Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Optimism opens the door to great things.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Infrastructure week. at last.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Everybody saw this coming.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / NANCY SMASH! / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Nancy (Once Again) Smash

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Nancy (Once Again) Smash

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May her shadow never grow less!:

Democrats are wandering around in the wilderness once again, shut out of power in Washington after losing a close, hard-fought presidential battle. The last time this happened, after the 2004 elections, the newly reelected president, George W. Bush, over-read his mandate and launched an ill-fated effort to partially privatize Social Security, providing a rallying point for Democrats to begin turning things around.

In an interview with me, House Dem leader Nancy Pelosi argued that history might repeat itself, if House Speaker Paul Ryan — with Donald Trump’s blessing — makes good on his hints to press forward with his plans to privatize Medicare. Pelosi vowed that Democrats would remain united in the battle to stop Ryan’s plan, a goal she described as crucial to defeating it, just as unity enabled Dems to block Bush’s Social Security plan…

In that 2005 fight, Pelosi recalled, Democrats actively avoided developing an alternative plan to Bush’s. Instead, Democrats said their plan was to defend Social Security, a very popular government program. At the time, some Democratic strategists warned against uncompromising opposition. But the gamble paid off. Observers noted that Bush’s plan sank in popularity as Dems remained unified behind a refusal to budge in defense of Social Security, a move that was widely credited with helping to put Dems on track to winning back Congress in the 2006 elections.

Pelosi argued that if Republicans did try to privatize Medicare, it would afford a chance to underscore “the difference between Democrats and Republicans” at a time when Democrats are trying to regain their footing after this year’s loss. “This is such a stark difference that people know we have to be unified,” Pelosi said….

… Pelosi adamantly stated that Democrats would not give any ground on the core ideological dispute here, which is over whether to maintain a government coverage guarantee. “We are not going to a casino — this is a guarantee,” Pelosi said. “This is a value system for us, and we will fight for it. Is it a guarantee, or not?”…

***********

Apart from vowing to fight on, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  1. 1.

    Botsplainer

    Starving and dying olds could be the thing that actually brings us progressive nirvana, given voting patterns.

    Shame is, I’ll be one of those starving and dying olds before progressive nirvana becomes an inevitability.

  2. 2.

    Botsplainer

    My other take is this – if it looks like it is going, don’t preserve it for those over 55. Either keep it or kill it. Make Appalachia, the rust belt and retirees own the consequences of their votes.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I can see the ad now:

    Paul Ryan walking along side a sweet doddering grandmother. He keeps talking about how his medicare is better. She just wants to show pictures of her grandchildren and tell stories about them. He keeps talking over her, especially when she gets the pictures out. They come to a crosswalk and he stops.

    She looks puzzled and says, “Aren’t you coming with?”
    He says, “No, you’re on your own now.”

    She takes a hesitant step out looking left, another looking right, another loo….

    WHAM!!!! a big yellow school bus with the words “Insurance Company Bean Counters”** runs her over.

    Paul Ryan smiles, “That’s the Free Market for you, gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.”

    **I am unsure of the exact wording on the side of the bus I was thinking “Ins Co Death Panels” but that may have been too well co-opted by the RWNJ/Tea Party.

  6. 6.

    JPL

    @Botsplainer: I agree. The statement that if you like medicare you can keep it is a lie. What will be left is a program with fewer doctors and little negotiating power.

    Nancy is great at keeping the coalition together, but I think we need someone who is younger. Nancy isn’t that great giving interviews. imo

  9. 9.

    Juice Box

    I’m 55+. If Medicare is only available to people my age and above, what happens 20 years from now? Will the young people want to keep supporting the program? I doubt it.

    Of course, my preference is M’care for all.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Front page headline at the far left uber liberal commie rag St Louis Post Disgrace: New overtime rule could cost Missouri taxpayers more than $5 million No, I won’t link to it.

  13. 13.

    daveNYC

    She’s 76, so now probably would be a good time to start training up a replacement.

    As great as it would be for the Republicans to try and nuke Medicare without any grandfathering, there’s zero chance they’re that stupid. The grandfathering is the only thing that lets it have even a remote chance of passing.

  14. 14.

    Botsplainer

    @Juice Box:

    Yeah, I’m 54. If the voting preference of olds kills it for me, I’m going to spite vote in order to more quickly kill off the olds so that a better system comes about.

  15. 15.

    bemused

    @Juice Box:

    It’s the slower kill method as the number of Med recipients and payroll contributions to the fund decrease, they will justify steep benefits cuts to remaining recipients and voila.

  18. 18.

    Inmourning

    Trump campaigned on a promise to protect SS and Medicare. We should emphasize that he has reneged on that promise. His promise got him votes he likely otherwise would not have gotten. Dems should stand firm on this.

  21. 21.

    JPL

    We need a category for wtf

    Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said.
    Nasa’s Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space, with the president-elect having set a goal during the campaign to explore the entire solar system by the end of the century.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research?CMP=share_btn_tw

  27. 27.

    Botsplainer

    @Inmourning:

    I’m looking forward to my weekly ValPak mailer (everything from gutter cleaning to Mexican restaurants) which includes a Medicare coupon for 10% off on a colonoscopy at a handy TrumpCorp medical center. The next month, I might get a 5% off Medicare coupon for treatment of s broken arm on Tuesdays and every 3rd Friday.

    And my monthly SS statements from the TrumpCorp Asset Management Group will be a breeze. It’ll tell me how much I’m winning, but very simply-just a number on a page.

    See? He saved Medicare and SS, as promised…

  29. 29.

    Botsplainer

    @JPL:

    There was a scifi novella written in the 80s about how Russia suckered the US into expensive and quite useless deep space manned programs in order to bankrupt the US. In the end, Russia got suckered by China into racing to Alpha Centauri.

  33. 33.

    henqiguai

    @JPL(#6):

    Nancy is great at keeping the coalition together, but I think we need someone who is younger.

    Suggest away Mr. Political Genius. I hear that Tim Ryan kid is an up-and-comer. Always this ‘someone younger’ noise, but nobody credible around. What’s your plan if not the demonstrably effective Nancy Smash?

  36. 36.

    Alabama Blue Dot

    Can you imagine the scammers that will come out of the woodwork for a Medicare voucher? There will be so many fake insurance companies and policies that even a strong FTC couldn’t investigate them all.

  38. 38.

    bemused

    @Botsplainer:

    We both recently became eligible for Medicare and are extremely worried about our adult kids and grandkids losing that healthcare cushion.

    I plan to grab anyone by the collar, senior citizen or younger, who is not concerned or completely ignorant that killing Medicare is a top priority on 2017 GOP wish list. Current Medicare users who don’t care as long as they have it need to be scared out of their thick skulls that their current benefits are also at risk of being cut.

    There must be some math whizzes that could calculate a estimated projection how many years it would take for Medicare to die if granny killer Ryan had his way, 55 and older plan. Dwindling payroll contritions, fewer providers, etc could probably be calculated now to know when Medicare would be kaput. No doubt GOP would also make poison pill cuts to current Medicare benefits to make it go down faster.

    People don’t worry as much about something happening “in the future” but if there were carefully analyzed date projections, give or take 5 years, it might shake up and scare more people.

  41. 41.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Probably going to pull the trigger on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 today. I’ve been eyeballing it for a while, and Micro Center suddenly put it on sale for $250. (Price has held firm at $400 for months at Amazon and Micro Center.) I think the 8″ screen is the sweet spot for me, and it’ll be a big step up from my aging Nexus 7. Christmas comes early this year!

    Any caveats, speak now or forever hold your peace.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    The New York Times is still doggedly pursuing the unspecified email crimes of Hillary Clinton.

    Trump allowed them into his corporate headquarters for 45 minutes and that’s what they followed up on- the Clinton crimes they pursued for the last 24 months.

    These people require an intervention. Loathing Clinton is one thing- smearing her after Trump is elected is wacky. Most of the country now believe Donald Trump graciously declined to imprison Hillary Clinton, which isn’t true.

    The best part about it is Hillary Clinton can’t defend! What’s she supposed to say? “I wasn’t charged with anything and the President can’t prosecute people anyway”?

    These are choices they’re making. They chose to focus on that line of inquiry and they chose to amplify that part of the interview as headline news. It’s nuts to focus on Clinton when we have a President no one knows the first thing about.

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    It’s nuts to focus on Clinton when we have a President no one knows the first thing about.

    We know he runs a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization, but BENGHAZI!! EMAILS!!! CLINTON FOUNDATION!!!

  50. 50.

    PIGL

    @JPL: but most people don’t understand is that once institutions like that have been destroyed they cannot be restored.

    I guess my view is evolving into roughly as follows: if the United States of America is determined to blow its brains out, then you may as well get right to it … no dawdling no prevarication no second thoughts.

    I think there’s a Portal song much to this effect.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    Just let this sink in a minute: the headline news all day yesterday was Donald Trump declined to prosecute his political opponent.

    He successfully mainstreamed an entirely new norm. They’re now crediting him with backing off his vow to prosecute political opponents. It isn’t just lowering standards- it’s adopting Trump’s standards. He won’t be held accountable because they’re abandoning any of the norms he violates, as soon as he violates them!

    He and his team announced there were no rules as far as conflicts of interest. Now the Trump Family and all of a Congress get a pass. “Nothing anyone can do! Oh, well”. This is racing to the bottom.

  53. 53.

    Patricia Kayden

    @rikyrah: Kudos to Rep Pelosi but Republicans can still ram this bill through without Dems according to the Washington Post article.

    It’s always possible that even if Democrats do maintain unity, Republicans could also remain unified and pass the Ryan plan without them.

  54. 54.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Aside from losing Medicare, I’ll be losing the hefty raise I just got to comply with the new overtime rules. It’s probably a good thing I won’t be around my family tomorrow.

  55. 55.

    Kay

    Also, anyone who wants to believe there was vote-rigging in midwest states will believe it anyway, but I think this theory is nonsense and Democrats shouldn’t sign on. This happened after 2004. People wanted to believe there was rigging that allowed Bush to win Ohio and that was nonsense too.

    Liberals and Democrats hurt the cause of voting rights when they do this, because there are real problems with voter suppression and pursuing bullshit conspiracies allows people to dismiss suppression claims as a conspiracy theory.

    Please don’t do this. It does harm.

  57. 57.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    I know this is going to sound stupid but I am a big believer in karma and I really think Shitgibbon has screwed so many people over his lifetime that this presidency thing will turn out to be one of the biggest karma bitchslaps of all time. Granted this doesn’t help us but I am going to enjoy seeing him go down for whatever scam/foreign disaster he will be responsible for. In my fantasy dream it ends up being something where he can’t find any scapegoat to blame it on – well,maybe his trophy hunter sons.

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @PIGL:

    but most people don’t understand is that once institutions like that have been destroyed they cannot be restored.

    Of course they can. The hardware doesn’t go away, the scientists don’t all suddenly die. They can be rebuilt and done so much quicker then the way they were built to begin with: From scratch.

    Of course, it takes the political will to do so, which in the short term is unlikely, and in this case the damage inflicted in the mean time is, on a homo sapiens scale, irreversible.

  59. 59.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: Your comment is why I doubt Trump will be impeached — especially by the Ryan/McConnell Congress. I can’t think of anything Trump could do to cause Congress to go after him as long as he’s doing their bidding of sticking it to the poors, gays, women and POC.

  61. 61.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    The piece is a rehash of the “clouds over the Clintons” reporting they did for the last 24 months.

    You know who is now defending the idea that the President can’t prosecute his political opponents? Ann Coulter. It’s wacky. They’re adopting Trump’s norms! Ann Coulter won’t even go that far!

  62. 62.

    debbie

    @JPL:

    They can always redefine the roles. Pelosi’s great at herding. The Whip could become more of a spokesperson on policy.

  66. 66.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Inmourning: I’m sure that Trump will leave a trail of broken promises since so many of them were vague, ill-advised or not practical. We will soon see how his avid supporters react when they realize that he has no intention of following through on the many promises he made during the heat of his presidential campaign.

  67. 67.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    He already announced no rules apply to him and that’s how they report it- “no rules apply to Donald Trump”

    Congress writes law. They could do PLENTY to rein in Trump. Now they won’t be pressured to do anything. Trump has announced there’s nothing that applies to him.

    We’re watching each institution fail in sequence. There’s a chance someone or something might stop Trump, but that person or entity will have to be new. The existing structure is collapsing in front of us. It was weakened and it’s now failing. It’s that simple.

  69. 69.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @debbie:

    This is a tablet, not a phone. I don’t think it’s in danger. The battery’s got more room to breathe.

  72. 72.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: According to a Vanity Fair article I read, it was the NYT which introduced the world to the email server “scandal” in the first place back in early 2015 so it’s not surprising that they are continuing their vendetta against Mrs. Clinton even now. NYT must have a personal distaste for the Clintons left over from the 90s because otherwise this obsession with emails in the face of a Trump presidency is inexplicable.

  74. 74.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Kay: How is it plausible for no ethics or conflict of interest rules to apply to the President? I’m hoping that the Democrats are not buying into that foolish argument. Loads of ethics and conflict of interest rules applied to President Clinton so why would Trump be exempt? Absolutely rubbish.

  78. 78.

    PIGL

    @Patricia Kayden: I think it’s very easily explicable… they want a Trump presidency, they want to destroy the Democratic Party. At some point you have to assume that people are doing what they want to do and that the obvious consequences are the objective.

  79. 79.

    PIGL

    @OzarkHillbilly: well if the decision was reversed in 30 seconds yes of course; but these things take years to turn around and that’s too long. people give up, move on, the next generation decides to go to trade school….the consequences are serious and long-term and fairly immediate…on the time scale of a few years, a granting cycle, a PhD.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @PIGL: Yes, as I said in my reply:

    Of course, it takes the political will to do so, which in the short term is unlikely, and in this case the damage inflicted in the mean time is, on a homo sapiens scale, irreversible.

  81. 81.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Patricia Kayden: Actually it makes a certain amount of sense. The president’s powers make it very difficult for him to be prosecuted, so why bother.

    The check is supposed to be Congress, who after all can impeach him because they don’t like the color of his tie. They don’t need him to break a law, so why bother.

  82. 82.

    Botsplainer

    @Patricia Kayden:

    They don’t get to call for hearings or control if bills come to the floor.

    Winter is truly coming. At least 4 years’ worth.

    Prior to the election, I said I felt the Donald Trump would be the last President of the US as currently comprised under the 1789 constitution.

  83. 83.

    Chris

    @JPL:

    Ah, “politicized science.” We now have our version of the “Jewish science” that led the Nazis to neglect nuclear research.

  84. 84.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    I have no idea if there was vote-rigging, though I think pursuing it is a political loser. I do believe there was vote suppression, but good luck getting people to care about that one.

  85. 85.

    PIGL

    @Botsplainer: I wouldn’t go quite as far as that but I will agree absolutely that trumps election is an instance of how such things come about. Things do look very black, and he hasn’t even started yet .

  86. 86.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    We’re watching each institution fail in sequence. There’s a chance someone or something might stop Trump, but that person or entity will have to be new. The existing structure is collapsing in front of us. It was weakened and it’s now failing. It’s that simple.

    Yep. That’s what’s terrifying about the new era. Republicans controlling any one government institution is bad, but survivable. Republicans controlling all of them in tandem, now that they’ve committed themselves to essentially Jim Crowing the system to stay in power indefinitely, is terrifying. As is the fact that civil society institutions like the media are willing to back them to the hilt.

    We literally have nothing left to rely on except what Democrats are left, and I’m far from certain that’ll be enough.

  88. 88.

    D58826

    @Chris: He also said in a tweet that he is putting in place his team for the next 8 years. Slip or frauduian slip? AT least that would spare us the sight of reptilian Ted Cruz campaigning for 2020.

  91. 91.

    D58826

    @Chris:

    now that they’ve committed themselves to essentially Jim Crowing the system to stay in power indefinitely, is terrifying

    They are field testing election results don’t matter in N. Carolina. For those not following:
    1. the GOP did all it could to depress the turnout among D voters
    2. McCory still lost
    3. Cooper has a 7k+ lead
    4. GOP is doing everything it can to get a recount or at least discredit the results.
    5. If they can drag it out till the next legislative session, the Legislature (with a GOP super majority) can declare the results in dispute and pick the new governor.
    6. This action cannot be appealed in court. The article didnot say but I’m assuming that is only state court.

    They aren’t even doing this in a smoke filled room.

  94. 94.

    Chris

    @D58826:

    Oh, Freudian. Totally Freudian.

    @debbie:

    Eh. Nobody knows what the other candidates would be doing, but it would all have been horrific. Saying that we wish it had been someone else at this point feels kind of like those time travel episodes where you kill Hitler and assume everything’ll be better only to find out that things still went horrifically wrong, just slightly differently.

  95. 95.

    Poopyman

    @Kay: Managing risk involves balancing the probability of an event occurring with the consequences from that event happening.

    You may safely assume that no system is hack-proof. And the fact that the Feds warned several states that their vote aggregation systems had potential problems indicates that they saw that there were potential problems.

    If the Russians didn’t rig the 2016 election it’s only because Putin calculated that the consequence of discovery outweighed the benefit to Russia. If we DON’T at least investigate the integrity of the systems, then Putin will rightly assume that the probability of discovery is negligible for the NEXT election.

    Still want to brush it aside?

  96. 96.

    Chris

    @D58826:

    The reality that still hasn’t sunk in is that the entire Republican Party, including and especially its voters, has pretty much openly given up on the notion of representative government. We’re essentially living in Third Republic era France, when there was a bitterly divided country with major culture wars going on within the republican framework of government, but underlying it all was the reality that the other side of that culture war, i.e. close to half of that country, didn’t really accept the republican framework as legitimate in the first place (after seventy years, they’d finally get a chance at backlash via Vichy). Except at least the pro-republic half of the country realized the kind of fight they were in. Liberals and moderates in the U.S. still don’t, I think, which is at least part of the reason for all the “it’s not so bad” articles after Trump was elected.

  97. 97.

    Botsplainer

    The losing ideology in this whole quagmire is the notion of total peaceful engagement and passive resistance. Peaceful compliance with and acceptance of social norms, administrative directives and court orders in the face of a concerted “government is the problem, shrink it” propaganda effort for the past 35 years led to weakened institutions that have no resilience and will collapse regardless of effort. Some mouthy rightwing skulls need to be cracked every now and then for fear to be felt, lest the cracking occur the other way by right wing forces in authority.

    Likewise, decades of meek compliance with picket line buffers, anti strike injunctions and legal prohibitions on general strikes have gutted labor. Managers, executives and owners should have to send their families to safe places periodically, they should have to worry about their houses and country clubs and churches being torched on occasion, they should have to sweep the undercarriages on their cars when they leave home, and they should feel reluctant to go to the local grocery or theater for fear of confrontation. Scabs should be concerned about ass kicking for crossing picket lines, too.

    Meek compliance and peaceful acceptance led to zero resilience on gains. Time to up the ante.

    Any lawyer who has ever dealt with a “never compliant” in civil courts can tell you – the system is ill-equipped to handle noncompliance. It is all very brittle, as the Bundy saga demonstrates.

  98. 98.

    D58826

    elections have consequences – here and abroad

    The Israeli Planning and Construction Committee, on Sunday, announced that Israel intends to build thousands of new settlement units in the occupied West Bank, now that Donald Trump has been elected to the United States presidential office, saying that the settlement project was “frozen for years, for fear of angering Obama.”
    Israel intends to approve the construction of 1,400 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish settlement neighborhood in East Jerusalem that lies beyond the so-called “Green Line,” Israel’s Channel Two News reported on Sunday, according to the PNN. Before his election, Trump stated that he supported settlement expansion, and that he will move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, making it “the undivided capital of Israel.”
    After the election, Israeli minister of education Naftali Bennett said it was “an opportunity for Israel to immediately retract the notion of a Palestinian state in the center of the country”, and that it signaled that the “era of a Palestinian state is over.”

    well if the Trumpsters want a clash of civilizations this will certainly add a big log to the fire
    http://www.juancole.com/2016/11/construction-thousands-settlement.html

  99. 99.

    Botsplainer

    @D58826:

    Thing is North Carolina clearly reflects a shitton of ticket splitting, telling me the results are real.

    If your votes don’t count, then what should keep people from declaring that it is blowing/burning shit up and shooting time? White country clubs, the businesses of big GOP contributors, the homes, clubs and churches of loudmouth GOP legislators would potentially be fair game.

  100. 100.

    D58826

    @Kay: While I tend to agree, in 2004 you did not have the actions of the Russians in the mix. Putin has the time, resources and motive to try and hack the election. The KGB has been undermining foreign elections for years.

    These voting systems are developed by private entities who view the hardware and software as proprietary information. Has any third party tried a full on attempt to hack these systems to determine there vulnerabilities. I’m sure there are some, just ask the DNC or Target. The KGB has the resources to keep poking away until they find something.

    While it might be very difficult to hack the election, remember the US was able to penetrate Iranian security to plant a virus in their nuclear weapons program. The KGB doesn’t have to hack every last voting booth. Texas and Calif. would be a waste of time but the swing states maybe.

    The KGB can read a map of the swing states as well as the voting profiles in each state. In a close election, who knows. Hillary is down by what 100k votes across PA/WI/MI? Michigan state/ Ohio state/ Penn state get that many people out for a football game.

    I think there should be a recount/audit just to be sure.
    I don’t think Hillary should go Gore v Bush unless there is overwhelming evidence. A replace would make 2000 look like a pick-nick
    It would be nice if the FBI( yea insert joke), cyber security folks, election officials and makers of these systems worked together to make them as secure as possible.

  101. 101.

    Botsplainer

    @D58826:

    Brilliant. ISIS is going to be pleased.

    This won’t end well, and likely results in Tel Aviv becoming a smoking, glowing pile of rubble.

  102. 102.

    D58826

    @Botsplainer: from what I’ve read Ben Laden could not believe his luck that Bush would be dumb enough to invade Iraq. Now ISIS can’t believe that the US would again exhibit such monumental stupidity and elect Trump.

  106. 106.

    Botsplainer

    @rikyrah:

    The bill I want is one where Medicare dies across the board. THAT is the special gift I want for health execs, investors, senior citizens.

    Burn it out.

  107. 107.

    D58826

    definite word on vote hacking. https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-was-hacked-look-at-the-ballots-c61a6113b0ba#.ept8ynm05

    Were this year’s deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked. But I don’t believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other. The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence — paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts.

    and for the future he doesn’t rule out a hacked election –

    Why hasn’t more been done about this? In the U.S., each state (and often individual counties or municipalities) selects its own election technology, and some states have taken steps to guard against these problems. (For instance, California banned the use of the most dangerous computer voting machines in 2007 as a result of vulnerabilities that I and other computer scientists found.) But many states continue to use machines that are known to be insecure — sometimes with software that is a decade or more out of date — because they simply don’t have the money to replace those machines.

    There is one absolutely essential security safeguard that protects most Americans’ votes: paper.

  108. 108.

    Kay

    Dave Weigel ‏@daveweigel 20h20 hours ago
    Trump’s dance with “prosecuting Hillary” is really the GOP squeezing the last juice from the Clinton-bashing orange.

    He forgot something. And media’s. Media’s promotion of prosecuting Hillary is them squeezing the last juice from the Clinton-bashing orange.

    It’s really unfair to continue to promote the idea that this person committed a crime and that’s what they did all yesterday. They allowed the loudmouth cretin to announce he “didn’t want to hurt” Clinton so that’s why he wasn’t pursuing putting her in prison. The whole premise of this cleverly constructed smear is a lie.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    You can read the transcript:

    MAGGIE HABERMAN, political reporter: I’ll start, thank you, Dean. Mr. President, I’d like to thank you for being here. This morning, Kellyanne Conway talked about not prosecuting Hillary Clinton. We were hoping you could talk about exactly what that means — does that mean just the emails, or the emails and the foundation, and how you came to that decision.

    First question. They set it up on Trump’s terms. Would he be prosecuting Hillary Clinton. How you came to that decision.

    Unfucking believable. They tee’d it right up for him and even expanded it to the Foundation!

    They should apologize for misleading the public and allow Clinton a front page rebuttal to the smear they promoted.

    What do you think it is with the NYTimes? Is it because Trump is a NYC personality and knows all these people? It’s something. This is more than political reporters disliking Clinton. These people are smart enough to know the President doesn’t decide whether to prosecute his political opponents.

  110. 110.

    Tazj

    @Kay: I couldn’t agree more. The all-great and powerful Trump is being merciful to the wretched criminal because he doesn’t want the Clintons to suffer.

  111. 111.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Kay: there are legitimate discrepancies in regards to the votes in at least three states, so serious that actual scientists are risking their professional reputations on encouraging an audit of the electronic machines. If they found any real inconsistencies, it would open the door to audits in FL and other key states. Good.

    This isn’t 2004. We’ve crossed the rubicon with this election, and I for one hope they go balls to the wall on tampering, fraud AND suppression. Even if it can’t change this election’s outcome, the truth needs to be shoved right in the faces of everyone.

  112. 112.

    Kay

    @Tazj:

    LED by the NYTimes! They set the terms IN THE QUESTION. Christ almighty. If it were a court there would be a “leading the witness” objection. The crime is assumed. BY THE JOURNALISTS. The only question is whether The President of the United States will “prosecute”.

    Boy, “norms” are dropping like flies. Now we’re negotiating the terms of political prosecutions.

  113. 113.

    D58826

    And looks like Trump’s cabinet will continue to be the bigoted vs the blind or is it the blind vs the bigoted

    President-elect Donald Trump has offered retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson the position of Housing & Urban Development secretary, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
    According to the report, Carson, who also ran for the Republican presidential nomination and has no background in housing policy, will consider the post over the Thanksgiving holiday.

  115. 115.

    NotMax

    @Kay

    Much, much more important – deciding to prosecute or not prosecute anyone is not a presidential decision. Interfering with or endeavoring to influence investigative authorities and agencies was included among the articles of impeachment against Nixon.

    That Haberman either does not know this or chooses to ignore it by rights ought to disqualify her from political reporting, period.

  116. 116.

    Kay

    @Ella in New Mexico:

    Sorry. Ella. I think it’s lazy. Democrats don’t have the energy or focus to work state by state on suppression so they’re looking for another nationally-led miracle, a Hail Mary pass.

    Stop looking national. Move to focus on the states. It’s like that’s too boring and mundane for us, too much trenchwork, too slow and exhausting.

    The governor of North Carolina is attempting to overturn results right now, and those are African American votes he’s throwing out. If Democrats want a cause, that would be a good one. This to me is a test on whether Democrats have the ability to focus on a state.

  117. 117.

    D58826

    And why we should turn all of the infrastructure over to the private sector (snark). About the recent pipeline explosion in Alabama

    The chaos revealed something millions of Americans had long been able to ignore: They depend on a single pipeline to deliver the gasoline that fuels their everyday lives. And that pipeline is operated by a single, little-known company with an increasingly troubled safety record. Built in 1962, the Colonial was the largest private-sector infrastructure project of its time. Roughly half of all refined fuel products used in cities from Georgia to New Jersey run through its 5,500 miles, which branch out from oil refineries in Texas and on the Gulf Coast to gas stations in America’s most populated corridor. In 1999, Colonial Pipeline paid a fine of $7 million—the biggest ever at the time—for a massive spill in South Carolina. Four years later, it was fined $34 million, a new record, for spilling 1.45 million gallons of oil in five states.
    At the same time, Colonial has benefited from an increasingly dense regulatory environment for pipeline construction, which has helped protect it from competition and make it something of a piggy bank for its owners, to whom the company returns annual dividends that typically total about $300 million. Colonial’s pipeline consistently runs at 100 percent capacity, leaving gasoline refiners and fuel merchants, who pay transport rates in a manner akin to a toll road, vying for space. The company, headquartered in Alpharetta, a suburb of Atlanta, is privately held by a consortium of investors. The largest is Koch Industries, with a 28 percent stake; others include the private equity firm KKR, Shell Pipeline, and South Korea’s National Pension Service.

    Him that name again Koch.

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/a-blade-strikes-steel-and-the-blast-shocks-a-nations-energy-system/ar-AAkEhLl?li=AA4Zjn&ocid=spartandhp

  119. 119.

    Steeplejack

    @rikyrah:

    I got a Nexus 7 three or four years ago to check out the tablet scene, mainly because I found that I was doing a lot of Web reading on my cell phone and wanted a better alternative when I was not on the computer. Also wanted to see what kind of work I could move to a tablet (e-mail, writing, spreadsheets, etc.). I have liked the Nexus 7, but with age and upgrades to the Android OS it has gotten slower, and I was looking for the next thing.

    I decided that I didn’t want a 10" tablet, because they felt a little ungainly for reading in bed or even casually in a chair. More of a two-handed proposition. I thought an 8" tablet would be a good compromise between screen size and handling convenience but would be big enough to use propped up with a Bluetooth keyboard. I haven’t watched a lot of streaming movies and such on the Nexus 7, but I think an 8" screen would be big enough to make that feasible. It’s not a major criterion for me.

    I was looking at the Apple iPad Mini 4, and then somehow the Samsung S2 came up on the radar. I did some searches on “best tablets,” “best Android tablets,” etc., and it kept coming up, and I think maybe it showed up as “people also bought” on an Amazon page. It gets good reviews, and the more I looked it seemed like a strong alternative to the Mini 4.

    I’m not a rabid partisan for or against Apple, and the iPad Mini 4 is really nice, but the S2 has really comparable specs and is an easier transition for me, as the Nexus 7 uses Android. I think I was nudged by the fact that the S2 has three gigabytes of RAM to the Mini 4’s two. Maybe it’s just truthy, but that feels like an important performance factor to me. The S2 comes with 32 GB of storage, but you can add a microSD card up to 128 GB.

    Finally, I had to bite on this Micro Center sale. The S2 is never discounted—even at Amazon it’s always full retail price ($400)—and I did a spit-take last night when I saw they had dropped it to $250. I had pretty much decided to get one before Black Friday and the Christmas chaos, and then the sudden sale seemed like a direct sign from the gadget gods.

    Couple of good comparison articles: PC Magazine and iDigitalTimes.

  120. 120.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    Well for one thing, I think they would’ve loved to see Clinton actually being prosecuted under a Trump administration. Just imagine, another year at least of getting to milk the shit out of their favorite story, go after their favorite punching bag, and allow themselves to ignore the far worse scandals being perpetrated by a president they don’t want to investigate.

    At this point, even Trump has made it clear to them that they’re not going to get it, but they still can’t let it go. They just wanted is so bad.

  121. 121.

    D58826

    @Kay: Your probably both right. Election law is at the state level so the democrats have to start taking back state government. But the gutting of the VRA makes it a lot easier for states to get away with this and the civil rights division at DOJ (while it still exists) is probably the only agency that has the ability to investigate these abuses. And it’s not like these abuses are occurring in a vacuum in each state. There is cross state planning and financing. Can you spell Koch brothers.

  122. 122.

    Chris

    @Kay:
    @Emma:

    Co-co-signed. Was complaining all through the Obama era that as good a shape as we might be in nationally (heh), we didn’t have a hell of a lot at the state and local level, and that we were going to have to if we ever hoped to be in the same position as the old New Deal coalition or the Nixon/Reagan coalition. Well, we sure as hell better get to it now.

  123. 123.

    D58826

    @Chris: I’m a little surprised that der Fuhrer may have taken it off the table. With the media running Clinton scandal 24/7 for the next year or so, no one would even notice the little Fuhrers driving a truck up to Fort Knox and moving the gold to Trump Tower. For safe keeping of course.

    Seriously though a Clinton investigation would divert attention from a lot of what der Fuhrer is doing to enrich himself.

  124. 124.

    D58826

    Hey der Fuhrer is a man who can get thiongs done. According to a twitter feed that Argintine building propject that has been collecting dust is now moving ahead. Only took one phone call.

    In the meantime his CIA guy Pompeo is wondering why Obama keeps picking the Islamic east rather than the Christian west. And the war on terror is a clash between Islam and Christianity.

    At this point I will be glad when der Fuhrer has his hands on the nuclear codes. He can have his big parties on Jan 20th and then blow the world up on on Jan21sti

  126. 126.

    D58826

    from kos –

    A fifth grade student in Washington County, MN, threatened to kill a 3rd grade Muslim student. Three days later, he brought a gun to school (an air pistol), which was confiscated on the bus on the way to school.

    Welcome to der Fuhrer’s America

  127. 127.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    It’s not safe for a lot of us to organize locally. I think this is a widely ignored factor in why more Democrats don’t run for office in many places.

  128. 128.

    PIGL

    @NotMax: Your national institutions are accepting Trump as Caudillo. In front of our very eyes, without the merest whimper of protest, and in the absence of any credible immediate threat of coercion.

    Valued commenter Kay had it right.

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