herself was too negative a figure for some people to pull it off. So let’s keep that message of #StrongerTogether and #LoveTrumpsHate and keep pushing it forward.

  143. 143.

    Tenar Darell

    I can’t help thinking:

    1. Anyone write yet about the Dreamers, the database with their information, the ethical obligations of records managers (which is fundamentally to preserve) vs. ethical humanity?

    2. What happens when the Archivist of the US has to try and preserve the records of this upcoming administration for posterity? What’s her obligation here, with an administration full of proven document destroyers…

  153. 153.

    Mnemosyne

    @Emerald:

    I’ve almost decided to go get a kilt pin and alphabet beads for it so I can spell out “Love Trumps Hate,” just to make sure the message is crystal clear to any fucking neo-Nazis.

  160. 160.

    Emerald

    @Mnemosyne: Of course, I do have a Hillary pin.

    I can wear that too, especially if the safety pin proves to be meh.

    (I am verklempt. I had an Obama pin that I got in 2007 before he won Iowa. I know I have it but I cannot find it!!!)

  161. 161.

    Kay

    I love too how all of media is full of stories about the Democrats. The minority Party. Out of power.

    Is there a point where they move on to covering the President-elect and the far Right one-Party rule in DC?

    Republicans have the whole shooting match. They own every bit of this. Is there some logical reason that they’re still pursuing dirt on Hillary Clinton? She’s a private citizen. Can they pull 50 or so people off the email beat and find something out about the new President ? Do we have to crowd-source this, or what?

  163. 163.

    divF

    @Mnemosyne:

    No one should be mistaken about this: this was planned and executed long before Trump was the nominee.

    The problem for the GOP was that this strategy wasn’t going to be enough, not with a candidate with such high negatives as Trump. So first they brought the neo-Nazi’s on board with Bannon. Then with a couple of weeks left before the election, and Hillary with an unstealable lead, they pulled out the emergency weapon, which was the Comey announcement. The first was a targeted effort to the upper Midwest. The second was the other half of the GOP voter suppression strategy, which was swiftboating / both sides are awful, which tends to have the mushy middle stay home.

  164. 164.

    Adam L Silverman

    @frosty: We need to be prepared to respond appropriately. But we can’t overreact now and start jumping at shadows. Right now the reaction has to be to stand up, as necessary, for those being targeted in the name of Trump and/or his “movement”. Letting them know they’re not alone. Letting them know they have people they can turn to. Actually putting ourselves between them and their abusers if we are in a place where we’re watching the abuse occur. Things like that. For those involved in organized politics, now is also the time, as several have mentioned in both posts and comments, to start the planning for the next round of local elections (some of those will be next year) and then the next round of off year/mid term elections in 2018. And we need to keep each other informed of what is happening.

    If, as was threatened/intimated during the campaign, a registry for Muslims is created, I would recommend signing up even if one isn’t a Muslim. Aside from the last names confusing the daylights out of people (Issac Rabinowitz? Kieran O’Malley? John Smith? David Nelson – finally, we got that guy on the watchlist…), it will make the idea of creating the registry a joke. I’m sure we will all have more things to consider as events occur.

  165. 165.

    Aleta

    @Elie: I hope it’s not too extreme for me to suggest that at this point they may be able to pin whatever falsehood thy want on her. Maybe staying agreeable and unthreatening is her best chance to be left alone? It’s galling to the max. I hope I am being too extreme actually. Seriously I think Trump wouldn’t hesitate to have her threatened with more questioning.

  167. 167.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: No, I do not. I am also done with any analysis of the election that veers into relitigating the primaries. We need to figure out exactly what went wrong, so we know what to fix, what to scrap, and what to double down on. Anything else is onanism.

  168. 168.

    Suzanne

    I really don’t think that there was anything deeper to this election than a whole bunch of people who feel looked down upon for being trashy got really mad about it and decided to Stick It To The (Black) Man.

    It’s not economic. It’s even only partially racial or misogynist. It’s the primal scream of the clinging-to-guns-and-religion-and-chain-restaurants people. They wanted to kick the asses of the kind of people that are featured in “Stuff White People Like”.

  169. 169.

    Elie

    @delk:

    My best to you, friend. Lots more options for treatment than there used to be but you have to take care of yourself #1. Hopefully, you like your docs and medical care…

  171. 171.

    Mnemosyne

    @efgoldman:

    And, frankly, they need to couch it in good ol’ fashioned Jewish or Catholic passive-aggressiveness. “I’m just so sad that Senator McConnell would support this bill that will starve babies. I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed.“

  172. 172.

    OGLiberal

    @schrodinger’s cat: Same here…just told my wife that. Not on Twitter because I follow some wingnuts just to get the other side’s perspective. (most of the cons I follow hate Trump but hate Hillary more so while their not happy they will be all about posting about how incredible it is that Hillary couldn’t win because she was so horrible) Facebook? No way…don’t want to see people I like gloating about electing a racist misogynist know-nothing authoritarian.

  173. 173.

    Emerald

    @divF: It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if it turned out that Comey was coordinating with the trump campaign.

    He needs to be prosecuted.

    Which, natch, won’t happen now.

  174. 174.

    frosty

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Kind of surprised you’d never seen that. You have to read “the making of” too. That thing was auto-generated by Microsoft’s wizard.

    I was surprised, too. I just went back and reread “The Making Of”. What a thing of beauty! He didn’t have to choose the most garish color scheme imaginable because the PPT Wizard already did it for him!

  176. 176.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: I don’t like it either. I also seldom respond well to panicky people. It is one of the reasons I did not react well to to the first people who saw what was going on on Tuesday. So many people here panic so often that I reacted with scorn. I was wrong – this time.

  180. 180.

    Elie

    @Aleta:

    Again, its unclear at this point but I think they would be taking a huge risk and her verbal aggressiveness, while maybe attracting them would also give her a lot of protection while kicking off a true resistance. Who knows if I know what I am talking about? This is not how I have thought of US politics and power moves. You might be right, she should hunker down. But then what? For how long would they leave her alone and how would she feel having bought her freedom that way? I believe (but have no proof), that she would rather go down guns blazing and as a warrior queen. We’ll see for sure…

  183. 183.

    Timurid

    @Kay:

    The may be trying to hedge against the possibility of an Electoral College mutiny. That’s a very unlikely event, but it’s also an extraordinarily destructive one (from their point of view). The kind of event you buy insurance for, juuust in case. A few column inches of e-mail scandal rehash every day is a pretty cheap insurance policy.

  184. 184.

    WarMunchkin

    @Steeplejack: See @#150. The real kicker is the idea that this is presented as a purely political, not legal story.

    And yes, you can be reductive in saying all legal actions are some n-order removal from political actions, but dear lord. The Trump Administration is normal now.

    President Obama must be feeling just as bad as HRC.

  185. 185.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Tenar Darell: @schrodinger’s cat: That’s not even my real worry. I’ve done inservice training for an ICE Field Office. They know the limitations they are dealing with and they are aware of not wanting to alienate the larger communities they are tasked with interacting with for immigration enforcement. I was brought in to do Engagement/socio-cultural stuff.

    The real worry is roving groups of knuckleheads feeling empowered to ask anyone who’s a person of color and/or has an accent when they’re leaving? Do they have their papers. There’s a Filipino woman, in her 60s or so, at the gym/wellness center I work out at. She dances for joy every time the President Elect or one of his surrogates is on one of the TVs. And she’s obnoxiously in everyone’s face about her support and how he’s going to fix everything and everyone and build a wall and deport a bunch of people (my guess is she still sends Christmas cards to the Marcoses…). Anyhow, the next time I get a chance I intend to politely tell her: “you realize when they start rounding up brown people with funny accents that you’re a brown person with a funny accent?” And then just walk away.

  187. 187.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Emerald: I’d bet money that some agents were in touch with Giuliani, at the very least through that retied FBI agent whose name kept popping up– Kallestrom? also, with staffers on Chaffetz committee

  188. 188.

    Aleta

    From an email sent me today by a person who wrote in Sanders for pres:

    Donald Trump, and the Republicans, arguably “won” this election just as Hillary Clinton, and the DNC, “won” her the Democratic nomination—i.e., by fraudulently “beating” Bernie Sanders in the primaries.

    (The suggestion is that Trump stole the election ‘just like’ H stole the nomination.)

  190. 190.

    Kay

    This is tragic:

    Interior Secretary
    The Interior Department manages the nation’s public lands and waters. The next secretary will decide the fate of Obama-era rules that stop public land development; curb the exploration of oil, coal and gas; and promote wind and solar power on public lands.
    Jan Brewer Former Arizona governor
    Robert E. Grady Gryphon Investors partner
    Harold G. Hamm Chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas company
    Forrest Lucas President of Lucas Oil Products, which manufactures automotive lubricants, additives and greases
    Sarah Palin Former Alaska governor

    let the looting begin.

  194. 194.

    weaselone

    @Emerald:

    Given her history, Hillary is not going to leave the country, and she would never accept a pardon as it would be an admission of criminality.

  196. 196.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman: What you’re discussing is what I call “facts”. Putting a Muslim registry in place? Fact. Fighting it? Definitely. Gaming out a strategy in advance? OK, sounds like a good plan.

    But wondering what Gingrich as SoS or Giuliani as AG will do before there’s even a transition team in place? I’m going to take a deep breath and not worry about it.

  201. 201.

    MomSense

    I’m firmly in the rage stage of grief and then got some really crushing news about an old friend and I just can’t right now.

    Media blackout except BJ. The tv input is set so I won’t accidentally see news. Just not ready. Kid sent me a really nice recording of a song he wrote and middle kid is checking in on me. Had a second birthday party for the pup with her best friend who’s birthday is also today. Her parents have a new baby so that was a brief break.

    Last night we binge watched Stranger Things which I recommend for nerds who lived through the early 80s and would like a little escape.

    FUCK Fucking cancer and the NYT.

  204. 204.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kay: Actually Palin was in the process of pushing an extraction tax, with proceeds going into Alaska’s budget and to supplement the yearly dividend every Alaskan gets, when she decided to go rogue and resign. And she and her family are actual outdoors folks and sportsmen. She might be the least objectionable pick on that list. She can also see Russia from her house, so that will help with the surveillance.

  206. 206.

    Elie

    I actually believe one of the big challenges for the Trump regime will be getting all the appointments and agency heads in place. Sure, the bureaucracy can run for a while without leadership, but they want to make a lot of changes all at once — complex changes that involve a lot of different departments, etc. Also, its fair to say after 8 years of Obama, at least some of this bureaucracy is not going to really help them. Lots of opportunities for misdirection and downright catastrophes. Also, he does not have a unified team but a bunch of competitors snapping at each other. The American people may have to endure some real governmental crises, not made of intentional actions, but incompetence and lack of awareness. Oh by the way, it will also cost millions and millions of dollars and result in a whole lot of shit going wrong in the hinterlands …. Would be fun to watch if people weren’t going to suffer…

  209. 209.

    Kay

    @Timurid:

    The may be trying to hedge against the possibility of an Electoral College mutiny.

    I don’t think there should be an electoral college block of Trump. this election was a disaster start to finish. It’s time for all concerned to suffer some consequences or the next one will be worse.

    They think it doesn’t matter, that ‘the country” will roll along no matter what they do. They take it for granted that nothing will ever touch them directly – that’s what “privilege” is – it’s feeling secure. They’re not safe. They elected a lunatic. he’s not going to get better. He’s going to get worse.

  210. 210.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @schrodinger’s cat: This is an exception. Just like if you were in NOLA when Katrina hit, freaking out a bit was not unreasonable. A Jew being put on a train to the east in 1939 had cause for freaking out too. Etc.

  213. 213.

    Retr2327

    @Trentrunner: by the way, to the extent you blame Comey (and I do), you have to blame Bill as well. If not for that impromptu meeting on the tarmac, AG Lynch would have stayed in charge of the investigation, and Comey would not have been given free rein to run wild.

  214. 214.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @MomSense:

    That Trump/NYT dynamic is deliberately and willfully mainlining whitewashing into the country. It’s KGB-like. TURN ALL MEDIA NEWS OFF. It’s a vector for the toxic waste that is all things Trump. The media’s job is now to smear us all with Trump’s feces too, so we can’t have contempt their stench. TURN THE MEDIA OFF.

  215. 215.

    clay

    @Emerald: i don’t think Comey was coordinating with Trump — he never would’ve released the second letter if he was actively pro-Trump.

    I think it’s much more likely that his hand was forced by a cadre of anti-Hillary agents, and wasn’t competent enough to handle it.

  216. 216.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Elie: Its the level below the top line appointees they’re going to have trouble with by all reports. All the long time policy hands, especially in defense, foreign, security, and intel who have said they want nothing to do with a Trump Administration. These would be the Deputy Assistant Secretaries, Directors, and Deputy Directors that would actually run things as political appointees. For instance, they’re supposed to drop in about 20 of these folks into DHS (and even larger numbers at other agencies and departments) over the next week to start a two mont left seat/right seat handoff with the outgoing folks. The problem is they don’t have these people. To get them they’re going to either try to get their proteges and I’m sure they’ll pick up a few of them. That leaves them with really inexperienced folks. At places like DOD and the specific services these folks are going to get eaten alive by the general officers/flag officers, the senior officers (colonels/liuetenant colonels/captains/commanders) the senior executives (usually retirees themselves – often colonels/captains), and the senior civil servants (GS 14s and 15s) are going to eat them alive. Same thing will happen at the Intel agencies, especially as 17 of them are part of DOD.

  221. 221.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: @Omnes Omnibus: Exactly. For instance:

    (Begin somber, sad sounding narrator) Senator McConnell, based on today’s submitted legislation and debate, believes he has the right to make decisions for your wife or daughter about what to do with her body, specifically that she cannot use contraceptives and that she must carry any pregnancy, no matter how dangerous to term. If Senator McConnell believes he has this authority, and its clear he does, then he also has the authority to tell your wife or daughter who she must have sex with. Call Senator McConnell’s office now and tell him he doesn’t have the right to decide who impregnates your wife or daughter. Paid for by its no one else’s business who your wife or daughter have sex with PAC a 501C3 organization.

  223. 223.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    DOn’t know if this has been covered here

    Wisconsin’s voter ID law caused problems at the polls in the city and likely contributed to lower voter turnout, Milwaukee’s elections chief said Thursday.
    The city saw a decline of some 41,000 voters in Tuesday’s election compared with 2012, when President Barack Obama won broad support in Milwaukee and coasted to re-election.
    “We saw some of the greatest declines were in the districts we projected would have the most trouble with voter ID requirements,” said Neil Albrecht, executive director of the city’s Election Commission.

  225. 225.

    Emerald

    @Kay: When Obama said look, the sun came up today, the only thing I could think was Yeah, it came up on Jan 31, 1933 in Berlin too.

    (Amazing how we no longer have to apologize for going Godwin)

  226. 226.

    Mnemosyne

    @frosty:

    If there is a Muslim registry, I am putting my name on it the day it goes live, just like Conrad Veidt registered himself as a Jew in Germany when his friends were forced to do it. Allahu Akbar!

    ETA: I even have a copy of the Koran I can bring with me in case they don’t believe me. A nice man gave it to me for free at the Festival of Books.

  228. 228.

    Kryptik

    @Poopyman:

    Late to this, but I’m pretty sure ‘Goodbye cruel world’ was an overwrought stock phrase for melodramatically taking one’s life before that song. Could swear it was used in Looney Tunes well before that, at the very least.

  229. 229.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Omnes Omnibus: I know you’ve brought it up, I didn’t know if those numbers were new or not. I know one jackass was saying there was no evidence that voter suppression had affected turnout

  230. 230.

    divF

    @clay: The second letter was part of the plan. The first one suppresses the Clinton voters, the second one fires up the Trump voters who think there is a conspiracy. But by then the “both sides are equally bad” crowd have already tuned out.

  231. 231.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: I was once given someone’s personal copy of the New Testament when I tried to avoid a Christianist kook by saying that I was Jewish.

  234. 234.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: Not sure what caused that. If I’d had run for Senate in Florida against Rubio, every day on the stump I would have done that with Rubio in place of McConnell. And I would have added: I want Senator Rubio to tell me whether if I get elected I get to legislate who sleeps with his wife?

    This is why I’m not in politics…

  235. 235.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kay:

    I think you’re in the same darkly humorous place I am right now, so I’ll say that if the Electoral College did decide to throw it to Hillary, I hope she would do this.

    (Context for non-“Simpsons” fans: Homer beats the garbage commissioner in an election by lying about everything and predictably screws everything up, so they try to re-appoint the previous guy (voiced by Steve Martin).)

  237. 237.

    Kay

    I want to see full-on coverage of Donald Trump and the Republican Party as completely responsible for everything from now on.

    They have great power- all but unchecked. Now let’s see some responsibility. We didn’t get it when they took Congress. Everything was laid at the feet of Obama. Just because Donald Trump is completely unqualified doesn’t mean the rest of us have to lower standards

  239. 239.

    Miss Bianca

    @efgoldman:

    Sure, NOW the Village is looking at what they did.
    Any asshole can predict the past
    Fuckem

    Yup. This up to 11.

    I had to get off Facebook after one of my friends there – who had approvingly quoted Susan Sarandon and made it clear that she thought Jill Stein was an awesome choice for president, tearfully proclaiming that she couldn’t understand how the American people could have voted for Trump.

    Next time I see her, I’m going to hard-pressed not to slap her upside the head and say, “there – happy now? We’ve got Trump for President, just like Jill wanted! oh, you mean you’re NOT happy now? Dearie, I love you, but fuck you. Fuck you and all your woo-woo, anti-vaxxing ilk. Just…don’t be near me now. I’m not safe.“

  241. 241.

    Kay

    @Mnemosyne:

    My nieces and nephews are making me sad with that petition to the electoral college. Oh, to be 20 again and believe in “petitions to the electoral college’

    I’m like “great! you should sign that!” but I don’t believe :)

    I want them not to be so sad.

  244. 244.

    Felonius Monk

    @Baud:

    Can’t believe that’s not the name of a blog.

    Well, there is a close ally called The Masturbator’s Sanctum, but in the interest of humanity I will not link to it.

  245. 245.

    Tenar Darell

    @Adam L Silverman: Yeah. Good luck with that. With people like that it’s always, always “but it couldn’t happen to me.” Until it happens to them. Saying that, & then mentioning that there have already been Filipinos who were legally naturalized or born here who have been harassed simply because of how they looked might shut her up or at least make sure she keeps her distance.

    It’s human nature to believe “not me” until it’s too late. I always wondered if my great-grandparents & my grandfather hadn’t immigrated when they did, would they have left the area of the Pale in the 1930’s even if they couldn’t have gotten visas? It’s like wondering if you would have fought, run, hidden or cooperated. Some kids in class couldn’t imagine anything but fighting, but that was statistically the least common choice.

  247. 247.

    Hurling Dervish

    On Election Night, as bad results were coming in, I heard an NPR reporter say that Democrats were, by nature, “pants-wetters” and so were panicking.

  250. 250.

    gene108

    But Hillary had a private e-mail server, which is the worst thing in the history of the Republic and required all the attention.

    I hope Trump refuses to do press conferences and does not even have a Press Secretary. I hope he does not let one damn journalist in the White House. There’s no law or Constitutional requirement to have press briefings. The White House press corpse will be out of work overnight.

    Outside of the State of the Uniion, Trump has no reason to address anyone.

  253. 253.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @gene108: No requirement of a SOTU speech. Prez needs to report the SOTU to Congress every year. That is all. Originally it was a written report; I don’t recall offhand who did the first speech.

  255. 255.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    You can almost watch them abandon standards and norms hour by hour. They’re interviewing Ivanka Trump as if someone elected Ivanka Trump. They’re going to treat those grown children as legitimate political leaders. They’re already doing it. It’s been accepted without question, as if it’s normal to bring 4 family members in as co-Presidents. We’re even getting the son in law. The United States of America is now a Trump property. It’s incredible to watch this.

  256. 256.

    Gretchen

    @Mnemosyne:
    And people wonder why I won’t get off this Voter Suppression hobbyhorse

    You shouldn’t get off of it until everybody has easy access to ID.

  259. 259.

    Taylor

    @Baud:

    From what I saw, The Guardian was all about the EMAIL also.

    Their US reporters seem to be infected with the same false equivalence disease as the rest of the US “journalism” profession.

    And they sometimes have fucking Jill Abramson writing columns for them (no comments allowed on her most recent self-serving banality).

    But I don’t think they would have buried Risen’s illegal wire-tapping story, as Keller did in 2004. That was when I gave up on the NYT.

    And they are pushing hard for disinvestment in fossil fuels.

    They are losing money hand-over-fist. They deserve our support.

  262. 262.

    Lizzy L

    @Mnemosyne: Yes. I posted that very thing on my FB page a couple of days ago. My kin in Germany wore yellow stars and carried documents that said “Juden.” Fuck me if I’m going to sit still and watch my government do that very thing to my neighbors and fellow citizens.

    I gave up on the TV network and cable media years ago, but stuck with NPR — until this election, when the smarmy solemn voices discussing EMAILS had me digging my nails into my palms. Dear sweet Jesus on a pogo stick, the country’s in serious shit and they’re nattering about nothing. I get by with TPM, this place, LGM, lately the WaPo. Bloomberg because a friend of mine works for them. I read the NYT Book Review and stuff, but I avoid the news because I don’t trust them, and I won’t read the Op-Eds because FFS these people think that Ross Douthat is worth listening to.

  264. 264.

    dww44

    @Emerald: Post 8 p.m. MSNBC has been very good this week and Lawrence O’Donnell has been quite excellent. If so inclined you can watch entire programs or just selected videos. One of my favorites from Wednesday night. That entire show made me feel so much better.

  268. 268.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Miss Bianca: I’m trained to do provide socio-cultural support for Military Information Support Operations (Information Operations and Psychological Operations).

    When Governor Scott didn’t come out on stage for his debate in 2014 because he was scared of the portable fan, what should have happened, what would have happened if I was there advising the candidate, was to have my candidate go out and say:

    (Insert name of moderators here) and all Floridians in the audience and watching at home. I’m very sorry that Governor Scott has an intense and uncontrollable fear of small household appliances – bless his heart. But like the work that Floridians require of their elected officials, this debate can’t wait for his campaign staff to get him calmed down. So rather than waste any more time and money, I’m happy to take questions from the moderators, the audience, anyone who wants to tweet one in because your time, and the money being spent on this, is to important to waste and if you honor me by electing me your next governor, I promise here and now never to waste it and never to let my personal fears keep me from doing the serious and important work you would entrust me with.

    Then every time Governor Scott had a campaign event I’d pay to have someone standing right in front of him with a small, portable fan. And make sure it was caught on tape. Each and every time.

  272. 272.

    Aleta

    @Poopyman:

    Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home:
    Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine.
    Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
    A river-ark on the ocean brine,
    Long I’ve been tossed like the driven foam;
    But now, proud world! I’m going home.

    Good-bye to Flattery’s fawning face;
    To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
    To upstart Wealth’s averted eye;
    To supple Office, low and high;
    To crowded halls, to court and street;
    To frozen hearts and hasting feet;
    To those who go, and those who come;
    Good-bye, proud world! I’m going home.

  278. 278.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: I know, that’s why I didn’t include you in the reply or send you via email what I sent her the other day and to what she’s referring to as being funny, not frightening.

  279. 279.

    Taylor

    @Adam L Silverman:

    At places like DOD and the specific services these folks are going to get eaten alive

    What does “eaten alive” mean?

    Serious question, I just don’t know what this means operationally for the running of the government.

  281. 281.

    CZanne

    @SFAW: podcast network with an associated web forum is my current moonshot for Democratic messenging. It has much lower startup costs than a deep cable network or an AM radio network. Cable and radio are both losing the battle for media attention. A podcast network can get away with about 60 hours of programming a week, instead of the current 96 hours that MSNBC produces or the 112 on the other two cable news stations. Since all of the content is on-demand, and the back catalog stays available, that fills the hours, should someone want 24-7 politics, though that’s a terrible idea. The content producers need not be assembled in any central location, which is good, because we need regional voices, and start-up costs are fairly small. The network should not be 100% politics all the time, but include pop culture, science, music and social programming, because one of the things that we’ve failed at in our previous attempts of a liberal network is we count on outrage to sustain it, and people get exhausted. Outrage is a powerful drug, and it’s not a drug that fits well in the generally liberal personality set. (One of the reasons right-wing radio persists is because it acts as a stimulant, and people who are inclined start to rely on that stimulant. The generally liberal mindset doesn’t handle that as well and retreats from it.) Best guess, building a network of 25 podcast programs, with two-three voices each and an editor, we’re looking at about $2M for media production in the first year. (The benchmark for a reasonably successful podcast team in the market right now is $3500-$5000 a month in income.) Recouping that through a combination of minimally invasive advertising and crowd-source sponsoring is not impossible at all. The $1 a month, or $1 a show model works extremely well for multiple current podcasters, it’s easy to produce both an ad-sponsored or somewhat limited free version and an ad-free version for subscribers. I am… not generally supportive of this being a specifically DNC project. It would go better if the DNC were a partner, because we’re not talking about a propaganda network. The alt-right version of this was fairly organic in development, with regular injections of funding-fertilizer.

    The delivery infrastructure is outsourced to multiple platforms — Apple, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Swell — so there’s robustness and platform independence built in. There’s also a strong stable of podcasters currently at work now, some of whom can be recruited off the shelf with their audiences, either as podcast network partners or affiliate partners.

    And… if worst comes to worst, and a complete collapse of net neutrality breaks that infrastructure, we can go samizdat with this model, and outsource broadcast to community radio, HAM and shortwave, and low-power FM, if the podcasts are Creative Commons licensed for free reproduction, no alteration, attribution required. CDs are cheap and easy to burn and mail, and torrent is not dead. (Yes, in fact, I am thinking of Deathly Hallows and the radio program. Voldemort is looming.)

    The other side is the forum aspect. The ideal model is a network owned, professionally and transparently moderated forum, with strong preferences for the mods to come out of the SF/F community mod ethic, because the SF/F community has built some highly functional moderating chops. We’re geeks — we’ve been on the internet a long time. We’ve also been through three substantial troll wars, and survived while strengthening the community voice and not stifling the opposition, because we have a strong tool set we continue to build. (Disemvoweling, troll containment zones, and a community ethic of toleration helps.) The exception is the GmrGt war, with its slide into the Puppies offensive. Which should have been a winnable war, and should never have gotten much past some asshole is being a jerk about his ex, except the primary platform of the offensive did not provide the basic tools needed. Twit could not be bothered to offer any form of moderation tool, not even mute, until far too late. Book of face was not much better, and was a secondary front. We can’t do anything about the *chans.

    And trolls will be attracted. It’s going to be necessary to have active, transparent moderation. The forum side will need a robust and proactive service provider, because DDOS and other attacks are inevitable. (See DemocraticUnderground right now for the example of what should be expected and would need defense against.) I’ve been online for more than half of my life, and I am increasingly frustrated with how liberal sites have handled trolling, because the response overwhelmingly runs to the wrong over-reaction. (This place, Slacktivist and a few others excepted.) Trolls were there at the beginning, and they’re not going away. They’re generally people who are so marginalized and disfellowshipped from society that they’re screaming for attention. They take negative attention because it’s better than being ignored. Yes, ostracism makes them worse, but it’s the tool we have because nobody in the world has the resources to find these schmucks and steer them into therapy. Quarantine is the only effective response to this specific meme. Which means ideally, recognition of trolling behavior would be baked into the user experience and rewards would be built in for not engaging with the troll (flag and move on) with some sort of admonishment for engaging, and quick removal of the burning bags of poop trolls leave in the comments section. (Disqus, thus, is a very bad system, since Disqus doesn’t seem to actually take action with regards to trolls, though blocking is finally possible.)

    FB is the 800 pound gorilla of social networking, but it’s a terrible platform for this proposed network and should be treated as a potentially hazardous adjunct, at most. It can’t be ignored, but nothing mission critical should be there. It’s where conspiracy theory goes to spawn, it’s bad on security and poorly responsive. Plus, it “relies” on real names, and a lot of people who will need, want and use this kind of network have reason to want to keep their identities private. Also, everybody’s mom is on Book of Face and it’s a personal security nightmare. A forum with paid moderation is going to run about $30-40K per year per moderator, at minimum, but since modding is a do it in your PJs from home job, the costs are lower than something centralized. A starting team of five full-timers and four part-timers with plans to add one per 10K users after 70K users is probably reasonable. It’s also possible to import some of the better practices already in place within the liberal media web community — DU’s jury system is brilliant and effective, and they have a strong knowledge base of how to handle trolls, community divisions and diversity. It would not be at all stupid to recruit DU, Crooks&Liars, and DKos into the family, either as partners, affiliates or siblings. We have a lot of fragmentation in our online media, which hurts us. Right-wing online media also narrow-casts, but they intentionally overlap and interlock, which gives their messaging more intentional cross-linking and coordination.

    If that forum system is looking painful, there is a second option, but is still going to require some paid moderation and administration, and that’s Reddit. (Okay, you can stop laughing any time. I’m serious.) Subreddits with active moderation and clear rules are a marvel of good social function (see r/raisedbynarcissists for the best example, but I can give others), and they work very, very well. A network-centric subreddit could get by with a combination of paid and volunteer mods, assuming the volunteers are vetted. (However, it’s a poor tool for the second aspect of the point of the forum, so I present it only as a first step and eventual adjunct.) The risk with Reddit is the same risk as using any platform not under the control of the network — being subject to the rules, or lack thereof, of someone else’s house. OTOH, Reddit works well with its subreddit admins and mods, and allows its subreddit admins and mods to set extremely flexible rules about their own space. Reddit comes with its own extremely large user base, and an extremely sturdy service.

    And the forum feedback is a critical component of making a liberal media network work. This is my second point of the forum. We have to be able to communicate with each other and the network. The DNC doesn’t admit this, but county offices and their volunteers are way too isolated from each other, and liberals in general are not engaged with the larger structure, because we don’t have a messaging, communications and engagement media infrastructure. BoCoDems has a great infrastructure of volunteers, but we’re royal blue in a pretty blue metro, in a more violet than purple state. But we’re technically mostly in late 1999, through a combination of low priority for tech, a hesitance to even ask the volunteer base to commit to a technology much less strongly advise or require, a volunteer base that goes fairly dormant when we’re not in season, and little state, regional or national leadership. We’re still relying on emailing lists (as of last summer, at least, when I stopped being a chair because I moved into a precinct with a titular chair, though I never saw or heard from him…) for precinct chairs, which means those lists are either dead (most of the time) or turn into vast quagmires of reply all. We should be on Slack, at minimum. And we should be cross-county coordinating. Registration drive is incredibly easy for us, thanks to motor voter, the sec state website, and vote by mail now. That, and our reliable turnout, give us breathing room to go help Jeffco or Grant or Douglas when needed. But we don’t have that kind of mesh networking tool — it’s county chair contacting county chair and hoping the chair can mobilize people with nothing else to do. We need it at the state levels, and we need it at the regional level. CO and NV have strong programs, so we should be mentoring Utah Dem startups. (We already have a decent portion of the Gentile minority in Utah, and we can flip the Mormon majority if we put about a decade of work into it, because LDS theology, doctrine and social practice can map onto the Dem platform — they’ve got a very strong social service and communal aid infrastructure. They strongly favor leaving nobody behind, support for families, and education and they’re very attached to the 1st Amendment, because religious persecution is still within their oral history. Harry Reid is not an aberration – he’s more representative of Mormon Corridor Culture than Jeff Flake or Jason Chaffetz. A flipped Utah would be fairly Blue Dog for another generation, but that’s okay. Big tent.) We should also be applying the community organizing legacy of the Chicago machine. (Not the graft. That, we don’t need.) Which means building or rebuilding local engagement. I should see my precinct chair regularly. The Chicago machine worked as long and well as it did because the machine got potholes fixed and held job fairs and got parks re-seeded, because somebody in every neighborhood knew who to call when something wasn’t working. We need to rebuild the popular association of the Democratic Party being the party that gets shit done. That’s what a forum/mesh network can help us provide. We still have to have feet on the ground and people doing the work, but that’s always the case.

    The key is that Dems own the cities. We have to work harder, because our urban votes are worth 25-35% what a Wyoming or Delaware vote is worth in the EC, but we’ve got a lock on 60+% of the electorate. (The US population is 80% urban, and urbanites vote 3:1 for liberal policy and candidates.) If we turn out 70% of registered voters, it doesn’t matter what the rural 20% and the 25% contrarian urban vote do, because they’re overwhelmed. (Yes, we need to fix the EC. There’s a way, that doesn’t require a ConCon, but it’s not going to happen without a Blue House and a super Blue senate.) We need a tool that messages us, and lets us message back and between. Which we can combine with info-tainment, because that builds engagement.

    –C
    Democracy is Coming

  283. 283.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Taylor: It means the general officers/flag officers, colonels/captains and lieutenant colonels/commanders, the senior executives, and the senior civil servants that actually run things day to day and have deep expertise in what is supposed to be done will be able to do what they think needs to be done because you’re likely to have rank amateurs at the managerial level of the political appointments who are supposed to actually run things, if the reporting is accurate, not know what they’re doing. And if you’re put in charge of a bunch of generals, but haven’t had a lot of exposure to them, its going to show. Does that make sense?

  287. 287.

    Taylor

    @Adam L Silverman: So, think Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister/Prime Minister, with the Trump appointees as hapless Jim Hackers?

    Ok, thanks.

    BTW I studied Public Administration when that show was first running, and the instructor swore by the veracity of its dialogue.

  288. 288.

    Morzer

    @CZanne:

    The Chicago machine worked as long and well as it did because the machine got potholes fixed and held job fairs and got parks re-seeded, because somebody in every neighborhood knew who to call when something wasn’t working.

    I have to point out that there was a generous dose of segregation in the mix and very much by design. The machine did a lot of stuff for the “right” people, while funding some carefully chosen community leaders who would keep the lid on the “wrong” areas.

  290. 290.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Adam L Silverman: Adam, I’d phrase it as “no matter how dangerous the pregnancy, no matter the health risk to you/your wife/your daughter, Senator McConnell will force her through it, against her will, over and over again until menopause.”

  293. 293.

    Gavin

    It’s also dead on to point out that Trump’s entire campaign populism has already been shown to be a sham — by his Cabinet shortlists. Welcome to Bush the Lesser Round 3!

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