Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.
So I’m watching Rachel Maddow and she’s talking with Chris Hayes about the Trump rally MSNBC just aired in full. Maddow’s saying that now that he’s president-elect* the media have no choice and just have to “put the camera on him.” I couldn’t disagree more. Why should the media act as they traditionally have when he not only ignores any of the traditional responsibilities on his part but attacks journalists and journalism relentlessly? They shouldn’t. They’re under no obligation to air his PR events at all. He’s using and abusing them. They could, and should, be talking about so many other things. If they feel they need to film what he says (and they don’t really – they could do their investigative reporting without this), they should demand that he agree to a real press conference, and not on his terms, and call out his pattern of lies and cons.
new page
I don’t think I could tolerate another ‘problem occurred, page was reloaded’ tonight.
Pierce R. Butler @996:
If there’s one thing we can agree on, it’s that Stein is problematic. It’s thanks to her that I found myself in the bizarre situation of agreeing with Trump.
The Opening Arguments podcast is worth adding to your feeds; a lawyer and a non-lawyer talk about the law, basically. Their latest episode takes a look at Stein’s recount efforts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The recount law for that last state reads (emphasis mine):
“Aggrieved,” according to Andrew Torrez, is a legal term of art that means a person who believes they were materially impacted by an unfair decision. Slight problem: Jill Stein got 1.1% of the vote in Michigan. No-one honestly thought she’d win that state, so she was not materially impacted by the announced results. She can’t even pull the 5% card here, as that would mean Stein honestly believes that she was prevented from getting 200,000+ additional votes. Stein cannot file for a recount under Michigan law. Both the hosts point out she could salvage the situation by convincing Clinton to officially file, and were glad to hear she’d signed up.
Apparently, neither read the fine print of what Clinton’s lawyer said.
Clinton’s team don’t see actionable evidence for vote rigging, so they don’t thing the decision was unfair. Clinton doesn’t qualify as aggrieved either!
Anyone want to guess what Trump’s first counter-claim was in his protest?
sigh. I guess the $973,250 cheque she handed to Michigan is headed back into the coffers of the Green Party. To put that into perspective, over the entire 2016 election the Greens only managed to raise $3,509,477.
I suppose this also is a good excuse to mention all six recounts currently in play:
In case anyone was wondering, Clinton won Nevada, and the difference between her and Trump is over 20,000 votes at last count.
And in the interest of completeness, the US House Science committee retweeted a climate denialist article posted on Breitbart. The story was posted next door.
Well, it isn’t (necessarily), which should have been evident from the fact that I posted a critical article a few hours later and made clear that I didn’t think criticism was out of order.
It wasn’t trolling of any sort. I specified my criticisms and frustrations. Look, I’ve been pretty relentlessly critical of how WaPo covers foreign policy for years, but the way this was handled by Greenwald, Blumenthal, et al., misrepresents the situation and doesn’t help move us forward, and it effectively mocks and dismisses what I consider a major problem.
They didn’t even acknowledge the report, although it was cited in the WaPo article. They focused on several tangential issues and attacks and failed to acknowledge the importance or extent of the Russian operation. They fell back on ridiculous hyperbole (Taibbi less so than the others, but him, too). If they had done what I did and focused on and critically evaluated the methods discussed in the report, I would have been pleased. (If I’d known Chen would do it to some extent, I could have saved some time, but since I’m unemployed offering a needed social-scientific perspective was kind of therapeutic.)
Well, some of what was good was original to me, and probably many others. (Specifically, the two case studies, even though I had issues with those, and just generally beginning to work through developing methods for identifying some state-sponsored and rightwing online propaganda. I’ve done a little on presenting information on rightwing organizational networks, but haven’t really focused on analyzing shared online content. PON’s method is slipshod, but good social-scientific tools could be very useful to journalists and resisters going forward.) I would question whether you’d know what was original, in any case, since you didn’t seem to be aware of all of the articles on the subject that aren’t at all connected to or based on PON.
I don’t care what reasons people offer. Anonymity isn’t a big deal to me in most circumstances, but it was an incessant focus of most if not all of the first batch of critical pieces (Greenwald called them “anonymous cowards” multiple times). To emphasize this rather than engaging with the content of the report is stupid.
I disagree.
No, I mean that in a context in which Clinton is president, claims about sites being outlets for Russian propaganda, even if coming from unknown groups, amplified in the media would be scarier because there would be a reasonable chance of their being acted on by the government, which would see Putin as an adversary. McCarthyism was as harmful as it was because it had the weight of the state behind it. PON does not. The likelihood of a Trump administration targeting and persecuting people because they’re claimed to spread Russian propaganda is essentially zero. They welcome and benefit from it.
In the current reality, Russian propaganda and hacking have worked and continue to work for Trump’s benefit – they have common goals. This isn’t a negligible fact – it’s central to political reality. In this actual context, claims that sites spread Russian propaganda are neither McCarthyist in any effective sense nor especially dangerous for the sites about which it’s claimed (whether or not the claims are correct). A Trump/Republican government isn’t going to be persecuting anyone for this. They’re disinclined to have any of this investigated or discussed at all, for obvious reasons. Focusing on Russian propaganda in this context is a necessary part of leftwing criticism and resistance. If Trump and Putin are in league, which the evidence indicates they are, analyzing Putin’s propaganda operation isn’t displacing the domestic onto the foreign – it’s talking about the domestic. I can’t emphasize this enough.
There’s no time. And in the spirit of recognizing this, I’ll let you (and KG and whoever) have the last word on this topic. I think I’ve exhausted my contribution in any event.
Hm. My immediate thoughts: I haven’t listened to the podcast, and IANAL, but I think I could make a case that Stein was aggrieved even under a “materially impacted” standard, especially if her Michigan recount petition was like her WI one. If an election is essentially rigged by a foreign government, it’s a farce, and any candidate participating in it has a case that they’re aggrieved regardless of their chances of winning. If there was rigging, all of the candidates spent time and energy on an election when the fix was in. Hell, I know the law doesn’t allow it, but any voter in Michigan would have a case for being aggrieved if the results were predetermined. (I’m not saying this did happen, but it was the possibility Stein’s petition and its expert affidavit raised in WI.)
The Russian foreign ministry offers an opinion.
SC, that deserves more elaboration. Here’s what Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said:
And here’s what “southpaw” had to say on Twitter:
And yes, this person is right: Manafort was on the pro-Russian side of Ukrainian politics. It looks like the Russian government is so desperate to kiss Trump’s ass that they’ll throw Manafort under the bus, as long as it results in Trump taking a hands-off approach to the Ukraine.
Sorry, but a bit of a pet peeve of mine:
It is not the Ukraine, just Ukraine.
I’m married to someone of Ukrainian descent, and I would be remiss if I did not point this out!
“Trump’s Breezy Calls to World Leaders Leave Diplomats Aghast”:
One of the more astounding quotes from the Pakistan call was his saying Pakistanis are “one of the most intelligent people.” Such a clown.
* Here’s an interesting article by Sarah Kendzior about Nazarbayev’s and other similar regimes. Mabel Berezin’s Making the Fascist Self, if I recall correctly, touched on some similar themes. (I do remember that it mentioned that there was a Mussolini perfume called “Il Duce.”)
“Trump’s Business Is Not Too Big to Sell”:
O’Brien wrote the book TrumpNation. Back in May, I recommended the chapter “TrumpSpin” to the media. They really should have read it.
Phew – I was terribly concerned about what would happen to them if the ACA is repealed.
You know how yesterday I was talking about the real looming “Red Scare”? A few hours later Kellyanne Conway called the SPLC “an anti-Trump group.”
Huh? They’re saying the stories about Manafort were Ukrainian lies.
I think their main purpose here is to further cement their control of Trump by playing on his well-known susceptibilities – reminding him “those Ukrainian leaders said mean things about you!”
Jen Palmieri:
Conway also said this, about Trump’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud: ““He’s president-elect so that’s presidential behavior.” No external standard – he can proceed to debase the office. He’s a national disgrace, unworthy of anyone’s respect, and that’s how he’ll be remembered by history.
Trump’s post-election rally was an opportunity for him to diss the press some more. He did that so much that I think it may be one of his main reasons for holding these ridiculous rallies. Maybe the big win of the popular vote by Hillary Clinton is irking him so much that he has to discredit that reporting entirely. (Clinton’s popular vote margin over Trump is now over 2.5 million.)
Some excerpts from Trump’s wallow in self-congratulation:
No, Trump, you didn’t. There was no landslide.
Not presidential.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is now filing a suit to stop the recount.
A warning.
Comey, I hope you’re pleased with what you’ve helped to create.
This is a followup to comment 17.
An excerpt from New York Times coverage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/politics/trump-kicks-off-thank-you-tour-reveling-in-crowd-and-campaign-themes.html
A followup to comments 17 and 21.
Analysis from Alex Shephard of The New Republic:
Rachel Maddow presented a devastating analysis of how Trump used tax benefits and not tax penalties to seem some jobs in Indiana.
The video is 10:54 minutes long.
It’s like the universe is determined to provide evidence of the impending Red Scare I talked about yesterday:
“Jeff Sessions fought as Alabama attorney general to keep an LGBT conference from meeting on a public campus”:
My take on the Ukraine/Russia comments up-thread. Russia is taking Trump’s side by accusing Ukrainian officials of trying to undermine Trump’s campaign. Makes sense to me.
In other news, I think Trump chose retired General James Mattis as Secretary of Defense because Trump’s idea of fun is to shout “Mad Dog Mattis!” at rallies.
More evidence: “Lewandowski: Times editor Dean Baquet ‘should be in jail’ for publishing Trump tax docs”
It’s being reported that Trump had an “engaging” chat with Duterte, who invited him to visit the Philippines.
I had the same feeling. His attitude toward “tough guys” and the military is that of a four year old. In other news, the Democrats could actually block Mattis.
Ha – I didn’t mean to repeat your “In other news” – it just rolled off my fingertips.
The Trump campaign is now filing a federal lawsuit to block the Wisconsin recount.
I admit to not having read everything on the Propornot site, and thus failing to realise that you were not quoting Propornot, despite having read and understood the report. The way your #478 is structured, it’s a natural assumption that you are quoting them. But it’s hilarious that you treat the Henry Jackson Society as a reliable source! It’s a well-known neocon propaganda organization, at least among those with more than an elementary grasp of current politics. The very report you link to repeats the old Cold War lie that CND was funded by the Kremlin.
Clarification: The federal lawsuit is being filed by two pro-Trump super PACs.
I don’t think it’s by any means out of the question. Whether you consider the instability of Trump himself, or the slew of competing right-wing factions around him – which will certainly included the neocons, who continue to view Russia as a threat to US hegemony, it’s quite possible the Trump-Putin axis will not survive the length of his administration – in which case it would be followed by outright hostility and a Macarthyite hunt for “Russian agents”. Of course any such crackdown would be focused on the left – plus any right-wing sites that happened to offend Trump or whichever faction comes out on top.
Hj Hornbeck @ # 2: If there’s one thing we can agree on, it’s that Stein is problematic.
I agree we can agree on that. I’ll go further and say that the Greens, as presently constituted, form the primary obstacle to creating a viable progressive party in the US.
The Opening Arguments podcast is worth adding to your feeds…
Mebbeso, if I had feeds to which to add it – the written word remains my medium of choice.
Clinton’s team don’t see actionable evidence for vote rigging…
I admit I haven’t followed this particular bit of quixoticism very closely, and I know you’re talking about the Michigan recount specifically… but if there’s any basis to the claim that some Wisconsin counties reported ~85% turnout, then we do have evidence worth action.
… I guess the $973,250 cheque she handed to Michigan is headed back into the coffers of the Green Party.
Whence it will surely relocate to the pockets of lawyers and other support for the remaining recounts, unless those get blown away too.
I had considered that, but I believe the Trump-Putin axis goes too deep and Putin has too much power over him. In any case, I think it’s a remote possibility, and would, as you say, primarily target the groups and organizations that are already in danger in the immediate future. The new rightwing-axis “Red Scare” that’s already begun (and poses a danger to PON, CounterPunch, Truthdig, and WaPo alike, and so many others) is far scarier than a hypothetical future one. But yes, the hypothetical case isn’t out of the question (and could also happen, though probably to a lesser extent, if Trump were impeached). That would be a major change in the situation. In the current context, I don’t believe PON and WaPo constitute anything reasonably described as a Red Scare or represent anything “far more dangerous” than the Putin-Trump alliance and its capacity for persecution of the Left.
Oh, sorry – I forgot I promised to leave you the last word! I’ll try again. :]
School voucher programs are a windfall for religious schools, and for other organizations who want to run schools with few or no regulations.
Take a look, for example, at the voucher program Mike Pence supported in Indiana. The god-addled dunderhead set it up so that public money was used to pay for private school tuition. That tuition-payment program eventually added up to $135 billion per year in Indiana.
Christian schools that teach creationism, and that use the Bible as a source of literal Truth (historical and cultural truth) benefited.
Here comes the slippery slope. Look what happened next:
Link
The article goes on to document school books that whitewash slavery, push Noah’s Ark as fact, etc. And the outcome of this Pence program just gets worse and worse:
What will Trump inherit when he is sworn in?
Link
I don’t know anything about that turnout claim, but I’m confused about the “lack of evidence” idea on the part of the Clinton campaign. I know they were in contact with Halderman and others, and I keep coming back to the Halderman affidavit in the WI petition. It seems to me that he was showing why suspicions of possible vote interference were plausible enough to justify a recount, and that if the interference had happened in the way he thought was possible, only through a recount could evidence be found. So in this case we wouldn’t expect much evidence of interference to be available prior to the recount, although I think he did point to an unusual rise in absentee ballots in some places.
As far as I’m concerned, just what’s known about the Russian political interference; the hacking of Democrats (and bugging, in this case), the Clinton campaign, and numerous other people and organizations; and the apparent attempts to get into the voter rolls in at least a couple of states is enough to warrant a national audit. But that doesn’t seem to be a possibility.
Good news, and facts … all denied by Trump:
Link
No surprise, Trump supports construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Vox link
Well, not “all Americans.” What about the protestors?
From a BBC interview with CIA director John Brennan (yes, it’s everything you imagine):
Such as…? What could this “proportional response” consist of?
Who now will include a human wall of 2000 veterans, who are beginning to arrive. (The campaign is still trending, and they’ve raised almost $900,000.)
Well i’ll make it easier for you to stop by agreeing with that point – and complimenting you on your excellent analysis of the flaws in the Propornot report’s methodology. My objections, in fact, have not been to your posts, but to Hj Hornbeck’s naive swallowing of neocon propaganda, from both Propornot and the Henry Jackson Society.
My take on recent events – Brexit, Trump, and the rise of fascism and right-populism across Europe – is that economic neoliberalism has had its day (the right is well able to shift ideologically between “free trade and deregulation make everyone richer” to nativism of various shades up to full-on fascism), but that neocon foreign policy in the USA and its UK poodle is another matter. Thus I don’t expect Trump to follow through with the sceptical noises he made about NATO, or to disengage from the Middle East, stop supporting Saudi intervention in Yemen, etc. – and this is likely to lead to a falling-out with Putin in the not-too-distant future. He may well give up on the “moderate opposition” to Assad – which as anyone who’s followed events in Syria knows, is inextricable from jihadi extremists including Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise – but his declared policies are as internally contradictory as Obama’s, given his hostility to Iran, which is allied with both Assad and Russia.
Wonkette’s coverage of Trump’s “Sore Winner Victory Tour” is great, a good read.
Excerpt:
So while the Republican Michigan AG files a suit to stop the recount, Republicans in the Michigan legislature work to pass even more voter-suppression laws.
Oh, FFS. Trump’s team is now pushing propaganda that includes the risible idea that Jeff Session has a “strong civil rights record.”
Politico link
The Trump team also wants Republicans to tout Steven Mnuchin as a “world-class financier” and more.
The Detroit Free Press reports that legislators in Michigan have put an even stricter voter-ID law on a fast track for passage.
The legislature is dominated by Republicans.
Hmmm. I wonder if the close call when it came to Clinton v. Trump gave the Republicans a scare, so now they have to take even more draconian measures to disenfranchise likely Democratic Party voters?
SC @46, I see we are on the same wavelength again.
SC… @ # 5: … it isn’t (necessarily), which should have been evident from the fact that I posted a critical article …
Silence implies assent. Even a very very short disclaimer would have clarified.
I specified my criticisms and frustrations.
Which focused on tone, not (much) on content.
They didn’t even acknowledge the report…
That blog post you linked to lacks both structure and meaningful information, meriting neither acknowledgement nor the label of “report”.
PON’s method is slipshod, but good social-scientific tools could be very useful …
Agreed. POrN, meanwhile, just muddies the water.
… you didn’t seem to be aware of all of the articles on the subject …
Aware enough to know the WaPo piece only promoted the worst example of same.
Anonymity … was an incessant focus of most … of the first batch of critical pieces…
If they’d put forth a non-ridiculous reason, the critics would not have focused on it.
… in a context in which Clinton is president, claims about sites being outlets for Russian propaganda, even if coming from unknown groups, amplified in the media would be scarier because there would be a reasonable chance of their being acted on by the government, which would see Putin as an adversary.
The multiple dangers presented by a Clinton administration seem quite moot now, but thanks for the clarification.
The likelihood of a Trump administration targeting and persecuting people because they’re claimed to spread Russian propaganda is essentially zero.
No, the Trump gang seems more likely to target and persecute people on even more spurious claims.
Russian propaganda and hacking have worked and continue to work for Trump’s benefit – they have common goals.
So have con-artist teenagers in Macedonia and suburbanites in Los Angeles. We already know of a similar Zionist operation, and I suspect a lower-key project run from Beijing. Other organizations, governmental and otherwise, will surely join in. Those of us who prefer to have some confidence in our knowledge will feel a lot more stress from now on.
There’s no time.
Where I live, a couple of local groups rapidly organized a protest march and a follow-up organizing meeting, both of which I attended. They did a pretty good job, working mostly through Faceborg – but their page turned into a swamp of bickering (mostly, it seemed to me, of people working out accumulated social trauma through emotional and exaggerated accusations of racism – but I lingered neither for the FB comments nor the face-to-face attempts to move on). We (yes, Honko-Americans in particular) have an awful lot of work to do to get actual unity, and I think attempts to paper over internal disagreements will not serve us well when real pressure comes down.
George Yancy, whose book Look, A White! I recommend, on his inclusion in the Professor Watchlist – “I Am a Dangerous Professor”:
I’m letting your comment stand as the last word, as promised, but I just want to be clear that we’re talking about the same thing. I’m referring to the 32-page report here. It’s not a blog post, has a structure, and certainly qualifies as a report, whatever you might think of its quality.
So this is interesting:
It’s entirely possible that that many people didn’t select a presidential candidate, but should be checked out.
SC… @ # 52: I’m referring to the 32-page report here.
I guess you mean the “updated Black Friday Report … available for downloading” here, per the linked page, or the scrolly version there (in which the “Executive Summary” only misspells one word and includes one gross syntactical wtf). Okay, that does have some structure, though it falls far short of professionalism, or persuasiveness.
And the point made? Wingnut sites echo each other a lot, and don’t fact-check. For a scoop like that, PZ Myers & Orac should have shared a Pulitzer Prize – ten years ago.
The Michigan AG’s recount-blocking request asks that if a recount does go forward it be electronic only.
So you really didn’t realize what we were referring to before now, even after I’d linked to it three separate times. Good grief.
A portrait of Steve Bannon, told through documents.
The Clintons and George Soros should get together and put in a bid.
So this happened.
Evidently Trump has avarice interests in Taiwan.
The Michigan elections board came down evenly split (2-2) in Trump’s request to stop the recount, so it will proceed starting Monday if the court doesn’t intervene in response to the AG’s suit. Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania has shrunk to below 50,000 as more ballots were counted.
With everything going on, I’m seriously starting to think they cheated with Putin’s help.
“Trump’s education pick says reform can ‘advance God’s Kingdom'”:
SC @60, yikes, and FFS. So Trump threw a wrench into 40 years of carefully-conducted diplomacy because he wants to make some big bucks in Taiwan? Sounds about right.
Rachel Maddow just excoriated Trump for his stupidity when it came to handling phone calls from Taiwan.
SC @62, Betsy DeVos is not the only christian who sees the money spent on public education as a giant slush fund that they should funnel towards god-addled education for all children.
But now, DeVos is actually in charge. She has increased her power to meet the “greater Kingdom” goals exponentially.
Spooky how she capitalizes “Kingdom.” This is unconstitutional.
Now Trump has filed suit with the Michigan Board of State Canvassers to stop the recount.
Duterte is describing his talk with the presidential runner-up:
As several people have noted, anyone he talks to can make these sorts of claims of support or encouragement even if they’re not true (so far, none of them, including this one, seem out of character for Trump).
Duterte, like Arpaio, represents the pathological extreme of the idiotic “war on drugs” which has caused so much suffering, death, and injustice. We were starting to move away from this disastrous approach, but now – in the midst of a drug epidemic here in the US – we’re set to go back to the 1980s.
“Norway urges Trump to issue predictable, clear policy on Russia”:
The article says Trump spoke with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg on Thursday and “reassured” her “about the United States’ commitment to the NATO alliance and common security.” Shockingly, that isn’t enough for some people.
“Spread of Fake News Provokes Anxiety in Italy”:
I linked to the Buzzfeed piece a few days ago. One part that stood out to me:
As far as President Duterte goes I expect him to eventually step on the wrong toes and die in an “accident” of some sort.
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/02/fake-news-facebook-us-election-around-the-world"This is a good piece in the Guardian about propaganda, disinformation, and fake news around the world. (On the negative side, it doesn’t give much historical context or focus nearly enough on the more “traditional” forms of spin some of us have been talking about for years.)
My favorite new word: fachosphère
It only briefly mentions Austria. Here’s what Breitbart, to which I won’t link, has to say about it:
So a Breitbartian populist is someone running on the “liberalization of the economy” who “held his final campaign appearance in the marble halls of the Vienna Stock Exchange.” (The BBC article, which points out that the Freedom Party “was founded in 1955 by a former general in the Nazi SS,” irresponsibly suggests that “If Mr Van der Bellen wins, there is likely to be a sigh of relief from Europe’s elites” and captions an image “Former Green politician Alexander Van der Bellen is the favoured candidate among most of Europe’s elites.” Because “Europe’s elites” are the only ones concerned about the far-Right coming to power, and “economic liberalization” is so anti-elite. Thanks for playing into the fascists’ hands, BBC.)
Gah. This is the first link in my previous post.
Now Jill Stein has filed a lawsuit calling for the Michigan recount to be started immediately.
Trumpgrets.
This is a followup to comments 60 and 63.
So, China’s foreign minister noticed that Trump bumbled into a diplomatic disaster bigly.
Talking Points Memo link
Here is a link to the Rachel Maddow segment in which Rachel excoriates Trump for his stupidity and/or irresponsibility. Senator chris Murphy is interviewed toward the end of the 21-minute presentation. This is a longer-than-usual segment on the Maddow show, but this is a fairly complicated issue, with lots of historical baggage. The diplomacy surrounding the China/Taiwan situation is in a stable, but delicate balance. Trump is upsetting that balance, most likely because his foreign policy chops range from uninformed to ill-informed.
Also, Trump likes the president of Taiwan because she called him and congratulated him. And he likes Taiwan because, as SC point out, Trump intends to build some Trumpish crap there in order to rake in some cash.
Senators Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz praised Trump’s phone conversation with the president of Taiwan. Dunderheads flocking together. Cotton put out a statement:
Dafuq?
See comments 60, 63, and 74 for previous discussions of Trump’s ignorance in relation to this issue.
“Trump’s Information Universe”:
This is a followup to comments 60, 63, 74 and 75.
Josh Marshall weighed in on the China/Taiwan muddled mess caused by Trump:
Somehow the “Santa is white” nonsense seems more ominous this holiday season.
SC @78, that black Santa looks awesome! What a truly jolly fellow.
The “Santa is white” meme stands for “everything white is better,” “we are afraid of black and brown people,” “tradition means white supremacy,” and a host of other half-hidden, fear-laced assumptions.
The holiday season is going to be seasoned with disgusting eruptions of racism this year … even more than usual.
Let’s have black and brown Jesus symbols everywhere as a show of resistance.
Here are links to three articles about the Italian referendum.
This is sickening.
Jill Stein withdrew the statewide recount request in Pennsylvania, saying they didn’t have the $1 million bond required by Monday [!], so the hearing scheduled for this week and the statewide recount have been canceled. People are saying that some local recounts (or audits or something) are continuing, but who the hell knows at this point. The media have been super helpful in diligently following this story.
Everything about this year in politics just reeks:
Wait, the Penn recount wont happen? I thought she raised a shit load of money.
“Extremists Turn to a Leader to Protect Western Values: Vladimir Putin”:
I honestly have no idea. The media is hardly covering anything about the recounts, so I’ve been trying to scrape together information from various sources, some of which might not be trustworthy or accurate. It’s possible the bond demand from PA is an intentional hurdle thrown in the path of the recount, after WI increased its filing fees. It’s also possible the precinct-by-precinct recounts could still go forward; and that since Trump’s lead has decreased to .8% (from 1.2%) as more votes have come in, they’re hoping that more votes coming in and precincts recounting could push it below .5%, which would trigger an automatic statewide recount. I really don’t know, and it’s beyond irritating.
An excellent article by Ned Resnikoff – “Trump’s lies have a purpose. They are an assault on democracy.”:
This brings to mind a book review I wrote last year.
* No, this isn’t the “natural state” of politics, and perpetuating this myth only feeds the propaganda of the Right by presenting democratic, deliberative, relatively peaceable politics as an aberration and as particularly fragile because it allegedly relies on various preconditions and props that can easily fail, whereas in authoritarian systems people merely revert to their natural tendencies.
Recount update:
I’m still not clear about the status of the different lawsuits in Michigan or the nature of the recount in Wisconsin (whether it’s of a form that would root out the sorts of problems Halderman points to as plausible).
It’s astonishing and intolerable that given this context (I think I linked to that thread before, and it has its problems, but it’s useful), in addition to Trump’s demonstrated penchant for cheating and lying and the Republican Party’s voter-suppression efforts, several of which have already been determined to be illegal, a nationwide audit isn’t being carried out before the EC votes.
Jeff Sharlet linked on Twitter to his 2014 report “Inside the Iron Closet: What It’s Like to Be Gay in Putin’s Russia,” in response to the NYT piece I quoted above @ # 85. He notes that, as described in the article, “When I intrvwd Russian fascist leader, he had flags of US confederacy on desk.”
Austria update!:
On Saturday Night Live, cast members poked fun at Trump for his incessant tweeting. Trump responded by tweeting.
More on the complex European political situation.
Well, at least Jill Stein is finally useful. I’ve always found the green party to be useless, especially since their star player left (Sanders) and it looks like he’s not coming back.
FINALLY. Time to catch up…
bassmike @1009:
Ack, sorry about that! It’s strange how the latter option feels weird to type.
SC @1014:
forehead smack. I read the second half of that sentence but somehow didn’t parse the first. They’re actually defending Manafort, not tossing him under the bus as I thought.
Re Michigan recount: I guess there’s a reason that podcast’s tagline is “Don’t take legal advice from a podcast!”.
KG @1031:
Fair enough, though I’m still a little surprised you fell into the natural assumption when you should have known better.
Yeesh, that’s embarrassing. Had I known that about the Henry Jackson Society, I would have done more vetting of the report…
… but now that I have done some vetting of the report, I think its main thesis is on solid ground: Russia has shifted its propaganda tactics to target a wider range of international allies, with the goal of extending Russian soft power and eroding the stability “Western” governments. I disagree with parts of the report (lefties have allied with Russia “in part because their admiration for Russia survived the end of the Cold War”?!), but not all of it.
Look, to support the hypothesis “Russia tampered with the US elections via fake news,” you have to establish:
1. Russia has an active propaganda system,
2. which targets places outside of Russia,
3. was active during the US elections,
4. and was talking about them.
Points 1 and 2 should be beyond question, at this point. It’s even part of the EU’s bureaucracy!
Points 3 and 4 are a bit trickier, but not by much. Remember Adrian Chen, who wrote a critical review of PropOrNot’s paper?
“Russian trolls” is more precise than it sounds.
It’s funny, I listened to the interview that SC posted in 1042 before I saw it mentioned here. What struck me most was not that Brennan would entertain the question that Russia tried to interfere in the elections, it’s that the reporter’s question was “Clearly, Russia has tried to influence the US’s elections, do you think they succeeded?” It’s telling that a BBC reporter took the idea as a given; Europe’s a bit further ahead of North America in this sort of thing.
(Also, minor tangent: it’s worth listening to the BBC interview, if only to hear the stunned silence after Brennan announces Trump hasn’t met with the CIA yet. It makes me a bit hopeful; I’m sure a lot of us are fearful about what Trump could do with the keys to the NSA and CIA, but so far he’s more interested in playing political games within Washington.)
While I was wandering about doing research, I learned that Garry Kasparov, the famous chess Grandmaster, is a bit of a political activist.
Oh yes, and if you think it’s outrageous that Russia would interfere with another country’s elections, read this…
… and this.
Statement from Philippines Vice President Leni Robredo:
So it appears she’s resigned as Housing Secretary but not as VP.
Baldwin’s response.
This is actually good advice from Evan McMullin.
A bit of good news: Austrian neo-Nazi Norbert Hofer has conceded defeat in the Austrian Presidential election. The margin is currently given as 53%-46%. That could change, but the result won’t, according to the electoral authorities. The Presidency is largely ceremonial, but does have significant political roles, and the result is of the first importance symbolically. Hofer was defeated by Alexander Van der Bellen, former head of the Austrian Greens. Van der Bellen describes himself as a “liberal”, which suggests to me he’s unlikely to give the EU establishment much cause for concern* (so, SC@70, the BBC is probably right to say the EU elites will breathe a sigh of relief, because a victory for Hofer would have strengthened the anti-EU far right in Netherlands, France and Germany, all of which have crucial elections next year – although the prominence they give to this, as opposed to the sighs of relief that could be expected from any rational anti-Nazi, is certainly questionable).
*European Green parties vary considerably in where they sit on the left/right dimension. My own party, the Scottish Greens, and its sister party in England and Wales, are among the furthest left – and even we have quite a few mushy centrists.
Gosh, really? I can’t have known this for more than 11 years or so – you know, when he retired from professional chess, formed the United Civil Front, and joined “The Other Russia” coalition to oppose Putin.
Of course. It was the prominence and the lack of interest in anyone other than “Europe’s elites” – a term and opposition which reproduces far-Right framing – that angered me.
They were slightly better in the report on the election results I linked to @ #90 – “Established parties and European Union leaders are likely to welcome the result.” (It would be difficult to list all of the people in Austria, Europe, and around the world who welcome that result.)
SC @99, I like that advice. Evan Mcmullen seems to have a brain that works fairly well.
Part of the problem is that “follow many credible sources of news” is advice my rightwing neighbors are incapable of following. They follow the news on Breitbart because, “Breitbart tells the truth.”
In other news, “DarkSyde,” writing for Daily Kos, made some good points about the changes to Medicare that Republicans keep promising to put into effect in the first “six to eight months” of the Trump administration:
A suggestion for action now that may impact the Republican narrative:
No More Mister Nice Blog link for quoted text above.
SC @102, like you, I am fed up with media outlets that put “elites” and “the establishment” on one side of an issue and the “far right” on the other side. That false dichotomy gives way too much credit to the “far right,” and it promotes the view that “elite” is a dirty word, and that “the establishment” is evil.
The far right has lost a battle in Austria, but they won’t go away. I see lots of media coverage describing the far-right doofuses in Austria as “right-wing populist” or as a “freedom” party. They are pushing “populist” as a good thing, and of course “freedom” as a good thing. These neo-nazi-types are anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-anything-but-white, anti-LGBT, etc. And they want “freedom” to be all-powerful while they strip rights and services away from others.
Scary portents:
I’m a bit surprised this hasn’t been mentioned here.
Priebus and Pence were both on TV this morning defending Trump’s patent lie about millions of illegal voters:
Priebus: “I don’t know if that’s not true.”
Pence: “Look, I don’t know that that is a false statement.”
As far as I can discover, Sanders was never a member of the Green Party. His elder brother Larry, however, is spokesperson on health for the Green Party of England and Wales.
I’d read about this earlier. They want to convince them to deadlock – which would just throw it to the House – or vote for someone like Kasich or Romney, rather than Clinton, who won by (so far) 2.6 million votes. In fact, it already looks like they have more Democrats than Republicans, which makes it even worse.
Look at the larger remarks in which Priebus‘ and Pence‘s lies in defense of lies and lying were embedded – Trump’s “expressing his opinion,” “telling you what’s on his mind,” “not taking conventional thought.”
So pathetic, so evil, so pathetically evil.
This is a followup to comments 91 and 98.
If Trump finds SNL so “unwatchable,” why is he still watching it? He watches every Saturday night. He watches because he cares that much when it comes to what people think of him. Trump’s anger stems from the fact that the SNL skits do not laud him, do not portray him a good light. He cares because he is petty and he really does have “a bad brain,” as his SNL counterpart stated.
SC @109, I don’t think Priebus and Pence have a choice. Now that they have both sold their integrity in order to ride the Trump train, they have to come up with some sort of justification, (no matter how far fetched or evil), for Trumps lies.
Speaking of lies, Lt. General Mike Flynn (Trump’s choice for national security), told his worker bees at the Defense Intelligence Agency that Iran backed the attack on Benghazi:
Just like Trump.
NY Times link
Flynn has a wild hair, a bee in his brain, whatever you want to call it, for starting a war with Iran.
And then…there was Danielle Fucking Muscato.
Holy shit – I knew that name was familiar.
My favorite telling detail from Mike Pence’s defense of Trump’s lies: “refreshing.” Yes, Pence said Trump’s lies are “refreshing.”
That’s Mike Pence, self-proclaimed “child of god,” happy to describe Trump’s disinformation as “refreshing.”
Pence is burnishing the turds of the Dear Leader.
Not a mere grandmaster: long-time world champion and (arguably) the best chess player ever. His wiki article is a pretty interesting read, even if you pass over all of the fantastic chess stuff.
Meanwhile, Magnus Carlsen is apparently some sort of Trump fan…. bleeegh.
Reports are that No vote in Italy has won and Renzi has resigned.
A man was arrested with a rifle at Comet Ping Pong, a DC pizzeria. This was the fevered rightwing conspiracy theory that likely brought him there.
They can do this?! DO THIS!
I’ve had drinks in the basement of Comet. Didn’t see any kids there.
I feel like Danielle Muscato’s righteous Twitter rant isn’t receiving sufficient attention. It’s now made the national news. She’s one of us!
Guess who promoted “pizzagate.”
It’s an entire party of sociopaths.
“Ivanka was finalizing Japanese business deal at time of Trump, Abe meeting: report”:
Our country is plunging headlong into an epistemological swamp.
Ben fucking Carson.
For HUD secretary. What.
What the fuck is this disgusting orange rapist going to do to this country.
Evan McMullin – “Trump’s Threat to the Constitution”:
A very thorough article – “Judge orders immediate start of Michigan recount”:
“The Equal Protection argument against ‘winner take all’ in the Electoral College”:
The constitutional argument made here seems to me very sound.
“GOP wagers Americans don’t care about Trump’s conflicts”:
SC:
But the math isn’t. There’s still inequality, because the electors are not distributed equally throughout the country and the states do not decide how many electors they get. Counting their internal populations and making the system (statewide) not winner-takes-all but some sort of proportional system does not do anything at all about the (nationwide) disproportionate number of electors given to various states.
Although that would help to make it somewhat more equal, there’s a simpler way to think about this. The eligible voter population of the country (as well as the total population) is not a multiple of 538. It’s changing all of the time of course, so occasionally it is for a fleeting moment, but no system like that can give you something equivalent to one-person/one-vote direct democracy.
As I’ve mentioned before, I do support the national popular vote interstate compact, which is working through the state election laws to get a better result, without touching the Constitutional aspects of the system. But that’s actually aimed at treating all voters across the country as equals, not only those within Wyoming as equals among themselves, those in Florida as equals among themselves, etc., etc. (Of course those aren’t exactly equal anyway, for the same reason as I mentioned about the national level: California’s voting population isn’t typically a multiple of 55, so dividing its electors up “proportionally” isn’t something you can literally do.) That’s just not a way to get a fair and equal democratic system.
I mean, consider that the number of votes can be a prime number. Then what? You’d have to fudge the math somehow when you’re giving a whole number electors to one candidate, another whole number to this candidate, another to this candidate, etc. However you do that calculation, since there’s certainly more than one way to resolve it (none of which is the “obviously fair” choice), then one way or another it must throw things off (potentially by a large amount, since this is done state-by-state, since they are the entities running elections) from literally counting each and every person’s vote as equal.
Here’s an interesting article on the Italian referendum. It was published before the vote, but at a time the result was already predictable. The point of the “reforms” was to increase the powers of the Prime Minister, and enable neoliberal economic measures to be pushed through – although the leading party in the government calls itself Democratic Left (PD), it is one of the many supposedly left parties in Europe that has swallowed the neoliberal kool-aid. Italy, unlike Greece, Spain and Portugal, had not until recently produced a new leftist party, but the nascent Italian Left joined the opposition to the reforms, alongside the right, and the populist “Five Star” movement (M5S), which is ideologically incoherent (and whose leader, Beppo Grillo, is suspected to be in Putin’s pocket). So, undoubtedly a defeat for the EU’s neoliberal elite (although none of the main Italian parties favours leaving the EU, both MS5 and the racist and semi-separatist Lega Nord are sceptical about the Eurozone), but one which risks strengthening the populist right. Early elections, in which MS5 would probably do well, are possible but unlikely. Probably the PD-led minority government will stagger on until elections are due in early 2018. However, Italy also faces the strong possiblity of a full-scale banking crisis well before then.
Hmm, could a sworn he (Sanders) was in the green party at some point, but I think I was mistaken.
Florida voting weirdness.
No, it doesn’t – they acknowledge this. Jerry Sims does link to a spreadsheet at the end with the total allocation of EC votes if they were allocated proportionally within states, even with the current massive unfairness, and both the rounded and unrounded (!) totals have Clinton winning, but barely. The disproportionate assignment of electors is wrong but isn’t unconstitutional, while WTA does appear to be:
I agree.
The article argues that “it is important that the argument be made that either proportional selection of Electors be allowed on the State level or winner-take-all selection of Electors be allowed based on the national vote.” I’m not sure how the latter would work.
I don’t know. This actually points to an aspect of the system (WTA) that is unconstitutional and so open to legal challenge now. One of the comments says:
It sounds very similar to the NPVIC in goals, but focuses on the unconstitutional aspects of the system that are legally open to challenge. As I said, the legal argument seems sound to my inexpert judgment. On the other hand, as you point out, it doesn’t necessarily address the undemocratic nature of the EC itself or the unfair small-state advantage that wildly distorts the results, so the practical usefulness of such a challenge is open to question.
McCrory has finally conceded the North Carolina governor race.
“Jill Stein Files Federal Lawsuit In Pennsylvania For A Statewide Recount”:
Sounds like strong language for a lawsuit.
Jake Tapper tries to talk some sense into Flynn Jr. about his promotion of the ludicrous and dangerous “pizzagate” myth.
Well, election day (for the “popular vote” and actual votes for other offices/propositions) has come and gone. I don’t know that you can change a state’s election laws retroactively, even on Constitutional grounds. So it could be worth challenging “now” I guess, but I doubt the decision would be effective until a later election.
I don’t understand…
… If people are Constitutionally granted equal protection in that regard, then the disproportionate assignment of electors is clearly violating it as well. So from that perspective, the Constitution (+Amendments) is just internally inconsistent. Anything follows from a contradiction, so you could claim one branch must be false (that the EC is constitutional for example), but you can just as easily claim the other is. I happen to like the 14th Amendment, so I know where I would stand if the choice were up to me, but it’s not clear how the Constitution by itself could offer any coherent guidance.
However, the EC does not give all citizens voting rights (neither equal or unequal rights) on the question of the POTUS/VP: it only gives those rights to electors who do the actual voting. So nobody’s rights are being violated, according to the Constitution, because only those electors should get such equal protection… which sounds absurd, of course. Because it is.
This is why over a month ago (when it was about a Democrat in WA in think), I argued it’s unconstitutional for states to penalize “faithless” electors with fines or jail time or whatever, for voting however they wanted to vote, no matter what the ordinary “voters” or their party or anybody else wants. That’s because they were given the right to vote. An elector is a natural person for a reason: they wanted an elite caste of people to have the actual power, since the rest of us are not to be trusted. But another reason is that being a person who votes (as opposed to coming up with the result through some other process, like automatic succession in hereditary monarchy) seems to legitimize the idea that they have such rights (while we do not) and the idea that this is supposed to be considered somehow democratic. So, they’re supposed to be granted rights/autonomy to vote however they wish (and for the same reason they get equal protection, whatever that would amount to if it were ever threatened). Admittedly, it’s a little weird for me to argue on their behalf like this, since I’d love the whole system to be abolished, but that’s what I understand the Constitution to be saying about the electors’ place in our current system.
I posted yesterday (@ #97) the statement from Philippines Vice President Leni Robredo about her resignation as Housing Secretary. I didn’t know this part:
SC, you missed an interesting part of your link at 1130:
And lo, did irony meters explode.
SC @130, Gingrich’s comment really raises eyebrows. It is off the mark, incendiary, and composed for repetition by fake-news-disseminating media.
Bull.
@138, that “pizzagate” myth is so over the top. Hillary Clinton and some of her aides ran a child-sex-trafficking ring? Out of a pizza place in Washington D.C.? This conspiracy theory demonstrates that right-wingers have turned Clinton into their ultimate manifestation of evil. What a crock.
Yeah, probably so.
It is internally inconsistent. The difference as I understand it is that state WTA rules aren’t in the constitution like the EC and its assignment of electors, and so have a different standing. Like the comment I quoted above says in part:
That’s not the case with the EC or its state-by-state proportions. I agree that they’re unconstitutional in the same sense, but at the same time they’re in the constitution and so have a different status.
Hm. That’s a good point. I’m not sure about the implications for the allocation question, which would seem to come prior in a sense to their voting. WTA allocation seems to cut against that totally undemocratic “principle” as well. Could the case against WTA allocation be made even within the framework of the ridiculous EC system, which infringes on people’s equal protection rights by design? I mean, it’s true that “nobody’s rights are being violated, according to the Constitution, because only those electors should get such equal protection,” but still we have (some semblance remaining of) the VRA and other legislation which applies to presidential and vice-presidential voting as well. I’m not sure that this is so different as it applies to state rules, but it comes up against the whole problem with the EC. If the case couldn’t be made without blowing up the system, what would happen?
SC @136, I noticed that MCrory is still harping on the issue of supposed voter fraud: “Despite continued questions that should be answered regarding the voting process, I personally believe that the majority of our citizens have spoken, and we now should do everything we can to support the 75 governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper.”
In other words, McCrory is not done whining. And it is likely that he will use his loss in this contest for governor to continue to push for disenfranchisement of likely Democratic Party voters in N.C.
McCrory is the only Republican governor to lose in 2016.
The threat from the pizzagate bs isn’t limited to Comet:
Those other businesses include several popular restaurants, and one of the best and (alas) few remaining independent bookstores in DC, Politics and Prose, where the Obamas and I have been known to do our Xmas shopping.
“Embassy of Azerbaijan to co-host event at Trump’s D.C. hotel”:
This is a follow up to What a Maroon @145, to comment 142, and to SC @138.
Let’s highlight Lt. General Michael Flynn’s part in spreading this ridiculous and false “news.” Flynn raised the profile of the child-trafficking-by-Hillary-Clinton conspiracy theory by posting it on his Twitter page as a “must read” from Breitbart. Flynn promoted the false claims.
Flynn is Trump’s choice for national security advisor.
See comment 111 for further proof of Flynn’s gullibility and stupidity.
Followup to comments 125 and 126.
Ben Carson running HUD is an embarrassment. Trump picked a fellow scam-artist.
Mother Jones link
LA times link to a corruption probe in 1993 of HUD.
Well, all I can say to that is that a Supreme Court (if we get could a full one) certainly could see it as having a different status for that reason, but it seems like the motivation would only be to maintain the status quo as much as possible to avoid blowing up the system.
If you were motivated to create good law that makes some kind of sense, you would see what’s actually damaged about it, whatever the source may be, and work on fixing that. If you notice a blatant contradiction like that, you don’t just rest easy with the thought that the two contradictory statements are written in the same document, as if that was supposed to make them satisfactory. (The SC’s powers are obviously limited, but it seems like they could at least write an appropriate decision which forces the issue on Congress, instead of offering a bullshit interpretation that everything is okay.)
I don’t really know. We blow it up anyway? ;)
A clear decision which makes it even more explicit that we don’t have equal protection certainly sounds like it would be bad. I’d be a little worried about poking that beast.
More on Ben Carson’s unsuitability for the office of secretary of housing and urban development (HUD):
Right Wing Watch link
Sounds to me like Carson is the one that is “downright dangerous.”
Hey, remember how it was odd that Wikileaks released a tonne of material material that was damaging to Clinton, who’s considered a strong opponent of the Kremlin, while they had nothing on the guy who sucked up to them? History may be repeating.
Wonkette covered pizzagate in their usual inimitable way, and they added coverage of this new twist:
Reminder: In September, Trump pledged to sign the “First Amendment Defense Act.” It
This was in the context of a statement on “Issues of Importance to Catholics,” which is still on the site. It also pledges:
That’s weird.
Did anyone else get a email for a “new post” from Lynna that was actually from November?
Here’s a little nightmare fuel for ya.
Shoot, I should have carried on that quote for another two paragraphs.
In Electoral College news,
Also, Lawrence Lessig has weighed in.
micro raptor @155, I didn’t receive the notification.
In other news, (and a followup of sort to comment 158), Hillary Clinton’s popular lead vote is up to 2.65 million. Google spreadsheet link
I think Trump wants to continue to use his private plane throughout his presidency. He wants to fly the giant, TRUMP-emblazoned cigar around the world for photo-op purposes. Another marketing ploy?
Here’s what makes me thing that: he gave a short speech to reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower, and he followed that up with an anti-Boeing tweet.
Boeing’s stock dropped. Some reports show that Trump exaggerated the costs.
Trump has more than one plane, but his favorite is a 1991 Boeing 757. That plane features brushed 24-karat gold fixtures and leather toilet seats.
So much for Trump’s claim that 3 million people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton:
Washington Post link
That was written by Trump’s lawyers. Somebody needs to inform Trump.
Kurt Eichenwald is all over the Boeing story. First off, he links to this story…
Then followed up with a bit of a tweet storm.
And in case you missed that, Trump owns or owned Boeing stock.
Two people from Five Thirty Eight attended that Harvard forum on the election, and shared their impressions in podcast form. I recommend giving it a listen, but here’s my quick summary:
1. The Trump and Clinton campaigns really, really, really hate one another. Silver and Enten complained about all the heckling both camps were doing, but singled out Kellyanne Conway and Corey Lewandowski as the worst assholes in the room.
2. The Clinton campaign didn’t seem to have much of a plan for the last month or so, and campaigned as if they had a solid lead which could be expanded into a blowout. Their bitterness over the Comey letters was palpable, and probably worse than they publicly let on.
3. If we ignore Kellyanne Conway’s claim that Trump had the election locked a week before Comey’s first pre-election letter dropped (despite having no evidence, and being in contradiction with the rest of Trump’s polling team), the Trump campaign were pretty sure they’d lose. Their comparative lack of resources led them to be very careful about when and where they ran ads, though, and the few options they had for the electoral college focused their campaigning. They made good strategic calls, in short, and were rewarded for it.
4. Jill Stein didn’t cost Clinton the election. Stein’s voters at the end were pretty hardcore, and most would have refused to vote for anyone rather than vote for Clinton.
5. But at the same time, Stein’s way off-base on the recount issue. There’s just no evidence of fraud, which means she’s doing it to score political points, earn more name recognition, or line the Green Party’s coffers.
Surprise, surprise.
Now, while I’ve been pretty dismissive of Stein and her attempts at a recount, I have to grudgingly admit she was on to something.
This doesn’t seem like a systematic “let’s screw over Democrats” thing, it’s more of a systematic “let’s not fund the voting system in Democratic counties and hope that depresses the vote” thing. Either way, we wouldn’t have learned of it without Stein’s activism.
More on the threats that businesses are receiving as a result of the pizza bullshit (any suggestions for a shorthand that doesn’t include “-gate”?):
I fear things are going to get a lot worse.
Hornbeck @162, yeah, that all makes sense to me. We already know not to trust Trump or his advisors when they say that Trump sold all his stock in such-and-such company on such-and-such date. He has lied before.
It makes total sense, and is consistent with Trump’s vindictive nature, that he would conduct a half-assed tweet storm to punish Boeing for evincing concern over Trump’s anti-China stance/policies.
We don’t know when Trump sold his Boeing stock, but it is likely that he sold his stock before he made pronouncements that caused Boeing stock to drop.
President Obama gave a great speech today, a speech that focused on the proper and effective use of U.S. military forces, and that made sense of policies currently in place to reduce the strength of terrorist organizations. Obama was so clear, so reasonable, so willing to provide both details and a broader picture that the contrast with Trump could not have been more striking. I don’t see any links up to this speech yet. I’ll find one soon.
Awww, it seems Trump is perpetually destined to play second-fiddle to Clinton, even on his home turf.
Apparently General Flynn’s son promoted one too many conspiracy theories (including pizzagate) … one too many even for the conspiracy-prone Trump team.
Talking Points Memo link
I’m betting Drumph sold all his Boeing stock before saying the Boeing federal contract should be cancelled, causing the stock to plummet so he could snatch up all the stock at very low price, to become majority stockholder and rule the board of Boeing, in order to price gouge the Air Force One upgrades. (thinking it “quite presidential, by definition”)
he is all machinations, that brainfarter of a Drumph.
Oh, FFS. Trump’s marketing of the Carrier deal worked. People are loving Trump more.
Think Progress link
Yeah, and that excerpt does not mention that Governor Mike Pence offered Carrier $7 million to save fewer jobs than Trump claimed. Nor does it mention that Trump offered to lower corporate taxes once he is president, and to reduce regulations on the industry.
The Think Progress article does address all of the issues if you read it in its entirety.
Journalists writing for Media Matters put together a detailed report on the fake news that has been propagated by the Trump team.
Here is a short excerpt from a much longer article:
Excerpts from the speech President Obama delivered today at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/12/06/watch-live-president-obama-reviews-his-approach-counterterrorism
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/06/last-foreign-policy-speech-obama-argues-sustainable-strategy-terror/95012796/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/06/remarks-president-thank-service-members This link provides a transcript.
Oh, FFS. Mike Pence confirmed that a security clearance was requested for Michael Flynn Jr., the general’s son who propagated 19 conspiracy theories online, including pizzagate.
Link
Earlier discussion of this issue: comments 169 and 172.
New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie has an approval rating of 19%. He is the most unpopular governor in the U.S., so you might expect him to think twice before making any more dumb moves. If so, you would be wrong.
Christie just vetoed a bill that would have banned solitary confinement for children, pregnant women and mentally ill persons.
Slate link
Having shepherded Donald Trump to a victory in the presidential race, ethically-challenged motor mouth Kellyanne Conway is planning her next career move. Apparently, she is going to become some kind of Super Internet Troll.
She will do this, in part, by supervising a bunch of other trollish people to take down Democrats. (One presumes by using fake news, innuendo, other forms of lying, etc.)
Online bullying. Add in some meat-space bullying. Are these the lessons Kellyanne learned from Trump?
Kellyanne Conway will fund this endeavor using the same tactics that have worked for her previously: she will hit up the Mercer family and other wealthy dunderheads for more funds.
Kellyanne is putting together a lynch mob.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/12/05/new-pro-trump-group-takes-form-with-kellyanne-conway-possibly-at-the-helm/
This is a followup to comments 164 and 171.
Chuck Jones, the president of United Steelworkers 1999, had something to say about Trump’s machinations with Carrier.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/06/he-got-up-there-and-lied-his-a-off-carrier-union-leader-on-trumps-big-deal/
And this one! :)
Of course, Trump’s neo-fascism will never genuinely be a pro-worker movement, and unions should disabuse themselves of this notion immediately. It’s fundamentally reactionary. These gestures represent different inflections of the state-capital alliance.
Is there anyone who’s a regular viewer of “All In” who wants to see 14 minutes of a Trump rally during Hayes’ show? I’m guessing almost no one. We don’t want to watch this, MSNBC.
And how was a union president optimistic about a deal in which his union played no part? How does that make any sense at all?
Ohio passes “heartbeat” abortion bill
Time magazine just named Trump “Person of the Year.” I understand that the selection is not supposed to indicate approval or disapproval, but it still rankles.
We don’t need any more magazine covers featuring Trump. And you know damn well that Trump and his followers will claim it is an honor.
In the Time article, Trump repeats something he said before and Putin and Putin’s minions. Trump says he still does not believe that Russian agents/agencies hacked/stole Democratic National Committee emails and Clinton campaign emails. “I don’t believe they interfered,” Trump said.
Trump indicated that he still thinks investigative efforts of the Russian hacking on the part of U.S. agencies was politically driven.
As Steve Benen noted:
This is a followup to comments 167 and 173.
More excerpts from President Obama’s speech:
A followup to Saad’s comment 181.
Writing for Right Wing Watch, Miranda Blue took a closer look at Janet Porter, the anti-abortion activist who pushed hard for Ohio’s “heartbeat bill.”
The Weather Channel created a video in response to Breitbart articles and videos that mislead viewers about climate change. The Weather Channel video is only 1:57 minutes long, but a lot is packed into that short time. The link is to the YouTube video.
Excerpt from transcript:
“Pizzagate” seems to be spreading.
Now we are seeing pizzerias in Austin, Brooklyn and Amherst involved.
The conspiracy theory claims that Hillary Clinton runs a Satanic pedophilia (child sex trafficking) ring out of various pizzerias. The conspiracy theorists say that restaurants’ logos look like a symbol of the “illuminati” (and various other things, most of them evil and child-threatening).
East side Pies in Austin (a small chain of stores) is now under internet attack, an attack that includes claims that co-owner Michael Freid has “connections to the CIA.” Fried is an alumnus of the Culinary Institute of America.
As we all know, Hillary Clinton secretly runs the CIA and the other CIA. /sarcasm
In Brooklyn, the target is Roberta’s pizza restaurant, where death threats have been received. A video claiming Satanic activity takes place at Roberta’s has been uploaded to YouTube.
Pretty much the same claims are being made about a pizza restaurant in Amherst, New York.
This will be interesting.
Does Trump side with his party, and throw the people who helped elect him under the bus? Or does he push for those provisions, and risk division and weakness within the party? It’s a classic lose-lose situation.
There’s so much wrong here.
Why, pray tell, does Pence think Trump has a mandate?
Or a sign that maybe, just maybe, some counties have more people in them than others, so comparing numbers of counties won is meaningless?
Predictably, Trump has required transition staff to sign NDAs. The transition is publicly funded, so this can’t be enforceable, and the very idea is an assault on democracy and transparency.
Trump’s blocking his critics on Twitter seems increasingly menacing. He’s not psychologically or emotionally equipped to face criticism, protest, or mockery – he lacks the inner strength that comes from real self-love, self-belief, self-confidence. He can’t take it. And his authoritarianism deems it an offense and a threat. Blocking people could be a temporary measure to avoid seeing the criticism, but it’s not going away. And he’s not going to become better able to deal with it. It’s easy to imagine the next steps.
I thought Trump was supposed to be supporting steelworkers, not picking fights with them.
I look forward to the day Trump nukes Pakistan because Mamnoon Hussain called him a liar.
Hj Hornbeck @191: With Trump’s knowledge of international politics, he might just nuke Pakistan because King Abdullah called him a liar.
!!! Trump is hostile to workers’ rights and always has been – there can be no doubt about this. He’s going to put down this country’s unions? His thugs are going to threaten union leaders? Oh, no. There will be solidarity like the US hasn’t seen in decades. No fucking way, you pampered thin-skinned schmuck.
@Lynna, 186
This entire situation is utterly unamusing in the extreme, but I laughed like a drain at this.
Another day, another whitewash of the Kremlin.
Strange. What are her qualifications?
Money and a lack of ethics, apparently. She’ll fit in well.
Hornbeck @191, Trump is bullying a private citizen … again. Chuck Jones is not a senator or governor or state representative. He’s a union guy.
Also, Trump’s claim that jobs were shipped out of Indiana because the union did a bad job is just stupid. I doubt that Chuck Jones can control global markets.
The judge has now halted the Michigan recount after hearing arguments. I stand by what I said @ #7 above; the problem is that you’d need to do the audit to determine whether there’s evidence of hacking or systematic corruption of the process. The recount is continuing in WI, but as I said above I don’t know whether it’s being done in a manner that would get at the questions Stein is raising. A hearing is upcoming in PA.
I’m seething over how the media are covering (or not covering) this, and how little attention there’s been to Trump’s and other Republicans’ fight against it. That seems very suspicious to me, and I don’t know how people could really have confidence in the voting system in some states going forward. The Republicans have shown themselves willing to cheat through voter suppression and disenfranchisement based on vicious lies about voter fraud, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find other forms of cheating. If there was hacking by the Kremlin, it was to their benefit, so they’re not going to do anything about it and don’t want it to be investigated.
It’s looking at this point like maybe the only recount that will go forward in full is in…Nevada. Because injustice is the theme of this election.
Trump is expected to pick Andrew Puzder as Secretary of Labor. Who is Andrew Puzder, you ask?
So obviously he’s a highly qualified champion of the working person, right?
The Trump administration’s assault on humanity marches on.
Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey had a few things to say about Trump’s choice for head of the Environmental Protection Agency:
http://www.markey.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/markey-statement-on-nomination-of-scott-pruitt-as-epa-administrator
More details at the link.
One general throws serious shade at another general.
Daily Kos link
Rachel Maddow last night on Trump’s raising the prospect of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
SC @202, Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson, Russian oil company, Putin … and Donald Trump soon-to-be-president: this is a recipe for disaster.
In other news, with the choice of McMahon, Trump has now named three billionaires to his cabinet. (See Hornbeck’s comment 196 for info on McMahon). For a comparison of the wealth of Trump’s cabinet picks so far to the cabinets of past administrations, see Rebecca Balhaus’ post. Or, see the Wall Street Journal article.
Jennifer Rubin on Tillerson:
Even Trump’s repeatedly raising the possibility is a signal to the world that he intends to be Putin’s and the corporations’ stooge.
This is a followup to What a Maroon’s comment 199.
Think Progress link
Trump seems to have a knack for choosing people as Secretary-of-this-and-that who have personal or business goals that are in direct conflict with the mission(s) of the agency they have been chosen to head.
David Frum: “Basically the Trump administration is a giant prank on Trump voters.”
Just think, white male Trump voters – while the minority and women workers you didn’t care about are victimized even further, many of you could soon join them. Well done voting for the “populist” candidate.
A followup to comments 199 and 205.
Both Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. are known for their sexist and hyper-sexualized advertising campaigns. Many of these ads feature super models wearing very little clothing while eating burgers. One of the ads shows Charlotte McKinney walking through a marketplace while apparently naked. A poll taken by a market research firm found 51 percent of viewers found the ads offensive.
Puzder does not find them offensive:
Yeah. Looks like Puzder is a sexist of the same type as Trump.
This article answers my questions about the WI recount:
“Obama under mounting pressure to disclose Russia’s role in US election”:
“Germany sees increase in Russian propaganda, cyber attacks”:
“Lindsey Graham, Democrats plan probes of Russia hacking”:
United Steelworkers to Trump: “Chuck is a hero not a scapegoat: you, others know about Carrier because of his, members’ tireless work since day 1 to save ALL jobs there.”
On the same day Trump was targeting a steelworkers’ union leader with his vitriol, the Republicans did this.
“L.A.-based Holocaust claims lawyer sues FBI over Clinton warrant”:
At this point Drumpf has to be simply trolling us with his cabinet picks.
Trump being Trump. He’s sort of going back on his promises about undocumented aliens in regard to Dreamers, but doesn’t really offer anything concrete.
I expect him to change his mind again.
Of course, Obama could make this moot by issuing a blanket pardon of all Dreamers.
The guy who hosted [the white nationalist] at Texas A&M the other night also hosted a talk there by Alexander Dugin last year:
Regarding Andrew Puzder you’d think he’d be another person for right wing Christians to be upset about, due to his fondness for T&A. But I doubt we’ll hear any complaints from them.
CKE, the company that owns Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., only operates in Canada under the latter brand due to the long existing Canadian burger franchise Harvey’s. They’ve been having problems this year, with all the Toronto Carl’s Jr. restaurants closing because of franchisee problems, and 4 of their British Columbia restaurants closing in November. This includes the Kelowna store, which was their first outlet in Canada.
“Trump’s Presidency Is Shaping Up to Be an American Tragedy”:
This is political farce rather than madness, perhaps. Boris Johnson, appointed the UK’s Foreign Secretary by Theresa May, has been slapped down by her – for (for once) telling the unvarnished truth: that Saudi Arabia is engaging in proxy wars in the Middle East. This simple truth is “not the government’s position” – because of UK arms sales to the Saudi theocratic tyranny. Can Johnson’s departure be long delayed? Is he even, perhaps, seeking an “issue of principle” on which to resign, and return to his long-running role as political maverick/buffoon?
“‘Trump TV’ Will Be In The White House Press Briefings”:
SC @211, it sounds like the successes the Russians experienced during the U.S. presidential election have emboldened them to use the same tactics elsewhere. Merkel will suffer in Germany as a result.
It drives me bonkers to think that the Republicans will not approve an investigation of Russian interference in U.S. elections. That should be a bipartisan issue. I think they are afraid that the findings would cast a shadow (more shadows) on Trump’s win. But that is not a good reason to fail to investigate. Cowards. Hypocrites.
A-Ray #216
I’m not so sure he isn’t trying to destroy government in order to make it as small and ineffective the Liberturds and conservatives like Ryan want. It would be Yuge change, after all. But not change for the better for most Americans.
As opposed to Johnson, who’s a unifying voice.
A little more on Puzder’s overall Trumpiness: Trump’s Pick For Labor Was Accused Of Domestic Abuse In The ’80s:
Democracy Now!: “Constitutional Lawyer: It’s an ‘Outrage’ That Judge Halted Michigan Presidential Election Recount”
Rebecca Solnit: “Jill Stein: US election recount is vital to reform our broken voting system”
The Post-General Election Report – the last FEC filing from the presidential candidates – was due today.
“NYC will cease retaining data that Trump could use for mass deportations”
Detestable person.
Back in January, Republicans in Washington State introduced one of those “bathroom panic” bills. It didn’t pass.
A number of Religious Right organizations then tried to get enough signatures for a ballot initiative that would accomplish the same. That too failed.
At the same time, North Carolina’s HB2 caused a mass exodus of businesses and ultimately defeated the Republican governor. It should be pretty obvious that there’s little acceptance for these discriminatory measures among the voting the public.
Alas, the Religious Right has a poor grasp on the obvious.
More on right-wingers having a poor grasp of the obvious, and it is not just the religious right.
Wow, the mother of all great segments from Rachel Maddow:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/poll-shows-trump-voter-gap-with-facts-rest-of-americans-s-views-828697155531
Yeah, it’s a poll, and we’re damned sick of polls, but this time Maddow has exclusive coverage of new PPP poll results that are … hair-raisingly shocking. The video is 13:45 minutes long.
Uh, this might be a bit of a problem…
I guess being a president is a part-time gig? Whatever the case, it broke Kurt Eichenwald.
But only for a short while.
Also, interesting observation from Eichenwald:
As a bit of background,
“Women’s March on Washington Barred From Lincoln Memorial”
BFFs (bicontinental fascist friends) Steve King and Norbert Hofer.
“Former Clinton staffer launches new anti-Trump site: corrupt.af”:
“Notes from the Resistance: A Column on Language and Power “:
re 236:
shikes, I would really like to be there, to force the guards to get a little more “physical” (violent) to maintain the exclusion barrier, with full media coverage to still get the message across.
Yet, foke, that just me daydreaming, inconsequential and whole lot of useless fantasizing. never mind my phantasming. I just stay home and watch tv to monitor peaceful guardianship of the “safe space” Trump is demanding (after denigrating safe spaces for anyone else, gee who da thunk).
Sheesh, who else demands no one ever visibly protest? Kim Jong Un. etc. comes to mind first, with a long list of similar authoritarians included.
The Guardian wrote:
*twiddling thumbs* I really want to disrupt that inauguration… sheeeeet
“White House orders intelligence report of election cyberattacks”:
This is a followup to comment 233.
A summary of results from a survey conducted by PPP (Public Policy Polling):
Link
This is so frustrating.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/9/1609053/-Being-president-is-a-part-time-job-Trump-to-remain-as-executive-producer-on-The-Apprentice
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/business/the-apprentice-donald-trump-executive-producer.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/conway-trump-apprentice-obama-golf
Yeah, that’s right, Trump and his surrogates (Kellyanne Conway for sure) are using the argument that if President Obama played golf, it is okay for Trump to play reality TV Executive Producer. However, Obama was never paid to play golf. He was not paid a five-figure salary per golf episode.
Trump must need the money.
Also, Conway’s take on this aligns with fake or hyperbolic news sources that are livid about Obama playing golf.
Conway and other right-wingers object vociferously to Obama playing golf, and they do it all the time.
As Steve Benen put it:
Not to mention that Trump also plays golf.
Director of the National Economic Council: Goldman Sachs president and COO Gary Cohn.
Ah, but rich white guys playing golf is normal. For a black man, even a wealthy black man like Barrack Obama, to play golf, well, there’s something wrong. Obviously Something Wrong! with that.
♫ He’s making a list
(and checking it twice!)
Gonna find out
who’s naughty or nice… ♫
Calvin Peete and Tiger Woods, for example.
The reactionaries never got out of the 1950’s.
SC @241, well that’s one way to get around Jason Chaffetz’s refusal to investigate anything remotely related to Trump.
In other news, General Michael Flynn said that “radical Islamist countries” have made deals with drug cartels that operate near the U.S.-Mexican border for access to “lanes of entry” to avoid border security.
The ISIS connection with drug cartels in Mexico is a conspiracy theory. Flynn even reported the bogus details touted by conspiracy theorists:
The claims were investigated. No evidence was found to back up Flynn’s lies. The rightwing doofuses at Judicial Watch cited “anonymous sources” when they posted lies about a terrorist training camp eight miles from the border. None of that bullshit is true.
Talking Points Memo link
Flynn should not be an advisor in any capacity to Trump.
I guess the meme comparing Obama golf time vs Bush (W) golf time has been completely dismissed by the right wing. That meme being the one showing W playing golf many times (the factor, that is) than Obama. Then again, facts are liberal talking points, of no relevance to anything meaningful. I imagine them saying,
Nerd of Redhead @247:
Sorry. Trying for sarcasm. Failed.
My writing seems to be off today, so I’ll off.
Don’t go. My failure to understand your sarcasm.
Let me coin a new moniker for our POS-elect:
Kim Jong Trump.
(due to his request to preemptively shut down any and protest directed at his policies, appointments, appearance, et al.
To make it clear who he is appearing to model his behavior after.)
apologies to King Jong ~~~, sorry to violate your anti-sarcasm decree by comparing you to our pile of dung of an Elect.
*looking over shoulder*
This does actually seem a little self-incriminating. (And “report into” doesn’t really make sense.)
None of it is funny, but I did laugh out loud when Maddow showed that some significant percentage of Trump voters thought California’s votes shouldn’t count. (California, by the way, has the sixth biggest economy in the world. In the world.)
Trump is giving a speech right now in Louisiana. He told the audience that his policy will be to buy American and to hire Americans.
Meanwhile, he is hiring immigrants in Florida — actually requesting waivers to bring in immigrants to work at his property instead of hiring Floridians.
And his fellow Republicans in Congress stripped “buy American, hire American” language out of a funding bill. Trump said nothing, nada.
He continues to tell his followers one thing while he is simultaneously doing the opposite.
We have noted this before. Just thought I’d let you know that today, this hour, Trump is no different.
Let’s take a closer look at Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Trump’s likely pick to lead the Department of the Interior. That department administers all public land in the U.S, including national forests, National Parks Service, Bureau of Land Management areas and fossil fuel extraction on all public lands.
McMorris Rodgers is another leader who is directly opposed to all of the goals of the Department of the Interior.
Think Progress link
During his speech in Louisiana today, Trump questioned the merits of early voting. Early voting benefits people who are likely Democratic Party voters more than likely Republican voters, so my guess is that that is why Trump wants to get rid of early voting. Single parents, people who work two jobs, the elderly, college students, disabled people, people for whom transportation to the polls is difficult, and communities of color make more use of early voting opportunities.
Dunderhead extraordinaire, Alex Jones, has his own list of purveyors of fake news, which would be funny if it were not so horrifying:
The New York Times
The Washington Post
CNN
NBC News
MSNBC
CBS News
ABC News
BBC News
Financial Times
L.A. Times
USA Today
NPR
PBS
The New Yorker
The Economist
Wonkette
Not going to link to that black hole of conspiracy-theory sludge.
Colbert addressed the issue of fake news, and he focused on Alex Jones. Pizzagate was shredded. Wonkette link. Scroll down for the Colbert video.
This is a followup to comment 258.
Lots of rightwing media outlets are following Alex Jone’s example. They are all jumping on the InfoWars bandwagon and they are calling The New York Times, etc. “fake news.”
Media Matters link
Salty Current @254:
I’ve run into such people. Apparently there’s something circulating about how the governor of California illegally made it legal (wrap your head around that) for Mexicans to vote in the election so tons of them voted and swung the state for Hillary because, you know, it’s totally out of character for California to go blue on a national election otherwise.
So, we suspected, but now we know. The CIA says that Russian interfered in the U.S. election in order to increase the chances that Trump would win. The Russian backed Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html
Furthermore, the CIA told top Senate and House Intelligence honchos that was the case in September! The Republicans in the room rejected the idea of a bipartisan announcement so that the public would know. Mitch McConnell was against letting the public know.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/12/09/cia-russia-tried-to-help-trump-win.html
This new WaPo reporting is something else.
Now it’s being reported that Tillerson is top choice for SoS.
Michael Cohen: “Considering Russia’s direct involvement on behalf of Trump & his encouragement of them, its hard to view this election result as legitimate.”
It’s impossible.
It’s nice to have an official report, but the fact that multiple white men in multiple countries ganged up to gaslight HRC isn’t news. When is someone finally going to acknowledge that conspiring with foreign powers to influence the process qualifies as treason and declare this election null and void? Stop the madness!
Transition statement on the CIA report. Nuts.
Hillary Clinton’s national popular vote lead is now 2.8 million.
Maybe this report from the CIA will sway the Electoral College.
Probably not, but we can always hope, right?
Lynna
That’s a lot of Mexicans who voted illegally.
Whenever I see an Infowars bumper sticker on a car, I give it a wide berth.
Aleppo is about to fall to Assad; the US government is sending 200 more troops to Syria to assist in the liberation of Raqqa from ISIS.
This rather annoying article in the NYT says administration officials are reporting that the Kremlin also hacked the RNC but didn’t release the documents:
This is maybe the most bizarre moment in the country’s history.
SC @268: Part of the transition team statement reads: “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”
And, as for saying, “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” I would like to point out that the report of the Russian hacks related to the U.S. presidential election is not the same as the weapons of mass destruction report. Address the issue at hand, Trump transition team! The issues are your connections to Russia, and the fact that Russia hacked the DNC and other Democratic Party personnel to tip the scales in Trump’s favor!
Hillary Clinton appeared in Washington, D.C. to give a speech that was part of the Senate’s celebration for outgoing Senator, Harry Reid. Here’s an excerpt:
President Obama used his weekly address to make a case for Obamacare. Excerpts:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/weekly-address
Tillerson for SoS. (Here’s a thread summarizing the Putin-Trump history.)
I agree with Judd Legum. This has all gone way too far, and has to be the urgent focus of attention.
If that leads to a constitutional crisis and instability, it’s infinitely better than allowing an unstable treasonous kleptocratic clown and his corrupt party to conspire with an authoritarian adversary to destroy our sovereignty and democracy and ruin any chance of planetary survival.
Keith Boykin: “This is a national emergency. This is not a test. We have to use every lawful means to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.”
Federalist No. 68.
It appears the health care industry is waking up to the fact that a straight repeal of the ACA could be disastrous to their bottom lines.
I think the loss of corporate profits will get the attention of less ideologically driven republican lawmakers.
“What It Really Means to Be a ‘Friend of Putin’: Reported Secretary of State frontrunner Rex Tillerson is close to Vladimir Putin. Here’s what that costs these days.”:
This has to be grounds for being evicted from FB.
The latest news from the CIA might have you scratching your head a bit. This article claimed the Kremlin just wanted to disrupt the election, yet the CIA is saying the Kremlin’s goal was to get Trump elected. Why the difference? Kurt Eichenwald, the author of the first article, clarified this:
This also means that European spy agencies are quietly trying to dig up ties between Putin and Trump, and “Europe intel already leaking like sieve.”
Kurt Eichenwald’s is on a Twitter tear, FYI.
And while it isn’t part of that thread, this is worth noting:
While I’m mining that source, a rift may be forming between the GOP and Trump.
This could erode Trump’s support within the GOP, resulting in impeachment and President Pence.
OK, this is from Harry Reid, but still:
I recommend you read the original, it provides plenty of context and a few more tidbits:
Speaking of “not doing anything to reassure people that you’re not a Russian puppet:”
By the way, remember Paul Manafort? The guy with close ties to the Kremlin, who was booted from the Trump campaign after those ties became public?
If I may repeat from the story, for emphasis:
Looks like he never left Trump’s sphere of influence.
The Dinesh D’Souzas aren’t even trying to keep up the facade anymore. It’s helpful – people can see exactly what they’re dealing with.
Eichenwald:
Where does the Republican Party say that? Or even a significant portion of Republicans in leadership positions? As far as I can tell, so far it’s Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and possibly a few others, in addition to Joe Walsh and Glenn Beck.
Outrageous.
I PREDICT!
I predict that, no matter how much more comes to light regarding Russia’s involvement in the last election, regarding Russia’s attempts to subvert American (almost-)democracy, that the response by Congress, by the courts, by the news media (centre and right (there is no left anymore)), will be to declare, “Well, yes, Putin basically helped to decide who would be President, but to actually do anything about it would put democracy at risk and create a Constitutional Crisis!” so lets just live with a Russian puppet as President.
And (this is from a conversation with a co-worker) does anyone else feel like we are living in a Robert Ludlum spy thriller? Or that Umberto Eco has come up with the ultimate in conspiracy theories that, oops, turned out to be true?
I was just reading this – “Russia’s Interference in This Election Should Not Be a Surprise”:
Where does the Republican Party say that?
Priebus isn’t saying it.
As far as I can tell, so far it’s Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and possibly a few others, in addition to Joe Walsh and Glenn Beck.
Add James Lankford and Rand Paul. Marco Rubio seems to be objecting to Tillerson.
The proof will be in the actions taken. Certainly, no one can count on Republicans to be a driving force.
I still can’t adjust to this brave new world in which Glenn Beck is a voice of reason.
“World War III: Democrats and America vs. Trump and Russia: The CIA believes Moscow tried to destroy Hillary Clinton and tilt the election. Republicans stayed quiet. This is a fight for who controls America: you or Putin?”:
I didn’t mean to forget Evan McMullin:
“Republican leaders knew Russia was undermining our democracy during the election and they chose to ignore it.”
“Their willingness to put party before country & power before principle has resulted in one of the worst compromises of US security ever.”
“It must be clear that Donald Trump is not a loyal American and we should prepare for the next four years accordingly. ”
“Trump encouraged Russian subversion of our democracy then denied its occurrence despite CIA evidence, while preparing to align with Russia.”
“If collaborating with our main foreign adversary, while attacking our first rights & system of government isn’t disloyalty, then what is it?”
SC @1290:
My only source on that is Eichenwald. I’ll also add Sean Spicer to your Reince Priebus:
I noticed something interesting, though. Here’s Reince Priebus, with my emphasis:
Ah yes, the FBI.
That would also be this FBI.
So this should come as no surprise:
The more I read, the more legit this seems:
Oh wait, AHA! The picture clears a bit more. Emphasis mine:
It’s also important to look at the recent past, such as August:
And September:
And October:
Crooks & Liars runs down their 182 stories on Trump-Russia-hacking since June.
Meanwhile, Nate Silver is sounding more certain:
Naturally, he backs that up with charts and data.
Silver also puts words to something I’ve been thinking about.
I’ve suspected this was a test by Trump to see how much influence he has. Could he get away with proposing someone like Tillerson, or would other politicians force him to pick someone less controversial in response to the current uproar over Russian hacking?
Trump claims, again, to be “a smart person.” Then he proves, again, that he is not.
Trump continues to say that he doesn’t believe the Russians interfered with U.S. elections, and he claims that the CIA does not know who hacked the DNC and RNC. He also continues to say or to hint that the CIA is making claims of Russian hacking for political purposes.
I think he needs a more thorough, and repetitive briefing on this issue.
I think Eichenwald might be overly optimistic in anticipating this divide. We’ll probably know by tomorrow. Paul Ryan sure isn’t saying “Russian hacking issue serious & needs investigation.”
I don’t think there’s anything left of the Republican Party. They’ve sold out their party, the people, democracy, law, decency, and the country. That’s their legacy and their profound shame.
He’s nothing like a smart person.
He knows the truth. He’s in on it.
More Trumpishness regarding the Russian hacks:
Wait. What? How would a “landslide victory” prove that there were no Russian hacks? Also, Trump did not win a “massive landslide victory.”
The Democrats did not create this news about Russian hacks. Trump is projecting. He makes up “news” so he thinks everyone else operates the same way.
That’s not what he was saying in July.
“Intelligence figures fear Trump reprisals over assessment of Russia election role”:
Signaling an intelligence purge (in more senses than one).
SC @312, so the CIA (rightly) does not trust Trump, and Trump does not trust the CIA. One of Trump’s favorite Generals, Flynn, also does not trust the CIA. Flynn thought that Iran was responsible for the Benghazi attack, and he refused to believe CIA reports to the contrary. This situation does not bode well for governing.
Regarding Trump’s repeated claims to “one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history”: Obama’s victories were more decisive (365-173 and 332-206). Trump’s was 306-232. Bill Clinton’s wins were also more decisive (370-168 and 379-159). In most of the seventeen elections in recent history (since the end of WWII), the winners received more electoral college votes than Trump.
It’s also worth bringing this back up, if only to push back on the impression that this is merely a CIA/FBI spat.
This was the source of Clinton’s claim that “17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election.” While the FBI is technically one of those agencies, it’s important to note they didn’t sign on to that October 7th statement.
Lynna @1315:
Obligatory Five Thirty Eight link:
Wonkette debunked the Trump Transition Team statement regarding Russian hacks:
Incidentally, if you have a moment do a Google search for “17 agencies confirm russia hack“. Here’s what I get:
Hooray for fake news! Some of it is a bit comical, like that first link:
Weird, no-one linked to Joe Walsh’s tweet storm on Russian hacking? Allow me.
Kurt Eichenwald again:
Zero Hedge was the case study in the PropOrNot report.
Ooo, a joint statement:
Nothing surprising, but it’s nice to see.
SC @1321:
I’d forgotten about that, but they do indeed devote pages 10 to 16-sh to Zero Hedge.
Thanks for bringing them up, in fact, because I see PropOrNot is still chugging away.
Good news, everyone, Glenn Greenwald has weighed in!
Ah, good ol’ Glenn Greenwald, always measured, thoughtful, and even-tempered.
Truthdig sent a letter to WaPo demanding a retraction of the article that refers to PropOrNot, and didn’t get it.
I read the Greenwald article yesterday. The combination of ignoring the non-CIA evidence, the lack of perspective, and the use of “hysterical,” “drooling,” and “lost” have led me to tune it out (which was no great loss in terms of that piece, since the useful parts I knew already). I’m angered that Greenwald and TI have gone down this particular path, since their voices are needed now, including by the Left in Russia.
Good advice:
Yes. I was pleased in August when it seemed the media might at last be starting to focus on the pattern of credulity and mendacity ranging from the pointless to the extreme and dangerous, but they regressed.
(I haven’t listened to the interview with Masha Gessen they refer to there, but I did read her book – The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin – and recommend it.)
On AM Joy, Joy Reid covered the news of Russian influence and/or interference in the U.S. election, and in other issues that shape policy in the U.S.
That AM Joy segment (link in comment 327) also covered Rex Tillerson (Exxon Mobile head honcho) as the choice for Secretary of State.
Marco Rubio seems to be objecting to Tillerson.
However, there’s disagreement:
“Selecting Tillerson – sensation. This businessman, by definition, a pragmatist, but still with a lot of experience with Russia. Trump continues to amaze.” – Alexey Pushkov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Duma
In Soviet Russia, irrationality spins you.
Eric Garland went on a super-long Twitter rant, basically outlining how the Kremlin could take advantage of American Left- and Right-wing politics to weaken the USA and Europe. I don’t agree with all of it (much as I dislike Greenwald, I think Garland’s portrayal of him is off the mark, and don’t get me started on his Chelsea Manning), but it’s worth reading in full. Here’s a small teaser:
So Clinton or Obama carried out a false flag operation to… self-sabotage their plans for reform?
Life is now parodying art.
Remember Trump’s decision to play hardball with China? That’s working out well.
This should come as no surprise, by now.
“Electors demand intelligence briefing before Electoral College vote”:
“Beijing ‘seriously concerned’ after Trump questions ‘one China’ policy”:
Trump spoke at one of his post-election, Great-Leader rallies on Friday. Among other mind-numbing things, this happened at the rally:
I think I mentioned it at the time or shortly after, but one of the most amazing moments in the campaign was after Ted Cruz had thrown away his dignity to support Trump. At a rally, Trump said something like “He’s not Lyin’ Ted anymore. We love Ted now.” This was after weeks of whipping his followers up against Cruz, calling him a liar, insulting his wife, suggesting his father was involved in the assassination of JFK,… He told them not to trust that he meant anything he said, and they didn’t care.
According to one of his tweets from this morning, Trump thinks that the issue of Russian interference in the election was not brought up before everyone voted in November. He may have a case, sort of, in that the Russian interference was not given the attention it deserved, but surely even his childish brain remembers that the issue was brought up.
Trump’s tweet: “Why wasn’t this brought up before election?”
His tiny attack dog, Kellyanne Conway, also pushed the idea: “[I]f you go back and you listen to Clinton campaign spokespeople on your program and others, if you listen to their private briefings to media and others, they said very little about this.” [With “this” being Russian interference.]
How about this Ms. Conway and Doofus Drumpf? Hillary Clinton brought up the issue in every presidential debate, in every debate. Here is an excerpt from the third debate, Hillary Clinton speaking:
Mike Pence, Trump’s V.P. pick, said in October that we are seeing “more and more evidence that implicates Russia” in the hacking. Pence also said, “there should be serious consequences” for Russia.
In summary, dunderheaded Trump, WTF is wrong with you? Russian interference in the election was brought up many times during the campaign season. The White House brought it up during the daily briefing. It was a recurring subject during the debates. You think it wasn’t brought up because you, personally, refused to acknowledge it?
You do not get to rewrite history.
I understand that the issue is now front and center, and is accompanied by too much controversy and shouting for you to ignore it. Could you please at least stop blatantly lying and proving what a dullard you are on Twitter? And stop having Conway repeat your lies. This is not just ugly behavior, it is alarming. You don’t know what is going on. You are ignorant and it is possible that your memory is failing. It is possible that your “smart brain” is totally fucked up.
Followup to comment 340.
For clarity, here is Trump’s entire tweet:
Who is feeding Trump this line of bullshit?
Here is Pence’s entire statement made in October:
And here is the statement from the U.S. Intelligence community that was issued in early October:
Why didn’t anybody bring it up before the election?!!
More stupid tweeting from Trump’s dumpster of a mind:
That’s from today, December 12, 2016.
Comey’s entirely unjustified and unprofessional intervention in the campaign should be getting much higher priority. Unlike the case of Russian intervention – which I don’t discount, but which remains something for which the public have not been shown the evidence – we know that the Director of the FBI made a partisan intervention in the Presidential election at a crucial moment. As I remarked at the time, the subsequent announcement that there was nothing in Weiner’s computer to change the decision that Clinton had not broken the law could not reverse the effect of Comey’s intervention, because what counts in a campaign above all is the salience of issues. All Comey needed to do to tip the election – and he must have known this – was to generate headlines with “Clinton” and “emails” in them.
Which is more serious for the USA – a foreign power undertaking cyber-espionage and trying to influence an election – things the USA itself does to other countries routinely – or a domestic agency itself making a partisan intervention which in all probability, changed the outcome?
Followup to comments 340 and 341.
Trump himself brought up the issue in July 2016:
Two days later, Trump encouraged Russian hackers to find 30,000 missing Clinton emails, adding that the hackers would be “rewarded mightily by our press.”
During the first presidential debate, Trump brought up the issue by claiming that “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds” might have done the hacking. That was in September.
Is Trump saying that he not only fails to remember what others have said, but that he also does not remember what he himself said (or tweeted)?
Hj Hornbeck@331,
Srsly? You think that kind of spew is worth reading?
They made an entire campaign ad about it.
SC @345, good point. I saw that ad at the time, but had forgotten it.
I am troubled to see that rightwing media is accepting Trump and Conway’s new tactic (new as of Friday with the “didn’t come up before the election” claim).
Meanwhile, Trump is seriously considering John Bolton for deputy secretary of state, conveniently ignoring the fact that Bolton has floated the accusation that the entire Russian-interference issue is a “false flag” operation.
Link
The quote is from a Bolton appearance on Fox News Sunday during an interview. Bolton appeared on Fox News on Dec 11 and 12 to make the same claim.
More news of Trump basically paying himself to run for president:
Daily Beast link
Hillary Clinton is backing the effort to provide electors at the Electoral College with more information about Russian interference in the election:
Link
Looks like there’s weak support for a review within the GOP. Here’s Mitch McConnell:
And Paul Ryan:
It’s notable that neither person is interested in setting up a special committee on that topic in specific, preferring to reuse existing reviews. McConnell in particular was fine with special committees on Benghazi, and Ryan with an investigation into Clinton’s emails, so you’d think both would be bullish on examining Russian interference.
It’s also notable what McConnell declined to talk about.
KG @1344:
I think that was kinda implied? Good to know you disagree, though.
As expected, Trump picked the president of Goldman Sachs for the job of director of the National Economic Council.
Link
On the same subject, Nate Silver counts 15 GOP senators that back an investigation of some sort. He’s not tracking DNC senators.
Wonkette covered Trump’s consideration of Carly Fioriana for director of national intelligence:
Oh, and I forgot to mention (bolding mine):
Expect that to be shoved in Trump’s face for the next day or two.
Followup to comment 346.
John Bolton is not the only trumpian dunderhead who is floating the idea that Russian interference in the election is really a “false flag” operation by the Obama administration.
Carter Page, one of Trump’s Putin-loving former advisors, is also pushing the conspiracy theory that Russian cyber-warfare conducted against the U.S. political system was a “false flag.”
https://twitter.com/INechepurenko/status/808354740195258368
KG:
Yes, you were right about this at the time. I thought the second announcement was a positive development, but it wasn’t.
When Rick Perry had an “Oops” moment when he was running for president it was because he forgot the name of one of the government agencies he supposedly wanted to eliminate. That agency was the Department of Energy.
Now trump is considering Perry to head that agency.
Maybe Perry will be in charge of gutting the Department of Energy?
The White House weighs in via a daily briefing led by Press Secretary Josh Earnest:
#351: I just want to say, fuck Nate Silver. The cult of the poll has done enough damage.
PZM @1358:
I can mount a defense of the guy, but I do agree on the second part: there’s waaaay too much emphasis on the horse race in the media, across the board, the only people who should care about polling are political junkies and those wanting to contribute to a campaign.
Ironically, I was just about to swoop in with a Pew survey on attitudes towards Trump. While the finding that Trump’s the least popular president-elect in two decades seems to be grabbing the headlines, the partisan divide is what caught my eye. According to this survey, Trump is more popular with Republicans than any prior president-elect in that timeframe, albeit just barely; with Democrats, he’s the least popular by a wide margin. While variables like age and education are also factors, they don’t have nearly the strength as political party membership.
Polls like that are handy to people who live in a liberal bubble, like me; it underscores that I see the world a lot differently than other people, and if I hope to share a planet with them I should probably spend some time figuring out why we differ.
Paul Krugman – “Russia’s Hand in America’s Election.”
I have a problem with this line, and broader notion:
As far as I’m concerned, the only way to restore faith in the electoral system and institutions is to make them worthy of it. Over the past several years, the Republican leadership has shown itself willing to cheat and lie to gain and hold power, through voter disenfranchisement and suppression, relentless governmental obstruction and refusal to fulfill the most basic obligations of governance, the use of congressional powers for absurdly partisan purposes, and so on. Some of it’s illegal; some technically not but goes against what the people who wrote the constitution intended and what’s in the interests of the country and the world. All of this plus their indifference to Russian actions during the campaign, McConnell’s efforts to keep the evidence and further threat of Russian interference hidden, Comey’s interventions, their support of Comey’s outrageous acts, their determined efforts to block and interfere with recounts and audits in several states,… – none of this should lead anyone to have faith in the system or institutions when they’re largely controlled by Republicans. They’re cheaters (not all, but many) who’ve shown they can’t be expected to defend the integrity of institutions or, indeed, to have any integrity themselves.
The only way they could help to restore faith in the electoral system and institutions at this point would be to immediately oppose a Trump presidency and to cease their other attacks on democracy. For the moment, I’d accept the former as a step in the right direction. (They’re also so fixated on power and advancing their and their sponsors’ reactionary agenda that they don’t see the danger for themselves in not stopping Trump and Putin now, but they will when it’s too late.)
Do not let kleptocracy and the destruction of sovereignty be normalized – block this gluttonmonkey now:
No words can do this justice.
Ari Melber: “Trump didn’t ‘delay’ his presser. He canceled a planned presser.”
A brief defense of the guy:
Statisticians should care about polling, and that is what he does. Fuck him for doing his job? A focus in the “media” on horse races is not new, and it’s very weird to associate Nate Silver with it. You see lots of journalists, TV personalities, talking-head “experts,” pundits, etc., using garbage “information” pulled from their asses to make “predictions” and “explanations” of the results of polls/surveys/elections and so on, which creates a huge opening for lying and bullshitting and opining in editorials and ordinary “news” about such developments. So many form very misinformed conclusions and as a result say/do all sorts of wacky crap that they might not be doing, if they had just been properly informed in the first place by a faintly responsible media outlet, of which there are very few. I don’t see a problem with analyzing real data with something like rigor and professionalism, and I don’t think a cult could be built out of something like that.
Here are two articles about the tech “summit.” From the second:
This tweet sums it up:
This is, surprising as it might seem, the core anarchist position.
I’ve now watched a couple minutes of the Bernie Sanders town hall on Chris Hayes. I’m losing respect for Sanders by the second. His knowledge of global political-economic history is woeful.
This town hall is a farce.
“No, Paul Ryan doesn’t support an investigation into Russian election interference: He just wants you to think he does.”:
“GOP leaders shield Trump from expanded Russia probe: Despite calls for expanded investigations, Republicans are content with their existing oversight of alleged Russian misdeeds.”:
David Frum: “Will conservative commentators really let Donald Trump degrade them into a defense of Russian clandestine operations against their country?”
I’d like to point out, because I’ve been pointing this out for so long, that in Latin America when the US backs a coup or the destruction of democratic institutions, people rise up and resist. They defend their democracy and sovereignty. We can, too.
Keith Olbermann.
Ogvorbis:
Yes, and I want to relocate to a Sade song.
Move along, folks:
people of Aleppo wish to inform you that tomorrow they will be killed with their families
“A Year in the Life of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin”
Time for me to raid Kurt Eichenwald again.
Trump is now a boon to the stock market.
And now, onto the main event: the last time Rachael Maddow teased a story of Eichenwald, it was about European intelligence agencies’ view of the Kremlin hacking. Today, she teased another one.
Last time, Eichenwald was flattered. Now, it sounds like he’s gloating.
The lack of consequences is potentially ominous.
My sister and I sang this in the back seat on car trips when we were children. You took a wrong turn, West Virginia.
Followup to Hornbeck @246.
The Department of Energy is refusing to give Trump’s transition team the lists of individual names requested. It looks like the D.O.E. is not going to help Trump purge people who worked on climate change issues.
The text is from Eben Burnham-Snyder, a department spokesman, who sent a response to Trump.
President Obama speaks out on Trump and the Russians:
Scroll down to watch the video.
Daily Beast link.
Whoops. In comment 383, I linked to a trailer for the interview with Obama.
Here is a link to the complete Daily Show episode in which Trevor Noah interviews President Obama: Comedy Central link
SC@381,
This is a much better version.
Eichenwald’s article is up: “How Donald Trump’s Business Ties Are Already Jeopardizing U.S. Interests.” It’s a long read and tough to summarize, but if you’ve been browsing this thread for a while you’ll already know a good half of it. I’m surprised Eichenwald didn’t dig anything up on India or mention Russia, but I suppose he didn’t have the space.
Ignoring the Turkish conflict, mentioned earlier, this bit is worth sharing…
… and as is typical, the conclusion is as good a summary as you’ll find.
Second opinion, anyone?
It’s worth pointing out that the authors behind this story are the same as those behind the War On The Rocks post.
Hmm, I missed this bit of info, which adds to Lynna’s comment at 1354.
Via Kurt Eichenwald: Trump knew this story coming today. Canceled conflicts announce, sent tweets on biz, invited Kanye. Media falls 4 it
Sadly, he may have a point. I did a quick check for “Donald Trump” on Google news, and the top stories were:
Kanye West visits Donald Trump in New York (92 stories)
Rex Tillerson named as Donald Trump’s secretary of state (75 stories)
Critics slam Donald Trump’s plan to let his sons run businesses (97 stories)
Kurt Eichenwald’s piece (1 story about it)
Too late, but still good news: The House Select Benghazi Committee was finally shut down. After spending $7.8 million taxpayer dollars over a period of two and a half years, the committee filed its final report and adjourned. That final report did not single out nor find a single wrongdoing by then secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
USA Today link.
Followup to SC’s comment 369.
Steve Benen clearly states the difference between the apparent compliance Republicans are offering and a real, proper investigation of Russian interference in U.S. elections:
Trump’s nervous about the Hamilton Electors.
In related news, I don’t see any mention of the Colorado lawsuit.
Cross posted with A #NODA victory.
Prima facie evidence that the pipeline should not be built and run as designed.
Creek in ND polluted due to a pipeline break.
A group of scientists have implemented plans to copy United States climate data onto non-government servers. They fear the data could disappear once Trump becomes president.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scientists-copying-climate-data-before-trump-assumes-office
Good. Action is being taken. We should not trust Trump, and we should plan accordingly.
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay decided to say some stupid stuff:
Link
News from Russia:
Link
Weird, I thought someone would have pointed this out:
Also, if you’re not sick of tales of Russian hacking by now, here’s a long read from the New York Times.
This would explain his pained expression.
Such a coward.
Hillary Clinton and the DNC were not the only Democratic Party targets of Russian hackers. The hackers went after down-ballot dems as well.
NY Times link
The Russians interfered in about a dozen House races.
President Obama is, once again, doing what he can to protect people from Republican stupidity. Obama strengthened the rules that prevent states from withholding funds from Planned Parenthood.
The Trump administration will, no doubt, want to dismantle Obama’s action, but if they do, it will take them some time.
NY Times link
It looks like Trump may be forced to divest when it comes to at least one his real estate holdings: the Old Post Office, (Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.), is owned by the General Services Administration. Trump leases the property.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3238357-2016-12-14-EEC-DeFazio-Connolly-Carson-to-Roth.html
Recently, (November 14), Google announced that it would take action to reduce the profitability of fake news. Google has failed.
Media Matters link
A few examples from fake news that is currently running:
“Christmas Lights BANNED To Avoid ‘OFFENDING’ Muslim ‘Refugees’
Liberal Church Houses Muslim Refugees, Horrified By What They Find In Pews
Criminal President Obama Encourages Illegal Aliens to Vote – Promises No Repercussions
Clinton Exteme Meltdown From Surprise Question – Screams, Thrown Water, Obscenities
Rachel Maddow focused on Rex Tillerson in one of her segments last night.
Partial transcript:
Maddow link
Maddow covered the fact that Tillerson acted against the interest of the United States in many instances, and that, in particular Tillerson acted against the best interests of the people of Chad. He acted unethically in order to increase profits for Exxon.
The video is 16:00 minutes long.
Oh, FFS. We don’t need it, but we now have more evidence of Trump’s self-delusion and narcissism. At a post-election rally in Wisconsin, Trump accused the press of mangling his “beautiful flowing sentences” in order to make him look bad. [Too much laughing.]
A few linguists weighed in on Trump’s self-assessment:
Vox link
Ah, yes, just what we need, another connection to White Supremacy among Trump’s flock of advisors.
Mother Jones link
Miller has denied being an acquaintance of Richard Spencer.
You know that meeting between Trump and Kanye West? The meeting that was covered more thoroughly than new findings about Russian interference in U.S. elections?
Well, it had us all wondering, “Why?”
Alex Jones has an answer.
Right Wing Watch link
Okay, good. That clears that up. Donald Trump can save you from the Illuminati should you need saving.
Lynna @406:
Trump’s sentences tend to flow like a rhino with IBS.
Given the recent reports that US intelligence has good, evidence-based reason to suspect Putin was directly involved in the timing of the DNC leaks, “false flag” isn’t really all that incorrect, even if it’s being applied in the wrong direction. According to intelligence sources, Russia and Wikileaks had a vendetta against Clinton but were also actuated by a desire to undermine the US’s reputation abroad and stoke fear in US citizens that its government was corrupt; they succeeded. (As discussed, they plan to destabilize Europe in similar fashion by nurturing and protecting homegrown right-wingers.)
The “false flag” business is the continued assertion that the hackers acted out of the goodness of their hearts and earnest desire for transparency, rather than that they were hired and compensated for digging up and parcelling out dirt. But the reverse is true: they suppressed evidence culled from the RNC hacks (possibly for future leverage), misattributed the origin of the DNC leaks, and carefully manipulated what those leaks demonstrated with the explicit knowledge and assistance of quislings within the US government, who continue their attempts to twist the narrative, conceal the aim, and keep their own secrets secret by cooperating with blackmailers. Wikileaks played along (occasionally giving the game away) by denying Russia’s involvement.
This one’s a twofer: classic GOP ratfucking against their opponents with the added bonus of a genuine “false flag” waved by a US enemy. And, true to form because the US lacks all subtlety, the Trump transition team has taken to quite literally waving that flag in our face, as well. They’re too stupid to see how deftly they’re being manipulated, serving two Russians aims: deliver it a malleable ally while making that ally look, abroad, like a laughingstock.
HAHAAHAAHAHA where have we seen that before? Shoe’s on the other foot these days. Soon Trump will be Our Man in Amerikkka for some macho imperialist enterprise.
Yes, Putin was involved:
NBC News link
Well, now we know what was going on in North Carolina when Republican legislators called an emergency session without being clear about their objective. Their goal, as it turns out, was to strip the governorship of N.C. of power. This is their response to the win of Roy Cooper, a Democrat who will soon be governor.
News Observer link
Vanity Fair magazine gave the restaurant Trump Grill a bad review. Trump took time out of his busy schedule to tweet:
Graydon Carter, by the way, is credited with the phrase “short-fingered vulgarian” to describe Trump.
Here’s an excerpt from the Vanity Fair review, which was written by Tina Nguyen:
Oh, FFS. Legislators in Missouri want to redirect funds dedicated to feeding hungry children to so-called “Pregnancy Crisis Centers.” The CPCs are really just anti-abortion/religious nodes of ignorance and disinformation.
https://thinkprogress.org/missouri-tanf-crisis-pregnancy-bill-cfbc911dbf6a#.cbd1wkvdm
Trump chooses another dunderhead:
Media Matters link
Mark Stern, writing for Slate described the North Carolina Republicans’ actions as a “legislative coup” and “an attack on Democracy.”
Those Republican legislators do not need any stinkin’ democracy. They want autocratic rule.
Trump is causing a recession in the area around Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Link
Trump on Oct. 28, 2016: “You won’t hear this from the media: We have the highest murder rate in this country in 45 years. You don’t hear that from these people. They don’t want to talk about it. The highest murder rate in the United States in 45 years.”
Trump on Oct. 29, 2016: “The murder rate in the United States, it’s the worst, the highest it’s been in 45 years. Nobody talks about that — nobody talks about that.”
Trump on Oct. 30, 2016: “Murder is — in 45 years, right now, the rates are the highest they’ve been … and they don’t want to talk about it.”
Trump last night: “The murder rate in the United States is the largest it’s been in 45 years.”
As Steve Benon pointed out:
I vote for #4.
Oh, FFS. One of Trump’s favorite sheriffs, and a guy who campaigned for Trump (including appearing onstage with Trump) just made an announcement about President Obama’s birth certificate.
Salon link
pop
Obama’s last press conference is live as I type this. He’s discussed hacking and Syria so far.
Also, the relationship between the White House and Trump’s team is rapidly deteriorating.
pop
Hornbeck @421, Kellyanne Conway thinks it is the patriotic duty of President Obama and Hillary Clinton to shut down any discussion of Russian hacking:
So that’s a major WTF moment.
Trump benefited from Russian interference in the election and he and his team think he has the patriotic high ground here? For the good of country (for the good of Trump), we should all ignore the fact that Russia is meddling in our elections?
Followup to 421.
Obama also said that Hillary Clinton was not treated fairly during the election. He said that coverage of Clinton and of the issues was troubling.
Trump Has a Plan to Break Up the EU
As we all know, Dylann Roof was found guilty on all counts for murdering nine black parishioners in a South Carolina church. The news was covered on all cable news programs this morning.
Oh, wait, Fox & Friends did not even mention this major news story. I guess it is possible that Fox News viewers don’t know.
Link
In The New Yorker, David Remnick made some good points concerning Trump’s choices for Cabinet spots and for advisors.
Remnick goes on to document the connection with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and he provides more details about David Friedman’s extreme rightwing views.
“Amid outcry, N.C. GOP passes law to curb Democratic governor’s power”:
I watched it on MSNBC, and their subsequent “analysis” was an embarrassment. Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd appear to be people incapable of self-reflection and learning. Rather than report the significant substantive portions of Obama’s remarks, of which there were several deserving of serious consideration and debate, they chose to focus on his alleged tone and his allegedly passionate attack on and blaming of the media. Obama talked about the hacking, the upcoming intelligence report, and plans for retaliation (some public, some covert). But with that established, he situated the Russian electoral interference within the domestic context in which it was effective, including, but not limited to, the role played by the media. (I would have thought the key sentences were those about how Russia is a second-rate power which doesn’t innovate or produce anything anyone wants to import, has an authoritarian system contrary to our values and ideals, and is too weak to harm us unless we lose sight of or actively turn against what’s important, as many Republicans especially are doing.) He also noted that Clinton was treated unfairly by the media, a claim supported by copious evidence. Their response is to defensively obsess over any comments referring to them.
In contrast, even after months of dealing with Trump, they seem not at all prepared for the assault on the free press he has in store and has in fact already begun. “How dare Obama blame us when he should be blaming Putin?!” No concern about whether this might not just be Obama’s last presidential press conference (and the longest one he’s ever done, by the way) but the last real presidential press conference for the foreseeable future. Fools.
There’s a link in this piece to the list of policies the so-called House Freedom Caucus wants to remove in the first 100 days of a Trump presidency. Noam Chomsky was right when he said that “today’s Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history.”
A few minutes before the Obama press conference it was confirmed that the FBI now agrees that the Kremlin’s goal was to help Trump win.
One question which was asked only obliquely and which Obama sidestepped concerned the possibility of Trump’s complicity. (He did note again Trump’s statements and actions in support of Putin before and since the election.)
Crisis in Poland.
In a follow-up to #429…Trump has picked the co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, Mick Mulvaney, as director of the Office of Management and Budget.
“Clinton Aide Huma Abedin Seeks to Review Emails Search Warrant”:
“Truth is a lost game in Turkey. Don’t let the same thing happen to you”:
Oprah Winfrey interviewed Michelle Obama, and it’ll be aired on Monday at 9 Eastern time. It’s…not cheery.
This professor is in hiding due to threats she’s received after comments about Trump she made in class that were recorded by a rightist student and posted online. I’ll just say that Nazi student protests and harassment of anti-Nazi professors was part of their rise to and consolidation of power. Colleges and universities need to be prepared for these rightwing-backed efforts when they’re ramped up and supported by people in power.
Things you never thought you’d ever be quoting.
As usual, there’s some juicy parts at the end.
Suuuuch a jerkface.
Salon’s coverage goes into more detail.
John Shattuck, “former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor”*:
* I’m not sure if this is the same position as #166 on the “Freedom Caucus” list of proposed removals.
Chris Hayes tonight interviewed Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal J Street. He talked about a split between Jewish people, leaders, and organizations who support Trump and those in opposition. I said it in the past: The rightwing Israeli government has shown itself opposed not only to US critics of Israeli policy but to the interests of Jewish people in the US. It supports a person who’s run probably the most anti-Semitic campaign in US history, is openly cheered by the KKK and other white supremacist organizations, and has chosen an anti-Semite who runs a grotesquely bigoted site as his chief of staff.
The lines are being drawn here and they’re most certainly not between religious or ethnic groups. People standing for decency, democracy, equality, freedom, and justice will oppose Trump and Putin and what they represent.
All of the problems with this analogy and film (and there are many) aside, yes!
We don’t want a global Pottersville, or Putinsville. We need to stop it together.
“Trump’s 17 cabinet-level picks have more money than a third of American households combined”:
Good pundit.
If there’s one thing we can rely on, it’s that Fox News will be blindly partisan. It’ll be a cold day when they take Russian hacking seriously.
See? Fox is gonna Fox, no matt-
…. well, I’ll be damned.
It appears someone targeted Kurt Eichenwald and induced an epileptic seizure.
SC @440
Maybe I have my tinfoil hat on too tight, but I think that anti-semitism in the US (and Europe) is in the interest of the Israeli right since it will increase immigration to Israel. This will increase the number of settlers who will occupy Palestinian territory. This is more important to them than the interests of Jewish people in America or Europe.
Oh, well, if they’re bloggers…
WaPo has developed an extension that attaches fact-checking and contextual information to Trump tweets.
If you are a purveyor of absurd conspiracy theories, Donald Trump has a job for you. Rachel Maddow covered Trump’s job offer to Fox News contributor Monica Crowley.
Barack Obama is, secretly, NOT black!
Trump’s swamp becomes more and more toxic.
This is a good interview with Sarah Kendzior about Trump, authoritarianism, and resistance.
useful infographic”
https://i.imgur.com/7xHaUXf.jpg
Apologies if this has already been posted and I missed it, but I don’t think this story is getting enough attention.
Shockingly, turns out Putin didn’t want to sabotage Clinton because he didn’t respect her but because he was terrified of her.
“House GOP Quietly Closes Flint, Mich. Water Investigation”
The State of Michigan must supply bottled water to Flint residents.
You taint the water, you pay for it….
I admit that I love how Evan McMullin is dealing with Trump. (I would never have thought that on a thread that began with “Moments of Mormon Madness” I’d be cheering a Mormon ex-CIA dude, but such is 2016.)
In surprisingly political news,
Miss France is Miss Guiana (Alicia Aylies), for the first time.
Elle is joining Teen Vogue in the ranks of hard-hitting journalism.
I really have to wonder what his fans think when they hear things like this:
Trump’s cynicism is dense enough to approximate its Schwarzschild radius, yet his fans don’t seem to realize he’s insulting them by admitting he blatantly lied to get elected.
Is this a peace offering, or just another distraction? Either way, the poor State department must be having heart attacks on a daily basis right now.
“Ever wonder what it’d be like to go back in time and help fight nazis? Support Civil Rights Era? Resist Native genocide? Now’s your chance”
Still good, McMuffin.
Michael Mann – “I’m a scientist who has gotten death threats. I fear what may happen under Trump.”:
What Mann has faced from Republican politicians and rightwing organizations is astounding.
Not just gaslighting: Trump using abuser playbook to manipulate the country.
“Hillary Actually”
Here’s a quick break from US news, in the form of an insightful article on the current state of Brexit.
“Leak reveals Rex Tillerson is director of Bahamas-based US-Russian oil company”:
“McCain, Schumer double down on Russia probe: A bipartisan quartet of senators continues to push Mitch McConnell on the issue.”:
I don’t even know where to start with how disturbing this piece by David Friedman is.
“In Poland, a window on what happens when populists come to power”:
*tears hair out*
Salty Current @ 468:
Why is Israel getting so chummy with Russia these days?
Newt Gingrich is at it again.
That “propaganda media” phrase is intriguing, though; Amanda Marcotte points out that the German word “Lügenpresse” translates as “lying press.” She suggests Gingrich is trying to mainstream the term via translation, and I think she’s on to something.
“Trump private security force ‘playing with fire’”:
While I think the electorate college is the best way to stop Trump, I also don’t think its likely to succeed. I’ve been waiting to dump some cold water on the idea for a while, and now I finally get a chance.
As depressing as the news is, I can’t be surprised. Look at polling data like this:
America is becoming increasingly partisan, and a major event like 9/11 is at best a temporary pause in the trend. Republicans in general aren’t interested in flipping their votes, because they see nothing wrong with Trump, and the few exceptions are being scared into toeing the line for fear of retaliation of either the economic or physical kind.
From up here, it smells like you’re headed towards a civil war.
It’s being reported that the Russian ambassador to Turkey has been shot and killed in Ankara.
Details:
The man who shot him has been killed. He actually said quite a bit about Aleppo and the war in Syria. They’re now saying he actually was an off-duty Turkish police officer.
So sad.
“Foreign-Policy Poker With Donald Trump: Who is the patsy at the table?”:
Apologies for my absence from my “curating” duties for a little while. Our recent snowstorm brought down some trees in my yard. I’ve been busy with tree-removal and cleanup.
Thanks to all of you who are tearing your hair out in my absence. There’s plenty of hair-tearing news.
SC @478, I thought President Obama let Trump off too lightly with his calm and rather kind suggestion that Trump might want to be briefed before he makes comments that affect foreign policy.
Of course.
SC @473, The mix of Trump’s private security with Secret Service protection sounds like a recipe for disaster. At the very least, that mix will cause confusion. If there are real difficulties, confusion is just what you do not want.
Hornbeck @474, Trump’s transition team, and Trump himself, do have a fairly low approval rating (compared to previous presidents-elect), but I think it should be a lot lower considering what is going on.
Horbeck @472, FFS, haven’t the right wingers damaged the free press in the U.S. enough?
There are reports that there’s some sort of “ongoing security incident” at the US embassy in Ankara, and US citizens are being advised to avoid it. No idea – could be nothing.
SC @468, there’s a disturbing amount of “oh, how I love Russia” comments in that piece. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that he does not care if Russia bombs civilians, commits war crimes, or is taking over Syria. Friedman loves a big, stupid hammer that hits everything. Very manly, I suppose.
SC @ 467, Senator McCain might actually get something done since he has the power to form a special sub-committee. Maybe he can work around McConnell’s obstructionism that way.
SC @466, This is what I expected. Rex Tillerson was officially replaced as head of Exxon Mobil by Darren Woods, but that is all just for show. In reality, Tillerson will still be involved with Exxon. And he will do what he can as Trump’s Secretary of State to send profits Exxon’s way. (Shades of Dick Cheney and Halliburton.)
Do you want to go hunting with Eric Trump and with Donald Trump Jr.? Do you have $500,000 to spend for the “Grizzly Bear” package, or $1 million for the Bald Eagle package?
http://www.tmz.com/2016/12/16/donald-trump-inauguration-party/
The invitation says that “proceeds will be distributed to conservation charities.” Oh, please.
I’m no expert on these countries’ foreign policy, but I’ll speculate that it’s political. Reading Matthew Karp’s This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy has led me to think even more about the global advance of the extreme Right today in those terms. It’s possible that the current rightwing Israeli government sees the preservation of its segregationist system as paramount and as necessary to the country’s survival. In this sense, authoritarian Russia – home of pogroms, whose regime sponsors neo-Nazi movements around the world – can be seen as an ally, while leftist democratic governments and movements critical of the system – including Jewish Israelis and USians – are threats. (Friedman has said J Street aren’t Jews.)
In the same way the British abolition of slavery in 1833 radically shifted the global balance of power away from slavery and made Brazil and Cuba important allies for the slave states (and thus for the US government, which pro-slavery ideologues dominated for decades prior to Lincoln’s election), Trump is shifting it back towards more rigid hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and class maintained by force. They’re trying to build a coalition of rightwing regimes that might have very different interests otherwise but share a commitment to authoritarianism. As I think this through, it seems to me that the people who formed the Confederacy made a similar mistake to the fascists’. They saw themselves as modern, as the regime of the future, and thought the world was coming around to their way of thinking. They believed that more liberal, democratic systems were weak and failing, and that the growth of European imperialism suggested that the European governments were coming around to their way of thinking about the necessity of authoritarianism and forced labor generally. They were right in both cases about the hypocrisy of domestically relatively liberal but racist and imperialistic powers, but, fortunately, they were wrong about the larger question of alliance and/or weakness. In short, they were overconfident and underestimated the democratic resistance.
One of the most frightening things I’ve heard recently was on a segment of AM Joy last week featuring a discussion with a group of people about the meaning of Trump for people in various countries in Africa. One of the panelists kept insisting, I’m sure accurately, that many of the people she’s talked to find the changed rhetoric refreshing in that finally the mask of democracy and human rights has fallen. (It reminded me in a way of a New Yorker cartoon that someone shared a while back but I somehow didn’t save – It shows some sheep looking at a billboard of a wolf candidate, with the slogan “I Will Eat You.” One sheep is saying to the others “He tells it like it is!”) But for the Left in the US, including many liberal hypocrites and even some conservatives, democratic values are actually more than a veneer, and will always be the basis for the fight against authoritarianism. Yes, Democrats in power in the US have had an imperialistic foreign policy (though, it should be said, often at the insistence of the Right). But things can get immeasurably worse for people in poor countries when rightwing extremists come to power here.
The far-Right, led by Putin, sees the struggle as a domestic and a global one, and to that extent they’re able to overlook the dangers and inconsistencies of alliances with other far-Right movements and powers while trying to marginalize and destroy the Left. If that’s what’s happening, I think it’s a tragic and disastrous path for Israel in any possible future. But I hope they’re wrong again about liberal and leftwing (and even more conservative but not fascistic) governments and movements and whether they’re up for the struggle. Anyway, that’s my highly speculative analysis.
A truck has rammed through a Christmas market in Berlin causing several deaths and injuries. They suspect it was an attack.
A judge has ordered the release of the search warrant for Huma Abedin’s emails (see #215 above), which will happen tomorrow if there’s no appeal.
Good news: there’s some protest voting among the electorals, more than is typical in an election year. Bad news:
I spotted this additional detail on Twitter:
Thanks, Bernie Sanders.
This is a helpful article from earlier this month.
The FOP’s endorsement of Trump was terrifying regardless of the outcome of the election, because of what it signified about their ideology and priorities. Now they’ve spelled out their wish list.
“The Triumph of the 1%”
“Trump dines with Carlos Slim as relations warm with Mexican leaders”
I’m not sure why Slim is described as a “leader,” or why that’s plural given that he’s the only Mexican “business titan” mentioned by name.
“Under political pressure, Kuwait cancels major event at Four Seasons, switches to Trump’s D.C. hotel”:
Once again, Teen Vogue hitting harder. (I have some quibbles, especially about the presentation of the history, but even that’s still better than most major papers.)
“Gingrich: Congress should change ethics laws for Trump”:
It’s starting to look like a Putin takeover of B613.
It’s official.
A second source on that.
Of those six, three Democrats voted for Colin Powell, one Republican voted for Ron Paul, one for John Kasich, and one Democrat voted for Faith Spotted Eagle. Yep, the Democrats had more protest votes than the Republicans.
FFS.