Consider this a proof-of-life post. I went into a renewed Trump slough of despond a few days ago and am only now crawling out. My reaction these last several days is summed up by this, fresh from my son’s vault of amusing internet clutter:
I’m climbing out of my funk in a couple of ways: for one, by forcing myself to focus on work (and disconnect, insofar as I can, from Twitter). Turns out that a deep dive into the story of Edmond “Comet” Halley as the father of life insurance does wonders for the mood.
Then there’s the promise of action. My spouse is not letting up, and she’s making sure I’m going to march and all that. The mood’s grim around here, but not abject. I count that a win.
Then there’s the gang here. This vicious pack of snarling jackals is a comfort and a goad. Long may we roil.
And, though I may be a hopeless optimist on this one, I think the press is getting just a little better. Not enough, yet, but the combination of obvious corruption, the overwhelming evidence of a tampered election, and the terror many are beginning to feel as the sheer slapdash incompetence of the Trump junta becomes ever more obvious has woken at least a few in the elite press. Relentless pressure on social media, letters to the editor and so on will help. That’s something the less crowd-loving among us (me!) can do, pajama-clad, in our basements.
And when all else fails, there’s the absurdity of it all. That doesn’t make it better, of course, but it does give us something to gawp and cackle at. Exhibit A? This insight from the physician who attested to the Cheeto-faced, ferret-heedit shitgibbon’s Yuuuuuugely perfect health:
“If something happens to him, then it happens to him,” Bornstein said. “It’s like all the rest of us, no? That’s why we have a vice president and a speaker of the House and a whole line of people. They can just keep dying.”
They. Can. Just. Keep. Dying.
That’s the perspective I seek in my medical professionals…
BTW — check out this gem from the good doctor:
“It never occurred to me that he was the oldest president, not for a second,” Bornstein, 69, said in his Upper East Side office of the 70-year-old Trump. He said that “there’s nothing to share” on a regular basis about a president’s health. “Ronald Reagan had pre-senile dementia. I mean, seriously, did they share that one with you, or did Nancy just cover it up?”
Reassured yet?
Last, because I love you, and I couldn’t resist this when I saw the shot, how about this edition of….
SEPARATED AT BIRTH
and…
Kitten Tikka Masala is unamused by Trump, and doesn’t care who knows it.
Thread, this one, open it is.
Image: Yousuf Karsh, portrait of Winston Churchill, December 30, 1941.
NotMax
Regarding you know who, time to dust off a term which has fallen into disuse: churl.
satby
Ok, something to root for. I’m in.
germy
Is that portrait of Churchill the one where the photographer snatched the cigar out of his hand and then took the photo of his outrage?
I remember Groucho Marx telling an anecdote about meeting Churchill. Winston and his daughter would compete to see how long they could hold a cigar before the ash fell. Groucho had expected more dignified behavior; I don’t know why.
JPL
Earlier I streamed CNN, and it appears that Trump’s tweets and threats haven’t deterred them from covering, his conflicts of interest. I’m not saying that there is hope, but maybe the rest of MSM will catch on. lol
I haven’t shed tears since the election, because I fear that if I start, I won’t stop.
rikyrah
I know that I keep on saying this…
But, this is who they are.
PS-cute cat pic. The cat looks scary but, in a picture, cute.
Tom Levenson
@germy: Yeah. That’s the story at least. Tikka’s outrage is constant. The world is a constant disappointment to him for the four to six hours a day he spends awake.
rikyrah
The Media Need to Focus on Context, Not “Balance”
by Nancy LeTourneau
December 20, 2016 3:49 PM
POLITICAL ANIMAL BLOG
In writing about Democratic opposition to the electoral college vote yesterday, the only mention from Jonathan Martin and Michael Wines of the fact that he lost the popular vote by 2.8 million comes in a quote from Bill Clinton. Eventually, they report this reaction to the opposition from Kellyanne Conway.
We have no way of knowing whether there was anymore to this discussion they had with Conway because that is where they leave things in their reporting. One wonders whether or not they reminded her of the way Republicans fomented a permanent opposition to Bill Clinton via everything from Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky. Or if they brought up the permanent opposition to Barack Obama that began the night of his 2009 inauguration. It would have been particularly interesting to know how she would have reacted to a reminder that Donald Trump tried to delegitimize Obama’s election via his obsession with birtherism.
None of that historical context was included by Martin and Wines, even though they found the space in an article of more than 1,500 words to mention the Gingrich revolution in 1994 as well as Democratic opposition to the election of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
Nicole
My husband and I have quickly become addicted to the FOX series The Exorcist (catching up via on demand) and the episode last night had a quote that jumped out at me- defending his continuing attempts to chase the demon out of one of the characters, the exorcist said, “We stand in the doorway and we push back the darkness.”
I think that shall be my motto for the next four years.
Morzer
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/pessimists-guide-to-2017/
rikyrah
Bill O’Reilly: ‘The Left Wants Power Taken Away From The White Establishment’
Twitter erupted.
12/21/2016 02:41 am ET
Bill O’Reilly sparked outrage online Tuesday for what he described as the “hidden reason” behind calls to abolish the Electoral College.
“This is all about race,” the conservative commentator said on his Fox News show. “The left sees white privilege in America as an oppressive force that must be done away with. Therefore white working class voters must be marginalized.”
He later added that liberals believe “white men have set up a system of oppression and that system must be destroyed … The left wants power taken away from the white establishment and they want a profound change in the way America is run.”
O’Reilly’s admission of “white privilege” and the “white establishment” struck a chord with Twitter users, and discussion on the topic became a trending topic overnight.
germy
@Tom Levenson:
Reminds me of James Thurber’s description of his boyhood dog: “No one knew was the matter with him, but whatever it was it made him irascible, especially in the mornings.”
Morzer
Something I find fascinating, even if it does involve accountants:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/19/accountants-and-spies-the-secret-history-of-deloittes-espionage-practice.html
Elizabelle
Trump and his spokespeople lie, lie, lie. It’s a firehose. It is unprecedented.
Even our finest journalists have to have noticed that. And, not that much lower on the learning curve, some of Trump’s less moronic voters and supporters.
What’s more, I think small investors and consumers are going to act a lot differently than the big dogs. I feel fear.
OzarkHillbilly
Puleeeeeeeze??? I mean PULEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE??????????
Spanky (ex P-man)
Comedy gold, Jerry!
So, his doctor’s a Democrat then?
SenyorDave
@rikyrah: “This is all about race,” the conservative commentator said on his Fox News show. “The left sees white privilege in America as an oppressive force that must be done away with. Therefore white working class voters must be marginalized.”
I think people overlook the fact that O’Reilly is a stone cold racist. He’s basically a more restrained Trump. He’s got most of the bases covered (sexual harrasser, bully, liar in his professional life, even beat up his wife), pretty much an amoral pig just like Trump. But his personal racism and rush to defend racists has been a constant throughout O’Reilly’s career.
Morzer
@Elizabelle:
I think the problem Trump will eventually face is that you can get away with some strategic lies, provided you’ve got some sort of solid basis of facts or accomplishments to work with, but if you keep reflexively lying even on trivial matters, sooner or later people will assume you are lying even when you try to tell the truth. Even two years is much more time than it might seem – and Trump is coming in with terrible ratings and a well-established reputation for aggressive dishonesty and dubious business dealings. I don’t think it’s going to get better for him – and it’s likely to get worse quite quickly. What happens to the GOP if they go along with Trump, as they seem to be preparing to do – and Trump’s reputation and credibility craters hard and fast? The midterms might well be more interesting than anyone suspects – and the Democrats absolutely have to be ready and loaded for bear when they come around.
SP
Nothing to see here, this is just Trump’s pick to write the federal budget for the next four years:
Trump’s budget director pick: “Do we really need government-funded research at all”.
That quote is in reference to Zika research specifically, but his general attitude seems to be, Well, we don’t know anything for certain in science, so how do we know which research to fund?
Son of the bitch.
JPL
@rikyrah:
Some think that the last 8 years, have been pretty darn good. Let’s remember who was in charge when the economy almost tanked. Let’s remember who was in charge, when hordes died in Iraq. If I had magical powers, I’d order Tikka to attack O’Reilly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Archie Bunker in a better suit.
Then again, Archie never would’ve dragged Edith down the stairs by her throat, so I guess Trump is the better comparison
JPL
@SP: Let em die is the pro-life position.
Bex
Is the good Dr. Bornstein trying to tell us something?
manyakitty
@JPL: That’s a legit risk. Ask me how I know.
Spanky (ex P-man)
Well, here’s something new:
Harrumph.
Gin & Tonic
@Tom Levenson: Is that a microphone in the pic? Are you expecting him to sing or something?
Botsplainer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Archie, for all his faults, wasn’t a cheater. And when the chips were down, he rose to the occasion to support her.
rikyrah
What Did Donald Trump Know, and When Did He Know It?
by David Atkins
December 17, 2016 8:30 AM
As news rolls in about Russia’s likely sabotage of the American political system, the noose is beginning to tighten uncomfortably around Republicans. The only question that matters now is this: what did Donald Trump know about the hacks on his political opponents, and when did he know it?
It is becoming increasingly clear from all sides that Russian intelligence–likely at the specific direction of Vladimir Putin–perpetrated the hack on the Democratic National Committee and on Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. It appears to have been done with the specific aim of making Donald Trump president over Hillary Clinton, handing control of American government to a man who is not only more willing to do Russia’s bidding around the world, but also has business interests in Russia that make him personally vulnerable to blackmail and corruption.
The CIA has said so directly. The FBI is corroborating the CIA. The current President of the United States, not given to hyperbole, is in agreement. The Russians themselves, while officially denying involvement in the sabotage, have been celebrating Trump’s victory. Trump himself called on the Russians to hack Clinton’s emails during his last press conference. There isn’t a smoking gun of “proof” yet, but there rarely is one in cases of international cyber-espionage.
It’s important to remember the context here. “Hacking” is seen as so routine in our modern age that it’s easy to lose sight of historical precedent. The Watergate scandal that brought President Nixon to his knees began with a burglary attempt on Democratic campaign offices–a failed attempt to do the same thing that the Russians allegedly succeded in accomplishing far beyond Nixon’s wildest dreams. If anyone in the Republican firmament had knowledge of Russia’s efforts and aided and abetted them in any way, it would be a scandal orders of magnitude worse than Watergate. The optics alone are disastrous.
In response, recently triumphant Republicans are lurching from one bad talking point to another.
First comes outright denial of the truth: both Trump and RNC chair Reince Priebus have openly attempted to discredit the findings of American intelligence agencies in defense of Russia. Trump’s transition team mocked the CIA by falsely blaming the agency for poor intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (in truth, it was the Bush Administration that manipulated the evidence in order to go to war.) Priebus tried to claim–falsely–that there was no official report implicating Russia. But no one outside the Republican Party and a few Glenn Greenwald adherents are seriously in doubt about Russia’s role in all of this.
Trump campaign manager KellyAnne Conway is taking a more brazen approach, saying that we should just forget about it and let bygones be bygones in the spirit of patriotism and “love of country.” In this funhouse mirror world, ignoring a foreign manipulation of our democracy is the highest form of patriotism, while insisting on getting to the bottom of it is petty and partisan. That’s not likely to get traction beyond Trump’s committed base.
gvg
Well facts have a liberal bias. White privilege IS an oppressive force. Does not follow logically that white working class workers must be marginalized. As a matter of fact I think they already have been by the wealthy. What I want to stop is for them to stop being so gullible and not realizing the wealthy and corporations have used their own racism to divide them from their should be allies all the rest of the working class. our society is dangerously unequal in power and wealth. Its happened in my lifetime and it centers on too many tax cuts at the top and not taxing dividends the same as other income. IMO of course. Also being manipulated to being anti Union when that is such a useful tool for equalizing power somewhat.
IMO all the parts of society have value. Good smart managers and good workers, corporations and people. city and country, professional and blue collar. Things go wrong when one sector gets over worshiped. balance and fairness matter. unbalanced means crashes. for too long I have been hearing about “real” America, about wealthy leaders etc. it’s nonsense. GOP voters and politicians have been insulting to myself and many of my friends and family. I am really tired of it. Start with blaming everything on teachers (my mother you jerks, you aren’t fit to clean her shoes).
rikyrah
@SenyorDave:
I never have, but you are correct,certain people do.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby: Co-signed.
rikyrah
Gov. Chris Christie tweets up a storm after ‘revenge bill’ fails in New Jersey Legislature
NBC News
ALEX JOHNSON
Dec 21st 2016 7:35AM
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie unleashed his inner pit bull Tuesday on Twitter after the Legislature shelved his bill to yank millions of dollars in ads from state newspapers.
The measure was dubbed Christie’s “revenge” against newspapers that aggressively covered Bridgegate — the investigation that led to the convictions of two allies who conspired to cause a traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge in 2013 to punish a Democratic mayor who didn’t endorse the governor for re-election.
The bill would have repealed the state law requiring legal notices to be printed in newspapers, clearing the way for the lucrative ads to move online.
SiubhanDuinne
I have a Bunyan on my foot.
Spanky (ex P-man)
@rikyrah:
In this bifurcated country I’m not so sure those optics matter to a sizable chunk of the population, so I think “disastrous” is overstating the reaction.
And that’s a sad indictment of my country.
O. Felix Culpa
@Nicole:
I like that. It’s loin-girding, resolute, and realistic.
Chris
@SenyorDave:
You just described half the party.
(I say “half” because of the “more restrained” part, not the “Trump” part).
rikyrah
15 Worst States in America to Make a Living in 2016
Eric McWhinnie
December 21, 2016
We all want to make a good living, but the rat race doesn’t provide the same course obstacles in every state. America’s status quo now includes a painfully obvious split economy. Some citizens are experiencing a rebound in prosperity, while others are dumbfounded by the use of “recovery” in headlines. Either way, location plays a major part in your personal finances.
The United States is a collection of mini-economies. MoneyRates.com recently analyzed every state to find where workers have the best or worst shot to make a good living, based on employment statistics and living expenses. The financial site evaluated the five key factors listed below.
Gin & Tonic
Russian media are saying that the cop who assassinated the Russian ambassador in Turkey had been part of Erdogan’s security detail. They are also reporting that the night of July 15 (the attempted or supposedly attempted coup) he called out sick.
Spanky (ex P-man)
@SiubhanDuinne:
Paul?
Spanky (ex P-man)
@Gin & Tonic: I was wondering when they’d tie him to the hated secularists.
Time for another round of purges!
FlipYrWhig
@SiubhanDuinne: I bet it goes well with Trump’s favorite magazine, Vanity Fair.
Botsplainer
@rikyrah:
None of the revelations or corruption will matter – it was a conservative coup based mainly on voter suppression, the culmination of a 30 year long smear project and left flank ratfuckery, with a mighty assist from the Russian Federation. They will now consolidate power as if they had an overwhelming mandate.
Despite demographics and clear societal trends, conservatives drew an inside straight flush this year. The only cards that the center to center-left hold are pathetic responses to a major disaster (whether natural or via an aggrieved party engaging in an asymmetric attack) or a major international conflict ginned up by Twitler.
SiubhanDuinne
@Spanky (ex P-man):
John.
germy
@rikyrah:
Imagine an alternate universe: Can you imagine what she’d say if it turned out China hacked the RNC and helped HRC into a victory?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
reminds me of that Bruce Cockburn lyric: “Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight”
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
A bunion, unless it’s wordplay which flew over this gray head.
Major Major Major Major
I was reading something somewhere that had Sanders labeled as (D-VT) and I wanted to leave a comment that it should be (I-VT), but it made me sign up for disqus, which then wanted to verify my email, so I flounced off in a huff. Who wants to go through that to comment? p.s. disqus sucks anyway.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: From the article you quoted above:
As noted, it’s hilarious that a mouthpiece for a Republican crackpot who started his political ascent by lying about a popularly elected president’s birthplace is now whining about Democrats trying to delegitimize her boss. The Trump people are redefining chutzpah upward every damn day.
But I think this “why is the burden always on him” thing takes the chutzpah cake in that quote. Why, Conway? Because Trump will shortly be the president, you fucking idiot. Because he ran the most divisive campaign since George Fucking Wallace, you clueless, simpering moral cretin.
There’s nothing Trump could do to “unite” me or mine under his racist, sexist, xenophobic banner. Fuck him and every one of his lying minions. Barring the (happy) event where he drops dead or gets impeached, Trump will be the president of the country of which I am a citizen, but I consider that a technicality — I see the amoral, grifting pig for what he is and will be deeply ashamed to be an American until the last day of his accursed administration, and may it be short.
I guess I’m not over it either, huh?
Botsplainer
@Major Major Major Major:
There is no I in team.
Morzer
@rikyrah:
In the name of patriotism we must defer to a Russian-owned fraudster who thinks of the presidency as a shakedown operation and a means of avenging any and all insults he believes himself to have suffered. Greater love of country hath no man than to lay down himself and his country for a thuggish former KGB agent who presides over a failing petro-state riddled with corruption of every kind.
O. Felix Culpa
@Betty Cracker:
No, nor should any of us EVER be “over it.” That would be assenting to and colluding with evil.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
Yarrow
And it’s Republicans all the way down.
Major Major Major Major
@Botsplainer: Zing!
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: He didn’t have a blue ox though.
Morzer
@O. Felix Culpa:
I am a reasonable person. I’ll get over it when Trump and his GOP minions fall into the Cracks of Doom clutching their yuuge, classy gold ring and all their evil perishes with them.
Yarrow
@Morzer: Thanks for linking that. Talk about depressing. This kind of cracked me up.
Oh, yeah. Sure that’ll happen. The same Elon Musk who is on Trump’s technology advisory council? The same Sheryl Sandberg who agreed to meet with the Pussy Grabber-in-Chief and then said nothing publicly in support of women – or anyone else – after the meeting? Oh, sure they’ll be the leaders of some mythical progressive alliance. All have all that along with my unicorn, please.
Nicole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I like that too. I think I need to start cross stitching samplers again.
Yarrow
Dammit. Moderation. Changing the supposed offensive word.
@Morzer: Thanks for linking that. Talk about depressing. This kind of cracked me up though:
Oh, yeah. Sure that’ll happen. The same Elon Musk who is on Trump’s technology advisory council? The same Sheryl Sandberg who agreed to meet with the Pu$$y Grabber-in-Chief and then said nothing publicly in support of women – or anyone else – after the meeting? Oh, sure they’ll be the leaders of some mythical progressive alliance. All have all that along with my unicorn, please.
hovercraft
The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I was in denial election night, I’ve been angry ever since, I guess bargaining was holding out hope that something anything would undo what ‘those who walk amongst us’ had done, my depression is ongoing, and for me acceptance means that I’m determined to fight these morons who can walk and talk, but don’t have two brain cells to rub together in their heads. I accept this has really happened in this country in 2016, but I and millions more like me don’t have to accept that this is the way it has to be. We have to allow these morons and Hair Furor to destroy the future we are building for our children.
Kristine
I filled out the volunteer form for Sierra Club Illinois. If they don’t need me, I’ll sign up someplace else.
O. Felix Culpa
@Morzer:
Heh. That works.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
I wonder if these geniuses, thought to bring up, or even know that the Clenis hunting was a seminal pert in both her marriage and her entrance into politics. I wonder if that would be a worthwhile question for the slimy Mrs. Conway, why was her opposition of Clinton based on his womanizing appropriate, when the Shitgibbons isn’t? While there does seem to be a smidgeon of a hint, of dawning recognition of what they’ve done, the media is still so far up his ass to realize what they’ve done. Call me when every single report about him says, HE IS LYING. Then I’ll believe they’ve woken up and gotten a clue.
Till then I’ll continue to swing from despair, to rage, to fighting.
The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I was in denial election night, I’ve been angry ever since, I guess bargaining was holding out hope that something anything would undo what ‘those who walk amongst us’ had done, my depression is ongoing, and for me acceptance means that I’m determined to fight these morons who can walk and talk, but don’t have two brain cells to rub together in their heads. I accept this has really happened in this country in 2016, but I and millions more like me don’t have to accept that this is the way it has to be. We have to allow these morons and Hair Furor to destroy the future we are building for our children.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
Gosh, I can’t imagine why anyone would be loathe to “unite” with neo-nazis, grifters, bigots, sexists, misogynists, banksters, robber barons, bullies, Randians, serial liars, unhinged dregs of the human race.
CaseyL
Oh, Tom, how I feels ya. My bleak spells are getting shorter and my sleep is getting better, but every so often it’s like I get pulled up short and sharp.
Way way back, possibly during W’s Reign of Error, it seemed to me that US politics was precipitating, like a chemical solution – but the crystallization wasn’t about ideology as much as it was about basic intelligence. Or, more precisely, ideology was the precipitating agent. In order to defend W for ideological reasons, GOPers were increasingly turning off their brains… until they had no capacity for critical or even consistent thinking, thus arriving at that ideal Orwellian state where “Truth” was whatever their leaders said it was at any given moment.
That’s where we are now. 60 million American voters are programmable automatons, most of them ready to be programmed into acts of atrocities. I don’t see how we recover from that democratically. It’s not a difference of opinion; it’s a metastatic cancer.
My antidote: focus on what I can do locally. Still in the thinking stage on that, wanting to have complete arguments ready rather than offering inchoate wish lists. My action plan is necessarily different from that of someone living in a Red State; my aim is to protect what we have here in Washington, maybe even expand on it. Someone I work with, who’s done quite a lot of lobbying in Olympia, tells me that many of Washington’s GOPers are the old fashioned moderate type one may deal with in good faith. I guess we’ll see about that.
Chris
@bemused:
Fifty years of running elections by appealing to the worst of human nature, they naturally ended up with a voter base made up of the worst humanity had to offer.
rikyrah
Someone in the last thread posted the link.
Norm Conquest
Trump is set to undermine the things you take for granted in government and public life.
By Jamelle Bouie
On Monday, the Electoral College cast its ballots, and now Donald Trump is officially the next president of the United States. Even now, we still don’t know what Trump will do. Vague promises aside (“We will bring back jobs” or “we’ll stop ISIS”), Trump has said little on policy. We don’t know his priorities for action or his agenda for the first 100 days of his administration. If there is anything we can expect, however, it’s an escalation of his ongoing attack on the norms of politics and civic life.
Trump is defined by his shameless disregard, and even disdain, for the bonds that hold political life together. To win the Republican nomination and then the election, he stoked hatred and intolerance in a demagogic campaign against Hispanic immigrants and Muslim Americans. Since the election, he’s rejected evidence that Russia hacked the Democratic Party and attacked U.S. intelligence agencies for their conclusions.
There’s more. Constitutional scholars have sounded the alarm that Trump is embroiled in massive conflicts of interests tied to his sprawling businesses and debts to foreign banks and other creditors. The knot is so thick that, unless he liquidates his assets and hands them to a third party to place in a “blind” trust, he risks violating the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. Despite this danger, and his promise to remove himself from his businesses, Trump has leaned into these conflicts. His children, for instance, attend high-level meetings with heads of state and use their father’s prominence to solicit donations to personal causes. Ivanka Trump, in particular, has already joined her father for conversations that have a direct bearing on the business interests of their family.
Likewise, foreign governments have already opened doors for Trump’s businesses, signing permits and resolving legal disputes. The most obvious conflict involves the Trump International Hotel. The lease on the property, issued by the General Services Administration, forbids members of Congress or other elected federal officials from having any part of it. And that’s to say nothing of the more venal examples of corruption, such as foreign governments booking rooms in the hotel or reserving it for events in an effort to curry favor with the incoming president.
rikyrah
@bemused:
Yeah….I can’t understand that either.
It’s a mystery.
Who could want to not get along with such a swell crowd?
rikyrah
@Morzer:
Uh huh
Uh huh
don’t want to hear the word PATRIOTISM come from those muthaphuckas.
LAO
I’m with you Tom, every time I find a moment of peace with the state of our country and the election of the G.O.O., I read something or a thought pops into my head, which derails me. I’m personally afraid that I will spend the next 4 years in a state of perpetual anxiety and outrage. That is not a state of mind conducive to mental health.
bemused
@Chris:
This Politco headline, “Trump posse browbeats Hill Republicans” who are “loathe to say anything remotely critical, fearful they might set off Trump or his horde of enforcers” would have me on the floor out of breath laughing if it only punished those who created the monsters.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: yes…it’s a great article and points the way towards how we take on Trump and the GOP (and, per Krugman’s piece yesterday, save the Republic): point out the need to restore some norms. It’s a great way to get the Republicans back in line or, failing that, to make the differences very clear to the public. The ‘deplorables’ won’t care, but everyone else will.
Gin & Tonic
@CaseyL:
Martin posted this yesterday. The 15 states with the highest percentage of population with BA/BS degrees all voted for Clinton. The 15 states with the lowest percentage voted for Trump (with one exception, Nevada.)
Gator90
@Spanky (ex P-man): Most Republicans, like Trump himself, are fine with Russian interference in US elections as long as their side is the one that benefits. And any position taken by a substantial number of Republicans is guaranteed to be treated by the media with respect, deference and “balance.” (Is a foreign power’s covert participation in American elections a problem? Opinions differ.)
bemused
@rikyrah:
They’re treating us like battered bloody spouses who go back to their abusers for more beatings.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
Sadly he is only mentioning ‘white privilege’ so that he can bat it away. Who the hell set up our current system? Were there a bunch of women and POC hiding out in Philadelphia, did the artists, historians and all the attendees conspire to keep us from knowing that the Founding Fathers, were in fact not all men? I know most of his viewers lack the brain power to notice how ridiculous his statement is, but this is where the rest of the media and the rest of us come in. Point and laugh at the privileged heterosexual white man telling the rest of us to sit down and be grateful for all that they’ve deigned to give us. He will continue to fool and rile his flock, but he must be made to lose what little credibility he has outside of bullshit mountain.
Blueskies
Ya know, there is a much, much better meaning to that text than what it turned out to be… ;)
Chris
@bemused:
It’s even more laughable because none of these people is in any real risk. They’ll be fine as long as they suck up to the boss and don’t get on his bad side, and in the meantime, they’ll get to share in the power and profit. Which is all most of them want anyway. Even if he craters the country worse than anything we’re anticipating, unless that cratering involves nuclear war, they’re unlikely to suffer any real consequences.
So yeah, I have no sympathy. So they’re going to have to deal with another president they don’t consider Part Of The Club, and at worst, some of them will end up embarrassed publicly like Mitt Romney just was. Cry me a river, fuckwads.
rikyrah
For those in the bleacher seats.
And, can’t understand election results.
Hillary Clinton won the Archie Bunker votes.
She lost Archie’s college educated boss and his White wife.
So, FOH with this bullshyt.
HRA
I am scooting right to the bottom here and will read the comments ASAP.
I finally got wound up to the point of having to tell my resident Trump voter and cheerleader some truths. (Note: take the Bp pill soon)
Yes, I have been living in this surreal world for months with the man I love and cherish as no other. We had more arguments in the warm months on the deck than the 30 some years of our life. Today I laid it out in no uncertain terms of the peril we are facing from the DT nominations, the twitter crap, his children’s status, etc. Yes, it is too late in regards to his vote although I did annihilate it with my vote. Most of all he shows the first signs of being released from his trip through the dark side. It has been so difficult to understand why and how it happened when he helped get President Obama elected twice.
bemused
@Chris:
The non-rich Trump voters are going to get kicked in the ass and won’t even see it coming.
hovercraft
@SenyorDave:
Yes, I remember his infamous visit to Sylvia’s.
Cermet
@OzarkHillbilly: It had better be from the bottom up – I mean, those below the dump (must stink there) really are far worse.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: haha, wow, I did not remember that.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Wordplay. John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress, which gave us the “Slough of Despond.”
Sorry. Jokes and puns never work if they need to be explained.
[…goes in search of coffee…]
bemused
@HRA:
Best wishes that the ray of light keeps growing.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Yeah, this is what pisses me off about the whole WWC narrative. It isn’t even true.
@bemused:
And most of them still won’t see it coming even long after it’s happened. They deserve pretty much everything they’re about to get, though.
rikyrah
Better call Canada again:
Researchers race to copy Obamacare data for fear it will vanish
The White House prods efforts out of concern Trump might expunge reams of information.
By DAN DIAMOND 12/21/16 05:09 AM EST
The White House is encouraging researchers to copy government data on Obamacare out of concern that President-elect Donald Trump might hit the delete key when he takes office.
Spooked by Trump’s rhetoric and pledge to repeal Obamacare, several dozen independent researchers are racing to download key health care data and documents before Jan. 20. They say they began the effort on their own, and then got a boost from Jeanne Lambrew, the White House’s top health reform official, who also sounded alarms the new administration might expunge reams of information from public websites and end access to data, researchers told POLITICO.
bemused
@Chris:
Ostriches with heads permanently stuck in cement holes.
Major Major Major Major
So there are a lot of people at places like GOS, or folks like Newell at Slate, faulting the Clinton campaign for being overly reliant on data and modeling. There was a systemic failure of elite modeling this year, it’s true–but this critique strikes me as strange. We’re supposed to be the party of facts and reality, not the party of going by one’s gut. Some of these commenters sound like they don’t want the party to be democrats so much as they want the party to be republicans, but for their causes.
Were the models wrong? Yes. Can one be too reliant on modeling? Absolutely, it’s a classic problem. But that doesn’t seem to be what these critics are saying. It’s more like “hurr hurr, you nerds should have listened to Michael Moore.”
Spanky (ex P-man)
“Reams”
I wish.
Try “Terabytes”. And since I have no real handle on which and whose data (“all of them, Katie”), “petabytes” might be an appropriate value.
That’s why this is taking time. It’s a Herculean task.
Phylllis
@Botsplainer: But there is a ‘me’.
hovercraft
@rikyrah:
That’s just silly “optics” only matter when they involve democrats. The GOP can meet on inauguration night to plot against the new president, but that’s okay, because they are the opposition doing their job, the rethugs can oppose and sabotage the presidents foreign policy, but that’s okay, they disagree with his being a weak/poor leader. Protesting the Iraq war, commenting on Russian hacking/interference, meeting with foundation donors, commenting on the shitgibbons dangerous pronouncements, these are all terrible optics for democrats, demonstrating a lack of patriotism, disloyalty, and ungraciousness. Republicans can never be sore losers only democrats can. They love the country, even when their action serve to weaken and harm it, their intentions are pure, democrats hate America, and constantly want to change it, so even if those changes improve the country, democrats are guilty of treason because they refuse to acknowledge that America is perfect and has always been so. Suck it libs.
Brachiator
@Morzer:
In the next James Bond movie, our hero is captured by the fiendish Auric Bookkeeper and tied to a table.
Bond: Bookkeeper, do you expect me to talk?
Bookkeeper: No, Mr Bond. I expect you to audit.
The film also features the femme fatale, Amortization Galore.
Spanky (ex P-man)
@rikyrah: “Norm Conquest” would make an awesome nym.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major:
HRC banked on reachable Republicans, bad move. They don’t exist, the one who were reachable are Democrats now. Even in the deplorable speech she hammered on T but went easy on Rs, saying how they were honorable.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Yeah, I agree that this is over-reaction, but it is push back by people who fear and hate math.
And it’s not just that the models were wrong. They were flawed, and lots of people treated polls as infallible oracles. However, I have no idea what Michael Moore ever said, and don’t much care to know. But a couple of things are clear (as many things are in retrospect). A lot of the on the ground reporting by a number of news sources, including the lefty Guardian, indicated a great deal of skepticism and resistance in swing states among people who should have been reliably Democratic Party voters. And people confused condemning Trump supporters with discounting their voting strength. I think I recall reading that neither Trump nor Clinton spent a lot of time in one of the swing states, because everyone assumed it would go for Clinton. This turned out to be a major mistake.
Ironically enough, the less organized, less professional Trump campaign was not harmed as much by “bad” polling data than was the Clinton team, which relied on it more. I also note the much maligned LA Times poll, which consistently showed Trump leading in voter sentiment. And the Times poll didn’t just look at likely voters (based on participation in past elections), but included more people who had not voted for years who were energized by Trump’s message.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: she banked on the Obama coalition, if you read the post-mortems. Switching R votes was a “nice to have”. The people I’m talking about are slagging her for focusing on the Obama coalition instead of exurban midwestern whites.
ETA: @Brachiator: the LA Times ‘poll’ is one of those things that was right for the wrong reasons. The topline was correct, but the demographics were all over the map and while it got the zeitgeist right it wasn’t, like, accurate in a strict sense.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@O. Felix Culpa: :Me too. Thinking of borrowing/stealing for my new email sig line.
Major Major Major Major
@Major Major Major Major: also, wait, the topline wasn’t correct at all. But it got the shape right.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: Newell’s been kind of a dick, and no one should ever listen to Michael Moore– could somebody tell Chris Hayes there’s a happy medium somewhere between giving half your show to bleating emoters like Moore and getting steamrolled by Stepford operatives from also-ran far right vanity campaigns?– and for all I banged my head on whatever hard surface was nearby when I read things I can’t believe the HRC campaign did– they spent more money on TV chasing that one Omaha EV than in Milwaukee, she never appeared at one UAW hall in MI– they fought like hell in FL, PA and NC.
And voter suppression remains the dog howling in the night like a banshee that the MSM can’t/won’t hear, because nothing is ever about race.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: She lost counties in PA and OH that O won twice. So she didn’t get all his coalition.
ETA: I have no idea why this is and whether we can blame voter suppression for this as well.
James E Powell
I have thought and talked and smoked on this matter and it seems to me that the only thing to do, the only thing that will do any good, is to win the 2018 midterms. Unless and until Democrats get control of at least one branch of the federal government, they are just going to be “some Democrats say . . .”
Our first priority is making sure that currently elected Democrats understand our expectations. We will not accept compromise, reaching out, or whatever euphemism for surrender they want to use. We need an opposition that never sleeps and never stops explaining what a disaster Trump + Ryan + RW justices is for nearly every American.
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
In my teens, I was young, stupid, and conservative. Not many of my opinions on U.S. politics have remained unchanged since then. But that sentence is absolutely one of them.
Chris
@James E Powell:
Go all-in on registering voters, especially in states with vote suppression laws, and put all the money we can into making that happen. They’re going to go all-in on the vote suppression, and this is pretty much the only thing we can do in response. Even if they’ll try to mess with that, as well.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: right, which is why she lost the election.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chris: My memories are crowded and cloudy, but there was a time when Michael Moore was really damn funny. Anybody else remember Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken? Or Janeane Garofalo staging a mini-D-Day landing on a private (“residents only”) beach in I forget what snooty CT ocean front town?
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t think this is true, and the election results easily contradict this view.
SenyorDave
@hovercraft: Yes, I remember his infamous visit to Sylvia’s.
I’m sure O’Reilly was spot on with his astonishment. I went to a kosher deli recently and accidently dropped a penny, and I was amazed that none of the patrons immediately ran over to pick it up! A few days later I visited an Irish pub, and the people at the bar were having a few beers, just chatting, and there were no drunken brawls.
Imagine that, people not meeting some racist’s stereotype of how the world is. I’ll bet one stereotype does hold – O’Reilly probably belongs to a country club where the only people of color are the servers in the dining room.
gene108
Someone posted this on their FB feed. It is from CBS46 (not sure what area they cover), but they have a regular segment called “Reality Check”, where the host of the segment debunks “liberal” claims of the day.
In the linke he lays out a case for why Russia did not hack any bodies emails.
I am not sure, how we can manage, if facts become subjective and open to debate.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
There was a BBC documentary on polling and the recent elections (including BREXIT) that made a good case that the demographics of traditional polls were all over the map.
gene108
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CNIrPLHVfdI
The YouTube link is from a CBS46 news broadcast, where the host talks about why Russia did not hack anyone’s emails of interefere with the election.
I have no idea how to manage, when facts are subjective and no one is an authority.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
Could you elaborate on that? I’ve avoided doing my usual deep dive into the data due to the trauma of this mishegas. But I’ve read – scanned really – that Republicans came home. That the same asshole white suburbanites that re-elected George W Bush were the people who really gave us Trump.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
I thought that even they got it wrong, they had him winning by a couple of points, no? She won, but the distribution of the vote is what got her. We and the media/pollsters didn’t realize that the voter suppression laws put in were enough to give him enough votes I just enough places to put him over the top. She got most of the Obama coalition, but enough of them stayed home to cost her and us bigly.
ETA: I see you corrected yourself.
Jeffro
@James E Powell:
Yes…no matter who your Rep is or Senators are, they all need to hear from you, loudly, frequently, and ideally in person. Here’s a link to the handbook, “Indivisible”, that lays out all the steps.
Jeffro
@Brachiator: @James E Powell: You’re both correct: Hillz didn’t count on too many Rs being reachable…just that they would not turn out/come home for Trump. Unfortunately, while some Rs couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump, it appears large numbers of occasional Rs turned out this time. And of course on our side, turnout was slightly lower in a few demographics, and in a few key states.
Major Major Major Major
@Jeffro:
…is essentially the only story that can actually be told by this election’s results. Everything else is commentators trying to shoehorn their key issues or existing narrative into 80,000 people across the upper Midwest.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: What do you mean? That Republicans voted for HRC? Where was this? Do you have a link and/or data to back this up
Steeplejack (tablet)
@NotMax:
Clearly wordplay, tipped off by the capital B.
sherparick
The designated OMB Director apparently does not understand that the purpose of scientific research is to answer questions and explore “unknowns.”
http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/21/14012552/trump-budget-director-research-science-mulvaney
Boy, will I have a lot of grievance to air on December 23d.
hovercraft
@gene108:
Between Karl Rove’s we create our own reality, ( yes he was referring to geopolitics), and Colbert’s coining of the word “truthiness”, we do now live in a fact free world. This touched on our dilemma yesterday.
WARNING, NY Times, David Leonhardt DEC. 20, 2016
As they begin to wake up to the republicans perversion of the our democracy, it is my hope they will also point out their complete lack of honesty about anything. That some one other than the ever shrill K-thug has written this is encouraging, but as he says it is up to us to force the spineless people we’ve elected to stand up to this regime and it’s enablers. And at least he is aware that the both siderism that is pervasive in our fourth estate is bullshit.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack (tablet):
Yes, I thought that was the dead giveaway.
NeenerNeener
@bemused: I find it hard to understand why any Repub Congress critter would be afraid of Putin’s Poodle when they can hold the 25th Amendment over his head for the next 4 years. They have him by the short and curlies since they can either impeach or declare him unfit any time he steps out of line. As long as it’s the Repubs who stage the coup the unwashed masses who are the Poodle’s base will fall in line too. It’s the tribal thing to do.
Chris
@NeenerNeener:
They know they’d never survive the electoral backlash. Trump would go to war with them, tell his supporters to stay home or primary him or even vote for the Democrat next November, and they’d lose all fifty states.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve deleted past links and references that I had on a lot of this stuff. I’m not sure it’s healthy to keep going over the election, especially if it is to try to fix blame on some single thing or person or event that caused Hillary to lose. And of course it is doubly frustrating for a lot of people because the popular vote and electoral college results were so significantly divergent.
D58826
Can’t make this stuff up. From Dick Polman:
Meanwhile, the answer to this year’s top trivia question will be: Colin Powell.
The question: Who finished third in the 2016 Electoral College?
Yep, three Democratic electors in the state of Washington voted Monday for George W. Bush’s first Secretary of State, hoping in vain that Powell’s name would lure Republican electors away from Trump. I can only shake my head at the irony — OK, the stupidity — of voting for Powell at all.
Those three Democratic electors were Bernie Bros who got their gigs because Sanders won the Washington state caucus. Bernie spent the primary season pounding Hillary Clinton for her Senate vote authorizing war in Iraq. So what did those Bernie electors do on Monday? They voted for Powell…who helped lay the groundwork for war in Iraq. He went to the United Nations and told a string of untruths about Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction — which greased the runup to the war that Bernie loathed.
Brilliant idea, Bros.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: If you don’t understand a problem how can you solve it. I am a scientist by training, that’s how science tries to understand the world around us.
hovercraft
@sherparick:
As not only a Tea Party republican, and a member of the Freedom Caucus, just the type of person who would make the perfect OMB director, pesky things like arithmetic, history, precedent, and facts are meaningless, it’s all about “conservative principles”. This man is so pure that he saw the Ryan budgets as too bloated. His tenure at OMB should be a godsend for all those ‘economically anxious’ voters.
Spinoza is my Co-pilot
Love ya, Tom, but yes, that is some hopeless optimism right there. The press may be getting “just a little bit better” (I don’t know, I’m not seeing/hearing it) but it’s way too little way too late even if it is.
Most media that most people in this country pay any attention to will spend far more time normalizing Trump than they will criticizing him (it’s happening right before our eyes, actually) and he will continue to use Twitter to go around them with his baldfaced bullshit anyway. Any opposition by the Democrats will be largely portrayed in that same media as unseemly, unpatriotic, or (at best) as he said/she said “both sides do it” nonsense (exactly opposite the way the Tea Party bullshit was treated).
Most media that most people pay attention to (for political stuff) is either straight-up fascist propaganda (Fox News, talk radio, most of CNN) or they are useful tools who have spent the past generation bending over backwards for the right to avoid being labelled “liberal” (oh look, it’s Nice Polite Republican radio). They aren’t likely to grow a spine with the fascists in total control now; just the opposite is far likelier.
Besides that, we’re now living in a very Orwellian “post-fact” world of information. No surprise, that works to the fascists’ advantage, not ours. Just take the presidential voting results, for instance: We know that HRC got nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, and that even his EC victory was one of the narrowest in history. What does the right believe? That it was a “landslide” Trump victory, and that 3 million “illegal” votes were cast for HRC, so Trump actually won the popular vote. Look at the overall media response to those opposing sets of “facts” and tell me they’re doing “better”. The fuck they are.
Since all else has failed, I myself am going with the absurdity of it all (because life is, as the existentialists taught us, awfully goddamn absurd). Hell, I’ll probably learn to love Big Brother, too, someday, sitting there sipping my Victory Gin. My slough of despond is still really fucking deep, can you tell?
Origuy
I came across a quote, in a review of a new book, Stalin and the Scientists, that may be a warning. In a letter to Niels Bohr in the 1930s, Russian physicist Petr Kapitsa wrote, “The position of science and research people is somewhat peculiar here. It reminds me of a child with a pet animal which is tormented and tortured by him with the best of intentions. But indeed the child grows up and learns how to look properly after his pets…. I hope it will not be long to happen here.” Of course, Stalin sent many scientists to the gulags and Lysenkoism crippled Soviet biology and agriculture until his death.
Major Major Major Major
@D58826: gosh, you mean their fiery aversion to Hillary wasn’t based on policy? Whodathunk.
JPL
@sherparick: This is Balloon Juice where everyday is Festivus.
NeenerNeener
@Chris: Republican voters always, always, always fall in line. It’s what makes them republicans to begin with. So Poodle’s base may fuss a bit but they’ll come home at election time to defeat the Democrats that they hate more than they love the Poodle or their country. That establishment Repubs have anything to worry about from the Poodle may very well just be more posturing.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@SiubhanDuinne:
Some of us got it. That wasn’t on you.
dww44
@Jeffro: Question, could that lower turnout for likely Democratic voters in a few key locations be due to voter suppression? I’d love to see some data on that. Because overall, HRC’s vote total was pretty good, vis-a-vis 2012, was it not?
Major Major Major Major
@dww44: suppression can’t explain everything about the upper Midwest; that was as somebody said above the Bush 2004 crowd coming home. (They hadn’t bothered to vote in 2008/2012.)
KS in MA
@James E Powell:
THIS.
KS in MA
@Jeffro: Right … the Indivisible handbook is great. And: find out when/where your Congresspeople are holding town halls during the holidays, and go and ask what they’re doing about Social Security and Medicare.
Jeffro
@KS in MA:
Hopefully, doing nothing about them ;)
I hear you…going to find out my MoCs (as Indivisible calls them) are going to be available. Being in a Blue district in Blue VA, they just need to hear “NO COMPROMISES w/ PUTIN’S PUPPET”
bemused
@NeenerNeener:
They’re very afraid of their Trump voting constituents and not just losing their votes. They’re afraid of being in physical danger from them if they criticized Trump knowing so many of them are lunatics as told to Robert Reich.
Chat Noir
@Betty Cracker: This is word-for-word exactly how I feel but way more articulate than I could ever express.
KS in MA
@Jeffro: Sounds good!
Miss Bianca
@NeenerNeener:
If there was one thing I wish that Democrats – and “Democrats” like the BernieBros – would learn from Republicans, it would be this: you can’t change shit if you don’t VOTE FOR THE FUCKING DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE AND WIN THE FUCKING ELECTION.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
It’s also amusing that Trump is supposedly such a populist but he hasn’t done one thing to reach out to the tens of millions of regular people who didn’t vote for him.
He’s met with CEO’s, he’s hosting cocktail parties for journalists, he’s sucking up to members of Congress, but not a single effort to speak to regular people, outside rallies for his loyal fans.
That’s pretty goddamned elitist. He has no interest in any American outside the 27% or so who worship him. Not a word in our direction.
James E Powell
@Spinoza is my Co-pilot:
You’re right. Two points.
1) The style and tone of any criticism will be the usual “some Democrats say . . .” or “But others claim that . . . ” which, as we saw in the campaign, normalizes Trump, and
2) A fairly large portion of the press/media will be all out cheerleading for Trump. FOX & Morning Joe will defend him no matter what he does. CNN loves him because they make money when he’s around.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
In other words, you don’t have any data to back up your claim that Republicans voted for HRC.
Yarrow
@James E Powell:
Yep. And that means if all of us are not contacting our representatives at least once a week, more is better, then we are not doing our part. Let’s stiffen the spines of our Dem reps. Let them know what we want. And find out when your rep’s town hall is and show up.
Kay
I’m actually feeling a little better.
I don’t stay mad that long, mostly because I’m fairly shallow rather than generous and forgiving :)
Democrats and liberals need some happy warriors at this point- some brawlers- there are people who genuinely enjoy fighting and they’re generally most effective at it. Harry Reid is an example of this kind of person. The policy wonks and civility scolders should step back for a while and let people like that step up. Not grifters- not the people who make money inciting outrage and putting forth worthless petitions, they’ll appear now too- but just real people who can fight effectively and enjoy that sort of thing.
Yarrow
@Kay:
It’s not hard to explain. He’s an authoritarian. You’re either with him (showing up at his rallies, sucking up to him as a journalist, etc.) or you’re the enemy and must be punished and made an example of.
It’s not elitist. He’s showing his power. They are sadists and will act as such. They are authoritarians and will do whatever necessary to grow and retain power.
Change your view. They are not playing by the usual handbook. Trump has zero intention of being “president of all the people.” He is president for those who are for him and everyone else can go to hell – be put in prison or die. Period. Start there and then figure out your moves. Otherwise you’re wasting your time.
trollhattan
The Karsh photo of Churchill is one of my favorite portraits, and has a funny backstory. Winston’s glower is because the photographer had just snatched away his cigar when he tripped the shutter. That, my friends, is “shoots-puh.”
ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
You took the words right off my keyboard.
Feel exactly the same way. Fucking Exactly.
ruckus
@hovercraft:
You also took the words off my keyboard.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay:
I generally agree though I’m curious what exactly you want the wonks to do at the moment. Be quiet, stop blogging?
@James E Powell: I don’t think many did but I still reject the notion that it’s what Hillary was banking on.
Lizzy L
I dreamed about T last night — orange bastard just walked right into my dream. I guess that means that my anxiety/rage levels are still pretty high.
NeenerNeener
@bemused: The Poodle has already indicated that he has no wish to actually do the job, except for the ceremonial parts. If they haven’t had a Come-to-Satan meeting already between the Poodle, Kushner, Bannon and Paul Ryan there will be one soon, and I expect Paul Ryan to come out of that as the “Shadow President”. The Poodle will be neutered and only be trotted out for state dinners and other grift opportunities and he’ll be just fine with it. Ryan’s biggest challenge will be getting the idiot off of Twitter so he won’t blow their cover.
While he publicly humiliated Romney I haven’t seen him attack Ryan yet, and I’ll bet it’s because he knows where the actual power is.
SgrAstar
@rikyrah: is this an Alec-sponsored effort? Cuz it’s happening in other states too, including Utah. Republicans, dismantling the free press for good. Grrrrrrr.
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh, no. They don’t have to stop. One of the things I like about liberals is how brainy it can be. We just need less “the infrastructure bill is blah blah blah’
Punchier and connected to place. “This robs Wisconsin!” Trump won’t know the facts anyway :)
Kay
@Major Major Major Major:
They could also do a lot with Trump’s lack of transparency. As far as I’m concerned he “opened the door” to speculation on his associations, motivations, etc. because he chooses to reveal nothing. There should be a price to pay for that. Set it up so he has to disprove “clouds” and “shadows”. He’s stonewalling. Make him pay. He has loads of conflicts. If he doesn’t choose to clear those up they’re fair game. Cast doubt on every deal, every initiative, every hire. If he wants to prove he’s not acting in self-interest all he has to do is disclose.
If there’s no laws or rules and media won’t hold him accountable make him take the political downside of secrecy. The downside of secrecy is a lack of trust. He’s enjoying all the upside. Now he should pay.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Do you have practical advice on how to deal with a Jill Stein voter who believes in every conspiracy theory out there. Should I just cut her off completely. Answering her fact free emails gives me a headache.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
The election isn’t a problem to be solved. You can try to understand who voted and what their motivations were. You can try to understand what contributed to Trump’s victory and to Clinton’s defeat. That’s about it.
And some of the people who are certain that voter suppression or any other single factor was responsible for Clinton’s defeat have already reached a conclusion and are resistant to other considerations, which is the opposite of how good science confronts an issue to be investigated.
hovercraft
John may be onto some thing there, if only we had started the FEMA right after the 2008 election, we could have prevented the events of 2016. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Brachiator
@Kay:
Right now, you can’t make him pay. His supporters don’t care and there is no degree of pressure that can be applied. I don’t know. Maybe this is a super teflon honeymoon. I don’t think it can last, though.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: That is a stupid list, it has RI, CT, VT, ME, CA and NY listed in the worst states. Please. Another both-sides-do-it, article.
manyakitty
@NeenerNeener: What about Pence?
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: That was inartful wording. It is definitely a problem to be understood. We need to figure out why HRC lost the states that Obama, Al Gore and Kerry won.
ETC: There is no one reason, or one magic bullet. In fact I think the answer may be different for different states, on why she lost.
Kay
The thing that gets under Republican voters’ skin more than any other is charges of incompetency. You won’t get to them with charges of immorality. They can’t stand being called fuck ups. Trump is particularly vulnerable to this because so many people (wrongly) believe he’s a good business person.
His lackies on cable like this saying: “on time and under budget”. It’s the bullshit “builder” theme. Attack him for missing deadlines and going over budget. It’ll be easy to do. None of the people he hired have any experience and Republicans are reckless with spending. It would be easy to do with even a competent President, because President’in is hard. Nothing is on time and under budget :)
He’s extremely vulnerable there and it won’t make media uncomfortable because it’s not about gender or race or anything they don’t want to talk about. They love that thousand dollar toilet seat stuff. Make Trump out to be a fuck up, a bumbler, a bad manager. That’s why people turned against Bush. He couldn’t get bottled water to Biloxi. It made us ALL look bad, like we were all incompetent.
hovercraft
@schrodingers_cat:
Is she family or a close valued friend? It’s like any relationship, you have to weigh the pros and cons, is this someone I truly want in my life, is the relationship making my life better, or is it causing me more stress and heartache. Sometimes much as we love someone, they are too destructive to keep in your life.
If she is worth it, and reachable, then continue to try to reason with her, if she’s not explain to her that you do want her in your life but that you have to agree to disagree. No more e-mails with bullshit theories/conspiracies. You want to continue to be there, but only if we set politics aside.
NeenerNeener
@manyakitty: Dense Pence will do whatever he’s told by Ryan. This will be like Reagan’s 2nd term, with Ryan playing Poppy Bush. I would be thrilled if the Republicans actually imploded because of Poodle, but my luck has really sucked this year.
Kay
@Brachiator:
It isn’t for “his supporters”. Ignore them. It’s for the 25% of people who vote for any old reason and the 50% of people who voted against him. This is the job of the opposition Party. They have to embrace that role. It’s more important now than ever. That’s why the “happy” in “happy warrior” is so important. Not 1000 word think pieces. Punchy pummeling without a ton of anger behind it. People will find angry advocates off-putting. Only the Dem base loves them.
Trump has no sense of humor. His opponents need to have one.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Brava! Co-sign.
rikyrah
Shadow and Act talks with the author of Hidden Figures , Margot Lee Shetterly
The movie opens Christmas Day in select cities and the first week of January everywhere.
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: She is/was a dear friend. Her descent into crazy is scary.
rikyrah
@Kay:
He’s hired a bunch of folks with no experience in government. And, the rest are con-man grifters.
There will be nothing BUT incompetency.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
There ya go.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I don’t feel happy. and, won’t pretend otherwise.
The warrior, I’m ok with….
We need to punch back….with a true phuck you attitude.
hovercraft
Trump Transition Official Boycotts Israeli Govt Meeting Over Snub Of Far-Right Pol
hovercraft
@Kay:
Did you say opposition party? I think just say no is a better strategy, make them own it and him.
Schumer Gives Trump’s $1 Trillion Infrastructure Gamble A Big Bear Hug
ByLauren FoxPublishedDecember 21, 2016, 12:15 PM EDT
Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he’s on board with Trump’s proposal for a massive $1 trillion infrastructure bill, according to a report from Politico.
Schumer might be more aligned with Trump on the infrastructure plan than Republican leaders who have warned against the infrastructure bill’s price tag – and appears eager to exploit those tensions.
Schumer made the comments during an interview on Jon Karl’s and Rick Klein’s “Powerhouse Politics” podcast.
“We think it should be large,” Schumer said according to a write up from Politico. “He’s mentioned a trillion dollars. I told him that sounded good to me.”
The infrastructure bill may be a place where Schumer’s and Trump’s visions align more than Trump’s and his own party’s do. HIllary Clinton’s proposed infrastructure plan was far less expansive than Trump’s.
McConnell told reporters earlier this month that “I hope we avoid a trillion-dollar stimulus.”
Washington is watching Schumer closely to see what deals he may be able to broker with the new president. Schumer said on the podcast he plans to be judicious, but isn’t going to be blocking any pieces of legislation just because they are coming from Trump.
“We’re not going to oppose something simply because it has the name Trump on it, but we will certainly not sacrifice our principles just to get something done,” Schumer said.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Trump got the same proportion of white voters that Romney did. What about that is “contradictory” to what SC said about Republican voters being unreachable.
Democrats hoped that Republican voters from 2012 would switch to D. They didn’t. Do you have contrary statistic?
Mnemosyne
@D58826:
Yes, but Powell has a peni$ and Hillary doesn’t, and that’s the only thing that matters to the bros.
(Actually, this cements for me that a lot of the Berniebros are actually Paulistas who saw him as their new Great White Dude Hope. What Democrat would write in Colin frickin’ Powell in 2016?)
Spinoza is my Co-pilot
@James E Powell:
I agree with you that the Democrats have to control at least one branch of the federal gov’t to even have a chance of effectively opposing the fascists, but that’s the thing, they aren’t going to, not for a long time (if — I’m afraid this is very likely — ever).
The 2018 midterms are a ridiculous longshot for the Democrats for several key reasons — the Senate seats up that year lean very heavily in the Republican’s favor (much more than this year), the House districts are so drastically gerrymandered in enough Republican-controlled states that Democrats re-taking the House is even less likely than re-taking the Senate, and far too many Democratic voters stay home every goddamn midterm anyway (what would make 2018 any different?).
The fascists are in total control now, and we’re hoping to vote them out of that total control in the coming midterm while they watch? What, we’re expecting that “heightening the contradictions” will actually work? Very fucking unlikely. It’s much more likely that they hang onto that control for good and all in any way they can, whatever does or doesn’t happen with Trump and implementing disastrous Republican policies in the next few years.
It Can’t Happen Here? It did happen here, it really did, November 8th, 2016.
It’s still possible to turn it around, but there’s not much time and it would first require recognition and acknowledgment by enough people that American-style fascism does, in fact, now rule us all, presided over by the most demagogic (by far) head of state in our modern history. But precisely because it is American-style (no brownshirts or jackboots or other such obviously-militant Hitler/Mussolini/Franco shit) it is difficult to get even most left/liberal people in America to recognize it, let alone the vast mushy middle of our fellow citizens who seldom bother enough about politics to even vote (to say nothing of the millions of ordinary fascists themselves).
“Fascist” is well-understood as a nasty pejorative, like “racist”, and just as vehemently denied. Almost no one outside self-proclaimed Neo-Nazis willingly accepts the tag, or feels comfortable applying it to anyone who maybe seems nice and isn’t running around screaming “Sieg Heil!” or whatever, but fascism’s a useful shorthand for rightwing jingoistic authoritarian corporatism (among other lovely characteristics, like using convenient innocent scapegoats). Sound like anyone you know? Only just about every goddamn Republican in the country today, very much including all Republican officeholders and operatives. And they’re now solidly in control of government in America, more than ever before.
But because ordinary fascists (and fascist-enablers) are your co-worker, your boss, your next-door neighbor, your oldest friend, your grandfather, your sister, your spouse — few of whom seem like Gestapo agents or potential SS officers — it’s not recognized, it’s not acknowledged. We, collectively, simply refuse to see what’s happened here, because it can’t happen here, it’s not who we are. But it did, and it is who we are (enough of us, anyway).
Like global climate change, it may eventually be understood to be real and incredibly deleterious, just as all us Cassandras have been saying. Maybe we will find a way to vote the bastards out sometime in the 2020s (I have my doubts even about that, they will change and bend the rules and scapegoat like motherfuckers to keep that from happening). But, like doing anything serious and necessary about climate change, it will probably be far too little and far too late.
I wish I believed otherwise, I’ve been through our political ups and downs since the ’68 elections and was especially despondent in ’04, but this time seems very different. This time, it looks to me like we really are well and truly fucked. I never wanted to be more wrong about anything in my life than this, but that’s what I see.
Millard Filmore
@rikyrah:
Even if you can get past the validity of Trump as the next president, a hostile foreign power ratfucked our elections. Failure to vigorously and comprehensively investigate this situation is treason*.
* Since we have sent soldiers all over the world to fight without declaring WAR, we should not have to declare WAR for this to be treason.
Kay
@rikyrah:
That’s why you need shallow people! Think of it like a “hired gun”. It has to be people who don’t take it personally, whether it’s personal or not. Everyone gave it their best shot with morality arguments, human decency arguments, well-reasoned factual arguments. Now it’s time for shameless brawlers. They have a role!
joel hanes
@Spanky (ex P-man):
Auburn University at Montgomery
Winter in Montgomery, AL may not be a perfect model of winter in Frostbite Falls MN, or Fargo ND, nor yet Superior WI nor Albany NY.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, I don’t think anyone is claiming that there is One True Answer to what happened, but when anyone says that Democratic turn-out was mysteriously down this year, I will remind the group that massive voter suppression actually happened, so the “mystery” surrounding turn-out is not terribly mysterious after all.
schrodingers_cat
@joel hanes: Let’s send the author of this study to Bumfuck, Alaska for his/her winter jollies.
Brachiator
@Kay:
OK. Sounds like fun.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
This might be true in the aggregate, but not in the details. And the composition of the voters were not the same as the 2012 election. A few tidbits from Nate Silver (who may or may not be disgraced in your eyes).
but in low education counties:
Ella in New Mexico
That video made me literally laugh out loud–thank you, Tom!!!
All four of my young adult kids are so depressed. They’ll call and ask me “What the hell? How is this shit ok? How could this happen?” hoping I can give them some background or silver lining or hope. For the first time in their lives–shit, my own–I’ve had a very hard time being much help to them. My husband and I keep saying that this election feels like someone close to you died, and you’re so devastated and grieving that you’ve got nothing left to give to the rest of the family who are also grieving.
But this week, especially after the extinguishing of that last, flickering light hope I had that the Electoral College has a single bit of meaning in our democracy, I’ve decided I’m not letting this fucking election run my mind and heart and soul anymore.
So I’m gonna focus on the present more, and especially what makes the present meaningful. The hospital has been an incredible refuge these past weeks. There I can focus on providing comfort and good care to people, not on my own fear and anxiety. Having co-workers who you adore and being a help to them has been such an uplifting thing, especially since so many share my same sense of loss.
I was also accepted into Nurse Practitioner school and I start in the summer. I’m so looking forward to this. I’ve been postponing the decision to apply for a couple of years, but now is the time. I am so excited to learn and grow and get to go out and provide health care to rural populations who are poor and unseen and don’t always speak Donald Trump’s English. Plus I might make a little extra money to help pay off the student loans, so it’s all good.
I told my second son this morning that he needs to focus on doing good in his own little corner of the world right now and not worry about the future. I encouraged him to start finding ways to get involved in things that matter to our state, to his community. Find little ways to shine some happiness into the lives of others, even if it is just how he connects with the small family farmers he visits monthly in his job as an Agriculture Department Chemical inspector.
“I’ve actually been trying to do that” he said. “I’ve been giving the people I’m inspecting little Ziplock bags of Christmas candy, spending time after the visit to just chat. I’ve really come to respect these people, even though I know their politics are probably 180 degrees from mine. I give a shit about them, they struggle a lot but they work so hard. They’re all so ready to hate us because we’re “the government”, but I’m focusing on getting them to work with me, telling them to call me if they need help with something before it becomes a problem. Maybe they’ll see I’m a real human being, not an enemy and I’ll prevent some catastrophe.” he joked.
Now this might not sound like much, but this is the miser of the family. That kid has NEVER been loose with his money. He ran yard sales at the age of 8 for me and charged me a 50% fee. His brother told me that he charged interest for his loans when they were teenagers. He saved every penny he made for things like computers or video gaming equipment-we never bought him any of that. He even managed to graduate from college with money in the bank enough to put a good down-payment on a new car.
The fact that the penny-pinching little miser spent almost $40 bucks on candy and Christmas-themed Ziplocks for a bunch of Republican-scammed salt-of-the-earth-farmers stuck in the rural vasts of New Mexico makes my heart warm.
There is hope.
Ella in New Mexico
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve got one of those. She used to be a pretty sane person who worked as a mental health counselor up in the Four Corners region with Native American adolescents. Then she got a chance to move to Hawaii to “teach” meditation and alternative thot stuff at some charter school there. She has gotten worse and worse with the conspiracy theories.
First it was anti-vaxxer crap. Then it was GMO’s being some kind of ticking time bomb funded by the Illuminati to try and kill off as many people as possible on the planet. Then vaccines were also that. Last year, it was the whole “planet Niburu/Planet X” thing that was gonna fly so close to the plet that it would shift the Earth’s axis, but she had inside info on secret places that would be safe from the destruction it would wrek.
This month, it’s been “Pizza-gate”-John Podesta and Hilary Clinton’s secret child pedophile sex-slave thing out of Comet Pizza in DC. But apparently, I missed the fact that pretty much EVERYBODY is in on this world-wide pedo-sex ring, from the Pope to Mitt Romney to Angela Merkel.
I won’t unfriend her because for some reason she keeps engaging even after I stone-cold dispute every one of her fairy tales. And she hasn’t unfriended me, which is more than I can say for my Trump-lovin’ sister in law.
Maybe I can make a difference in her delusional disorder.
Elizabelle
@Ella in New Mexico:
Congratulations, and best of luck with Nurse Practitioner training. That’s marvelous.
Loved the story of your Chem inspector son and his kindness.
Ella in New Mexico
@Elizabelle: Thanks, Elizabelle. He never ceases to surprise me. ;-) . Hope you have a wonderful holiday and that the New Year is better for you and all the rest of us.
Like I told him this morning “Look on the bright side: I think Donald Trump might not even make it 6 months before he gets impeached. Watching these asshats crumble and fall will be a whole helluva lot of fun!”
zhena gogolia
@Ella in New Mexico:
Great story.
I agree, we need to keep trying to shine light in this darkness.
zhena gogolia
@Ella in New Mexico:
I try to cheer myself up this way: with eight years of Obama, we got complacent, we relied on him to take care of everything. Now we have to do the fighting ourselves, and maybe it will be good for us. Now that the EC’s over, I’m sort of looking forward to the struggle. (Obviously, I’d rather Clinton had been elected, with a dem Senate, but this is the reality we have to face, and thinking about counterfactuals just depresses me more.)
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: congrats on getting into the NP program!
Elizabelle
@Ella in New Mexico: Yeah. Odd to consider, but this could be losing a battle and winning a war, sooner than expected. Have to keep that as a hope.
Ella in New Mexico
@Miss Bianca: Thank you, Miss B! I’ll be commuting back and forth to Albuquerque for a couple of years, but it’ll be worth it. Such a great program. Happy New Year to you!
Ella in New Mexico
@zhena gogolia: Exactly. My thought exactly. :-)
The Lodger
@Kay: This is why I want Joe Biden to stay involved in the new year. He does Happy Warrior like nobody’s business.
Theodore Wirth
Take solace in the fact fact that Trump has elevated you all from your parents’ basement to a bedroom. You may still be fat and pajama-clad but whatever, take it as you will but it’s an upgrade nonetheless.