The Penultimate Week
January 14, 2017 5:22 AM   Subscribe

In seven days, Donald J. Trump is due to be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America. What happens next?

As Inauguration Day approaches, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSIC) gears up to investigate the Russian hacking scandal, and more information regarding the FBI's investigation and the reaction of Democratic lawmakers comes to light.

Rex Tillerson's confirmation highlights links between Rosneft, Exxon and Qatar, which is also looking to get involved with Trump's domestic infrastructure deals. Meanwhile, a top Rosneft exec turns up dead in his car.

Back at the ranch, while the Trump Team now admit that Gen. Flynn spoke to the Russian Ambassador to the US the day the recent sanctions were announced, Trump himself is already signaling his readiness to lift them "after a period of time."

In the wake of Trump's first press conference in months, Alexi Kovalev sends "A Message to My Doomed Colleagues in the American Media."

Barack Obama bids us farewell, with dignity, grace and a warning reminiscent of Eisenhower's.

Trump remains quite impressed with himself, and the Trump faithful are stubbornly unconcerned.

In response, the Women's March on Washington is planned for Saturday, Jan 21st in DC, with sister marches in other cities.
posted by snuffleupagus (3210 comments total) 107 users marked this as a favorite
 
Links mostly harvested from the end of the previous Election Thread, looks like there's more reporting coming out this morning.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:25 AM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


L.L. Bean, Don's Johns, Kata Sarka.
posted by box at 5:39 AM on January 14, 2017


My typical response to most news stories in the last two months.
posted by octothorpe at 5:44 AM on January 14, 2017 [74 favorites]


Yes, John Lewis, civil rights hero, is all talk, no action or results. (And how in the world does it take him 17 minutes to write the second half.)

@realDonaldTrump:
Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

@realDonaldTrump:
mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!


@Evan_McMullin:
While you avoided the draft, John Lewis risked his life for equality in America. You'll never even dream of such selfless patriotism, Donald
posted by chris24 at 5:46 AM on January 14, 2017 [189 favorites]


Did we talk about this shitbird in the previous thread?
posted by ian1977 at 5:46 AM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]




In German social media there are hints that the videos of Trump's frolic are to be had ... somewhere ... is this? I 'm not going to go look for them as much out of fear that I'll find them as to have that kind of query polluting Google's/NSA's view of my internet habits.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:52 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


@howiewolf:
John Lewis did more to make America great in one day on the Edmund Pettus Bridge than Donald Trump ever will. [image]
posted by chris24 at 5:54 AM on January 14, 2017 [86 favorites]


In German social media there are hints that the videos of Trump's frolic are to be had ... somewhere

The most credible mentions of video (that I've seen) so far have come from the Beeb:

Ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele in hiding after Trump dossier [BBC]
Mr Steele has been widely named as the author of a series of memos - which have been published as a dossier in some US media - containing extensive allegations about Mr Trump's personal life and his campaign's relationship with the Russian state.

Among the allegations are that Moscow has a video recording of Mr Trump with prostitutes and damaging information about his business activities.

posted by snuffleupagus at 5:55 AM on January 14, 2017


Pee & Steele
posted by ian1977 at 5:58 AM on January 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


Don's Jons pota-potty vendor displeased at its name being covered on inaugural facilities.

Of all the things he doesn't want to endorse...
posted by condour75 at 6:01 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


(The sequel to 'The Clothes Have No Emperor' is going to be amazing.)
posted by box at 6:01 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


The evening Buzzfeed released the document, someone in the previous thread suggested the Democrats should start wearing yellow ties as a protest. I love that idea; I don't know if it's going to be a Thing for anyone else, but I've decided to adopt it personally. So on Inauguration Day, and every Friday for as long as he is in office, I'm planning to wear a yellow or gold tie. Possibly some other item on Fridays I'm not working.

Petty and trivial, yes, but personally satisfying and it's the kind of symbol that will help me personally keep my focus on the more substantive work that needs to happen.
posted by nickmark at 6:02 AM on January 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


I think it's telling that he denies allegations against him by quoting other people. "Totally fake! That guy says so."
posted by davebush at 6:05 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Maybe protestors could bring mattresses to the inauguration and label them Donald's Port-A-Potties.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:06 AM on January 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


In German social media there are hints that the videos of Trump's frolic are to be had ...

I'm sure that when RT replaces C-SPAN on 12:01 on the 20th, it'll be the lead item, just before Pence annoucnes Donnie has been taken sadly ill and is recuperating in a secure hospital overseas where the best attention - the best! - can be provided, and the UN building has been annexed to the Russian embassy in return for services rendered. All citizens are to remain calm and in their homes and enjoy the following show - Sasha and Ivan Go Phishing.

(Joking. 100 percent. Almost.)
posted by Devonian at 6:06 AM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


Too on the nose?
posted by ian1977 at 6:06 AM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


On Jan 20th he will be president and he is still wet behind the ears.
posted by ian1977 at 6:07 AM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


(not to mention crime infested)

Because most of TrumP's audience needed to be reminded that John Lewis is black.
posted by Etrigan at 6:08 AM on January 14, 2017 [39 favorites]


Thank you, snuflleupagus!

If Putin's plan was to divide the Dems it would explain the worst of the Bernie Bros. It's one thing to say the ones who flipped from Bernie to Trumpo were "just" misogynists who hated HRC but that never really explained why such hateful people would have ever aligned themselves with the Dems or worse, a Socialist. I think the genuine haters were Trump supporters all along. That's not to say that they were all hand-picked double agents, but I can see the idea spreading amongst groups of assholes.

Also, I know it's a bad time to be a journalist but I think the photo editors are secretly having a ball.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:09 AM on January 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


Penthouse is only offering $1 million for video proof? Man I think you could get a lot more than that.
posted by ian1977 at 6:11 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


If we're going to clutter up the new thread with piss jokes, could they at least be original? Not the most obvious possible puns, that have already been made over and over?

this is why we can't have nice things
posted by thelonius at 6:12 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


I Will Survive
posted by chavenet at 6:17 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


All citizens are to remain calm and in their homes and enjoy the following show

Sounds like the time is ripe for a remake of Amerika.
posted by honestcoyote at 6:18 AM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Every day, Trump is looking more and more like the spiritual successor of Papa Duc Duvalier:

- elected on a wave of populism and racially-based nationalism
- staffing the government with his cronies, regardless of actual fitness for the position
- giving important positions to his family members

He even has his own Tonton Macoute. He calls it a "private security force", but still...

He hasn't noticeable started to practice Vodoun yet, but his Twitter feed might be a rough parallel.
posted by JohnFromGR at 6:18 AM on January 14, 2017 [41 favorites]


Hey can we talk about how the coming Democratic Purity Tests™ will hand Republicans a larger majority in 2 years and a Trump re-election in 4 years? Or is that a different thread?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:20 AM on January 14, 2017 [38 favorites]


You know what, it doesn't matter what happens. There's nothing that can be (legally) done about it as long as the GOP controls Congress. It's depressing as hell but our government wasn't built with the expectation of single party rule and much of what we've always called "checks and balances" are predicated on the assumption that there wouldn't be one party controlling both houses and the White House at the same time.
posted by tommasz at 6:20 AM on January 14, 2017 [13 favorites]




Nice protest sign.
posted by Coventry at 6:22 AM on January 14, 2017 [56 favorites]


there wouldn't be one party controlling both houses and the White House at the same time

And a majority of state houses and governorships. And the Supreme Court.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:22 AM on January 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


much of what we've always called "checks and balances" are predicated on the assumption that there wouldn't be one party controlling both houses and the White House at the same time.

It wasn't even founded on the assumption of the existence of parties, let alone the all but lockstep voting patterns of the present.
posted by jaduncan at 6:22 AM on January 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


If there is lurid evidence of trumps pee shenanigans I hope that it gets saved for midterms. Make the evidence public, then make it known that republicans sat on it. Use disgust to keep republicans home that day.
posted by ian1977 at 6:23 AM on January 14, 2017


One of the more apt memes I've seen recently (can't find the link anymore) went:

"This mailbox is more fit to serve as President than Donald Trump. It has selflessly served the American People for years."
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 6:23 AM on January 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


Most/all of his appointees are confirmed, including Scalia's replacement. Most/all of Obama's controversial executives orders, recent regulations and sub-regulatory agency guidance are repealed and a raft of older regulations are set on fast track for repeal. The legislative agenda moves forward at breakneck speed. Republicans and swing voters pay ever-less attention to the mainstream media.
posted by MattD at 6:25 AM on January 14, 2017


Use disgust to keep republicans home that day.

Republicans and Evangelicals made peace with the Access Hollywood tape, so they're sort of on board with whatever now. He just needs to have Jerry Falwell Jr. or whoever go on CNN and talk about how that was years ago and he's a changed man now.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:25 AM on January 14, 2017 [31 favorites]


Barack Obama bids us farewell, with dignity, grace and a warning reminiscent of Eisenhower's.

Time is running low for him to come and take everyone's guns.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:27 AM on January 14, 2017 [41 favorites]


Maybe. But I think there is a limit. The bully bush tape was roundly dismissed by Joe schmoes as locker room talk. Trump getting peed on will be beyond the pale for a lot of the same people. (Assuming there is such video and that is in it)
posted by ian1977 at 6:27 AM on January 14, 2017


If there is lurid evidence of trumps pee shenanigans I hope that it gets saved for midterms. Make the evidence public, then make it known that republicans sat on it. Use disgust to keep republicans home that day.
posted by ian1977 at 14:23 on January 14 [+] [!]

I couldn't care if Trump wants someone to urinate in his eyes and call him Nancy, it's about the fact that he appears to be in a situation where a foreign power has leverage over him. He implicitly suggests that it's true through his actions, but does not acknowledge the possibility in any way. The investigation has to happen now, because the US, NATO, allies and friends have serious geopolitical interests at stake.

It actually isn't a party thing, and is somewhat separate from the fact that Trump is in general presenting himself as an authoritarian lunatic who picks people with no discernable skill or aptitude to government positions and appears relatively corrupt.
posted by jaduncan at 6:27 AM on January 14, 2017 [74 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump: Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

And Lewis represents some of the nicest, richest areas of Atlanta.

@fordvox:
Uh, @repjohnlewis's district is the economic engine of Georgia, includes downtown, Buckhead, @ATLairport, @GeorgiaTech, @EmoryUniversity
posted by chris24 at 6:28 AM on January 14, 2017 [60 favorites]


"That's just bed (locker) room video."
posted by valkane at 6:29 AM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maybe. But I think there is a limit. The bully bush tape was roundly dismissed by Joe schmoes as locker room talk. Trump getting peed on will be beyond the pale for a lot of the same people. (Assuming there is such video and that is in it)

Nah, we'll get a replay of the "lots of guys like to watch their buddies screw!" scene from Repo Man, all over the US.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:29 AM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Republicans and Evangelicals made peace with the Access Hollywood tape, so they're sort of on board with whatever now. He just needs to have Jerry Falwell Jr. or whoever go on CNN and talk about how that was years ago and he's a changed man now.

He might well just dispute the allegation on the basis that it isn't really him on tape, and/or state something like FAKE NEWS WITCH HUNT FROM DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS, PUTIN SAYS IT ISN'T TRUE ANYWAY. SAD!
posted by jaduncan at 6:30 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Donald Trump, the Dunning-Kruger President

The original study's title, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments", is practically the ideal description of Trump.

"During the campaign, Trump made a number of statements that didn’t seem well-considered," the eponymous Prof. David Dunning says. "It seemed, especially in contrast with Hillary Clinton, that this was one of the least prepared candidates in my lifetime, but also the most confident candidate. It seemed like the most public example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, or something that looked like the Dunning-Kruger effect, that I’d ever seen." (He also calls the election's all-around surprise results "a collective Dunning-Kruger event".)

The added complication to Trump's unawareness of his incompetence is that he's always been rich enough to walk away from his failures without suffering real consequences, much less learning from them. Unfortunately for both him and everyone else, that's harder to do with the US presidency.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:30 AM on January 14, 2017 [97 favorites]


Trump getting peed on will be beyond the pale for a lot of the same people.

He'll claim that it's not him, it's digitally altered, it's Hollywood CGI stuff, the CIA made it to take him down, etc.

Where are you people getting your optimism that Republicans care one iota about any of this shit?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:31 AM on January 14, 2017 [98 favorites]


Last year, just a block from here, some taxi drivers ambushed an Uber driver. I still shudder when I walk past that spot. Extreme cowardice... Anyhow I thought bitterly that at this point, it would take the fundamental collapse of industrial civilisation to prevent the inevitability of the driverless car taking all of their jobs. I would say so with more certainty, but Trump.

The whole incident reminded me of how stupid people can get when they think someone's taking their job. And if they do that to other people, what do you think they're going to do to a driverless car? I know what Donald would do to quell their anger. He'd guarantee their jobs by putting them in the driverless cars. He'd give them fake jobs, pretending to drive them.

How do I know this? Of the few boasts of his that doesn't ring hollow, it is true he had a successful TV show. On this TV show, he gave people fake jobs. I don't think he ever stopped. He just gave his son-in-law a fake job.

As an aside, how fucked in the head is it that he's paying his son for his advice? In my experience close families share advice whether it's asked for or not. And this isn't 'a penny for your thoughts, kid', it's a full time fake job in the white house!

This all makes sense when you reflect that Donald doesn't see any difference between a real job and a fake job. He can't even tell the difference between real news and fake news. He thinks being president is exactly the same as being one of those fake drivers. Because it is becoming glaringly obvious that he expects the white house to drive itself.
posted by adept256 at 6:33 AM on January 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


maybe. But I think a lot of prudish people will be waaaaaay turned off. True believers? Yeah sure they will find a way to get on board. But that's not the bulk of them.
posted by ian1977 at 6:34 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates: "Where are you people getting your optimism that Republicans care one iota about any of this shit?"

Indeed, as if "water sports" were somehow a wholly lefty pursuit.
posted by chavenet at 6:35 AM on January 14, 2017


He just gave his son-in-law a fake job.

By most accounts Kushner was central to winning an election that nobody thought could be won; he was in charge of a lot of the Facebook marketing and microtargetting. He's someone close and trusted, I can see exactly why Donald wants him on staff.
posted by jaduncan at 6:36 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Thanks for that link, Doktor Zed. I have been saying for months that Trump is the walking embodiment of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, and now I know that Dunning himself agrees.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:41 AM on January 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


NPR Website Goes Down At Office Of Government Ethics Amid Political Storm
the site failure came as a result of the usually sleepy office's website receiving 1 million visitors in just the last three days.

Normally, it gets about 300,000 — in an entire year.
The attacks on the OGE by Republicans is one of those side stories that's really important but isn't getting a whole lot of traction because there is so much going on right now. Another Republican dirty tricks tip: when your leader is attacked on his ethics, attack the ethics of the accuser even if it is the Office of Ethics.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:44 AM on January 14, 2017 [72 favorites]


It's not that the Republicans control everything - these things happen sometimes in democracies, no matter what the system - but that they do so despite losing the popular vote in the general election.

I don't know any other democratic country where on a single national vote for a single outcome, the loser of the popular vote gets to win. Parliamentary elections, sure, but that's multiple votes for multiple outcomes.

This is the fault line.
posted by Devonian at 6:45 AM on January 14, 2017 [52 favorites]


I know congress needs to want to impeach, but is there a process for removing a president who has committed treason?

Impeachment is the process for that:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
posted by thelonius at 6:46 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


I just want to back up to the, almost certain, repeal of the ACA and coverage of pre-existing conditions. Like Ghidorah commented in the previous thread, I didn't / don't have plans to return to the USA. But before the ACA came into existence it would have equated to fairly certain significant physical disability and a slow form of medicated suicide. The ACA meant that at least I'd have a chance at coverage for my chronic condition (AS with complications) including the ~$30-50k annual medications costs (not even looking at all the procedures and specialists) if circumstances required I move back.

It looks likely that that's gone.
posted by michswiss at 6:46 AM on January 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


Every country in Europe and the EU itself are pushing the alarm buttons. Here in Denmark, this includes outing politicians and pundits as Putin Quislings, even if they are necessary government allies. People are really, really scared.
posted by mumimor (previous thread)

Here in Italy actually no-one seems to be registering the enormity of what's going on. General consensus seems to be oh, looks like Trump's not going to last long, but none of the ominous failure of the political process has really made an impression in general media and casual discourse.

(Incidentally: the fact that Italy's top retail bank, Intesa, was the main advisor in that dossiered Rosneft sale to the Swiss and Qataris, hasn't got much media traction here, but there are those who note how it was specifically Qatar not following through with taking a stake in MPS in early January that caused it to become the main quake in the current Italian bank crisis (previously) that many see as foreshadowing the next great systemic shock to the EU...)
posted by progosk at 6:47 AM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


I'm a bit dense, so please walk me through this. Why would Republicans want to impeach Donald Trump, thus enraging his supporters that they rely on? Right now the Republicans are watching the Democrats attack each other over the purity of their ideals; with a weakened opposition party and control at all levels of state and federal government, why on earth would they do anything to fuck up the amazing thing they have going?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:50 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Mod note: One deleted. Please don't get into hopes and wishes for the deaths and/or pain of other people, and generally folks, while we're at it, let's avoid super grimdark imaginings, the super dark gallows humor stuff, the "we're all DOOOMED," stuff etc., which while for some people is just a way to vent and doesn't mean that much, can be pretty awful for a lot of others who may want to be able to read the thread to keep up with news, but don't want to be triggered or sent further into spiralling depression. We can manage to discuss the news without harming each other in the process, so let's do that, please. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:50 AM on January 14, 2017 [124 favorites]


At what point does conspiracy in treason become treason? Is there even a dividing line? It might help arouse the slumbering sense of patriotism and national responsibility in some people's hearts if they start to suspect that, even if they pull off the trick of keeping Trump's arse from the fire this time around, the crime of the century will come to trial at some point in the future and they'll be up there in the dock with him.

Then they'll have to decide what they believe - that this will never happen, because they'll never lose power, or that it might, and they might cop it. Fear, uncertainty and doubt are pretty good tools for calling people to righteousness.
posted by Devonian at 6:53 AM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Why would Republicans want to impeach Donald Trump...?

They will only do it if there is a groundswell of popular outrage that threatens their ability to retain power in Congress.
posted by thelonius at 6:56 AM on January 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


At what point does conspiracy in treason become treason? Is there even a dividing line? It might help arouse the slumbering sense of patriotism and national responsibility in some people's hearts if they start to suspect that, even if they pull off the trick of keeping Trump's arse from the fire this time around, the crime of the century will come to trial at some point in the future and they'll be up there in the dock with him.

Conspiracy to commit treason is treason and it's one of the few crimes actually defined in the constitution.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
So you would need witnesses to an overt act.

Right now we have circumstantial evidence to alleged treason.
posted by Talez at 7:01 AM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


If there is undeniable evidence of treason, how can they ignore it?

Define "undeniable." Trump will claim that it's been doctored. Fake news. A grand conspiracy by the intelligence community to remove an elected President from office. If Republicans help to impeach, then they are now part of the conspiracy, and the "throw the bums out" voters will turn on them. Trump tried to drain the swamp, and the powers that be were just too powerful.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:01 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Look, I know it'sounds a lot to ask, but new Yorkers and californians - your going to all have to move to Mississippi, Alabama, Wyoming, and Kansas (and anywhere else possible) en masse in three years... but, if you can do it collectively and stomach it for just one year - oh the political redirection you can make!
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:01 AM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Look, I know it'sounds a lot to ask, but new Yorkers and californians - your going to all have to move to Mississippi, Alabama, Wyoming, and Kansas (and anywhere else possible) en masse in three years... but, if you can do it collectively and stomach it for just one year - oh the political redirection you can make!

If we did that I can guarantee you that the electoral votes would be chosen by the statehouse that election.
posted by Talez at 7:02 AM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Until recently, I've always feared the rise of a leader who could stand at a podium and articulate a coldly calculated, point-by-point agenda designed to fuck shit up. That's what I once thought would be a sign of dangerous times. I guess it still could be.

But never did I imagine word-salad would send a real chill down my spine. Cartoonish, rambling incoherence was how other countries were talked into submission.

That press conference, together with the barrage of confirmation hearings and non-stop misinformation . . . how do you gain ground against it all? One horrible thing would hurt them. Fifty, they get a pass because nobody can focus on anything long enough to make it stick.

And doesn't the whole "used foundation money to buy portrait" seem almost quaint? Like anybody who would even consider voting for Trump would give a shit.

See? Now they've made me a rambling fool. That's how they get you.
posted by Caxton1476 at 7:03 AM on January 14, 2017 [53 favorites]


What happens next?

For those in the Federal government, the same thing that's been going on since he was elected: how will we be downsized, will a hiring freeze be put into effect, and how do we continue to serve the people?

Our office is already seeing the effects of a potential freeze so hm.
posted by datawrangler at 7:03 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Another example of a "side story" that is bugging the shit out of me

The Oregonian: Republicans no longer defensive about 'fake news,' redefine it to their advantage: News analysis
During Senate confirmation hearings Thursday, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren asked retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson if he could guarantee that, under his watch, Housing and Urban Development funds "will not end up in the president-elect's pockets."

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown -- like Warren, a Democrat -- pointed out that President-elect Donald Trump holds an interest in "at least one subsidized housing project."

Sen. Thom Tillis had had enough. The North Carolina Republican suggested such questioning of Trump's HUD-secretary nominee was inappropriate and would cause a "fake-news cycle."
This isn't new, of course, for a few weeks now we have been seeing that Republicans defended Breitbart and FOX by calling any media outlet they didn't like as fake news. What struck me about Tillis' remark is that he used the term so widely as to preemptively label any information coming out about Trump's possible conflict of interest as fake.
Republicans are increasingly taking the "fake-news" term and turning it to their own purposes.

For them, it no longer refers to dubious conservative news outlets but instead to any news report that questions Republican orthodoxy or criticizes Trump.
One thing that this election has done for me is solidify my dislike and distrust of the Republican leadership. I knew that there were a lot of bad apples but I used to think that being a Republican didn't necessarily mean they were terrible people-- it just meant I did not agree with their approach toward government. This election clearly shows I was wrong. The Republicans running this country are terrible people that will use any trick, do anything to keep power for themselves so they can destroy Government for the People and make it Government for the 1%. Taking medical coverage away from millions of Americans just so they can prove that "Government does not work," is staggeringly evil.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:09 AM on January 14, 2017 [138 favorites]


Two witnesses.

This novel's a real page turner, isn't it?
posted by Devonian at 7:10 AM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


I have spent all morning wondering whether there is some way we could bait the Donald into using the phrase "yellow journalism" because, well, piss jokes.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:10 AM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


I don't know any other democratic country where on a single national vote for a single outcome, the loser of the popular vote gets to win. Parliamentary elections, sure, but that's multiple votes for multiple outcomes.

Why would you say parliamentary elections are any different? Not trying to argue, I've just sat here for a bit and can't figure it out - the fundamental issue seems the same: where representation is scaled to land areas rather than populace?

I've lived in both Malaysia and Australia and it's not unheard of for the winner of the election to sometimes lose the popular vote.

In 1998 John Howard won 80-67 to form government but lost the popular vote 49% to 51%

In 2013 Najib won 133-89 to form government but lost the popular vote 47% to 51%
posted by xdvesper at 7:10 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Going after John Lewis?

What
posted by Kitteh at 7:13 AM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Trump stumbled over the truth on free trade, the issue which I believe swung the rust belt states in his favor, though not all would agree, nor do I care to debate it, but aside from renegotiating trade deals, and giving American workers a fighting chance, Trump is going to govern as a statist. He'll toss bones to evangelicals, but his primary focus will be undoing as many restraints on corporate excess as he can get away with.
posted by Beholder at 7:14 AM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Fear not, there is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
posted by davebush at 7:16 AM on January 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


If Putin's plan was to divide the Dems it would explain the worst of the Bernie Bros. It's one thing to say the ones who flipped from Bernie to Trumpo were "just" misogynists who hated HRC but that never really explained why such hateful people would have ever aligned themselves with the Dems or worse, a Socialist. I think the genuine haters were Trump supporters all along. That's not to say that they were all hand-picked double agents, but I can see the idea spreading amongst groups of assholes

As ever, the problem isn't the handful of theoretical plants or fifth columnists or however you want to explain away certain behavior. The problem is that there were enough people on the left who were eager to buy what they were selling.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:16 AM on January 14, 2017 [41 favorites]


I think parliamentary elections are different, because the leader of the parliament's not directly elected, and their party will often replace them. Off the top of my head, about half the time in the UK, the prime minister changes without an election.
posted by ambrosen at 7:17 AM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Room 641-A, if you're going to make inflammatory claims like that on MetaFilter, you need to provide some evidence that a substantial number of Bernie supporters voted for Trump. There were a lot of polls conducted during the campaign, some of the polls conducted after the conventions broke out at former Sanders supporters as a subgroup. To the best of my recollection, they showed that an overwhelming majority of them were voting for Clinton, which matches my experience. And, no, couple anonymous commenters on the internet claiming to have a friend who supported Sanders and switched to Trump doesn't count as evidence.

Without that, your claim sounds like an extension of David Brock's efforts to drive progressives Democrats out of the Party. I can imagine some them getting discouraged by all the harassment we faced during the campaign and giving up on the Democratic Party – that was idea, after all – but I can't imagine a single progressive Democrat who supported Sanders voting for Trump.
posted by nangar at 7:18 AM on January 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


That's not statism, Beholder. That's crony capitalism. From a more principaled President, you could call it laissez-faire capitalism. From Trump, it's just oligarchy.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:19 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump
INTELLIGENCE INSIDERS NOW CLAIM THE TRUMP DOSSIER IS "A COMPLETE FRAUD!" @OANN


Today I learned that "One America News Network" is more reliable than all non-FSB intelligence agencies.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:20 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Recently we had a FPP on the US Transgender Survey. Our community already face extremely high rates of attempted/completed suicide; endemic poverty, unemployment, and instability; extraordinary levels of harassment and discrimination; and the list never really stops.

Here's something I'd really like you to think about. On page 48 of the full report, there is a graph of years since people transitioned. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of respondents transitioned in the last 6 years. Thirteen percent (13%) transitioned 6-9 years ago, while 18% transitioned 10+ years ago.

Basically, the vast majority of people who responded to the survey came out in the Obama Administration, while less than 1-in-5 transitioned during the Bush Administration. This survey suggests that most trans people who are out, came out once an Administration would go to bat for us. How many of us won't feel safe to truly be ourselves because of this disaster?

Please read this article (Obama Opened a Window: We're Terrified [that man] will shut it). Little kids have their identities recognized now in a way I could only dream of as a child. I had hoped they would never know a President who held them in such contempt.

I knew what I was getting into when I came out, and the start of the Obama administration was really a breath of fresh air. Things really seemed to be improving. Now, though...

I am begging you: Please, please, please stand up for your trans friends and relatives. We are few, but willful. Please stand with us. Please don't let them kill more of us. We just want to live our lives.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 7:20 AM on January 14, 2017 [186 favorites]


If Putin's plan was to divide the Dems it would explain the worst of the Bernie Bros. It's one thing to say the ones who flipped from Bernie to Trumpo were "just" misogynists who hated HRC but that never really explained why such hateful people would have ever aligned themselves with the Dems or worse, a Socialist. I think the genuine haters were Trump supporters all along. That's not to say that they were all hand-picked double agents, but I can see the idea spreading amongst groups of assholes

Left-wing misogyny is widespread and has been as long as there's been a left, so much so that there's even a word for it: "brocialism". Lefty dudes being misogynist douches doesn't require conspiracies or foreign collaborators- there's plenty of them out there already.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:20 AM on January 14, 2017 [40 favorites]


In Parliamentary elections you get to vote for a local representative in the national parliament, and those representatives get to choose who leads the country - as you say (and as I said), this can lead to the majority of voters voting for a party but that party not getting a majority of seats - or indeed being in government at all.

But you don't vote for a national leader directly. Even if you vote for the winning party, it's possible (although unlikely) that the leader at the time of voting isn't the person who becomes prime minister; they can certainly be replaced by someone else, someone potentially not even on the ballot during the general election, during the course of the parliament, without triggering new elections.

In the US, there's a single national vote for a single outcome. That's the difference. I don't know of any other country with a single national vote for a single outcome where the minority can win. (I am, however, ignorant of most countrys' democratic processes, so there's that...)
posted by Devonian at 7:21 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


If a small subset Bernie supporters did anything harmful on November 8, it was to just stay home. They did not vote for Trump on any more than an anecdotal level.

I am not a huge fan of the Bernie wing of the party, but come on.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:22 AM on January 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


Here's my rebuttal to folks who think that the Republicans in the House and Senate are all of a sudden going to take a principled stand and move to oust Trump: John McCain, the guy who ACTUALLY SENT THE INTELLIGENCE DOSSIER TO THE FBI refused to campaign against Trump during the election and, whenever asked, claimed that he supported "the Republican nominee for President."
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:22 AM on January 14, 2017 [74 favorites]


The media has to stop feeding the beast. John Garfield's On the Media has a great interview with Nathan Robinson from Current Affairs on this that is super smart. Do we really need journalists to chase down whether Trump's claim about the number of dresses available in D.C. is a lie or not? NO - we need to know about lies that affect people's lies and hammer on those. I wish I could get the entire news corp to listen to this.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:26 AM on January 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


As to the "principled Republicans" myth, I'll just quote from this article:

"The reason Trump doesn’t need to release his tax returns, or resolve the financial conflicts of interest inherent in his ownership of the Trump Organization, or explain his thinking about Russia clearly is that Republicans haven’t made him.

Congressional Republicans know how to play hardball if they want to.

* It would have been trivially easy for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to refuse to schedule confirmation hearings with Rex Tillerson until its members got to have a chat with the president-elect about Russia.
* House Government Affairs Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz has been fanatical about Hillary Clinton email investigations but simply chooses not to hold hearings on Trump’s conflicts of interest.
* Congress could amend the statute governing executive branch conflicts of interest to extend coverage to the president.

Nothing along these lines has happened for two reasons. First, congressional Republicans seem to have uniformly reached the conclusion that the political costs of fighting with Trump exceed the political risk that they will end up being dragged down by his corruption when scandal erupts. Second, congressional Republicans seem to have universally reached the moral judgment that preventing the wholesale corruption of the federal government isn’t particularly important in the grand scheme of things. "
posted by bitmage at 7:26 AM on January 14, 2017 [110 favorites]


Today on Facebook, I saw someone on Facebook defending Russia, saying that we were being "gaslighted." A friend of mine (possessed of saintly patience) asked him to explain what he meant by "gaslighting." He said it meant believing whatever the government authorities tell you. So there's another useful term that has been stolen by the Alt Right and mangled beyond usefulness in public discourse.
posted by BrashTech at 7:27 AM on January 14, 2017 [40 favorites]


Anyway, the only way the left is going to do anything useful is to lower the bar for inclusion into the activist and governing spaces. If you can show up and wave a sign and write a letter and cast a vote, you're on my side enough for me to stand beside you and do the work together.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:28 AM on January 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


In Chicago we have a porta-potty company called Oui-Oui Enterprises. Just sayin'.
posted by lagomorphius at 7:29 AM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


They will only do it if there is a groundswell of popular outrage that threatens their ability to retain power in Congress.

They may be completely fucked once there's another election, but there's a chance that means there just won't be more elections. That's what who double down will be counting on.
posted by Artw at 7:29 AM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


I don't know any other democratic country where on a single national vote for a single outcome, the loser of the popular vote gets to win.

This is what I woke up thinking this morning. It isn't just that Hillary lost by a tiny, tiny fraction of the votes in the wrong places, it is that we have gone from hope in a progressive future and a Government that protects us and helps us in need, to a very nasty 180 degree turn into bleakness and despair. Things we will lose: ACA, MediCare, MediCaid, Social Security, Battle against Global Warming, Voting Rights, LGBTQ Rights, Women's Reproductive Rights, Big Business Regulations, Minimum wage, NATO, UN, Public Education. Things we will gain: freedom to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. (Which we have always had.) It's absurd. It's beyond belief. Lots of Americans are going to be finding out in the next 4 years how much their government has done for them in the past and they just took it for granted.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:30 AM on January 14, 2017 [110 favorites]


Things we will gain: freedom to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. (Which we have always had.)

Economic mobility depends on a robust social safety net and all of those things that, historically, actually created economic mobility. The Republicans are adamantly opposed to those things, because they are opposed to economic mobility.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:33 AM on January 14, 2017 [29 favorites]


"let's avoid super grimdark imaginings"

I posted a meta a couple of weeks ago that asked if the site planned to make any changes in policy or moderation with the new administration, this is an example of one of the things I feared might happen.

Taz, I understand your desire to protect folks that may be already struggling, I know you have people's best interest in mind and I respect that, but I'm concerned that asking us to avoid and not mention our deepest fears and speculations allows some very possible realities to never be discussed when, perhaps, they SHOULD be voiced and talked about.

Honestly, ALL of my "imaginings" are pretty "grimdark" right now...since I can't voice them here, I guess it's back to that dark, cold basement corner for me.
posted by HuronBob at 7:35 AM on January 14, 2017 [96 favorites]


Republican senator.

@BenSasse Retweeted Donald J. Trump
John Lewis and his "talk" have changed the world. [image]
posted by chris24 at 7:35 AM on January 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


Urban Dictionary Word of the Day: Banana Republican
posted by fuse theorem at 7:38 AM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


When Comey started addressing the group, he told them he was “tone deaf to politics.

This is like racists who declare they don't see color. Comey has his head so far up his ass that, like racists ignoring race, his pretending to ignore the political ramifications of his actions is quite political.
posted by JackFlash at 7:39 AM on January 14, 2017 [42 favorites]


Why would Republicans want to impeach Donald Trump...?

Republicans will want to stay in power in four years. So here are their choices:

1. Keep Trump. He is already planning his next run. He has proven himself electable and has overcome huge scandals already.
2. Impeach Trump and run Pence. Pence is not a nationally appealing candidate, he is too extreme in his Christian views and too bland. Very doubtful he could get elected.
3. Impeach Trump and run someone else. That would be a better option than Pence but if Trump is impeached that would be such a blow to the idea of a Republican Presidency it is pretty much guaranteeing a Democrat takes the WH.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:40 AM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


If a small subset Bernie supporters did anything harmful on November 8

It wasn't November 8 that I care about. It was the relentless ongoing noise starting before the convention. I know people who, after months of being anti-Clinton, finally voted for her -- but that was after months of being anti-Clinton with all of their friends and family and generally creating a hostile environment for those of us who did like her and/or appreciated the stakes.

As for progressives leaving the party -- honestly, I got sick of putting in the emotional labor to rope in vascillating supporters months ago. We're going to be retrenching, and I don't think any of them understand just how defensive we'll be. Roe v Wade is dead. So are any appreciable limits to global warming. And the idealists* who leave are people who don't understand the stakes.

* I'm progressive. I wouldn't leave because I am pragmatic as all fuck.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 7:40 AM on January 14, 2017 [55 favorites]


Of course, Sasse yesterday tried to get Lewis to abandon his principles and attend the inauguration of a racist traitor, so...

@BenSasse
To John Lewis, one of my heroes:

Please come to the Inauguration. It isn't about a man. It is a celebration of peaceful transfer of power.
posted by chris24 at 7:40 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Focusing on this latest tweet from Trump is an example of what Nathan Robinson is talking about on On the Media. Now there will be news stories on John Lewis' district when the focus should be on the Russians and the GOP and what their policies will do to real people, the people who voted for him. This is NOT to say that John Lewis shouldn't be defended - he is an American hero - but Trump's tweets should not be the story.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:41 AM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Whether or not the dossier leads to any congressional action, the most important thing is that it is derailing his attempt to make himself more popular in the run-up to and early days of his presidency. If the conversation wasn't taken up with this or something equally scandalous, we'd be seeing a whole lot more of him "saving" a few hundred jobs by slashing corporate taxes or about how he's gonna Drain the Swamp somewhere as he appoints oligarchs. Instead, right now Trump = Corruption, Treason, Outrage (and Piss).

Fact is, compared to every other incoming president since indoor plumbing, Trump is despised and the system of democratic apartheid that allows him and the GOP to stay in power does not have popular support. Fascist demagogues are a lot more successful when they are actually popular. 20% of the country allowing him to do absolutely anything is hugely different than 50%, and it's crucial to keep that number as low as possible now, while the country is cementing its opinion. Because he will do anything. The fouler he and his associates smell to the average american early in their regime, the greater the chances become of building an effective resistance when shit gets realer.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:43 AM on January 14, 2017 [48 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump:
Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

@realDonaldTrump:
mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!


...So said the man who was sued by the Department of Justice for racial discrimination at his housing projects.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:44 AM on January 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


I'm trans and gay and have basically no hope. There is zero chance that things will improve for me and a very good chance they will get significantly worse. Send me a memail if you're an EU citizen, especially Scandinavian, and want to get married. I like cold weather and I know how to load the dishwasher properly.
posted by AFABulous at 7:45 AM on January 14, 2017 [30 favorites]


As an Atlanta resident who will be marching with Rep Lewis on Monday in the annual march in memory of Dr. King, these tweets are a pretty big deal here. He is insulting our congressman, the Civil Rights Movement, and our entire city and, obviously, being really fucking racist.
posted by hydropsyche at 7:45 AM on January 14, 2017 [99 favorites]


But what's the alternative, bluesky43? Should the world's press just ignore the John Lewis story as the President-elect attacks a civil rights hero and majority-black neighborhoods on MLK weekend? I agree it shouldn't be the only story, and there are a lot of balls to keep in the air at once, but this stuff is real too, not just a distraction.
posted by zachlipton at 7:45 AM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Re: the treason angle:
...or in adhering to their Enemies...

Who gets to define Russia as an enemy? Trump has repeatedly indicated he wants friendly relations with Russia. If Russia is a friend of the United States, then there can be no treason.

Don't suggest that Russia can't be a friend because friends don't conduct espionage operations, not when the United States and Canada (for example) routinely conduct espionage operations against each other. You'd have a better chance of impeaching Obama for treason with respect to his actions with Cuba than you would with Trump and Russia.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 7:45 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Whether or not the dossier leads to any congressional action, the most important thing is that it is derailing his attempt to make himself more popular in the run-up to and early days of his presidency.

Yep. All this Putin stuff and assorted craziness is killing his already record low popularity. He lost 13 points with independents in the last month. His net favorability is not just the lowest ever, it's 44 points lower than any PEOTUS polled before.
posted by chris24 at 7:45 AM on January 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


I have spent all morning wondering whether there is some way we could bait the Donald into using the phrase "yellow journalism"

Someone would have to put it on the teleprompter, because sincerely I don't believe he knows the term. He probably doesn't know the name William Randolph Hearst (to identify him, at least). Or P.T. Barnum. Or McCarthy.
posted by datawrangler at 7:45 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


there wouldn't be one party controlling both houses and the White House at the same time

There were no checks and balances against party organization of any kind in the design. They didn't expect parties at all and as Washington argued, weren't all convinced the system could survive the introduction of parties. The process by design was supposed to be academic and deliberative, with all parties assumed to be making their best faith efforts to think through problems and policy solutions without regard for any loyalties outside personal loyalty to the Republic and the public interest. There are literally no checks and balances designed to account for party competition because many in the revolutionary elite, like Washington, expressly didn't expect or want permanent parties to form at all.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:46 AM on January 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


Why would Republicans want to impeach Donald Trump, thus enraging his supporters that they rely on?

Right now, you're not hearing from a single senator who says he's willing to impeach Trump. There's not a critical mass, so no one is mentioning anything. Even if there exist senators who want to, they're not risking their political capital by saying they want to - what if they need it for something later?

GOP senators aren't the only ones susceptible to this disease. In confirmation hearings for Mattis, Elizabeth Warren spoke glowingly and said "we're counting on you". But she still voted against the waiver - the measurable thing everyone can check quickly to test her purity. She keeps her political capital as the outsider who fights every battle; rather than vote for someone who could be an actual check on the Trump administration.

I don't know how to fix this problem, except to be more generous to our representatives on a wide scale, and I don't know if that's possible right now.
posted by corb at 7:46 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Republican senator.

@BenSasse Retweeted Donald J. Trump
John Lewis and his "talk" have changed the world.


I wouldn't be too quick to praise Ben Sasse.

@BenSasse To John Lewis, one of my heroes: Please come to the Inauguration. It isn't about a man. It is a celebration of peaceful transfer of power.

The idea that this Nebraskan Senator would try to "whitesplain" to John Lewis on the pros and cons of protesting is pretty mindboggling.

Oh! Pipped to the post by Chris 24. Oh well I'll leave my comment.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:48 AM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


Trump voters have no idea who John Lewis is. They will look at him, see one of those "people from Chicago who are taking our hard-earned money" blah, blah, blah, racist-dogwhistle-cakes, and they'll side with Trump in their feud. I live in Iowa, and I'm frequently staggered by the ignorance about anything related to the civil rights movement that I encounter here, even among people who consider themselves educated progressives. Like, a bunch of my friends were very surprised to learn that a bunch of school districts in Virginia shut down the public schools in the '60s rather than integrate, because it sounded so crazy, plus they didn't think that Virginia was really the South South, the way Alabama and Mississippi are. People here aren't educated about that vitally important part of American history, because people here really believe that it has nothing to do with them.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:48 AM on January 14, 2017 [57 favorites]


Has any country in the modern era recovered from being run by fascists to a government made up of actual adults without a tremendous amount of violence being involved? Are there any examples that we can look at to gain insight into how we might get our country back from the people who have stolen it?

The last time the fascists rose up in such force (and here I'm referring not just to the situation in the US with the Republicans, but also in Europe with UKIP and Le Pen) the reasonable people of the world tried to be reasonable and tried to talk and tried to deal and the price for those actions numbers in the many millions of lives. We have a responsibility to everyone on Earth to try to resolve this faster and more decisively. I hope that doesn't mean violence, but frankly I'd rather fight the monsters now than wait until they kill a few million innocents and then end up fighting them anyway.
posted by IAmUnaware at 7:50 AM on January 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


Fascist demagogues are a lot more successful when they are actually popular.

I would add: when they are actually smart.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:51 AM on January 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


The only way Republicans will take action against the (present) POTUS-elect is if he steps on their rights. Anything that diminishes their power, prestige, and/or income is likely to get their attention. But for now, it will be quiet because abused people know that when you draw attention to yourself it's likely to be bad attention, and you don't want the verbal smack that goes with it. So elected officials: stay quiet, until things get desperate, or you decide that defending someone else is something you can't help but do. Ultimately, you'll have to love something more than yourself.
posted by datawrangler at 7:51 AM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Repealing the ACA is going to be a massive economic clusterfuck, and that could conceivably get the Republicans' attention. I don't think they give a flying fuck that it's going to kill people, but it's also going to be a disaster for insurance companies and the entire medical industry, and that may be an issue for them. Interestingly, though, the impetus for that is coming from the Republican establishment, not from Trump. They may find it advantageous to blame Trump anyway.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:54 AM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Has any country in the modern era recovered from being run by fascists to a government made up of actual adults without a tremendous amount of violence being involved?

Spain and Portugal.
posted by thelonius at 7:54 AM on January 14, 2017 [42 favorites]


Of course, Sasse yesterday tried to get Lewis to abandon his principles and attend the inauguration of a racist traitor, so...
The man broke ranks when he praised John Lewis. That wouldn't have been remarkable if he hadn't been standing with his party previously.
posted by billjings at 7:57 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Right now, you're not hearing from a single senator who says he's willing to impeach

I mean, at least wait til the 21st, give the guy a few inches of rope...
posted by sammyo at 7:57 AM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Philippe Reines played Trump in debate prep for Hillary Clinton. Politico has a deep dive on that process that's well worth reading, but this detail stands out (h/t Sopan Deb):
Hoping to fully become the character he had been cast to play, Reines briefly went off his meds (he declined to say which, or if he has since resumed them).
posted by zachlipton at 7:58 AM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Trump voters have no idea who John Lewis is. They will look at him, see one of those "people from Chicago who are taking our hard-earned money" blah, blah, blah,

This so much this. People, the era of decency is gone and my fear is that any focus on progressive principles is going to have to be sidelined by just trying to maintain a democracy. I am not typically a highly reactive person but things are happening so fast and the media is so willing to be sucked into the Trump tweet vortex of disinformation and distraction, I fear for the future of my country.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:01 AM on January 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


If someone would wake me up when this shitshow is over, that would be great!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:01 AM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


> Without that, your claim sounds like an extension of David Brock's efforts to drive progressives Democrats out of the Party. I can imagine some them getting discouraged by all the harassment we faced during the campaign and giving up on the Democratic Party – that was idea, after all – but I can't imagine a single progressive Democrat who supported Sanders voting for Trump.

I'm not sure if we just misunderstand each other, but that was my point, that there was -- at least in part -- a deliberate misinformation or disruption campaign designed to divide Democrats. Are you saying that after Bernie lost you never heard of (alleged) Bernie supporters who were (allegedly) going to vote for Trump and who would never vote for HRC? It certainly makes more sense to me that it was outsiders who harassed HRC supporters on Twitter, or left those awful voice mails for that delegate. It never made sense to me that a true supporter of Bernie (and by default, whichever D was nominated) would act that way.

I was a very vocal Bernie supporter here (and volunteer IRL.) Why would I want to run progressives out of the party?
posted by Room 641-A at 8:03 AM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Has any country in the modern era recovered from being run by fascists to a government made up of actual adults without a tremendous amount of violence being involved?

Spain and Portugal.


Apart from the whole Spanish Civil War thing.
posted by billiebee at 8:04 AM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


abused people know that when you draw attention to yourself it's likely to be bad attention, and you don't want the verbal smack that goes with it.

You know, this is a really interesting (and I think apt) analogy. When living with an abuser, you know you'll have to stand up on some things, but you know there will be a huge cost when you do. So you try to save your energy only for the important stuff. But every time something happens, you have to consider: is this the worst that will happen for a while? Is it worth standing up now and taking the lumps, or is there maybe going to be something worse coming?

With Trump, no one is ever sure what worse thing is coming.
posted by corb at 8:04 AM on January 14, 2017 [73 favorites]


Adjusted for inflation, what's a higher price, 19.5% of Rosneft or 60 guilders of beads and trinkets?

Seems to me Trump isn't that good a deal-maker, considering the price.
posted by mahorn at 8:05 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump voters have no idea who John Lewis is. They will look at him, see one of those "people from Chicago who are taking our hard-earned money" blah, blah, blah,

But again, maybe we don't need to care about winning over Trump voters. Maybe we need to deliver a one-two punch of depressing and embarrassing them so much they quiet down, lose energy, and stay home (Pee scandals!) and firing up and energizing and empowering the Democrats, especially disillusioned minority voters, who stayed home in the last election. So in that scenario, Democrats stepping up and passionately defending John Lewis, the hero of a civil rights movement, against Trump's attacks seems like a decent strategy to me.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:05 AM on January 14, 2017 [44 favorites]


Apart from the whole Spanish Civil War thing.

That's probably the fascism being recovering from, since that's how fascists came to power in Spain, so ease off the gas a little. Everyone is stressed out, no need to light matches.

Franco was in power in Spain until the 70s.

First rule of being snarky and pedantic is to double check so you don't... well, do this.
posted by absalom at 8:08 AM on January 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


Apart from the whole Spanish Civil War thing.

The Spanish Civil War ended with the fascists coming into power. When Franco died in the 1970s, the transition out of fascism was peaceful.
posted by tiger tiger at 8:10 AM on January 14, 2017 [36 favorites]


(The sequel to 'The Clothes Have No Emperor' is going to be amazing.)

Through the magic of Dunning-Kruger time travel, it already exists! It's called Idiocracy.
posted by Bringer Tom at 8:10 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Here in Italy actually no-one seems to be registering the enormity of what's going on. General consensus seems to be oh, looks like Trump's not going to last long, but none of the ominous failure of the political process has really made an impression in general media and casual discourse.

Because it's more par-for-the-course from America than new and different. Since 1968 America has only had three Presidents who have even glanced at the left side of its political spectrum, and a handful of seriously dangerous conservative figureheads.

Trump is dangerous but Trump is the symptom of the prion disease, not the disease itself. His primary danger is in being a rubber stamp for a movement, a distraction from power as much as a wielder of it. If Trump goes on TV on the 22nd and shrieks "IT'S ALL TRUE, I AM A RUSSIAN PUPPET, RED DAWN BEGINS IN SEVEN DAYS, THESE ARE THE BILLIONS I RECEIVED FROM PUTIN, PEE ON ME MOMMY I'M A BAD LITTLE BOY," all that will change is that President Pence will intone solemnly about Leading America Forward and Overcoming Our Mistakes and A Need For Unity and get a free pass for a while, while rubber-stamping the same toxic sludge coming from Congress and putting the same toxic ideology into positions of power that Trump has.

We are fucked, but America is periodically fucked. It's in our blood. We have regressive undercurrents of racism, of sexism, of fuck-you-got-mine-ism, of exceptionalism, of caste-ism, of no-law-but-God's-ism, and they've been there throughout our history and bubble up at intervals like a badly mounted piece of wallpaper. If you check your browser and portions of America aren't poisoning the environment, poisoning its citizens, pointing guns at some other nation, thumping Bibles, dehumanizing minorities and shrieking SOCIALIST! at anyone who wants to fix any of that, hit F5.

Trump's ascent is horrific, yes. But is he really THAT different from Dubya or, arguably, from Reagan? He is there to smile, to wave, and to tell the followers what they want to hear while the machine behind him pumps raw sewage everywhere. The rest of the world can be surprised, as we were, at the choice of figurehead but they no longer feel a need to act shocked at the direction.
posted by delfin at 8:11 AM on January 14, 2017 [81 favorites]


Hoping to fully become the character he had been cast to play, Reines briefly went off his meds

Stay on your meds, people. Drink good water. Nap. We need hydrated, well-rested people.

We live in unprecedented times. Things happen fast, so take care of yourself and be happy whenever possible. We're going to get through this.

Stay away from TweetFace, move away from the news you may have as "background" and tell the people you love that you love them. Or the people you like why you like them. (Not on TweetFace!) That's your "make it better" ask for today. So goodday.
posted by petebest at 8:11 AM on January 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


I completely agree Pretentiousilliterate - Lewis should be defended - but a strategy of outrage at Donald Trump followed by a focus on his stupid lies will just distract from Russia and the ACA. Trump voters and the GOP don't care that he lies and insults people but they might care when a historical foe of the US - Russia - is found to have messed around in the election. And they might care when TrumpCare (or RyanCare) doesn't make health insurance cheaper or better and they can no longer get covered for pre-existing conditions except via a very expensive high risk insurance pool (see Ryan's "town hall" yesterday). Focusing on Lewis is exactly what Trump wants. The media has to learn not to give Trump what he wants even if that means drops in ratings.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:12 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm also not sure why it's inflammatory to suggest that the worst of the Bernie Bros weren't really Bernie supporters or Democrats.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:12 AM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


His primary danger is in being a rubber stamp for a movement, a distraction from power as much as a wielder of it

Trump's ascent is horrific, yes. But is he really THAT different from Dubya or, arguably, from Reagan? He is there to smile, to wave, and to tell the followers what they want to hear while the machine behind him pumps raw sewage everywhere.


2017 will have a higher probability of billions of people dying in a nuclear war than any year since 1983 and possibly any year since ever.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:13 AM on January 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


Repealing the ACA is going to be a massive economic clusterfuck, and that could conceivably get the Republicans' attention.

Nope, it'll be Obama's fault, and further proof that we need to destroy every aspect of the government that restrains the 1% from burning and looting the world.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:14 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump's ascent is horrific, yes. But is he really THAT different from Dubya or, arguably, from Reagan

Oh yes, Trump is much worse. I lived through both of those decades. I would like to enumerate why this is so but fundamentally Trump is a demagogue, and neither Reagan nor Bush were. I did not agree philosophically or ideologically with either Reagan or Bush but neither came close to the shitstorm that is Trump.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:16 AM on January 14, 2017 [85 favorites]


Trump's ascent is horrific, yes. But is he really THAT different from Dubya or, arguably, from Reagan?

Yes sweet Jesus the answer is yes and I have seen friends literally die in the war Bush started. Yes this is so much goddamn worse I don't even have words for how fucked we may be.
posted by corb at 8:16 AM on January 14, 2017 [156 favorites]


Trump's ascent is horrific, yes. But is he really THAT different from Dubya or, arguably, from Reagan?

Yes. Next question.

(You know what I find singularly unhelpful in trying to mobilize a critical mass of people who've never before engaged in activism and civil disobedience but now find they're considering it? Being told that this all just normal and the system working as intended, nothing different to see here, move along sheeple.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:18 AM on January 14, 2017 [73 favorites]


Nope, it'll be Obama's fault

Only if we let it. They'll try, and their base will believe it. But again, their base isn't enough. Even with Comey and Russia and misogyny and racism, he lost by 2.9 million votes. We need to fight to win the PR war among non-Trumpsters, which is a bigger slice of America.
posted by chris24 at 8:18 AM on January 14, 2017 [28 favorites]


Adjusted for inflation, what's a higher price, 19.5% of Rosneft or 60 guilders of beads and trinkets?


The Steele memo said that the deal was for the brokerage of the Rosneft stake, so the actual cash will be some fraction of the deal price - that's how it works, and why so many big deals that make no business sense go through, everyone in the chain has agreed to give each other a slice of the pie. (see also: where are the yachts of our clients?).

So the actual figure isn't known. Ditto what kickbacks and sweetheart deals are in the Qatari ten billion dollar infrastructure investment - that's going to go through who knows how many layers of indirection before the bank accounts of the unrighteous receive their final benediction.

I can't do the sums across two millennia, so can't say what the ROI on this is compared to forty pieces of silver.
posted by Devonian at 8:19 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


With Trump, no one is ever sure what worse thing is coming.

True. For what it's worth, his playbook seems to be most of the Art of War, and his moral philosophy, such as it is, is prosperity gospel.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:21 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


All the punditry and speculation is sort of a reminder of the stuff prior to the elections, most if not all of it, dead wrong.
We do know what the GOP and Trump want domestically. We now see the health program getting defunded. We know Trump against public unions in DC. We know the GOP will put one and possibly two people on the Supreme Court. We suspect education, V.A. hospitals, etc. will go partially private rather than govt run programs.
We do not know for sure what will happen in foreign affairs. We do know he is friendly (!) toward Russia and though he badmouths China and our companies there, he and his daughter own a lot there and in Russia, but we will not know in full because he will still not show in tax returns. The Am embassy will be moved to Jerusalem. The Arab nations will protest. No two state solution forthcoming.
There will be many demonstations, protests, but we have already seen the Dems doing questionable things:
1. Booker, an up and coming possible important guy votes with the GOP to make sure expensive drugs must be bought here.
2. Ellison, a Muslim and a nice guy, is offsetting to many Americans because our nation is anti Muslim.
3. Bernie hinting he might run again is not exactly a spring chicken and not really a socialist and not really a hot item for the popular vote.
We do not see:
1. anything being done about the Panama Papers, which contains the name "Trump" in 4 thousand (40000) accounts; or the name "Clinton," for big donors to her charity.
2. there is nothing that will be done to close the growing gap in wealth that has been destroying the middle class, and which will become worse with more automation and robotics.
the cable news MSNBC now hires a woman from Fox (Gretta), and seems to downgrade Joy; and Williams, a spokesman for Truth, tells us Trump often tells lies. Rachel will continue to smirk and be histrionic.
And, finally, good news: I will continue to babble here.
posted by Postroad at 8:21 AM on January 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


Where are you people getting your optimism that Republicans care one iota about any of this shit?"

I just want to come back to this and remind people of David Vitter, in Louisiana? With the prostitutes-and-diaper fetish? Who was re-elected after all that. Republicans will not give one good goddamn about any "weird" kink or fetish, even if performed in a way that, you know, compromised national security, as long as a Republican did it and promises to ban abortion and "stop killing all those poor babies." There is no sex scandal or national treason great enough to outweight the ignorant and rabid focus on abortion for the right-wingers.
posted by TwoStride at 8:21 AM on January 14, 2017 [54 favorites]


Only if we let it. They'll try, and their base will believe it. But again, their base isn't enough. Even with Comey and Russia and misogyny and racism, he lost by 2.9 million votes. We need to fight to win the PR war among non-Trumpsters, which is a bigger slice of America.

They've gerrymandered the US to the point where it is enough, and that's only going to get worse with the GOP in charge of the entire US government. They're also going to enact even more heinous voting restrictions to make it even worse. The Republicans are committed, long-term, to stealing the government and cheating in every election. I don't know how to overcome that, but pretending that it's otherwise- that the GOP is literally anything at this point other than a criminal conspiracy to steal the United States government- is the opposite of helpful.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:23 AM on January 14, 2017 [42 favorites]


(You know what I find singularly unhelpful in trying to mobilize a critical mass of people who've never before engaged in activism and civil disobedience but now find they're considering it? Being told that this all just normal and the system working as intended, nothing different to see here, move along sheeple.)

Which is absolutely not at all what I said. Regressive troglodytes controlling the United States of America is 120% NOT NORMAL and 120% NOT WORKING AS INTENDED. It is horrifying and disturbing and even more so that Americans have smiled and nodded and acted like nothing was wrong through most of my life. (I was born during Nixon's first term.)

We are about fifty years overdue for people waking up and screaming, no, this is NOT normal and this is NOT acceptable. But it is not a new phenomenon. What is different about Trump is the acuteness of the disorder, but removing Trump himself solves very little when they still control every other branch of government.
posted by delfin at 8:24 AM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


2. Ellison, a Muslim and a nice guy, is offsetting to many Americans because our nation is anti Muslim.

A failure to participate in religious bigotry does not belong on a list of Democrats doing questionable things.
posted by zachlipton at 8:24 AM on January 14, 2017 [40 favorites]


but pretending that it's otherwise- that the GOP is literally anything at this point other than a criminal conspiracy to steal the United States government- is the opposite of helpful.

Not sure how saying we need to fight to not let Republicans define the coming chaos as Obama's fault is pretending the Republicans aren't awful.
posted by chris24 at 8:26 AM on January 14, 2017


Trump's ascent is horrific, yes. But is he really THAT different from Dubya or, arguably, from Reagan?

A thousand times: yes.

Trump actually is all of the left-wing fever-dream fantasies of the worst possible imagined things Bush or Reagan or Romney could have been.
posted by tocts at 8:27 AM on January 14, 2017 [28 favorites]


With Trump, no one is ever sure what worse thing is coming.

True. For what it's worth, his playbook seems to be most of the Art of War, and his moral philosophy, such as it is, is prosperity gospel.

Yes, this. The closest I've lived through that echos any of this is Richard Nixon - I came home from high school every day and watched the Watergate hearings. But this is a totally different era where the divisions are so wide in the country and our elected officials are so willing to exploit those divisions and attack in ways that defy common decency. The main difference I see is that the lack of decency doesn't seem to matter to people anymore - this seems like a breakdown in society in a way that is unlike anything I have seen. Honestly, in the past I would look to the media as an arbiter of what's true but that is no longer possible.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:28 AM on January 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


GOP senators aren't the only ones susceptible to this disease. In confirmation hearings for Mattis, Elizabeth Warren spoke glowingly and said "we're counting on you". But she still voted against the waiver - the measurable thing everyone can check quickly to test her purity. She keeps her political capital as the outsider who fights every battle; rather than vote for someone who could be an actual check on the Trump administration.

How do you keep coming up with this both-sides bullshit? Warren did not "speak glowingly". She was very polite and professional but she wasn't glowing. She asked hard questions and demanded that "if you are confirmed" you keep your promises to stand up to Trump. By refusing to vote for the waiver, she was taking a principled stand for civilian oversight of the military.

I know you have a heart-on for Mattis, but your insistence that somehow Warren opposing Mattis is equivalent to Republicans who won't stand up to Trump is asinine.
posted by JackFlash at 8:29 AM on January 14, 2017 [35 favorites]


But is he really THAT different from Dubya or, arguably, from Reagan?

Yes.

But also he (and we) live in a mediated environment neither of them did. Under early Reagan we had between four and twenty TV channels, and no 24-hour news cycle. Under Dubz we still had an incipient Napster and IE 6.0. (No, nobody used it, but that's where we were.)

President Turdfungus arrives afloat on a TWO hour news cycle, a fractally-infinite set of "channels", both pro-and-con as well as woo. Live streaming available for anyone on Earth at anytime (see system requirements, ask that nerd in your group who does this stuff how it works).

It's really that different, but it's not really that predictable. We're rubber-banding a bit between the two.
posted by petebest at 8:30 AM on January 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


For those coming to the Women's March (see you there!), my graphic-designer partner and her hand-lettering collaborator made downloadable protest signs. [nsfw language]
posted by milquetoast at 8:31 AM on January 14, 2017 [45 favorites]


Here is the bullshit I got from my repeal-voting Rep today. Note that though she asks questions, this is not a poll so she just tells you what the answers are. I have included the links she gave with it. I'm about to email her back to point out that the Gallup poll she links overwhelmingly says "keep and fix" ACA not "repeal and replace."

The federal government’s approach to fixing our nation’s health insurance system – Obamacare – has failed. Prices have gone up and choices have gone down. If this poorly-designed law is kept in place, things will only get worse and more families will face difficult situations.

Dear Friend,

Below are four questions I want to ask about your health insurance:

1. Are you paying more for your health insurance today than before Obamacare?

2. Do you know someone, including yourself, who lost your health insurance coverage since Obamacare was implemented?

3. Have you have found the bureaucracy, rules and restrictions of health insurance more difficult?

4. Do you remember President Obama and Speaker Pelosi promising that you could keep your doctor and coverage, costs would go down, and that health insurance would be simpler under Obamacare?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. I hear from constituents every day who have lost their insurance plans and seen their costs go up. According to Gallup, eight out of ten Americans want to significantly change the law or replace it altogether.

Fortunately, we have a plan.

The new Congress and Administration are going to repeal this harmful law and transition to a better insurance system that is personal and centers around you – the patient. We have already started working on this with the passage of yesterday's budget vote, and I will keep you informed as we unveil our legislation for a 21st century health insurance system this year.


Sincerely,



Kay Granger

posted by emjaybee at 8:34 AM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


> "Fortunately, we have a plan."

That's what the Cylons kept telling us. They were lying, too.
posted by kyrademon at 8:41 AM on January 14, 2017 [58 favorites]


Fortunately, we have a plan.

5. Did you watch Battlestar Galactica? No? Good.
posted by Artw at 8:41 AM on January 14, 2017 [29 favorites]


I disagree with the folks who say that the John Lewis fracas is a distraction from the Russia issue.

It's just the opposite: John Lewis is at the center of the Russia issue. That is the reason he said that Trump was not legitimately elected.

Stick up for Lewis not just because of who he is, but also because of why he said what he said.
posted by billjings at 8:41 AM on January 14, 2017 [77 favorites]


@ZeddRebel
Needed a week to denounce David Duke's support, needed mere hours to denounce John Lewis's opposition. That sums Trump up perfectly.
posted by chris24 at 8:43 AM on January 14, 2017 [91 favorites]


Billjings - I completely agree! Lewis should be defended. But to focus on Trump's attack of an American hero distracts from attention on what Rep. Lewis was focusing on. This is the two hour news cycle that was described above. Trump has no decency and his playbook is attack attack and attack to distract. This is Trump's strategy and it is brilliant in it's simplicity and terrifying in its effectiveness.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:45 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


When people actually do or say something that helps us, maybe piling on them isn't the best plan?
posted by thelonius at 8:46 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


About that principled Republican Senate opposition to Trump...

@bsfarrington
At @FloridaGOP annual meeting, @marcorubio says the effort to re-elect @realDonaldTrump begins now.
posted by chris24 at 8:46 AM on January 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


TheWrap (which has been all over the inauguration performer story) Jennifer Holliday Pulls Out of Trump Inauguration, Apologizes to LGBT Community (Exclusive)

The story includes an open letter from Holliday "to my beloved LGBT community": "I sincerely apologize for my lapse of judgement, for being uneducated on the issues that affect every American at this crucial time in history and for causing such dismay and heartbreak to my fans...Thank you for communicating with me, I had no idea that I still meant so much to all of you."
posted by zachlipton at 8:50 AM on January 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


The Republicans running this country are terrible people that will use any trick, do anything to keep power for themselves so they can destroy Government for the People and make it Government for the 1%.

I'm glad this idea is finally starting to sink in. Having seen a lot of how party politics plays out in practice, in its effects on state government, I reached the same conclusion a long time ago, but at this point, not to be apocalyptic or hopeless about it, I think short of something really unexpected happening, liberals are still underestimating how far down the path we are now to not having a system that can be influenced by democratic activism. That's their end goal, remember: immunity from democratic pressure to do business however they want without hassles.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:55 AM on January 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


If Spain is the example of peaceful transition from fascism to a progressive modern state, then one valuable step is to, erm, join the EU.

(Also, restore the former royal dynasty as constitutional monarchs.)
posted by Segundus at 8:55 AM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Has any country in the modern era recovered from being run by fascists to a government made up of actual adults without a tremendous amount of violence being involved? Are there any examples that we can look at to gain insight into how we might get our country back from the people who have stolen it?

I asked a similar question of my history major son, except I said authoritarian instead of fascist. He thought for a moment and then said: "The US after FDR". I thought that was pretty insightful and it gave me some hope. Please no rejoinders about how actually, Trump and FDR are in no way comparable, we know that.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 8:58 AM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump actually is all of the left-wing fever-dream fantasies of the worst possible imagined things Bush or Reagan or Romney could have been.

Let me clarify because while I agree with this in part, I see it a bit differently.

Trump is dangerous because he is manifestly unqualified for the job because of zero meaningful experience, a mercurial temper and a willingness to say anything that his followers want to hear. Dubya was dangerous because he was manifestly unqualified for the job because of zero meaningful experience, a general state of befuddlement and a willingness to say anything that his followers wanted to hear. Reagan was dangerous because he was manifestly unqualified for the job because of a terrifying track record as Governor of California, mental infirmity, and willful blindness to anything the machine behind him was doing. All three of them are/were capable of ending the world in a series of white flashes, and Reagan came as close to that as anyone else so far.

Yes, Trump has the mirror universe media machine behind him now, the social media swamps and the fake-news newspapers and TV networks and pundits and such. Trump is dangerous because anyone unqualified in that position of power is supremely dangerous. But the authoritarian wave that put Trump there as its figurehead _will not go away_ if Trump resigns or is impeached. What Trump stands for to them -- an authority figure willing to demonize everyone they hate -- is more important than the man himself. Someone who is both competent AND authoritarian in that office is my worst nightmare. That is probably not Pence, but he is arguably a step in that direction.

President Trump is like a six-year-old holding a live hand grenade in a crowd. He could kill lots of people at any moment by lashing out, but he's not capable of doing so out of reasoned intent or logic. If someone tells him "throw it," he may throw it, and those someones are who scare me most. But if Trump is disgraced -- and lord knows I have no idea what kind of scandal would stick to Trump if what we've seen so far hasn't -- the authoritarians will keep screaming and keep attacking and put someone else just as unqualified into power.
posted by delfin at 8:59 AM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


along with Toby Keith, 3 Doors Down, Lee Greenwood and other entertainers, in a Jan. 19 event at the Lincoln Memorial called the “Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration.”

I'm pretty sure this occult ritual was already described in one of Dan Brown's books.
posted by petebest at 8:59 AM on January 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


President Trump is like a six-year-old holding a live hand grenade in a crowd.

Again, that live hand grenade can kill billions of people (probably including you and me) and set civilization back 5,000 years.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:01 AM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


That's their end goal, remember: immunity from democratic pressure to do business however they want without hassles.

see also; fascism
posted by petebest at 9:02 AM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


The biggest story right now, judging from google news front page, is a defense of Rep. Lewis. Little about what he said other than the illegitimate quote or why he said Trump is an illegitimate president, just the defense. along with various links to Trump 'blasting' Lewis' remarks. This is the two hour news cycle and when it wanes, Trump will be back with something else to distract attention away from things that matter. Don't misunderstand, Lewis should be defended - he is an American hero - but the attention span of the media (and apparently a lot of America) is limited to one thing. And the one thing right now is Trump's blast of lies followed by defense of the focus of those lies. Trump is brilliant in his manipulation of the media.
posted by bluesky43 at 9:05 AM on January 14, 2017


This is the two hour news cycle and when it wanes, Trump will be back with something else to distract attention away from things that matter.

That assumes there are zero new Russia/dossier developments (to which this is still tangentially related). You could still be right and the media might drop the ball and fail stupendously again, but as of now there's zero reason to think the other stories are dead just because Lewis is in the news for this 2 hour cycle.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:09 AM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Again, that live hand grenade can kill billions of people (probably including you and me) and set civilization back 5,000 years.

And that is a danger no matter who is President. But looking over the clown car of Allegedly Serious Candidates that Trump defeated, how many of them would you trust with the nuclear codes? Which among them was ready to say "no, Islam is not a war-worthy threat in and of itself" or "no, we are not going to impose our will across the globe" and somehow remain even remotely acceptable to the Republican base?
posted by delfin at 9:12 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


One thing I didn't realize about the announced Senate investigation into Trump's Russia ties. Joy Reid retweeted it but I haven't seen this elsewhere. Can anyone confirm?

@laseptiemewilay
As of this evening, the Trump campaign is under a preservation order--i.e., destruction of any material/email/memo/text etc is a felony
posted by chris24 at 9:14 AM on January 14, 2017 [36 favorites]


But looking over the clown car of Allegedly Serious Candidates that Trump defeated, how many of them would you trust with the nuclear codes?

Every single one of them a thousand times more than Trump.
posted by chris24 at 9:15 AM on January 14, 2017 [33 favorites]


"No, your tower is a shithole full of criminals" is the only appropriate reply.
posted by holgate at 9:15 AM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


And that is a danger no matter who is President. But looking over the clown car of Allegedly Serious Candidates that Trump defeated, how many of them would you trust with the nuclear codes?

I think that Ted Cruz understands that there are other people in the world than himself and that he is mortal. I am not confident that Trump does.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:16 AM on January 14, 2017 [31 favorites]


So at this point, if someone in the Trump campaign deletes a tweet, does that run afoul of the preservation order?
posted by tocts at 9:17 AM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think that Ted Cruz understands that there are other people in the world than himself

No matter how furious that makes him.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:18 AM on January 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


I have more fear of Cruz saying "I received a message from God this morning, it is time to cleanse the Earth of the evil unbelievers" than of Trump.

This is not to suggest that I have no fear of Trump saying "I received a message from Steve Bannon this morning..."
posted by delfin at 9:19 AM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


@mattdpearce
Rep. John Lewis knows what he's doing, has known all his life. Resistance is spectacle.
posted by chris24 at 9:21 AM on January 14, 2017 [30 favorites]


We're up to 11 Democrats boycotting the inauguration.

Hopefully Lewis' stand inspires more. Call your rep to ask if they stand with him. 202 224 3121
posted by chris24 at 9:23 AM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


So, is it irrational to be a tad terrified about the head of the DC National Guard being relieved of command the minute Trump is sworn in? I mean it's not like he'll replace him with someone who'll gleefully order the violent putdown of protestors or anything right?

Because Scwartz was appointed by Bush and not Obama makes me think it's not an anti-previous administration theatric.

Head of D.C. National Guard to be removed from post in middle of inauguration
posted by M Edward at 9:24 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


So, is it irrational to be a tad terrified about the head of the DC National Guard being relieved of command the minute Trump is sworn in?

As a DC resident, I consider that one of my more rational fears about the coming week.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 9:27 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Rubberbandits on Post Truth
posted by stonepharisee at 9:29 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


As of this evening, the Trump campaign is under a preservation order--i.e., destruction of any material/email/memo/text etc is a felony

Trump scans the headlines regarding Comey and his Cabinet confirmations, then a list of Republicans in Congress. "Fire up the shredders, boys!"
posted by Rykey at 9:30 AM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


This is my Congressman. I hope he will actually stand with Lewis and refuse to go on Friday, and I have told him so.

@RepJerryNadler
.@realDonaldTrump stands with V. Putin. I stand with @repjohnlewis.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:30 AM on January 14, 2017 [46 favorites]


As of this evening, the Trump campaign is under a preservation order--i.e., destruction of any material/email/memo/text etc is a felony

This is not that but as close as I can get for now.
posted by datawrangler at 9:31 AM on January 14, 2017


The masking tape over Don's Johns was so symbolic I got a bit carried away on Facebook yesterday. TLDR: I now call Trump "Don Quixote de la Porquería". Now, if you wanted to keep the Mancha similarity you could go for a much more straightforward "de la mierda", but as the man likes to portray himself as being someone who gets into it and stuff, I thought the shit and muck created in a pigsty more appropriate. It also means "bullshit."

The TL:
Guy who uses cheap coverups of embarrassments that eventually fall apart, requiring yet more cheap coverup attempts, puts cheapest possible coverup over an embarrassment. Cheapest possible coverup (masking tape) will predictably fall off, thus causing yet more embarrassment.

You could say it's a paeon to our times.
It will be the inauguration of an era of the masked johns of Don.
They'll tilt at ecological windmills and preach to goatherds about the golden age of when America was great.
Don Quixote de la Porquería
posted by fraula at 9:32 AM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Why would Republicans want to impeach Donald Trump, thus enraging his supporters that they rely on?

Because they don't want to die in a nuclear conflagration? Because Trump isn't a Republican and doesn't really care about their priorities, and Pence would be a much more reliable partner? Because there are still some principled people left in the party, and they hate Trump's lies and treasons?

I'm not saying it's likely. But it's definitely possible. If Pence signals to the right people that he would back them and justify the action to the American people if impeachment succeeds, they might decide it's worth it. Trump is monumentally, historically unpopular. I'd even say from the point of view of pure GOP self-interest that the sooner they get him out and get the unflappable, steady Pence in, the sooner they end the damage to their party and start to rebuild. A video of unusual activities with prostitutes, if it exists, could easily be the catalyst to get a majority of GOP representatives and senators to pull the trigger.

Now, as a liberal, Pence's policies are abhorrent. But I'd love to stop worrying about a loose canon getting us embroiled in a war and focus completely on protesting evil legislation. I'd welcome the change.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 9:34 AM on January 14, 2017 [30 favorites]


So, is it irrational to be a tad terrified about the head of the DC National Guard being relieved of command the minute Trump is sworn in?

Maybe this will make you feel better. (I posted this in a previous thread, hope it's OK to re-post here). It's not just the DC National Guard...
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition staff has issued a blanket edict requiring politically appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day, according to several American diplomats familiar with the plan, breaking with decades of precedent by declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods.

The mandate — issued “without exceptions,” according to a terse State Department cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said — threatens to leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. In the past, administrations of both parties have often granted extensions on a case-by-case basis to allow a handful of ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.
(Emphasis mine.)

More at the NYT
posted by Mister Bijou at 9:36 AM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


@BillKristol...

When did I slip into the dimension where "Never Right" Bill Kristol is the voice of reason?
posted by mikelieman at 9:36 AM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'd love to stop worrying about a loose canon getting us embroiled in a war // posted by Pater Aletheias

Ah, some eponysterical relief.

Politicians have egos, and they want their names on public buildings and historic plaques. They do not want their children disowning them, changing their last names for deniability, and leaving them to die alone.
posted by holgate at 9:38 AM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


This story is not simply about Rep. John Lewis. It's also about the fact that the President-elect just attacked a good chunk of a major American city, a district home to nearly 700,000 people, roughly 60% of them black, as "in horrible shape" and "falling apart." He did so not based on any personal knowledge or study of Atlanta, its successes, and its challenges, and not because he has any hope or solutions to offer the area, but because he wanted to retaliate against its elected representative, in an attack dripping with racist implications on MLK weekend.

That's significant in and of itself, not merely as a distraction from Russia.
posted by zachlipton at 9:40 AM on January 14, 2017 [138 favorites]


TheWrap (which has been all over the inauguration performer story) Jennifer Holliday Pulls Out of Trump Inauguration, Apologizes to LGBT Community (Exclusive)

And if I were awake when I posted that here, I would have, of course, titled it: "And I Am Telling You She's Not Going." We regret the delay.
posted by zachlipton at 9:44 AM on January 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


Apparently Brig. Gen. William J. Walker will be replacing Schwartz as head of the DC National Guard on inauguration day (cite). I don't know anything about Walker, but it's a little comforting after I was up all night panicking about (possibly?) outlandish questions like "Could Trump commission anyone he wants and put them in charge right away? Do Democratic politicians and WaPo journalists need to worry about getting out of town before the inauguration?"

Still freaking out about it, just a tiny bit less so as long as the replacement is already in place. Now to find out more about him.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:56 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


We're up to 11 Democrats boycotting the inauguration.

I have high hopes for my Rep, Ted Lieu. I just left a message saying he was doing a great job filling Henry Waxman's shoes and I hope he announces his boycott soon!
posted by Room 641-A at 9:57 AM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]




@Jjbouie: Notice how, again, Trump conflates majority black places with chaos and ruin, shouting ideas of black dysfunction into the mainstream.
posted by windbox at 10:09 AM on January 14, 2017 [68 favorites]


All this monkey business with the DC National Guard reminds me of the Replacement Army and Operation Valkyrie after the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944. Coup coup ca choup.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:09 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


For all the wishful thinking that Trump may not really be in bed with hardcore bigots and organized white nationalism (despite all the direct evidence to the contrary), whatever the case, it's definitely having a terrifying impact on the culture: this week my son got hit by an anti-Semitic slur at school. A kid who only knew him by reputation (presumably, because he knew my son's name) called him a "n__r-loving jew."

I was raised in the deep South after I was kidnapped to the U.S., in a tiny rural Florida backwater named "Bayou George" and other than on South Park, I can't remember ever having heard any kids use an anti-Semitic slur. Hell, I remember having to explain what Jewish people even were to a few kids.

As far as I know, we're not even Jewish, although possibly we had some Jewish ancestry going back before the WWII diaspora based on some amateur genealogy research my family and I have done. It illustrates how these slurs are used against anybody who doesn't conform, like bullshit, with no one even really caring what's true, only caring about achieving the intended chilling effects.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:10 AM on January 14, 2017 [52 favorites]


Don Quijote de la Mierda! I love it. It just rolls off the tongue. I will tell my coworkers, definitely. Maybe not my students.
posted by chainsofreedom at 10:10 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Donald Trump paid for an ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five Black teenagers. Who were innocent. He is that bad.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:12 AM on January 14, 2017 [69 favorites]


I was raised in the deep South after I was kidnapped to the U.S., in a tiny rural Florida backwater named "Bayou George" and other than on South Park, I can't remember ever having heard any kids use an anti-Semitic slur.

I was raised in the North, and it wasn't until I went to college in the South that 1) I actually heard people quoting Cartman from South Park, and 2) I realized that some people found him the hero of the show, the kid most worth emulating, ie, they were quoting him in all seriousness, not as a way to mock that way of thought.

I was never able to invite my Jewish friends to visit me in college because I never knew who might say something indelicate in front of them and I didn't want their visiting me to be tainted by an anti-Semitic slur.
posted by chainsofreedom at 10:13 AM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Donald Trump paid for an ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five Black teenagers. Who were innocent. He is that bad.

And when asked about it in October - after DNA evidence had cleared them decades ago - refused to retract his earlier statements and beliefs regarding it.
posted by chris24 at 10:14 AM on January 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


Donald Trump paid for an ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of five Black teenagers. Who were innocent. He is that bad.

He also, long after their exoneration and the conviction of the real rapist, insists on their guilt.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:15 AM on January 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


I've been spreading Indivisible around everywhere. In particular for the following paragraphs:
We know this because we’ve seen it before. The authors of this guide are former congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party. We saw these activists take on a popular president with a mandate for change and a supermajority in Congress. We saw them organize locally and convince their own MoCs to reject President Obama’s agenda. Their ideas were wrong, cruel, and tinged with racism— and they won.

We believe that protecting our values, our neighbors, and ourselves will require mounting a similar resistance to the Trump agenda — but a resistance built on the values of inclusion, tolerance, and fairness. Trump is not popular. He does not have a mandate. He does not have large congressional majorities. If a small minority in the Tea Party can stop President Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump. (emphasis added and paragraph mark fixed)
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:15 AM on January 14, 2017 [33 favorites]


When I was young some kids on the bus grabbed my head to feel for horns. I'm 30. Anti-semitism is hardly new.
posted by cyphill at 10:15 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


With the Inauguration so close I've been thinking a lot about how worried I am for DC. Not DC as a synecdoche for the federal government, although that's part of it, but the actual city and its residents who are real, living people many of whom don't really have much to do with the government or have tangentially related jobs like people who work at non-profits.

DC is a progressive, largely-minority coastal city with, all due respect to Eleanor Holmes Norton who is great, no meaningful congressional representation and, despite this, Congress is able to meddle more directly in our affairs than anywhere else. I worry that we as a city are in line for punishment from this racist, reactionary government. On top of that, if lots of government jobs are eliminated, , or stop giving grants, or stop contracting with affiliated organizations or major defense contracts, I think the economy around here could get very bad very fast. We're also, despite having less say than most Americans about how the federal government is run, near the top of the list for an attack. I've had multiple conversations with friends and colleagues (in fairness, most but not all initiated by me) about what we'll do if we hear of an incoming nuclear attack and the consensus seems to be "at least we'll die immediately". I think about how I'm going to get to daycare from work if I hear that missiles have been launched and I realize I'm not going to get there to be with my daughter one final time. We all know the odds are low but they're a lot higher than they were and we're all living with an extra weight of fear.

I know that things are going to be very, very bad for so many people both here and around the world and I also worry specifically about this city which is right here just full of liberals and minorities waiting to be targeted by her own government and basically defenseless. I'm afraid a lot of terrible people are going to get a lot of enjoyment out of making this city suffer.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 10:19 AM on January 14, 2017 [63 favorites]


It's social sadism as a political philosophy, basically. That's all it amounts to, at bottom.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:30 AM on January 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


6 Things Juggalo Culture Teaches Us About Trump (Nathan Rabin, for Cracked)
posted by box at 10:32 AM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


Mrs. Pterodactyl, that's where I am too. A lot of the base seems to picture DC as a synecdoche for big government and everything that's wrong with America, and an alarming number of people value the jobs of low-skilled air-conditioning factory workers over those of high-skilled federal employees.

We've been in a boom the whole time I've lived here, and in a way I wouldn't be sad to see some of the gentrification slow down. But I'm pretty apprehensive about what comes with it.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:40 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


There are some interesting connectivity graphs made by people trying to make sense of the money trail (interesting thread/author, too)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:41 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


> I am begging you: Please, please, please stand up for your trans friends and relatives. We are few, but willful. Please stand with us. Please don't let them kill more of us. We just want to live our lives.

I hear you. I stand with you, always. I am fighting for you in Texas, by trying to spread public opinion to favor you and by supporting state legislators who fight on your side, and harassing legislators who fight against you. I am fighting for you by trying to mobilize people and share the same message to cis straight folks in my networks; and I am fighting for you by screaming to everyone who will listen that this is not normal, we need to protect our own. I am fighting for you by telling thoughtless and ignorant, if well-meaning, idiots that these bathroom bills matter and that they bring consequences to real human beings like you, like me, like other folks in this room who have done nothing to hurt anyone else. I am fighting for you by taking attacks on your freedom and your safety and your medical care and publicizing them to be the bigoted and senseless attacks on the marginalized that they are.

And if I lose the fights I am trying to bring, I will draw a new line in the sand and I will fight to protect you and yours again. I will try with everything I have to keep you and yours safe from violence. I will trumpet the attacks on you to undecided people and I will insist angrily that they are a national and a statewide shame, a stain on the honor of the country that will not fade until we make restitution.

I hear you. I stand with you. I am saying this here not because I need to remind myself or galvanize myself for action--I am already taking action in every way I have the energy to do--but because I believe there is value in openly making these pledges. And I think there's value in hearing other people say "I stand for you and yours." I will carry you in my heart when I march this week, and more importantly I will share your fears with marchers around me, whether or not I know them; because I intend to be speaking to people throughout the day. I swear I will stand with you publicly, openly, and not remain silent in my angry assertion that people like you are people and deserve our support.

Keep safe, and take care of yourself as best you can. We still need your hands and voice, too, and we need you alive. We need you, and we ought to fight to protect you as best we can.
posted by sciatrix at 10:42 AM on January 14, 2017 [57 favorites]


Human Rights Watch lists Trump as threat to human rights
Human Rights Watch is listing President-elect Donald Trump as a threat to human rights, calling his campaign a “vivid illustration of the politics of intolerance.”

“Donald Trump’s election as US president after a campaign fomenting hatred and intolerance, and the rising influence of political parties in Europe that reject universal rights, have put the postwar human rights system at risk,” the group said in a Friday statement announcing a new report.

The 687-page World Report analyzes Trump’s campaign, pointing to his rhetoric as a cause for worry over human rights violations.

“(Trump’s) campaign floated proposals that would harm millions of people, including plans to engage in massive deportations of immigrants, to curtail women’s rights and media freedoms, and to use torture,” the report says, quoting Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth.

“Unless Trump repudiates these proposals, his administration risks committing massive rights violations in the US and shirking a longstanding, bipartisan belief, however imperfectly applied, in a rights-based foreign policy agenda.”
posted by chris24 at 10:49 AM on January 14, 2017 [30 favorites]


I'm really glad to see South Park being ID'd – IMO, accurately and justly – as the locus classicus of the anti-Semitism that's become renormalized in American mass culture these past twenty years. It's Exhibit A for me in the "ironic racism is still racism" file, as it is for the notion that significant percentages of the audience are not equipped to, and do not, perceive whatever irony the creators may have intended.
posted by adamgreenfield at 10:51 AM on January 14, 2017 [122 favorites]


Can we have a Mulligan?
posted by Smedleyman at 10:52 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Trump is not really interested in being POTUS. Trump is interested in things that can put money in his pocket or take it out. That is why there are two distinctly different Cabinets:

The Heckuva Job Brownie Cabinet, by far the largest, is populated top to bottom with party sycophants, wingnuts, whack jobs and loose cannons. They will be largely unsupervised because they, their departments and their missions don't interest Trump in the slightest. They will help keep his supporters and the RNC happy and draw most of the media attention and public ire.

The smaller Scrooge McDuck Money Bin Cabinet on the other hand, is nothing but CEO's, Wall Street and/or billionaires all the way down. This will be where the competent fleecing and big money action will quietly occur for the next four years out of the public eye...
posted by jim in austin at 11:04 AM on January 14, 2017 [68 favorites]


Huron Bob said: I'm concerned that asking us to avoid and not mention our deepest fears and speculations allows some very possible realities to never be discussed when, perhaps, they SHOULD be voiced and talked about.

Honestly, ALL of my "imaginings" are pretty "grimdark" right now...since I can't voice them here, I guess it's back to that dark, cold basement corner for me.


I was thinking of asking in MeTa for an ongoing thread, I don't know where we'd put it, that could be a sort of virtual group help.

A structured thread not just on the political aspect of the horror show, but how to cope on a personal level, addressing our emotional/ mental health needs, perhaps trying to offer concrete advice as well on issues we're facing (isolation, financial woes, discrimination, etc.).

How/ where could we set this up?
posted by NorthernLite at 11:08 AM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


sciatrix: Thank you for listening- Your post is very heartening :'). I wish I had better words to thank you. I've been struggling to keep my head above water in the past 60 days, in part because people outside the trans community--some close to me--aren't particularly alarmed. I feel slightly better and more energized. You're a star.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 11:21 AM on January 14, 2017 [14 favorites]




Is Trump, like Carter, a disjunctive President?

This is thought-provoking and hopeful, in its way.
posted by chavenet at 11:29 AM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


I swear I am correcting this everywhere. Someone up thread mentioned somehow that Booker (and other dems) voted to keep expensive drugs, which is just wrong. What went down is this:

Democrats and others offered amendments to the possible budget reconciliation bill the Senate would eventually consider. None of these amendments if passed would modify the actual law. Instead they were all suggestions that the chair of the budget committee would consider. This is the text of the one that is supposedly the "bill that democrats voted against that would have bought cheap drugs from canada":
The Chairman of the Committee on the Budget of the Senate may revise the allocations of a committee or committees, aggregates, and other appropriate levels in this resolution for one or more bills, joint resolutions, amendments, amendments between the Houses, motions, or conference reports relating to lowering prescription drug prices, including through the importation of safe and affordable prescription drugs by American pharmacists, wholesalers, and individuals with a valid prescription from a provider licensed to practice in the United States, by the amounts provided in such legislation for those purposes, provided that such legislation would not increase the deficit over either the period of the total of fiscal years 2017 through 2021 or the period of the total of fiscal years 2017 through 2026.
Note that "may". This is an amendment to say the chair may do something that the chair could already consider. He was never going to consider that anyway (given his history and that he voted against this amendment). So everyone is completely misreading what went on. The entire point of all the amendments the democrats were offering was to get Republicans on record as opposing existing law that is part of the ACA -- existing law that is very popular when talked about in plain terms like "not allowing insurance companies to refuse health care to people with pre-existing conditions". The budget reconciliation process is confusing and hard to talk about. These amendments weren't "bills" in any sense. They weren't even normal amendments where if one had passed it would have definitely been in the final law.

This was all political theater. This particular amendment everyone is up and arms about was attempting to make new policy when everyone who cares about health care should have been focused only on pointing out that the Republicans were destroying health care for many people. Instead we got these shenanigans where a bunch of headlines are about how some democrats don't care about health care too, "both sides are against health care" nonsense and so on. All because of a stupid amendment that had no chance of passing and that isn't a good one even if you think drug importation is a good policy.
posted by R343L at 11:37 AM on January 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


Buzzfeed has a story on systemic attempts to target Angela Merkel online, including an explosion of fake news, with pro-Trump Twitter accounts shifting their attentions to anti-Merkel tweets.
posted by zachlipton at 11:38 AM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


A touch of levity for these grim times.

Life Accordion To Trump
posted by Surely This at 11:41 AM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


had no idea John Lewis had an award-winning graphic novel.

It's a trilogy and it's f'ing incredible. A great gift for young folks that will teach them important history they try not to teach in what's left of our schools.

Congressman Lewis is one of my great heroes. I am certain he is trying to bait Trump into just the sort of response he elicited. I believe Lewis first coined the expression "Come at me, bro."
posted by spitbull at 11:45 AM on January 14, 2017 [31 favorites]


cjelli: Unfortunately I've been seeing it from long time friends. I knew they were liberal-progressive and all. Many are quite reasonable. I think this is just a case of a couple popular progressive media voices (like Robert Reich) who spread the idea that Booker and some Democrats were voting against a bill that had any chance of passing or being part of the law without any acknowledgement of the politics going on that have nothing to do with whether importing drugs from Canada is or isn't good policy. And since they trust those voices, they pass it on.
posted by R343L at 11:47 AM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Americans are more concerned than they were before the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign began about the potential threat Russia poses to the country, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday.

The Jan. 9-12 survey found that 82 percent of American adults, including 84 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans, described Russia as a general "threat" to the United States. That's up from 76 percent in March 2015 when the same questions were asked.
posted by futz at 11:51 AM on January 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


I've encouraged my congresspeople (Mass., so barring federal retribution not too much to lose?) to boycott. It's so hard for me to read what messaging will actually survive the news cycle, but I hope I'm right that if other representatives join Lewis, Lee, Takano, Clark, et. al. it might get noticed.
posted by alexandermatheson at 12:02 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Apologies for it being Facebook, but Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station posted an explanation on the relief of Maj. Gen. Errol Schwartz of the D.C. National Guard [Caution: Facebook]. According to Wright, Schwartz wasn't fired. He resigned as per normal procedure.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:04 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


I've seen (anecdotally) a ton of anti-Booker posts on a variety of social media platforms by posters who are either (1) totally new with no post history, or (2) have an extensive pro-Trump history. Which (anecdotally) makes me think that Booker might be being singled out because of his opposition to Jeff Sessions in his confirmation hearing, and because of the potential that Booker might run for the presidency in 2020. The sheer volume of it makes it feel like it's organized, but that's obviously hard to prove.

It's organized. Have no doubt about this. It's people in a crowd following the leaders of that crowd. Who the leaders are and their motivations are the questions but the organized part of it is simply people following the lead (and all the while thinking they are acting freely and independently).
It's a basic human social group function that is able to form virtually through the system of social media. The ability to be 'anyone' on the internet allows the harnessing of this human tendency to be much easier to manipulate and use then it is when physical presence is required because the social checks and balances that are present in physically based 'crowds' don't exist.
posted by Jalliah at 12:04 PM on January 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


Yeah, I've been struggling too, which is why I thought you might like an explicit response. It's fucking hard and it's all scary, and sometimes it feels like it's on you to tackle every single thing or one of the thousands of threats around you will slip through and then you'll be fucked. And it feels good to actually see someone say they'll have your back, yeah? Well, it feels good to say it, too. Even if the world around us is shit, even if these times are dark, we can still publicly proclaim that we stand together against that darkness.

I do want you to know, people in my local activist groups are pissed about SB 6 here--I swear there is a new call of rage at the Lt. Governor lying about the number of Texans supporting it or another state senator claiming it has legs every day or two, and when it happens it gets a hundred favorites and a whole bunch of people checking in to say they've called or brainstorming new ways to challenge it. My state senator responded back immediately when asked about it saying he opposed the bill and he was going to make damn sure he fought it and anything discriminatory. Other folks are harrying their own senators and trying to push them to vote against the bill. We're doing our best to have your backs, collectively, and it's something folks here are taking really, really seriously.

We might fail, mind. It's not a done deal. But there are people out there who are trying to keep you guys safe. There's a lot of people. We're all trying to hold the line as best we can.
posted by sciatrix at 12:06 PM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


My rep, Katherine Clark, is not attending the inauguration. I want to send her a bouquet of red, white, and blue flowers.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:12 PM on January 14, 2017 [30 favorites]


Protests derail UC Davis event with Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

University officials said in a statement that the Republican student group canceled it after consulting with campus police and student affairs officials.

“A large number of protesters blocked access to the venue,” according to the statement, “and it was determined that it was no longer feasible to continue with the event safely.”

The Davis College Republicans later announced on its Facebook page that members, along with Yiannopoulos, will gather back on campus at 1 p.m. Pacific time Saturday.

“We will not stand for the regressive left perpetuating violence, censoring speech, and spreading hate,” the student organization wrote on its Facebook page.

posted by futz at 12:20 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think fear of Democratic infighting and the dismissal of any criticism from the left of Cory Booker as Russian Psy-Ops is misguided and dangerous both to the future of the party and to mounting any meaningful resistance going forward. Putin, by all accounts, funds a wide variety of groups, often including his own opposition as a means to sow confusion and distrust on all sides and I wouldn't be surprised to see Bannon pull out a similar playbook. But the mainstream Democratic consensus that any interest in soul-searching or rebuilding the party from the bottom up is being a "useful idiot" for mysterious foreign powers smacks of nothing more than professional ass-covering and disinterest in owning any mistakes, swaddled in (occasionally) sincerely bizarre bouts of xenophobia.

I'm as stressed and worried about the next four years as anybody, but please, everyone, keep your head on your shoulders.
posted by StopMakingSense at 12:21 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


I disagree, StopMakingSense, and the reason I disagree is this:

We've been soul searching, from my perspective, for decades. Soul searching means you're looking inward, right? Well, looking inward--closing your eyes while you think about yourself, navel-gazing, whatever you want to call it--looking inward means you are not moving forward. It's the reason perfectionists who are thinking real hard about how best to do the thing they want to do often don't get anything done. Shit is so bad right now that I feel like we need to move forward fast and hard or we're going to be hamstrung.

And holy shit, do I not want to build the party again from the bottom up. Absolutely fucking not. We are outnumbered as it is; why the hell do you think we should be making ourselves an easy target while we take our infrastructure apart and restructure it at the same time that Republicans try to fucking gut us and murder our most vulnerable?! When we have members who are scared enough to be getting on their knees and fucking begging fellow leftists to protect them and keep them safe, you want to fucking sit there and think about all the reasons we aren't perfect and do better next time?

The best way to do better next time is to move forward. The things you are proposing are the fucking polar opposite of that. I am too damn scared to stop and fret about the state of my immortal soul or my party's perfection when there's a dozen fucking bills on state and national levels that are going to hurt people I know directly and care about! Why the shit do you think we should pause and rethink right as we're gathering some actual momentum?
posted by sciatrix at 12:27 PM on January 14, 2017 [73 favorites]


Mark Hamill is saving the galaxy again with more Orange Joker audio clips.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:36 PM on January 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


For the inauguration, I wonder which historic bible they'll pick out to make his tiny, grasping hands look large.
No, don't look that up, it's a rhetorical question. The answer is one that doesn't smolder when he touches it.
posted by Catblack at 12:36 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Cory Booker voted with the GOP to prohibit cheaper drugs from being available from Canada. Cory Booker is from New Jersey. New Brunswick, New Jersey, is headquarters for Johnson and Johnson, the very big pharm company
posted by Postroad at 12:37 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


achieving the intended chilling effects.
posted by infini at 12:39 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]




Postroad, do you read threads that you comment in?
posted by lazaruslong at 12:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [36 favorites]


is that a requirement now?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 12:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


I must admit, I've taken to only checking the last 50 or so.
posted by Coventry at 12:47 PM on January 14, 2017


I wasn't aware anyone read the comments down here. I sure don't.
posted by petebest at 12:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


I read 97.65% of the thread.
posted by infini at 12:48 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


sincerely bizarre bouts of xenophobia.

Have regular Russians or Russian Americans been assaulted and harassed in the US? Are Russian immigrants getting threatened with deportation?

We have a candidate and a party that wants to deport all undocumented immigrants, prohibit refugees from seeking a home here, accuses China, Japan, Korea, and Mexico of cheating the US, and is supported by white nationalists.

And the Democrats are being xenophobic.
posted by FJT at 1:04 PM on January 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


[Ivanka] Trump to host fundraiser for Booker

"Ivanka Trump, the daughter of Republican real estate mogul Donald Trump, will host a fundraiser for Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s Senate bid next Wednesday, a campaign source familiar with the event said.

The event, with a suggested contribution of $5,200 per person, will be held at Ivanka Trump’s home on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

She and her husband, Jared Kushner, had bundled $41,000 for Booker’s Senate campaign as of May. Booker has raised raised $6.5 million so far this year."


Um... what is going on?
posted by knapah at 1:05 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


That story is from 2013, is what's going on.

They are without conviction.
posted by Yowser at 1:10 PM on January 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


Um... what is going on?

adepts and hangarounds of the 1% are gonna be .. yeah, systemically, we're all still fighting over the proverbial scraps from the table and the last eight years TPTB seem to think we overstretched when we tried to get a whole loaf.

but with booker? what with politicians and oppurtunism was misunderstood? they're gonna go wherever the wind blows.
posted by xcasex at 1:10 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Um... what is going on?

Really, a scene from Lars von Trier's Antichrist comes to mind.
posted by mordax at 1:11 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Team Sciatrix all the way.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:22 PM on January 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


Amazon sells out of Rep. John Lewis’ biography after Trump attacks him.

Walking with the Wind: A memoir of the movement, which was published 16 years ago, is completely sold out on the bookseller’s website and now has a wait list of a month or more. (It’s unclear how many copies Amazon had to begin with.) March, Lewis’ series of graphic novels about his time in the civil rights movement, is currently still available there, as is Lewis’ other book Across That Bridge.
posted by futz at 1:25 PM on January 14, 2017 [38 favorites]


Residents of John Lewis's district would like to show Donald Trump some pictures of the urban hellscapes in which they reside.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:26 PM on January 14, 2017 [43 favorites]


Ooh there's a healthcare rally at Steve King's local office tomorrow. There's also a huge ice storm that might come through the area, so we'll see how it goes... but it's something!
posted by jason_steakums at 1:27 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's a trilogy and it's f'ing incredible. A great gift for young folks that will teach them important history they try not to teach in what's left of our schools.

And he cosplayed himself at Comic Con in 2015 to re-enact the march with attendees, wearing the same coat he wore at Selma. Living history. Still living history.

I want to send her a bouquet of red, white, and blue flowers.

Send her a card, tell her you've donated the money for flowers to a civil rights group.
posted by holgate at 1:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [39 favorites]


Right now, the most important meme that needs to be spread - and repeated every time it falls off the "two-hour news cycle" - is the efforts by O'Keefe and other Big Liars to disrupt the Inauguration and next-day march and put the blame on "those evil left-wingers". We need to amplify that message SO MUCH that the blame for any disruption is put directly at the feet of the Alt-Right-Neo-Fascists (even if any of the incidents actually are the acts of stupid asshole leftists).
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


sciatrix - Where I think we can agree is the need to stay on the offensive, show some actual spine, take serious steps to distinguish the Democratic Party as standing for something in particular and not get overly worried about playing dirty or being necessarily vicious. I think we both agree that it's important to remember who the real enemy is. I think we would both love nothing more for Donald Trump to be undone by his own shady business and political connections both here and abroad. Maybe he'll even go down for treason! If not, I would settle for taking back Congress in the midterms and to see him ousted unceremoniously in 2020.

I think we might disagree on whether this requires strategic and political re-alignment to be in any way effective, long-term.

I think we might disagree on whether anyone is asking anyone else to be "perfect." I, for one, would just like to win. I think we might disagree about what it will take to win.

I think we might disagree, irreconcilably, about what is or is not "movement" in this case.

Which is to say is that these disagreements, to me, are the opposite of navel-gazing and are instead indicative of renewed passion, interest and opportunity to push forward.

FJT- If you need me to tell you that the Republican Party has long been a grotesque mishmash of racist nationalism as a qualifier to the fact that a lot of people who I agree with on so much politically are acting VERY ODDLY at the moment, then I'm happy to. The Republican party has been happily neo-fascist since Reagan and I think he, both Bushes and Trump are all ghouls.

When I say xenophobia, I don't mean that it's worse or more serious than on the Right or anything (though this is a hopelessly low bar), it's just...worrying and slightly shortsighted as a tack to take. Like, the liberal commentariat at the moment seems super primed for a war with Russia, people talking about burning Russian flags and accusing people who disagree with them of being dupes for Russia which is all just like...what? What the hell? What are we even talking about all of a sudden? It's unsettling feel as though my party is slightly losing its mind when it needs to be thinking clearly now more than ever.
posted by StopMakingSense at 1:49 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


> The answer is one that doesn't smolder when he touches it.

The Wicked Bible seems likely to fit the bill
posted by BungaDunga at 1:51 PM on January 14, 2017


Do you think the focus on Russia might be something to do with, like, all the shit that Russia has been doing?
posted by Artw at 1:56 PM on January 14, 2017 [47 favorites]


Postroad, do you read threads that you comment in?

Are you saying when you come back to a thread and it says "384 new comments, show", you don't occasionally cheat a little? No skimming?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:58 PM on January 14, 2017


Okay, then what on earth do you define as movement? Because as far as I can tell, the gist of your response both to me and to FJT is "not that." What do you want to do? What do you think people should be doing? Not "sitting and thinking", but going out and focusing on?
posted by sciatrix at 2:00 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wait a second. Are some of you implying that Bernie introduced a bill that was for political theater and then when some Democrats didn't vote for it, a coordinated group of social media stars took Booker in an alley with deliberate zeal, preemptively taking out his legs for future office? Almost as a warning shot to other Democrats that the Purity Tests are coming and everyone is fair game?

I am scandalized.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 2:06 PM on January 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


When I say xenophobia, I don't mean that it's worse or more serious than on the Right or anything (though this is a hopelessly low bar), it's just...worrying and slightly shortsighted as a tack to take. Like, the liberal commentariat at the moment seems super primed for a war with Russia, people talking about burning Russian flags and accusing people who disagree with them of being dupes for Russia which is all just like...what? What the hell? What are we even talking about all of a sudden? It's unsettling feel as though my party is slightly losing its mind when it needs to be thinking clearly now more than ever.

Hate to break it to you but you are at war with Russia. Cold War 2.0 - Digital Edition. I'm sure someone can come up with a better name but Russia is fucking the US around right now as well as multiple other countries. This includes using this brave new world of digital connection where it's possible for people with a computer to get right in there and 'dupe' people. This isn't paranoia, it's happening and people know it's happening. It's super tough to deal with because online people can be anybody. I don't know what the solution is but when you know this shyte is happening, being suspicious is a natural defensive reaction.
posted by Jalliah at 2:06 PM on January 14, 2017 [35 favorites]


I don't want a hot war with Russia! I don't want a war with anyone. What I'd much prefer is for Russia to stop cyber and psy ops in this here country (and all the others it's doing the same thing in right now).
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:12 PM on January 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


I am asking because the anger at Russia that I have, personally, been seeing is based on a couple of things.

1) Russia interfered in our fucking election. There are precedents for this, sometimes precedents that are set by us interfering with other people's elections, and those went down really fucking badly for folks living in the interfered-with country. Our democratic process is badly injured and no one in power seems willing to do a goddamned thing about it. That is legitimately scary, and it is easier to be angry than afraid.

2) Russia's own policies towards its own people are terrifying. This is particularly vivid if you, like me, are queer and have been listening to the way that Russia has been targeting its queer citizens. But Russia has a hundred years of treating its citizens horrifyingly and in ways that cause massive death tolls, and everything I hear from recent Russian immigrants tells me that I do not fucking want to live anywhere controlled by Russia. See here "easier to be angry."

3) Quite a few of us are desperate because Russia is having its jackboots licked clean by the Republican party in exchange for at least temporary and local power, and the Republican party seems to principally agree with Russia on only one thing: persecuting whichever groups of American citizens it doesn't self-identify with or like. This state of affairs is particularly galling because the Republican party has traditionally (in my lifetime and my parents') been the party of warmongering and hawkish aggression in the service of patriotism and American strength. The hypocrisy salts the road rash wounds caused by the loss of the election and the future that many of us saw, and it is very good at creating anger.

4) Framing this administration as an effective Russian takeover lets American voters who might be undecided or less informed save face as they come to our banner. It's easier to get people over here to at least talk to us or listen to us when we hit things like their patriotism and their desire for national sovereignty. So targeting Russia is an effective tactic when it comes to getting people to pay attention to the way the Republican party is fucking us all eight ways to Sunday at home, apart from the emotions that are currently driving many of our responses to Russia on the left.

That helpful? I'm thinking, as I move, for god's sake; I'm just more willing to make a mistake in haste to act quickly than I am to take one more hit to a crumbling and fragile belief in democracy I might not be able to recover from.
posted by sciatrix at 2:13 PM on January 14, 2017 [85 favorites]


For the record, I don't think the "let's trash Booker on this pointless show amendment vote" is coordinated. I think it's just usual purity politics by influential voices with ridiculous headlines that misinform people about what they were actually voting on and why the amendments were put up how they were.
posted by R343L at 2:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


I admit, I'm very confused about the Booker thing, and because of the speed of politics this week I have not had the bandwidth to follow up on it--too busy explaining to friends that their health care isn't immediately gone yet, even with the Republicans' craven partisan politicking making things look bad. I suspect a lot of folks like me are confused and playing telephone, too, and I rather think R343L has the right of it.
posted by sciatrix at 2:19 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Booker is one of the Democrats people have mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. A coordinated thirty year smear campaign has to start somewhere.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:21 PM on January 14, 2017 [50 favorites]


I wrote a blog post on whom Donald Trump called racist. He made 24 tweets calling individuals racist. 18 were directed against black people, 5 against Jews, and one against Elizabeth Warren. White (non-Jewish) males are not racist.

What can we call the equivalent of Trump's Razor that says, whenever you suspect it might be racism, it is racism?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:22 PM on January 14, 2017 [42 favorites]


That story is from 2013, is what's going on.

Ah, that'll explain it. I normally catch that kind of thing.
posted by knapah at 2:23 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


There are quite a few folks in my Facebook sphere who are active progressives who spent much of their week calling the offices of Booker and Casey and encouraging others to do so, to register anger for their vote on prescription drugs. Purging the party of all traces of moderates is more important than fighting Trump, I guess.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 2:24 PM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


I really, really get the hate for Russia. Not least because I live a nuclear stone's throw from Russia.
But: In this particular case, the blame should be on the Manchurian candidate, not Russia. It's not as if whichever president of the US was elected, Russia would be in charge. Nope, not at all. The thing is that now we have an American president elect who is obviously beholden to Russian interests. Yes, the Russians are the bad guys and this is bad. But this would not have happened with any other candidate, Republican or Democratic.

One can not relativize this. It is catastrophic on a level we can't deal with.
posted by mumimor at 2:26 PM on January 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


Canada has the second highest medication costs in the world.

We don't want to be tied for highest, k thanx bye American arbitragers.
posted by Yowser at 2:27 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Importing prescription drugs from Canada won't be good for Canadians in general. It may create shortages, and Pfizer has already made threats about cutting off supplies if Canadian pharmaceutical sales cut into its profits from the US.
posted by LindsayIrene at 2:28 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


I have mixed feelings about Hammil's Trumpster recordings, given that Republicans have little shame in acting like cartoon villains.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:33 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Booker is one of the Democrats people have mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. A coordinated thirty year smear campaign has to start somewhere.

I've been confused by hearing vague slandering about Booker for a while now. What happened to Clinton makes it much more clear.
posted by bongo_x at 2:36 PM on January 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


I really, really get the hate for Russia. Not least because I live a nuclear stone's throw from Russia.
But: In this particular case, the blame should be on the Manchurian candidate, not Russia. It's not as if whichever president of the US was elected, Russia would be in charge. Nope, not at all. The thing is that now we have an American president elect who is obviously beholden to Russian interests. Yes, the Russians are the bad guys and this is bad. But this would not have happened with any other candidate, Republican or Democratic.

One can not relativize this. It is catastrophic on a level we can't deal with.


It's not just about the President. It's as much about what Russia has been doing to churn the waters of the sentiment that has led to him being elected. It's has become more clear in the past months about the co-ordinated psy-ops that has been occurring, online in place that have become bastions of pushing Alt-Right and White Nationalist sentiment. It's about things like wikileaks and the pushing of Russia based propaganda through social media. And while it's mostly happening in right wing spheres it appears to have also been happening in areas of the far left as well. #Calexit is one in particular.

It's now happening in France and Germany in support of their right wing facists. People have also tracked accounts that pretty much as soon as they election was over moved on from being fervent "Trump' to being all about Turkey.

It's really more then just about "Russia" it's about the fostering of right wing facism and general liberal and social democratic discord that serves Russia's geopolitical interests.
posted by Jalliah at 2:48 PM on January 14, 2017 [29 favorites]


I generally think Booker et al.'s vote was largely bullshit. If Republicans can go through with 60 protest votes to take away healthcare form millions of Americans, then Democrats can show some unity over a meaningless symbolic protest vote for lower prescription drug prices, no matter how much it upsets their pharma donors.

But this also isn't a purity contest. It was a bad vote on a meaningless amendment that had no chance of influencing policy. That doesn't change the fact that Booker largely wants many of the same things I want and will help fight the worst of what is happening right now.
posted by zachlipton at 2:48 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


North Dakota Bill Would Protect Drivers Who ‘Accidentally’ Hit And Kill Protesters - It’s aimed at Dakota Access protesters, and it doesn’t bode well.

A bill that state GOP Rep. Keith Kempenich introduced would exempt drivers from liability if they accidentally hit a pedestrian, according to the Bismarck Tribune. House Bill 1203 was written up in direct response to groups of protesters blocking roadways, Kempenich told the paper. He claims protesters were seen jumping out in front of vehicles.

“It’s shifting the burden of proof from the motor vehicle driver to the pedestrian,” Kempenich said. “They’re intentionally putting themselves in danger.”

He admits that the law might be used in cases that don’t involve protests. But a few casualties of justice are apparently worth it; his bill would mitigate instances when panicked drivers might have accidentally “punched the accelerator rather than the brakes” as protesters blocked the roads


JFC
posted by futz at 2:49 PM on January 14, 2017 [67 favorites]


zachlipton: Yet if you're trying to keep the minority caucus unified, it's smarter to not introduce amendments that aren't focused on preserving actual features of the ACA. If this had already been a feature of the ACA, then Booker voting against it would be upsetting, just as it would be if he'd voted against the pre-existing conditions amendment or any of the others like it. But even with this stupid amendment, it would also be smart for progressives, especially ones with influence, to not exaggerate the meaning of such a vote. The headlines on this have been disappointing.
posted by R343L at 2:54 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]




Rep. Kempenich from that horrible North Dakota proposal happens to own a trucking company -- Box K Trucking. For anyone keeping a Whom to Boycott tally. Thanks, futz, for pointing out that small-fry evil man.
posted by mahorn at 2:58 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


artw Yeah, but my entire original point here was what I thought a pretty tepid plea to be like, "Hey, not everyone who disagrees with you is a Kremlin operative and that line of thinking is both unhelpful and kind of insane?"

Like, "It's only disunity when the people I disagree with do it," you know?

sciatrix I think it would bog stuff down here a lot to get too into it, but mostly what I would define as movement at this moment in time is making the party better equipped, internally, to get candidates elected vis a vis tapping into the enormous mass of people who don't vote and to me, some dude at a computer somewhere, that looks like pushing hard against what the failures of the party have been, allowing room for new voices and ideas to take power and having a coherent, intersectional ideology to fight Trump with.

If the Democrats literally change nothing between now and the midterms and somehow sweep into power, I'll be genuinely, happily wrong.

In the meantime, you know, the usual standbys. Resist! Protest! Hit the streets! Volunteer! All that good stuff.

Framing this administration as an effective Russian takeover lets American voters who might be undecided or less informed save face as they come to our banner.

I think this is at the core of a lot of the rhetoric I've seen lately, and you might be right, but I'm skeptical. I just wonder where it leaves us after all is said and done, even if it is effective. A party bound together by having a common foreign enemy? The Democrats have always been firmly anti-Putin, and I don't think anything about that has changed, but sometimes it does seem like it's veering from "Putin is awful and stands opposed to our view of what is right and just in the world, and the Trump administration's relationship with him is both worrying and possibly treasonous" and slightly into "the Ruskies, our hated enemies, are trying to take our precious bodily fluids."

It's really more then just about "Russia" it's about the fostering of right wing fascism and general liberal and social democratic discord that serves Russia's geopolitical interests.

This, I agree with completely.
posted by StopMakingSense at 3:00 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Trumps first visit overseas will be to Russia

Well, generally, when you start a new job you're expected to check in with your new boss.
posted by valkane at 3:01 PM on January 14, 2017 [82 favorites]


Trumps first visit overseas will be to Russia, according to British Offcials in the the Sunday Times

Small correction: it will be WITH Russia, but IN Iceland. But, yeah. He's not even really trying to hide anything, is he?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 3:06 PM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


I'm just going to reiterate that it takes a special kind of coward to fucking insult Rep. John Lewis. On MLK weekend.

Goddamn.
posted by lydhre at 3:06 PM on January 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


Framing this administration as an effective Russian takeover lets American voters who might be undecided or less informed save face as they come to our banner.

This isn't going to work when elected Republicans and Republican voters are openly celebrating Putin's victory as much as Trump's. There's a reason Democrats are the only ones concerned about Russia beyond just Hilary's loss - Republicans agree with everything Putin's Russia stands for. Putin created a White Nationalist Christian Theocracy with himself as the Daddy Figure. That's exactly what Republicans have been trying to turn America into for 70 years.

They're natural allies. Putin himself would've won the election if he could've got on the ballot.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:08 PM on January 14, 2017 [30 favorites]


Trumps first visit overseas will be to Russia, according to British Offcials in the the Sunday Times

youvegottobefuckingkiddingme

Seriously, can I wake up now and it be Nov 9th and Hillary has been elected and this has just been a bad dream?
posted by photoslob at 3:11 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Small correction: it will be WITH Russia, but IN Iceland. But, yeah. He's not even really trying to hide anything, is he?

Among everything else I also read this as "Fuck you all for trying to tell me what I should or shouldn't be doing. You don't like me and Russia? Screw you. No one is going to tell me what to do"
(except maybe Russia of course)
posted by Jalliah at 3:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Quoted for Truth: Anyway, the only way the left is going to do anything useful is to lower the bar for inclusion into the activist and governing spaces. If you can show up and wave a sign and write a letter and cast a vote, you're on my side enough for me to stand beside you and do the work together.

I keep preaching this to the people around me in activist spaces. Take All Comers. There is room for everyone, regardless of who they are or what they are able to do. Yes, it can be frustrating when someone is ignorant of basics like how government works or what protests are likely to be at all effective. But if someone shows up and is really passionate about making noise about Ivanka Trump's clothing brand. . . well I might not think that is the best use of time, but that's what THAT PERSON wants to do. It contributes. And if we ridicule them and chase them out of our playhouse then they aren't going to be around when we need bodies to march or people to make calls. These newcomers to activism are only going to get more informed and more dedicated as they participate, unless we chase them away at the outset.
posted by threeturtles at 3:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [46 favorites]


Trumps first visit overseas will be to Russia, according to British Offcials in the the Sunday Times

A sit-down with the Don, near the Volga.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:17 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


I am too damn scared to stop and fret about the state of my immortal soul or my party's perfection when there's a dozen fucking bills on state and national levels that are going to hurt people I know directly and care about! Why the shit do you think we should pause and rethink right as we're gathering some actual momentum?

I'm just going to gently caution you that this is basically me two years ago. Sometimes it's important to soulsearch even when you're moving and winning, because otherwise this is the crap you end up with while you weren't paying attention.
posted by corb at 3:18 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Mod note: Guys, if you want to have a conversation about the appropriate doom-and-gloom apocalypse-prediction levels for MetaFilter, that's a discussion we need to have in MetaTalk and not in-thread. We've been getting increasing quantities of e-mail from people who are having a lot of trouble dealing with the doomsaying, and we've covered that ground really thoroughly in general. If someone wants to put together a well-constructed MetaTalk, that would be fine and we can have that discussion -- after the holiday weekend, so we have enough mods around for it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 3:21 PM on January 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


A sit-down with the Don, near the Volga.

Putin tells Trump he's an honorary cossack, Trump confusedly begins dressing like a foot-stool
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:24 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


[Eyebrows, can I ask why you never use the staff tag (that I've seen)?]
posted by uosuaq at 3:28 PM on January 14, 2017


Gently, though, corb, I... would want to point out that two years ago the Republican party had full control of half the legislative branch, had previously taken control of all of Congress, had recently ground the government to a standstill and was gearing up to do it again, and generally were not in the situation that liberals currently face. I would also like to gently ask whether Republicans two years ago were literally looking at rollback of thirty year old civil protections that personally applied to them and their families or new and exciting bills targeting their friends for harassment.

I hear you on fear, and like I said I am thinking as I act. But it seems to me that the actual incentives to be afraid are a little different, unless I am missing something big about your own context. Elaborate?
posted by sciatrix at 3:29 PM on January 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


mods don't use "staff" on the blue.
posted by futz at 3:30 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Staff tag only works in MetaTalk. :)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:30 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Also, I'm pretty sure the pertinent bit of your phrase there is moving and winning. Absolutely I can take time to soul search and consider the ramifications of my tactics when I'm not looking at a situation where people who hate every aspect of my identity except my whiteness have full control over two branches of federal government, half control of a third, and also control all branches of my state government outright. It's going to fucking be a while before I feel like we're winning.
posted by sciatrix at 3:33 PM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Comedy Central: "3 Doors Down will perform at the Trump inauguration, which can only mean Hoobastank said no."
posted by numaner at 3:35 PM on January 14, 2017 [13 favorites]




I don't know how to tell you guys this, but a lot of democratic voters consider Clinton a candidate we settled on. When Booker's vote makes him look like another progressive who fails the smell test, those voters are going to question both whether he deserves their vote and whether he can win the White House. This is not the doing of Vladimir Putin. Sorry.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:38 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


I can't wait for candidate after candidate to "fail the smell test" until 2019 rolls around and the only candidate with the progressive chops to run will be... Bernie Sanders! What do you know!

I will, in the parlance of our day, lol.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 3:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [36 favorites]


That's at least 12 now!

I have high hopes for my Rep, Ted Lieu. I just left a message saying he was doing a great job filling Henry Waxman's shoes and I hope he announces his boycott soon!
posted by Room 641-A at 9:57 AM on January 14


Ted Lieu @tedlieu: My statement on why I am not attending the inauguration of @realDonaldTrump. I stand with John Lewis. (link: https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/congressman-lieu-statement-his-decision-not-attend-inauguration) lieu.house.gov/media-center/p…
2:09 PM · Jan 14, 2017
posted by Room 641-A at 3:43 PM on January 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


March is an incredible trilogy and I can't recommend it enough. Twitter link (video, no captions): Accepting National Book Award, Rep. John Lewis emotionally recounts being denied a library card as a black child who loved to read.
posted by hapaxes.legomenon at 3:43 PM on January 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


I'm not crazy about Booker, either, but boy does starting the fight over the 2020 primary seem grotesquely beside the point right now.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [67 favorites]


[Trump's first visit overseas] will be WITH Russia, but IN Iceland. But, yeah. He's not even really trying to hide anything, is he?

Been thinking about this a bit.

In this era of non-open war, it seems to me that enemy and ally are getting very close to terms we can redefine at will. Especially when the biggest enemies are now stateless actors like ISIL and others soon to be discovered/invented.

I expect the new-normal spin that this will receive, eventually, is that Russia is one of our biggest, strongest allies in the world, so why wouldn't be meet with them ASAP? Nobody would complain if he met with the leaders of Great Britain, Canada or any of our other allies, would they?

The "positive" result will be that in the near future, it's a US-Russian alliance that will rule the planet, and if any other nations want to capitulate and join in, sure, they're welcome to the scraps.

Containing China is the only real obstacle, and a united USA-Russia might be able to do just that.
posted by rokusan at 3:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


That's very likely what will happen, Hall and Oates. What you just described is the democratic primary. We didn't have much of one in 2016, and you see where that got us.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:46 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh, for fuck's sake, kittens. If your Democratic voters value their allegiance to Sanders over helping the rest of us save their worthless hides, I gotta question the strength of theirs progressive values.
posted by sciatrix at 3:50 PM on January 14, 2017 [54 favorites]


"Fortunately, we have a plan."

Did you watch Battlestar Galactica?


Seriously, how did they fuck that up? It was basically the show's mission statement.

It's like winter never coming on Game of Thrones, or Star Trek forgetting to travel anywhere.
posted by rokusan at 3:52 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


I voted for Hillary. Didn't want to. Would I rather vote for someone more progressive? Of course I would. Why start compromising now? If Booker is nominated, I would vote for him over Trump. I would vote for almost anyone over Trump. While we're shopping, though, why make excuses?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:54 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


I can't wait for candidate after candidate to "fail the smell test" until 2019 rolls around and the only candidate with the progressive chops to run will be... Bernie Sanders!

I like to think we'll get an improved candidate that builds on Sanders, but isn't actually Sanders himself... however, to be fair, Clinton was the candidate chosen at least four (and more like eight) years in advance, so at least there'd be precedent.

(I am not even sure how much I'm joking at this point. Irony is armor.)
posted by rokusan at 3:54 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


White House Sends 'Strongest Signal Yet' That Chelsea Manning Will Be Freed

At a White House press conference on Friday, press secretary Josh Earnest broke silence around the Chelsea Manning's plea for clemency, sending what some advocates believe to be a signal that the president may soon decide in Manning's favor. When asked by a reporter about Manning's and Edward Snowden's clemency requests, Earnest spoke at length about their cases, which is in itself unusual.

Earnest carefully and clearly distinguished between the two cases in a way that appears the White House may favor Manning's request to be set free. "The Department of Justice and the president will consider individual clemency applications on their merits," Earnest explained. He went on to "illustrate the pretty stark difference between Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden,"...

posted by futz at 3:56 PM on January 14, 2017 [28 favorites]


I for one am not shopping for anything, and all this goddamn focus on either a primary that ended six months ago or one that won't happen for nearly four more years is a waste of fucking time. Worry about the primaries in two years, when we've seen if the terror driving massive mobilization now can be harnessed and converted into turnout. We have bigger fish to fry.
posted by sciatrix at 4:02 PM on January 14, 2017 [41 favorites]




Protests derail UC Davis event with Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

A little more background on this. Student groups repeatedly asked the administration to cancel the event, arguing that a forum featuring hate-spewing, violence-inciting Yiannopoulous and he-who-has-no-moral-core Shkreli would inherently violate the university's "Principles of Community." (Which, if you can believe it, are taken very seriously. Violating the Principles of Community, in an egregious enough way, I guess, is grounds for expulsion or termination.)

Ralph Hexter, the interim Chancellor -- the one who replaced perennial bad-choice-maker Linda Katehi -- sent an email to all faculty/staff/students yesterday afternoon saying he understood and heard and agreed with the concerns, but that freedom of expression is freedom of expression: "Any public university must do everything it can to make sure that all members of its community are free to express their views—both because free expression is a right guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution and enshrined in University of California policy, and because it is an essential ingredient of excellence in higher-education teaching and research.... To this, let me add my personal belief that a university is at its best, is most true to itself, and makes proper use of its unique intellectual resources when it listens to and critically engages opposing views, especially ones that many of us find upsetting or even offensive."

Hexter is an openly gay man, a professor of the Humanities. He sent a holiday message to that list of 70,000 faculty/staff/students that mentioned his partner (or husband -- don't know whether they're married) by name. [Which, to me, was just amazing. I was talking with another gay professor about it, who was equally touched, and all he could say was "In my 60 years, I just...." and he teared up, couldn't finish the sentence.] The day after the election, Hexter sent an email stating that undocumented students would be safe, would not lose financial aid or be kicked out of school, and that the campus police department would refuse to do anything to enforce deportation orders. He also acknowledged that many on campus were experiencing "considerable consernation" and felt raw, and included the full list of counseling resources on campus.

He's one of the good guys, and he made the call that the Breitbart-ish event would go on as planned. Which had to have been so, so difficult for him personally, as someone who has been the target of the kind of hatred that Milo/Martin and their fans breathe life into.

Compare Hexter -- who took a moral stance on something, even though it was repugnant and detrimental to him personally, because he believed it to be the right thing to do -- with Trump insulting John Lewis. I mean, my god, the gulf is wider than I ever thought it could be, and it makes me very sad.

(I'm really glad, by the way, that students took things into their own hands and protested the event out of existence so that Yiannopoulous and Shkreli were denied the forum. I'm also glad I don't have to walk around campus this coming week wondering which students had been emboldened by it.)
posted by mudpuppie at 4:05 PM on January 14, 2017 [65 favorites]


I for one am not shopping for anything, and all this goddamn focus on either a primary that ended six months ago or one that won't happen for nearly four more is a waste of fucking time. Worry about the primaries in two years, when we've seen if the terror driving massive mobilization now can be harnessed and converted into turnout. We have bigger fish to fry.

I would also suggest, unfortunately, that the context of what 2 years from now is going to be very, very different and people that theoretically may seem make sense now are not going to make sense then. Echoing the that it's a waste of time. Donald's admin is going to bring people to the forefront that have been barely heard of now. This is just what happens when things go sideways.
posted by Jalliah at 4:11 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


President-elect Donald Trump is expected to visit the National Museum of African American History in observance of Martin Luther King Day

Your link's bad -- the tweet is here.

It's nice to know in advance what the shitshow of the moment will be sometime in the vicinity of Monday afternoon, I suppose.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:14 PM on January 14, 2017


2020 is an aeon away. Every week until then will be uncharted territory. If we're going to go into this new era with open eyes, we need to focus on working to have a recognizable country in six months before we start planning for four endless years from now.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:14 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Mod note: Crank it down approximately three notches and speak to each other with respect, please.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 4:15 PM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]




Booker can simultaneously be a strong voice against Sessions and pander to one of his state's big industries -- big pharma. I've followed him fairly closely, and am wholly unsurprised by his vote.
posted by Sweetdefenestration at 4:15 PM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


I feel like people who ask if Trump is really that different when compared to Bush or Reagan either don't remember Bush and Reagan or aren't paying attention to Trump. I know that's likely not true but it's how I feel.
posted by Justinian at 4:15 PM on January 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


I apologize for contributing to the Booker derail. But here's the deal. It is insanity for Dem/Progressive leaders to introduce bullshit amendments that they KNOW won't go through, and then loudly condemn/attack their Dem partners who don't vote for it. Honestly, what is the fucking point of it? And why did Bernie introduce it if he wasn't sure that his Dem partners were also on board? Because he didn't care about it passing, he cared about shaming Dems who don't toe his line.

Dems need real leaders to rally them through this coming dark time. Anybody who is interested in showboating and cutting down allies is, well. Let's say he's not my cup of tea.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 4:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [56 favorites]


Is there an exhibit on Selma at the Museum? Maybe John Lewis could stand, Madame Tussaud's style, in that room and just wait for Trump to come in....
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [72 favorites]


How tone freaking deaf can trumpski be (don't bother answering) deciding to go to the National Museum of African American History after everything today? I wonder if this was planned before or after? And what a day to protest to drive home a point that will never penetrate donnie's greyish matter.

thanks for providing the correct link tivalasvegas.
posted by futz at 4:17 PM on January 14, 2017



Is there an exhibit on Selma at the Museum? Maybe John Lewis could stand, wax-museum style, in that room and just wait for Trump to come in....


You just made me choke on my hot chocolate.
posted by Jalliah at 4:18 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


How tone freaking deaf can trumpski be (don't bother answering) deciding to go to the National Museum of African American History after everything today?

Is it too much to hope that something will strike a chord with him, and he'll learn something? Maybe he can go with Barron or Ivanka or Tiffany.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:19 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'd like to think that sometime in the future there will be a documentary that will juxtapose the horror of the Trump years to those who showed up at his inauguration ball. A bit like The Sorrow and the Pity.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:19 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Normally, a Head of State asking you to perform would be a command performance? Like, except under very unusual circumstances, a Brit can't refuse an invitation from the Queen because the invitation is a command.

It's not, like, totally unreasonable and there are exceptions, like, if she invites an actor and that actor is filming, the entire cast and crew's filming schedule does not have to be thrown into disarray because Queenie-poos demands it.

Absent a major reason like massive inconvenience and cost to loads of people, though, you are REALLY supposed to show up if the Queen invites you to stuff.

I mean isn't it the same with being invited to the Inauguration? Or invited to anything else by the President?

So Steve Harvey saying, oh I'd go to the inauguration but my wife has plans for my 60th birthday, WOW that is putting Trump in his place. I assume he is the douchecopter everyone says he is, but CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE.
posted by tel3path at 4:21 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


It is insanity for Dem/Progressive leaders to introduce bullshit amendments that they KNOW won't go through, and then loudly condemn/attack their Dem partners who don't vote for it.

Exactly Arsenio etc. Exactly thank you.
posted by R343L at 4:22 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


I guess the question I keep coming back to is: what do the Republicans actually want? They seem to be a party consisting primarily of power-hungry ideologues who don't actually want to make the country better, and what's worse, know that a plurality of voters don't agree with them and so use all sort of shady and morally corrupt methods to win and hold onto power.

I can't seriously believe that any politician that was a member of an actual functioning party (functioning defined as a party genuinely interested in serving its citizens) would allow someone like Trump to be the head of government.

Is Trump really just the culmination of every horrible deal with the devil the Republicans have made over the past 40 years? How have the American people been so thoroughly snowed by the Republicans that they think what they're doing is okay?
posted by Automocar at 4:24 PM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump
Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!


Starting to think this Trump guy might be some kind of jerk
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:25 PM on January 14, 2017 [49 favorites]




I'd like to think that sometime in the future there will be a documentary that will juxtapose the horror of the Trump years to those who showed up at his inauguration ball. A bit like The Sorrow and the Pity.

I've been thinking almost nonstop about that film, and contemplated watching it this weekend, but I thought the wallowing would be hazardous to my health.
posted by GrammarMoses at 4:27 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Jesus Fucking Christ he just can't let it go.
posted by Talez at 4:27 PM on January 14, 2017


What the hell. STOP TWEETING. DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT. HIRE AN ANGER TRANSLATOR.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:27 PM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Normally, a Head of State asking you to perform would be a command performance? Like, except under very unusual circumstances, a Brit can't refuse an invitation from the Queen because the invitation is a command.

[...]

I mean isn't it the same with being invited to the Inauguration? Or invited to anything else by the President?


No, it isn't, this is a republic. For at least six more days.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:28 PM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


How tone freaking deaf can trumpski be (don't bother answering) deciding to go to the National Museum of African American History after everything today? I wonder if this was planned before or after?

Back in September when it first opened he could not remember the name of it. He called it "Smithsonian national museum of American history, African-American art.''

I recall his team wanted to tour the NC Civil Rights museum back in October but they wanted the museum shut down for 5 hours. The museum politely declined. Now I guess they can force the museum to shut down during his visit.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:28 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maybe John Lewis could stand, Madame Tussaud's style, in that room and just wait for Trump to come in....
There were a bunch of fabulous pictures circulating earlier this year of John Lewis at Comic-Con, cosplaying his 25-year-old self. (He was there to accept an award for his graphic-novel autobiography.) I bet he would be game.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:29 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


It is insanity for Dem/Progressive leaders to introduce bullshit amendments that they KNOW won't go through, and then loudly condemn/attack their Dem partners who don't vote for it.

The latter is more of an issue than the former. Part of the game of congressional politics involves launching a lot of trial balloons that don't have a prayer of passing just to say, "we tried that." But the other part of the game is shooting them down, so it's not good to use your trial balloons as an argument regarding party purity.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:30 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yes, for those who haven't followed the saga of Linda Katehi since she led a brutal crackdown on student OWS demonstrators -- a crisis she weathered despite her venal, horrid conduct --- she went on to get busted for egregious levels of fiscal corruption managing her own expense accounts and university funds and was forced to resign, at last, just last year.

Pepper spraying your own students sitting in a roadway is one thing. Billing the school for your first class hotel room on a vacation junket with your husband is something else again!

I predict she winds up as head of the NEH under Trump once Hulk Hogan's confirmation runs into trouble.
posted by spitbull at 4:31 PM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


What the hell. STOP TWEETING. DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT. HIRE AN ANGER TRANSLATOR.

You know he does this repeatedly but every time I'm still like 'wot? seriously? Can you not learn anything? Like ever?"

I suppose that it's good to know that the pushback is getting through though. Still astounding.
posted by Jalliah at 4:31 PM on January 14, 2017


I mean isn't it the same with being invited to the Inauguration?

We aren't a monarchy and our leaders are not regals. This was a decision made by none other than George Washington himself, who could have if he had wanted become our first king. There is no such thing as a command performance in the United States, at least since 1865. You can be invited, you can be paid or volunteer, you can accept or decline, but you cannot be forced* to do anything.

* Does not apply if your employer commands you to do something on pain of termination.
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:32 PM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


But it seems to me that the actual incentives to be afraid are a little different, unless I am missing something big about your own context. Elaborate?

You're already doing the right thing! I more meant in general when talking to others. The exigency of the situation can't mean throwing people under the bus, or using immoral tactics, for example. Which you are currently not doing so A+++.
posted by corb at 4:33 PM on January 14, 2017


Well, field sobriety tests.
posted by spitbull at 4:33 PM on January 14, 2017


That is disgusting. One moment he disrespects and insults real civil rights leaders like John Lewis and the community of Atlanta and the next moment he's visiting the Civil Rights Museum in a completely empty gesture that's an insult to everything Lewis and other civil rights activists fought for.

Two-faced doesn't even begin to cover it.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 4:34 PM on January 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


I guess the question I keep coming back to is: what do the Republicans actually want?

Revenge. They want to inflict as much pain as possible on every person or group not rich, white, Christian male. It's not complicated.

And tax cuts, of course.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:35 PM on January 14, 2017 [29 favorites]


I like the part where he thinks John Lewis is "all talk and no action."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:35 PM on January 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S.

He's like that guy in the Oliver Sacks vignette who had a brain tumor that stopped him making new memories after the late 1960s, and Sacks took him to a Rolling Stones reunion concert and he was super-confused by the stuff they were playing from the early '70s.

Except that guy didn't get elected President.
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:36 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


If I remember right, Tagore rejected royal honors as protest against UK imperialism. Generally "command performance" is something of an anachronism since jailing artists for not wanting to participate your state event is a political nightmare.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:37 PM on January 14, 2017


Why start compromising now? If Booker is nominated, I would vote for him over Trump. I would vote for almost anyone over Trump. While we're shopping, though, why make excuses?

So you didn't see the election? Whew, you've got a lot to catch up on.
posted by bongo_x at 4:37 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I like the part where he thinks John Lewis is "all talk and no action."

Yeah, the man arrested 45 times fighting for civil rights and beaten and spit on numerous times.
posted by chris24 at 4:37 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Normally, a Head of State asking you to perform would be a command performance?

I used to love reading Miss Manners books-- I collected all of them-- and I remember one of her rules was that you do not refuse an invitation to the White House unless you are on your deathbed. I don't think the lady could have imagined a Trump White House. In fact since he got elected I have from time to time imagined how ghastly Dinner at the White House will become. Can you imagine given his taste in food and people? Conversation with Laura Ingraham, Steve Bannon, Kellyann Conway, and Sean Hannity over iceberg lettuce, well-done steak and Trump water.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:39 PM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Is it too much to hope that something will strike a chord with him, and he'll learn something? Maybe he can go with Barron or Ivanka or Tiffany.

I have no reason to believe Ivanka cares about anything other than enriching herself.
posted by Room 641-A at 4:39 PM on January 14, 2017 [23 favorites]


Why not accept the invitation, then protest once you have the stage?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 4:39 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Well, I wasn't suggesting jailing would be the consequence. Only that it would be hugely disrespectful and a breach of protocol to say no. Nobody is suggesting that you'd be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure if you refused to perform on command. Only that refusing it is not like saying "nah I don't think so, there's good telly on that night."

Similarly, Steve Harvey saying, no I can't go to the inauguration cuz my wife has plans for my 60th birthday, well, that is highly respectful to his wife and his marriage, and highly disrespectful to Trump. GOOD.
posted by tel3path at 4:41 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Why not accept the invitation, then protest once you have the stage?

The blacklash from your own fans once you are announced is huge. So then you'd have to deal with not being able to tell them what you were going to do. It's be cool if someone offered to perform at the inauguration on like, the 19th or something, and just keep the secret for the night. "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" from Cabaret would be a good suggestion.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yeah, I wonder if somewhere in the Miss Manners archive there is a question about receiving an invitation from your head of state and your head of state is Hitler, what do you do then? Eh? Eh?

Because I'm sure her answer would be incisive and correct.

To such a hypothetical question. [sob]
posted by tel3path at 4:43 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


I don't think the lady could have imagined a Trump White House.
She's apparently still around. You could probably ask her.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


The brilliant illustrator Robert Sikoryak, who among other feats illustrated the entire iTunes terms and conditions in the style of famous comic book artists, is now creating comic book covers from Trump campaign quotes (including Trump as the Ice King in "Adversary Time").
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 4:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]




I do hope Trump learns something at the Museum, but I honestly feel he'd better serve the American people (hah!) right now with a damn walking tour around Atlanta, to see that it's not literally "burning," as that's apparently all he can imagine when he thinks of a place black people might be living.
posted by zachlipton at 4:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


Ivanka will not stop him. Ivanka will not save us. Ivanka is not a good person. Ivanka stood up there at the RNC and lied about her father's record with women, tried to convince people he isn't what he manifestly is. Ivanka attacked a Cosmo reporter for asking questions about her and her father's maternity leave program. Ivanka used the campaign to push her clothes line. Ivanka is a Trump through and through.

Thinking she's really some closeted decent person pulling strings for good seemingly simply because she's an attractive blonde is just as sexist as hating her for being a woman.
posted by chris24 at 4:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [130 favorites]


Why start compromising now? If Booker is nominated, I would vote for him over Trump. I would vote for almost anyone over Trump. While we're shopping, though, why make excuses?

So much this. It's been made clear that general elections are existential crises at this point, and it is no longer possibly to ethically vote Republican for any office. Policy decisions and candidate selections are made at the primary level. And at that level, I'd prefer to have the candidate who did not value the profits of his corporate masters over the ability of sick people to afford their meds. I don't think I need to be a Russian or Republican plant to think this.
posted by kafziel at 4:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'm trying to picture an "anger translator" for Trump...isn't that just called a delay pedal?
posted by uosuaq at 4:51 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


How tone freaking deaf can trumpski be (don't bother answering) deciding to go to the National Museum of African American History after everything today?

Is it too much to hope that something will strike a chord with him, and he'll learn something?


I'm guessing that chord will be nostalgia.
posted by JackFlash at 4:52 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Maybe if Trump goes to the museum he'll find out who John Lewis is. (Trump will never find out who Trump is.)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:52 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Jennifer Rubin at WaPo: Other Democrats could learn a lot from John Lewis: To recap, on MLK weekend Trump attacked a revered civil rights figure who received grave physical injuries in pursuit of freedom and equality by in essence labeling his district a crime-ridden ghetto. One can say Trump is impulsive and ignorant (does he even know who Lewis is?), but alas, he also makes negative, inaccurate generalizations about minorities. Yes, he talks like a racist. And more people know that now, thanks to Lewis — who once again prompted the press (Right Turn included) to recount his participation in the civil rights movement.
posted by TwoStride at 4:53 PM on January 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


re: Jennifer Holliday accepts, then cancels, inauguration gig

zachliption has a good explainer above about this.
posted by futz at 4:54 PM on January 14, 2017


I do hope Trump learns something at the Museum, but I honestly feel he'd better serve the American people (hah!) right now with a damn walking tour around Atlanta, to see that it's not literally "burning," as that's apparently all he can imagine when he thinks of a place black people might be living.
posted by zachlipton at 7:47 PM on January 14 [−] Favorite added! [!]

This, so much! I'm starting to think he was given a Boxed Set of The Wire and bingewatched it but I know that's not really true. He is stuck in the 70's when NY really was crime-infested. He is 70 years old and his ideas about Black Culture and Black lifestyles are probably not going to change. This museum visit is just a photo-op so he can pretend to himself and his fan base that he is not a racist.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


DJT will come away with absolutely nothing from his visit to the NMAAHC except further reassurance that he's glad he was born rich and white and learned well from his eugenicist father.
posted by TwoStride at 4:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


The bizarro world we live in now where Jennifer freakin' Rubin is frequently not only right, but on the right side of history.
posted by chris24 at 4:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


DJT will come away with absolutely nothing from his visit to the NMAAHC except further reassurance that he's glad he was born rich and white and learned well from his eugenicist father.

There's a 99% chance this is true but I'll hope for that 1% chance that it just utterly breaks him. (And/or that John Lewis comes at him when he least expects it.)
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:58 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Indeed. When Rubin AND Bill Kristol are making occasional sense, it's time to check on whether your planet is cube-shaped.
posted by delfin at 4:59 PM on January 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


Biased, overrated museum wants us to believe whites are to blame for slavery! So dishonest. SAD!
posted by uosuaq at 5:01 PM on January 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


Assuming he even actually shows up at the museum--I wouldn't rule out some kind of "emergency briefing" that gets him out of it when he tantrums about having to go see a history about people he doesn't like--how long do we think we'll stay? 10 minutes for a photo op?
posted by TwoStride at 5:02 PM on January 14, 2017


The blacklash from your own fans once you are announced is huge.

A few of the musicians on that list will be hearing from me as an ex-listener. Some have gone back on performing, so it's worth a try.

When I was just starting out in learning about the Trump circle, I was especially disgusted by people like Thiel and Milo who are in marginalized groups themselves, but are in privileged positions and use those positions to hurt minorities and other vulnerable groups. I now know that there's a bad history within elements of the community of marginalizing bi and trans* people, among others, so I'm not as shocked that such people exist as I was back then, but I hold a special contempt for Milo and Thiel for their benefiting from the struggles and suffering of LGBT activists while actively working to take the gains those activists fought for away.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 5:02 PM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]




The level of response by Donald supporters about the pushback on his Lewis tweets is quite literally (meaning I've seen the exact words used over and over) is 'Lewis started it' and "He has the right to defend himself'.

This is why a certain percentage of the people are never going to be able to see what Donald says and does as being a problem, they only understand Donald at the level of 'well they are being mean to me'.
posted by Jalliah at 5:08 PM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


I'm not from California, so I don't have as much insight here. I know Thiel has bottomless pockets and corrupt friends, so that's an issue for any opponent if he runs, but is he well-liked or popular enough to win the governorship of a solidly blue state like California? (I know Arnold won, but he was a bigger celebrity and from my understanding - correct me if I'm wrong - he wasn't as radically conservative as Thiel.)
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 5:09 PM on January 14, 2017


These threads get really long quickly and there are already quite a few double links. Perhaps a gentle reminder to ctrl+f the thread first? I am guilty of this too. I am always hesitant to broach things like this because I am not a mod. :/
posted by futz at 5:13 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


People said Trump couldn't win. Thiel can absolutely win. We can't ever write anyone off ever again.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:13 PM on January 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


I want to say he's universally disliked and would be blowing a stack of cash, but boy has the world gotten weird lately.
posted by Artw at 5:13 PM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


The blacklash from your own fans once you are announced is huge.

Springsteen cover band promises to cancel Trump inauguration concert if ‘the Boss’ asks

The New York Times reported Friday that members of the band B Street played at the inauguration of Pres. Barack Obama in 2009 and were such a hit that they were asked back in 2013. They agreed to play the 2017 inauguration before the election and are now bearing the brunt of people’s dissatisfaction with the incoming administration.

“I never saw this coming — this part coming,” said B Street keyboardist and founder Willie Forte in an interview with the Times. “Are you asking me if, you know, if I would’ve reconsidered if I could go back in the beginning and I knew this was going to happen? Sure
.”
posted by Room 641-A at 5:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


This is why a certain percentage of the people is never going to be able to see what Donald says and does as being a problem, they only understand Donald at the level of 'well they are being mean to me'.

Exactly, Jalliah, but the thing is that Trump could actually defend himself by attempting to make the case that he is legitimate (as Joy-Ann Reid wrote this morning) instead of lashing out not just at Rep. Lewis, but also at the 700,000 people who live in Georgia's 5th congressional district. He could have tried to make the case that he will be President of the entire country by attempting to learn about regions and cities (instead of just traveling to the states he won), not portray them in racist attacks as burning hellscapes. He could have acknowledged that he lost the popular vote and showed an ounce of humility over that, instead of glorifying the size of his mandate. He could have tried to make the case that he was serious about Russia and hacking instead of going into full-on puppet mode.

A real response would be to prove his legitimacy, not attack the speaker, and certainly not to demean an entire city. Step #1 in that process would be to be the bigger person and realize that, as President, you can simply ignore most attacks as not worthy of your attention, instead of lashing out over every slight. But he's incapable of that. Everyone knows that. We knew he was a snake when we took him in.
posted by zachlipton at 5:20 PM on January 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


Biased, overrated museum wants us to believe whites are to blame for slavery! So dishonest. SAD!

Lots of stuff about slaves, nothing about masters. Unfair!
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:24 PM on January 14, 2017 [20 favorites]


@Rschooley:
Trump visit to Smithsonian African American History Museum on MLK day is canceled. Can't imagine why. [image of John Lewis exhibit at museum]
posted by chris24 at 5:26 PM on January 14, 2017 [34 favorites]


And he's still blatting on about John Lewis! At least his latest tweet ends 'I need all the help I can get!' which may be the truest thing he's said in two years...
posted by Devonian at 5:28 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump: Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!

@justinamash:
Dude, just stop.


That's Tea Party leader Justin Amash.
posted by chris24 at 5:29 PM on January 14, 2017 [65 favorites]


I'm still disappointed about the 3 Doors Down thing, probably because they're the only band on that list I had any knowledge of and had a song I liked. Some of my friends who like their music more than me also expressed disappointment. I'm guessing that hoping they cancel the performance is a stretch, but I'll be happy to contribute to the social-media backlash. I already kicked them off my playlist in favor of Richard Thompson.

At the very least cutting them out has let me explore new and better music, so there's that.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 5:29 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


He is 70 years old and his ideas about Black Culture and Black lifestyles are probably not going to change.

WHY CAN'T THEY ALL BE LIKE HUGGY BEAR?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:30 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


A real response would be to prove his legitimacy, not attack the speaker, and certainly not to demean an entire city. Step #1 in that process would be to be the bigger person and realize that, as President, you can simply ignore most attacks as not worthy of your attention, instead of lashing out over every slight. But he's incapable of that. Everyone knows that. We knew he was a snake when we took him in.

Yep. For some reason tonight I felt like going elsewhere and having 'chats' with people saying things and have said these exact sort of things. Do you not see that the problem is what he said and not that he said anything? I've been engaging and have so far not been able to pierce the 'Lewis said something mean' worldview one bit. Whether willfully or not it's just 'Donald was just getting back at Lewis who started it and now people are in tears about it. That's all the seem to matter or that they can see.
posted by Jalliah at 5:33 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I just wanted to let everyone going to a protest (or just anywhere, really) about the ACLU Mobile Justice app. One of the features allows you to record an incident and have it automatically sent to the ACLU for review. This is handy if phones are confiscated or footage "accidentally" erased. There is a DC-specific version but I believe any version will work regardless of your location.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:36 PM on January 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump: Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!

So I think that he either saw or somebody showed him the responses from Atlanta (among other responses) and tried to explain to him that it was a problem and this is his take back.

Translation: Okay fine, not Atlanta then, all of the other cities then!!

And he's all proud of himself for figuring out how to be 'tricky'.
posted by Jalliah at 5:39 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


People said Trump couldn't win. Thiel can absolutely win. We can't ever write anyone off ever again.

I understand this, but I also feel like Jerry Brown's current popularity + anti-Trump backlash make it extremely unlikely that Thiel or anyone like him could be elected.

That could be the last shreds of my naïveté showing.
posted by mudpuppie at 5:40 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


...make it extremely unlikely that Thiel or anyone like him could be elected IN CALIFORNIA, meant to say.
posted by mudpuppie at 5:41 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


I understand this, but I also feel like Jerry Brown's current popularity + anti-Trump backlash make it extremely unlikely that Thiel or anyone like him could be elected.

He'll just put a D in front of his name. Worked for Ro Khanna.
posted by Talez at 5:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


This museum visit is just a photo-op so he can pretend to himself and his fan base that he is not a racist.

This reminds me of the picture that was circulating during the election of Trump squeamishly holding an LGBTQ pride flag like it was a soiled diaper. There were comments under it to the effect of "See! The dems are going to lose it!"

I envision Debord with a rictus grin that is growing daily.
posted by P.o.B. at 5:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


the ACLU Mobile Justice app.

Now THIS is the kind of thing I hope liberal/left orgs with the biggest reach keep doing.
posted by Rykey at 5:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


I kinda wonder if anybody has mentioned to Trump that saying "hey black guy, what about the black people?!" is wrong ten ways from Sunday. Considering he's already pulled this one before, my assumption is that he knows and doesn't care.
posted by P.o.B. at 5:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


But "hey black guy, what about the black people??" plays fantastically well with the racist fucks who voted for him, so.
posted by lydhre at 5:51 PM on January 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


Well, he's always been nakedly racist and too stupid/brash to conceal it. He also doesn't care that he's doing the Twitter equivalent of showing his bare butt to the entire world.

*reaches for brain bleach at the image*
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 5:52 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Well, he's always been nakedly racist and too stupid/brash to conceal it. He also doesn't care that he's doing the Twitter equivalent of showing his bare butt to the entire world.

*reaches for brain bleach at the image*


I hate you.
posted by Jalliah at 5:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


*reaches for brain bleach at the image*

There's a significant chance that we will see any and all nooks and crannies of his anatomy in grainy night-vision video at some point in the near future. Best not to bleach that image. We have to prepare ourselves.
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump
Inauguration Day is turning out to be even bigger than expected. January 20th, Washington D.C. Have fun!


Oh the banality.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:00 PM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Jesus Fucking Christ he just can't let it go.

I may be going out on a limb here, but I was looking at all the awesome Atlanta tweets trending under the hashtag #defendthe5th because I used to live in and still love that city, and I suddenly remembered how many times I walked past the empty lot with the development sign for Trump Towers Atlanta. Which never got off the ground - probably in part because of the recession. But the whole property was foreclosed on, and so the razed lot and TRUMP signs just sat there, for years. It's been bought and is being developed by someone else now, and it's in a great location. Tons of development in Midtown and beyond over the past 5 years; driving down Ponce last month on my way to the airport, the city seemed more vibrant than ever.

Anyway, no reason to discount racism as the primary reason for all the shitting on Lewis & Atlanta, but I bet the fact that his plan to get money for putting his name on two bright monstrous buildings in the middle of the city still bothers our thin-skinned little PEOTUS.
posted by deludingmyself at 6:00 PM on January 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


Chatting on Facebook about how unreal and pulp thriller-ish this all seems, I found myself saying "I haven't felt this way since 9/11."

And in saying that, I remembered the way I was glued to the news after that, thinking "This is some Tom Clancy bullshit. This can't be real..." the way I argued on the internet in my naive American confusion and hurt. The fear, the feeling that anything could happen. When all the flights were grounded indefinitely and the president was in an undisclosed location and phone lines were jammed and it seemed like... is this the end of the world?

Later, feeling unsafe at every airport and landmark, in every crowd. The anthrax threats. The endless talk of weapons of mass destruction. I was 21 in 2001, and I watched the news on Sept 11 all day on the big screens in the big lecture rooms of the community college where I had a summer job. I had to help hook up the TV feeds to those projectors myelf because the job was in the AV dept, and they canceled all the classes and just let everyone watch CNN, and I remember seeing on the crawl (which was new then) that then PENTAGON has been hit, and thinking "What??? Why aren't they TALKING about that?"

I felt so confused and scared and vulnerable in 2001. I felt like maybe that was just the opening salvo of a war that would actually be fought on American soil, and they'd already hit the Pentagon itself, so maybe we would lose.

There was no solid ground under my feet for a while there. Impossible things were happening, so anything could happen.

It really does feel exactly the same.

The only difference is, back then (in spite of the elections less than a year earlier when a moron who had lost the popular vote took office in a process with dubious legitimacy...) it felt like the rest of America was right there with me, scared and confused.

This time it's worse, because half the country, and my own family, seems to be on the side of the bad guys. I can't even imagine how I'll remember all this in 15 years.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:01 PM on January 14, 2017 [61 favorites]


Atlanta leaders celebrate 30 percent drop in crime in city since 2009

Not that facts matter unduly, but I retain a certain fondness for them.
posted by Devonian at 6:01 PM on January 14, 2017 [46 favorites]


Oh God what the fuck I came here to post a happy thing and Peter Thiel ughhhhghghghg

ANYWAY, re: the John Lewis thing, Shaun King responded on Facebook by asking people to buy copies of the March trilogy (Lewis's graphic novels about the civil rights movement, for which he won the National Book Award last year) as a show of support; cause them to sell out.
posted by sunset in snow country at 6:05 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


OnceUponATime, the 9/11 parallel is very good. I was living in a college dorm at the time and I remember screaming in the showers because I was so terrified and overwhelmed. But you're right, we were unified then in a way we're not now.
posted by AFABulous at 6:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Not that facts matter unduly, but I retain a certain fondness for them.

OH, Devonian, you old-fashioned rascal, you.
posted by tivalasvegas at 6:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [13 favorites]


When he does this - to the Khans, Alicia Machado, Chuck Jones, now Representative Lewis - it actually seems to hurt him politically, at least temporarily. To the point that, allegedly, Russia thought about writing him off while he was going off on the Khans. It's a hard but effective tactic that can be capitalized on: upstanding people publicly making themselves his enemies. It's also a good way to turn that distraction tactic back on him. He usually distracts us with his tweets, but this clearly distracts him.

And it's going to keep happening - just wait, he'll lash out at the first person with a chronic and/or terminal illness who gets a lot of media as a face of the fighting for the upcoming ACA clusterfuck. Really, on any topic, he will engage the personalities that pop up to oppose him, his whole thing is getting down in the mud and going head on against individuals and he can't seem to help himself. And when people see themselves or qualities they admire in those individuals, it does seem to cut into his support.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


So his first foreign trip as president is going to be checking in with the boss? At what point does Putin say to his boy "fucking hell mate, show some subtlety."
posted by Artw at 6:17 PM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


The only difference is, back then (in spite of the elections less than a year earlier when a moron who had lost the popular vote took office in a process with dubious legitimacy...) it felt like the rest of America was right there with me, scared and confused.

This time it's worse, because half the country, and my own family, seems to be on the side of the bad guys. I can't even imagine how I'll remember all this in 15 years.


The upside is, that unity gave Bush a mandate that he leveraged for all the awfulness that came after. Trump can not play that card.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:19 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


The upside is, that unity gave Bush a mandate that he leveraged for all the awfulness that came after. Trump can not play that card.

Absolutely. The wars, the torture, the nascent surveillance state, the 2004 Election even, all would not have been possible without the country unifying in large part behind W after 9/11. He had an approval rating in the 80s in 2002. No terrorist attack of any size could make the country unify that much behind Trump unless it's by aliens and even then maybe not.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:22 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


It's a hard but effective tactic that can be capitalized on: upstanding people publicly making themselves his enemies.

They don't even have to do it on purpose, they just need to exist and say things, like a normal thing that upstanding people do.
posted by Jalliah at 6:23 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


'We Waited for Decades': Polish Govt Welcomes US Troops

The ceremony in the western Polish town of Zagan comes some 23 years after the last Soviet troops left Poland. It marks a new historic moment — the first time Western forces are being deployed on a continuous basis to NATO's eastern flank. The move has infuriated Moscow.

"We have waited for you for a very long time," Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz told the troops as snow fell. "We waited for decades, sometimes feeling we had been left alone, sometimes almost losing hope, sometimes feeling that we were the only one who protected civilization from aggression that came from the east."


That comment almost made me tear up. man.
posted by futz at 6:24 PM on January 14, 2017 [28 favorites]


Oh god, that DID make me tear up.
posted by corb at 6:34 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


No terrorist attack of any size could make the country unify that much behind Trump unless it's by aliens and even then maybe not.

Josh Lyman: No, you got to go outside, turn around three times and curse.
Toby Ziegler: Spit.
Josh Lyman: Spit and curse.
Toby Ziegler: Do everything. Go!
posted by jason_steakums at 6:34 PM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


I do however have to note that she's still managed to twist the narrative to "this is what democrats are doing wrong". Couldn't Republicans also learn something from Lewis? Hmm?

Yes but even this isn't wrong.
posted by Jalliah at 6:35 PM on January 14, 2017


It's a little sad that the best defense of John Lewis is 50 years old. Surely he's done some great things since then, right? Surely he hasn't been part and parcel of the business-as-usual neoliberal war-mongering, Wall St.-enabling, spineless Democratic establishment, right?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 6:37 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


I mean, Trump went after "war hero" John McCain, something that never seemed possible. And it didn't even hurt him. I wonder why? Maybe because a lot of people didn't love McCain, maybe because he can be a "war hero" and a terrible scumbag politician.

I'm not equating Lewis with McCain, just to be clear. But if the best response we have to Trump's attacks is that certain people are simply beyond reproach, well, we shouldn't be too surprised when we fucking lose.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 6:40 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Well he's certainly more than earned enough respect to rest on his laurels, but have you not paid attention to his leading the gun-control sit-in last year, or when he was one of a dozen votes against the "super-predator" bill in 1994, or, hell, you could educate yourself about his record here.
posted by TwoStride at 6:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [57 favorites]


Seriously; that's a bizarrely ignorant take on Lewis, Joseph Gurl.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 6:45 PM on January 14, 2017 [45 favorites]


Surely he hasn't been part and parcel of the business-as-usual neoliberal war-mongering, Wall St.-enabling, spineless Democratic establishment, right?

I mean, sure he risked his life and freedom standing up against racism, faced down murderous white supremacists, faced dogs, faced the hoses, faced beatings and lynchings, and did so with grace and equanimity but what has he done for us lately?
posted by Justinian at 6:45 PM on January 14, 2017 [81 favorites]


It's a little sad that the best defense of John Lewis is 50 years old. Surely he's done some great things since then, right? Surely he hasn't been part and parcel of the business-as-usual neoliberal war-mongering, Wall St.-enabling, spineless Democratic establishment, right?

Hey, I get it, John Lewis doesn't quite live up to your standards. Let us know who your candidates are, they must be awesome. I can't wait until all those perfect people are elected, assuming they pass the tests.
posted by bongo_x at 6:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [38 favorites]


My order for the March Trilogy is placed.
After leaving SNCC in 1966, Lewis worked with community organizations and was named community affairs director for the National Consumer Co-op Bank in Atlanta.

Before being elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1981, Lewis faced "years of criticism as a holier-than-thou publicity seeker who challenged city leaders on ethical matters."
...
After his unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1977, Lewis was without a job and in debt from his campaign. He accepted a position with the Carter administration as associate director of ACTION, responsible for running the VISTA program, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, and the Foster Grandparent Program. He held that job for two and a half years, resigning as the 1980 election approached.[13] In 1981, Lewis was elected to the Atlanta City Council.
...
John Lewis has been reelected 14 times. He has dropped below 70 percent of the vote only once. In 1994, he defeated Republican Dale Dixon by a 38-point margin, 69%–31%.[19] He even ran unopposed in 1996 and from 2004 to 2008."
...
In March 2003, Lewis spoke to a crowd of 30,000 in Oregon during an anti-war protest before the start of the Iraq War.[39] He was arrested in 2006[40] and 2009 and outside the Sudan embassy in protest against the genocide in Darfur.[41] He was one of eight U.S. Representatives, from six states, arrested while holding a sit-in near the west side of the U.S. Capitol building, to advocate for illegal immigration reform. The lawmakers' participation and subsequent arrest in the protest occurred despite the fact that the 2013 government shutdown was going on at the time.[42] Lewis also led the 2016 House Democrats sit-in demanding that the House take action on gun control in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting and the failure of the United States Senate to act.[43]
If John Lewis doesn't pass your purity test, you should rethink your purity test.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [88 favorites]


Remember in one of the debates, when Trump unleashed this idea that seemingly he thought was a knock-down argument: Clinton has been in power all these years (as a First Lady? Senator? Sec. of State?) - so why didn't she personally close all the tax loopholes he exploited, if she thinks he shouldn't use them? He said it like three times - "So why didn't you stop me?".

He probably thinks that way, about Lewis: he's a Congressman, so why hasn't he single-handedly resolved all the social and economic issues that (to Trump) black politicians are responsible for fixing? How come there aren't Druid Hills manors in Vine City yet, Lewis? Huh?
posted by thelonius at 6:48 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


I'm not criticizing Lewis. As TwoStride correctly surmised, I'm not super informed. But as I read the news and Op-Eds, the only response I'm seeing is gasping and breathless hand-wringing that anyone would even criticize him. His record looks great to me, so why aren't the Dems defending that? (Maybe because he votes far, far to the left of the party?).
posted by Joseph Gurl at 6:49 PM on January 14, 2017


I'm not equating Lewis with McCain, just to be clear. But if the best response we have to Trump's attacks is that certain people are simply beyond reproach, well, we shouldn't be too surprised when we fucking lose.

This isn't what is happening. Donald, went straight up racist because Lewis is black. Lewis is a civil rights hero and icon. This is about a race base attack against against Lewis and African Americans as a whole because his insult was based on racial stereotyping of an entire group of people in the US.

This is not about Lewis's entire record or that he may or may not have done other good or bad things.
posted by Jalliah at 6:49 PM on January 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


I mean, I guess John Lewis should be grateful that he hasn't been almost killed again in the last 50 years. But as for his recent accomplishments, the sit-in on the floor of Congress after the Pulse massacre was pretty important, for me.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:50 PM on January 14, 2017 [22 favorites]


I'm not super informed.

Lemme stop you right there, friend.
posted by TwoStride at 6:50 PM on January 14, 2017 [55 favorites]


the only response I'm seeing is gasping and breathless hand-wringing that anyone would even criticize him.

This is really the only appropriate response when someone [cretins especially] criticizes a man who was literally willing to give up his life for his beliefs.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:54 PM on January 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


And to clarify, I didn't mean that Lewis is a martyr. I meant that he was willing to die so that Black people could vote.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


A man well known to be a chickenshit badmouthed a man with an established record for putting himself in physical danger for greater good.

#notthefirsttime
posted by ocschwar at 6:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


Your question didn't even make sense. You want Democrats to be saying: "How dare Trump attack someone with such a solid progressive record?"
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


John Lewis doesn't even know if he has bone spurs.
posted by jaduncan at 6:57 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


You didn't ask about his record. You implied he is a neo-liberal warmonger. Or something. Your original comment is strange and doesn't really square with your later comments.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:57 PM on January 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


John Lewis doesn't even know if he has bone spurs.

John Lewis probably has terrible bone spurs... and marched anyway.
posted by TwoStride at 6:59 PM on January 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


On one hand, you say you're not super informed about Rep. Lewis, and on the other hand, you call him out as an establishment hack coasting on his Civil Rights accomplishments as if that's rooted in anything remotely like fact. That is why people are upset with you, just so you know. It's not some inexplicable and unfair liberal- or Metafilter-specific insular culture reaction, you just trashed a personal hero of many here for something totally made up and acted like your accusations were the root of some problem with liberal politics, while admitting that you're uninformed about the very things you said.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:01 PM on January 14, 2017 [61 favorites]


Hey guys, I know Trump's response to criticism from an elected member of the house was so racist and defying of all knowledge of the man or the region he represents that it baffles belief, but the important thing here is that the left isn't good enough for me. I just want to be clear on that. We need to focus on why the left is no good, OK?
posted by tocts at 7:03 PM on January 14, 2017 [32 favorites]


it will be WITH Russia, but IN Iceland. But, yeah. He's not even really trying to hide anything, is he?

For those not closely following the money trail stories, Iceland is home to FL Group, the partner of Bayrock (Russian Mafia ties and staff who've been tried/convicted for economic shenanigans) in the Trump SoHo project.

Here's another long confusing but well-researched article from the necon journal The American Interest of all places, attempting to connect more of the dots in the financial ties: The Curious World of Donald Trump's Russian Connections, which includes a detailed section on the Icelandic FL Group.

With all the various countries and shell companies involved, it's really hard to follow all of this, but it does seem to provide a lot of answers if true. I wonder if the intelligence community actually already knew most of this but didn't want to intervene because they thought it could be a net positive in terms of where the money ended up and the changing balance of foreign relations, at least until they realized what a train wreck Donald Trump actually is.
posted by p3t3 at 7:07 PM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


John Lewis probably has terrible bone spurs... and marched anyway.
posted by TwoStride at 2:59 on 1/15


Eponysterical.
posted by jaduncan at 7:09 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Yeah. I like to think I'm treating the suggestion that Lewis isn't worthy with all the seriousness it warrants.

The man's a genuine American hero, and has frankly approached the people of his state with far more forgiveness than I think I could muster. He's also faced down much more imposing racists than Donald, who frankly wasn't even well informed enough to craft a decent insult.
posted by jaduncan at 7:12 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


Oh hey, so if you, like me, have been wondering where the hell Keepin' It 1600 has been for a few weeks, I guess they started a new podcast? I had no idea until I just stumbled across it.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:13 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]



Obama has extended Russian Sanctions

Notice -- Continuation of National Emergency with Respect to Ukraine

I can't find any US based news about this. It's being reported in what looks like Russia and some European media but mostly Russian. So I posted it straight from the White House.

I have very little understanding of how it all works but from what I have read in comments it means that Donald will have to do more work if he wants to get rid of the sanctions. They were set to expire and this sets them up for another year starting in March. So he will have to actually roll them back rather then let them lapse and apparently it opens up the opportunity for Congress to do something with a Veto.

He's also extend sanctions with Iran and a few others.
posted by Jalliah at 7:15 PM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Who knew Spencer's was still around? Fuck them.
posted by bongo_x at 7:23 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


More like Richard Spencer's, am I right
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:28 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


I usually like wacky novelty stores like Spencer's. I saw those shitty Trump shirts in the last one I went in, turned around and walked out and ain't going in one again.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:36 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Who knew Spencer's was still around? Fuck them.

I swear to god, I ever see someone wearing that "Grab Them by the Pussy" T-Shirt and I will perform my first ever full-on tackling of another human being, and I will be going for the balls. Repeatedly and mercilessly.
posted by mudpuppie at 7:37 PM on January 14, 2017 [35 favorites]


Regarding the UC Davis protests: apparently our pal Martin Shkreli caught a face full of dog shit from the protesters, which does my bitter old heart some good. This execrable display is coming to my place of employment later this week, and I'm hoping to see protests of this intensity, although I might not be able to join in.

The Davis College Republicans were pretty gross and ugly when I was there over a decade ago, too. My last year they held one of those revolting 'Affirmative Action Bake Sales,' where they would sell cookies to white people for $2.00 and black people for $0.50. A couple shave-headed jerkoffs in sunglass, fatigues, and combat boots marched around bellowing at the top of their lungs, while everyone else crowded around and heckled them. Sad to see they haven't improved any.
posted by Existential Dread at 7:39 PM on January 14, 2017 [28 favorites]


Well hey, the last lingering speck of guilt I had about shoplifting from Spencer's so much as a teenager is gone!
posted by jason_steakums at 7:41 PM on January 14, 2017 [14 favorites]


This blog post nicely lays out the math on how Paul Ryan's health care plan (to the extent he has one) is all about lowering premiums for the majority by shoving everyone with a pre-existing condition into a massively underfunded high risk pool so they can fuck off and die, or at least go without coverage.

This isn't some kind of secret either. He literally said to the cancer patient at the town hall:
Let's just directly fix that so that EVERYBODY ELSE can get more competitive rates and they don't have to pay for insurance to try to cover for THOSE KINDS OF REALLY EXPENSIVE PEOPLE."
His plan then divides the country up into "really expensive people" and "everybody else" and sets aside just a small fraction of what it would take to insure said "really expensive people" (hint: they are, by definition, really expensive).
posted by zachlipton at 7:41 PM on January 14, 2017 [36 favorites]


The point is that on Monday the US celebrates* a holiday that had to be fought for tooth and nail, one that commemorates someone murdered nearly 50 years ago. But this is not a holiday about the past; there are still people who stood by his side and fought his fight and fight his fight, calibrated to the present. The people who bought John Lewis's books today need to make sure they're read before they're put on the shelf.

* Offer not valid in certain dixieflag states unless combined with a dixieflager.
posted by holgate at 7:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


His plan then divides the country up into "really expensive people" and "everybody else" and sets aside just a small fraction of what it would take to insure said "really expensive people" (hint: they are, by definition, really expensive).

Right, that's the Republican plan; hope that the majority of Americans will be glad that they are paying less at the cost of a few million people dying / living in sickness.

The sad part is that their calculation may be correct. Sometimes the right thing to do is politically unpopular and sometimes the wrong thing is politically popular.
posted by Justinian at 7:50 PM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


Thing is unless you die suddenly and young, you are a really expensive person
posted by AlexiaSky at 7:53 PM on January 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


Here's another long confusing but well-researched article from the necon journal The American Interest of all places, attempting to connect more of the dots in the financial ties: The Curious World of Donald Trump's Russian Connections, which includes a detailed section on the Icelandic FL Group.

I like that this article, being written from a right-wing perspective, goes after the "mainstream media" in the opening ("From public records, using his renowned analytical skills, Henry shows what the mainstream news media in the United States have failed to report in any meaningful way") and I hope this and other pieces on Trump's corruption that are coming from the right are being shared with a lot of "What the Mainstream Media WON'T Tell You About Trump and Russia!" clickbaity titles. It's a hook that could work for some people.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:53 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Let's just directly fix that so that EVERYBODY ELSE can get more competitive rates and they don't have to pay for insurance to try to cover for THOSE KINDS OF REALLY EXPENSIVE PEOPLE."

So, in other words, Death Panels.
posted by bongo_x at 7:54 PM on January 14, 2017 [75 favorites]


Protests derail UC Davis event with Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli

More Yiannopoulos protests: 160 Children's Books Authors And Illustrators Protest Milo Yiannopoulos' Book Deal
posted by Room 641-A at 7:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Adding to zachlipton"s post just above mine. Link goes to archive.is b/c I can't get around their adblocker

Here are the lies Paul Ryan told about Obamacare during his town hall meeting

Here is the la times link
posted by futz at 7:56 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


Are you saying when you come back to a thread and it says "384 new comments, show", you don't occasionally cheat a little? No skimming?

Nope. Except for that one time I was on vacation and skipped ahead because it was too much like I'm missing it.
posted by petebest at 8:01 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


as of now we are up to 18!

18 House Democrats to skip Trump’s inauguration

Surely this is what "unpresidented" means.
posted by futz at 8:03 PM on January 14, 2017 [37 favorites]


My rep. is on the new list! Thank you, sir.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:07 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


What I'd like to see - and it's grim, and it does make me uncomfortable considering that the person I've been with for the past 8 1/2 years has had a slow-progressing brain cancer for more than half that time and has been unable to work and reliant on the ACA - is that EVERYONE who votes for the GOP healthcare bullshit is mailed copies of every diagnosis, every bill, and every obituary for those that they are choosing to kill with this. And in the cases of obituaries, keep resending them as often as you can afterwards. Flood their offices with this, their DC offices and every local office. Put faces and names to it. Make them hide from their victims. Bundle these messages up and stand outside their doors with stacks of them just to see them cower like Ryan did with the Planned Parenthood petitions.

And then when we finally wrest this country back from them and put something in place to help these people, I want to see a memorial to the names of the people we lost, another big black scar in the earth like the Vietnam memorial. Chisel their names into stone for the future to remember.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:09 PM on January 14, 2017 [92 favorites]


This will surprise no one here, but from Esquire tonight: The Trump Administration May Evict the Press from the White House
According to three senior officials on the transition team, a plan to evict the press corps from the White House is under serious consideration by the incoming Trump Administration. If the plan goes through, one of the officials said, the media will be removed from the cozy confines of the White House press room, where it has worked for several decades. Members of the press will be relocated to the White House Conference Center—near Lafayette Square—or to a space in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.

"They are the opposition party," a senior official says. "I want 'em out of the building. We are taking back the press room."
posted by gatorae at 8:13 PM on January 14, 2017 [15 favorites]


I sent off my polite but firm note to my rep about my low opinion of the vague assurances in the "replace" PDFs she so helpfully linked in her letter to me. Closed by telling her about my dad's death bankrupting my mom, and also asking her, as a Christian, what Christ would think of her increasing the suffering and death of her constituents.

I don't think she'll be swayed by my eloquence, but I feel better letting her know I'm not buying the BS.
posted by emjaybee at 8:15 PM on January 14, 2017 [67 favorites]


"They are the opposition party," a senior official says. "I want 'em out of the building. We are taking back the press room."

"Taking back the press room."...for whom, pray tell? Kushner's stenographers? Propagandists like Breitbart? You won't shut them or us up, fuckers.
posted by Existential Dread at 8:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


hope that the majority of Americans will be glad that they are paying less at the cost of a few million people dying / living in sickness.

I have a feeling this won't work. Most people know someone who ends up being in the very expensive list. Even if we assume Medicare / Medicaid will still pay out the big bucks for seniors in end of life care, we all still know someone who got cancer at 26, or almost died in a car accident at 19, or had kidney failure at 34, or a heart attack at 44. Many of us, even Trump voters, were that person at some point.

Stories about an insanely cute 6 yr old girl with a treatable cancer, who had coverage under the ACA and now has nearly nothing under the new GOP plan, will make the rounds of Facebook so quickly that it'll leave a stereotypical trail of fire in its wake. The campaign ads and human interest stories on national media will write themselves.

People don't deal well when a service was available and now no longer is. Even nominal Republicans and Trump voters will rethink their vote when they, or someone they love, are sacrificed for ideology.
posted by honestcoyote at 8:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


Bannon hates competition.
posted by Yowser at 8:16 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


So does Kershner.
posted by Yowser at 8:16 PM on January 14, 2017


Here's my first election thread post ever:

I live in John Lewis's Fifth District. When I moved two mile to be in it in 2008, I told people that voting for Rep. Lewis was one of the best things about my new house. I still feel that way. Meeting him, Andrew Jackson, C.T Vivian, and Rev. Joseph Lowery have been highlights in my adult life, and humbling experiences.

Trump's message communicates precisely to its intended audience, and that's not me or anyone else in the 5th. It's the people outside my city who lock their doors when they come Intown because of 'crime.' It's people in the rest of the state who depend on the city's economy and decry its existence. It's people who sympathize with Ted McIver, a local attorney whose excuse for shooting his wife is fear of 'Black Lives Matter.'

Don't pretend he's talking to us. He knows exactly who his audience is, and he's speaking very effectively.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 8:18 PM on January 14, 2017 [85 favorites]


This really is amazing. Fuck celebrating the peaceful transfer of power. The Power has turned toxic and is not to be celebrated. I love seeing the spines emerge and multiply.
posted by futz at 8:19 PM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Republican Ben Ferguson: I can't imagine the fallout if a Republican were to ever say Obama wasn't a legitimate president

CNN anchor: Umm
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:21 PM on January 14, 2017 [52 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump
Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!


America? Could I see you in my office for a second?

Hi, great thank you listen - ummm, I think we should talk about the PEOTUS' mental health. I know, I know we don't do that here and we definitely need to be careful and considerate but honestly I . . . I'm starting to think quasar the smockfish has a valid point from upthread - he seems genuinely afflicted.

I grant you he's eccentric to some extent, and probably had a hard time with his alcoholic dad and everything . . . well, and he's racist, misogynistic, a serial sexual predator, a fraud, xenophobic, narcissistic, and plagued by omnipresent terrible, terrible germs but. Still - he really does seem to be kind of batshit, and I was wondering if we could sort of look into how we can safely move him into a less harmful environment for plants and other living things? Mmmkay?

Really. It's more than just - everything he says and does and it's even more than the Russia thing. I was putting it down to mostly beng an enormous flatulent verbal turd factory on the campaign trail way too long but . . . he just seems unwell in a fundamental and very important way.
posted by petebest at 8:23 PM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Oh god I watched that roomthreeseventeen. More accurately, I heard it from the kitchen while my parents were watching a room away yelling at the TV and telling Ben "fuckface republican" to fuck off. My dad proclaimed (not for the first time) that there will be no CNN in the house any longer for giving these pro-trump assholes equal airtime. I love my parents.
posted by futz at 8:27 PM on January 14, 2017 [27 favorites]


I'm a little out of it right now, but until a few moments ago I thought people were writing PEOTUS because of the pee stories. I was surprised that it was so widespread, and wondered why it didn't have 2 EE's.

I'm just going to keep thinking that.
posted by bongo_x at 8:27 PM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Thing is unless you die suddenly and young, you are a really expensive person

Old people get Medicare.
posted by Justinian at 8:27 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


You can look at Lewis' Legislative record (as well as anyone else's) at the Library of Congress. For those to lazy to click, or factcheck before they tweet as PEOTUS, he's introduced 296 Bills as a sponsor and 9 in the latest session of Congress.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 8:29 PM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Old people get Medicare.
For now they do, but it's entirely possible that Ryan has plans to do something about that.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:30 PM on January 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


I thought people were writing PEOTUS because of the pee stories.

Just wait until he is impeeched!
posted by gatorae at 8:33 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh no. SNL is talking about the pee. My parents watch SNL.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:34 PM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are still in the crosshairs. If it helps someone not them, these fuckers hate it.
posted by emjaybee at 8:35 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Don't pretend he's talking to us. He knows exactly who his audience is, and he's speaking very effectively.

There is that, yes. But a side effect of that is that nobody was talking about how great things are in Lewis' district before Trump opened his mouth. A 30% reduction in crime since 2009, that's awesome and I had no idea about it before today and I'm sure a lot of others didn't, too! And this is part of how Trump gets himself in trouble pulling this shit, he lashes out at fundamentally good targets and then we all hear their stories, when it's likely we wouldn't have before. His core supporters think he's knocking it out of the park but he's cutting away at support from swing voters and people who voted for him despite being lukewarm on him. And if we can effectively tie him to the rest of the Republicans, which they help do themselves by leaping to his defense, he's cutting away at their support, too.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:36 PM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Trump transition team says it asked D.C. National Guard general to stay

Schwartz said he was asked to stay a couple of days after the inauguration as a result of the public and media attention to the situation, but he declined "because, by then, he had begun packing up his office and notified his staff. He said he believes the offer came only as a result of the negative attention his departure attracted."
posted by zachlipton at 8:38 PM on January 14, 2017 [43 favorites]


Oh no. SNL is talking about the pee. My parents watch SNL

My dad is already doing freestyle piss fanfic. He wants to tweet it and I am trying to convince him not to use his real name. He is a retired prof of linguistics and medieval literature as well as old man yells at cloud guy. I will shut up about my family now.
posted by futz at 8:40 PM on January 14, 2017 [55 favorites]


"They are the opposition party," a senior official says. "I want 'em out of the building. We are taking back the press room."

So they just openly declared all media they do not own their enemies? I mean, we knew that, but wow.
posted by Artw at 8:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [31 favorites]


futz but you have a wonderful family and I kind of want them to adopt me.
posted by emjaybee at 8:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [17 favorites]


I keep coming back to this, which seems like such a pie-in-the-sky thing but at the same time, with vigilance and persistence and being loud as hell about what's going on, if the Republican brand gets tarnished an independent affiliation could start looking real good to the few vulnerable Republican senators... if you asked me a week ago I'd say it's a crazy daydream that would never happen. This week has me hedging that bet, just a bit. Not much, but a bit, and that's something.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


I will shut up about my family now.

They sound great, don't worry about it.
posted by Artw at 8:42 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


We're basically going to be seeing epistemic closure as official state doctrine and fuck knows what happens when reality collides with that.
posted by Artw at 8:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Totalitarianism.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


My dad is already doing freestyle piss fanfic. He wants to tweet it and I am trying to convince him not to use his real name. He is a retired prof of linguistics and medieval literature as well

This sounds awesome. Let it flow!
posted by nubs at 8:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


The Hill, August 3rd, 2016: Better brush up on the 25th Amendment if Trump wins

Article II Section IV reads: “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

The 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967, as a clarification to Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the U.S. Constitution. The 25th Amendment deals with the succession of the Presidency, especially at a time when the sitting President becomes unable, incapable or unfit to perform the duties of his or her office. It also establishes procedures to fill a vacancy left by the Vice President. It is essentially a safeguard against a president who runs amuck, or who goes insane, or who cannot fulfill his or her duties as commander and chief and leader of the union of 50 states.

posted by petebest at 8:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


that EVERYONE who votes for the GOP healthcare bullshit is mailed copies of every diagnosis, every bill, and every obituary for those that they are choosing to kill with this.

It will take John Lewis levels of courage to do this, so this is not a request, but there needs to be a concerted effort to not pay medical bills, and send them to your GOP electeds. Send the collections letters to them. If you're going to be ruined by a 20-year payment plan, just stop paying. Because the only way to make the GOP squeal is if health providers and health insurers squeal, and the only way they'll squeal is if people stop paying them. Basic decency has been tried and found wanting. The plan shouldn't be GoFundMe for medical bills, it's ComeGuardMyHome against the fucking bailiffs.
posted by holgate at 8:51 PM on January 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


"We are taking back the press room."

Presumably this is part of the grand plan to restore the White House's old indoor swimming pool.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 8:51 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


he just seems unwell in a fundamental and very important way.

flat out mentally ill. glaringly so.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 8:52 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


He is a retired prof of linguistics and medieval literature

Please, please repost the tweets here. I can't stand pee jokes (the last few days have been difficult), but I'd make an exception for what a linguistics & medieval lit guy would come up with.
posted by honestcoyote at 8:54 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Trump transition team says it asked D.C. National Guard general to stay

Schwartz said he was asked to stay a couple of days after the inauguration as a result of the public and media attention to the situation, but he declined "because, by then, he had begun packing up his office and notified his staff. He said he believes the offer came only as a result of the negative attention his departure attracted."


You know, I'm continually surprised at some of the things that seemingly little negative attention gets Trump to fold on. The DC National Guard thing freaked me out, sure, and it still does because I can't trust anything the Trump team does, but the media reaction was basically "Huh. Weird." and *poof!* they offer to keep Schwartz on. Just like Trump walked himself back from a lot of the shit he spouted at rallies. He's surprisingly weak on some things. Don't get me wrong, I don't want him to stick to those things, but it's interesting. I have to wonder if maybe loud criticism that makes him look foolish gets you boorish defensive Trump who won't back down, whereas with quieter criticism he goes all "Ooh, let's consider the optics on this thing, we should develop a strategy to mitigate it, I'm a fuckin' marketing genius..." and pats himself on the back for his deft maneuvering. Which, if that's the case, that's a big huge opening for anyone to manipulate him.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:54 PM on January 14, 2017 [22 favorites]



So lets say they do ban the press from the press room. I understand that it's because of their desire to control the press. Isn't this something that could end up being not so great for them in real practice?
posted by Jalliah at 8:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


EVERYONE who votes for the GOP healthcare bullshit is mailed copies of every diagnosis, every bill, and every obituary for those that they are choosing to kill with this.
Stories about an insanely cute 6 yr old girl with a treatable cancer, who had coverage under the ACA and now has nearly nothing under the new GOP plan, will make the rounds of Facebook so quickly that it'll leave a stereotypical trail of fire in its wake.


These are excellent ideas and people should be doing them. Like I said: keep track of the death tolls that come from spite and "But my taxes!"
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:55 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


It's becoming increasingly difficult to deal with the right-wingers in my life without becoming very, very angry. I'm considering cutting all the ones I can out and being done with it.

I know they would say it's the coward's way out and that I'm dehumanizing them for their views, but they support and defend people who dehumanize minorities and just threw me and millions of other Americans under the bus. So no, I don't think it's equivalent at all.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 8:56 PM on January 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


I know they would say it's the coward's way out and that I'm dehumanizing them for their views, but they support and defend people who dehumanize minorities and just threw me and millions of other Americans under the bus. So no, I don't think it's equivalent at all.

The burden isn't on you for them making parts of your life shitty, if you cut 'em out, hold your head high.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:58 PM on January 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


(Sorry. Accidentally posted before I finished my comment above. Fading out here... Also meant to add I think that's where epistemic closure as philosophy of government leads, and it is like a collective mental illness: a compulsion to control and plot to control more that spreads into a movement using bullshit, in the technical sense.)

I think you're onto something there, jason_steakums. The trick with a narcissist like Trump is to get him to think he might have a chance to make the deal. He's a sucker for that. If he thinks you won't even bargain in good faith, he won't know how to screw you because his game relies on everybody else at the table being more honorable than him to work. So he'll come back with the attack dog act.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:59 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]



China: No negotiation on 'One China' policy despite Trump remarks

Washington (CNN)China's Foreign Ministry firmly pushed back Saturday against President-elect Donald Trump's suggestion that the "One China" policy on Taiwan is negotiable, calling it the "political foundation" of the relationship between the US and China.

China views Taiwan as a renegade province and, since 1979, the US has acknowledged Beijing's claim that Taiwan is part of China, with US-China relations governed by a set of protocols known as the "One China" policy.
"The 'One China' principle is the political foundation of Sino-US relations and it is non-negotiable. We urge the relevant side in the US to recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue and abide by the pledges by successive US administrations from both parties," spokesman Lu Kang said.

posted by Jalliah at 8:59 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


To go with the "ban the press from the press room" story, Page Six has an item that one of the rejected press secretary candidates proposed mandatory drug tests for the press corps back in November. That this would come out now is surely just a coincidence, right?

What is it with these people and urine?
posted by zachlipton at 9:02 PM on January 14, 2017 [18 favorites]


So they just openly declared all media they do not own their enemies? I mean, we knew that, but wow.

Why bother with dog-whistles?
posted by mikelieman at 9:02 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


And this is part of how Trump gets himself in trouble pulling this shit

I want to believe, jason_steakums, but what trouble has he ever gotten in? We who care about facts, governance, and decency are 'outraged' - which he wants - and the conservatives are proven right, yet again. He's set up a situation where every loss is a win. The fact that the real problem in Georgia's 5th isn't urban decay as much as rising values forcing people out doesn't even register, it's so (relatively) minor a lie.

It's straight up pro wrestling, carny huckstering.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 9:03 PM on January 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


flat out mentally ill. glaringly so.

There is a family medical history of dementia, and he's pretty old...
posted by mikelieman at 9:04 PM on January 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


mandatory drug tests for the press corps

so literally yellow journalism
posted by gatorae at 9:04 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


His plan then divides the country up into "really expensive people" and "everybody else" and sets aside just a small fraction of what it would take to insure said "really expensive people" (hint: they are, by definition, really expensive).

And as soon as you get sick, you move to the "Fuck Off and Die" group? So basically insurance companies never have to cover any really expensive procedures or treatments? Gee, I wonder who wrote his plan?

So here are two types of fire insurance: those for people whose homes are not on fire and those for people whose homes ARE on fire. Congratulations, if your home is not on fire, the plan is really cheap. But unfortunately if your home DOES catch fire your cost is going to go up a bit. To about the cost of replacing your entire home and all your belongings. But it's going to be AWESOME for those of us with concrete homes.
posted by threeturtles at 9:05 PM on January 14, 2017 [26 favorites]


I have no doubt Paul Ryan would like to screw up Medicare. He can't do that without nuking the filibuster. Which they won't do.
posted by Justinian at 9:06 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


So lets say they do ban the press from the press room. I understand that it's because of their desire to control the press. Isn't this something that could end up being not so great for them in real practice?

Yeah, because the press room is basically where the executive goes to present their case to the people via the press corp. Cutting the press corp out won't make them stop reporting; it'll just remove your ability to spin the things they're reporting on. Which is another example of these dipshits trying to be tough and shooting themselves in the foot.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:07 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]



Trump Twitfit scheduled for Thursday.

Michael Moore to host star-studded protest outside Trump's NYC hotel


Filmmaker Michael Moore announced Saturday evening that he would be holding a "massive rally" Thursday outside Trump’s New York City International Hotel with a pair of actors.

“Mark Ruffalo, Alec Baldwin & myself will be holding a massive rally in NYC in front of Trump International Hotel this Thursday, 6pm! Come!” Moore tweeted.

posted by Jalliah at 9:07 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


@realDonaldTrumpInauguration Day is turning out to be even bigger than expected. January 20th, Washington D.C. Have fun!

So my dad texted me today to say that he got me and KidRuki tickets to the Inauguration. I replied by threatening to egg his house, but when I got home from the market and saw the link he tagged me in on Facebook, I got the joke. You can, on January 15th, go to Trump's website and request Inauguration tickets. Last time around, Mister Ruki stayed home because my Congressman could only provide two tickets due to overwhelming demand. It's a ray of hope for me that more people are going to the Women's March than the Inauguration.
posted by Ruki at 9:11 PM on January 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


I want to believe, jason_steakums, but what trouble has he ever gotten in? We who care about facts, governance, and decency are 'outraged' - which he wants - and the conservatives are proven right, yet again. He's set up a situation where every loss is a win. The fact that the real problem in Georgia's 5th isn't urban decay as much as rising values forcing people out doesn't even register, it's so (relatively) minor a lie.

It's straight up pro wrestling, carny huckstering.


Just remember that his election was a perfect storm of things lining up for him just right in one little window. If we had our election a week or two or three earlier, or later, totally different story. I'd bet that Hillary would have won in substantially more hypothetical elections held each week for a few months before the election and up to now. He does take hits from these stupid self-inflicted fights and tantrums, but time is a factor, there's a window where a big hit from the immediate effect of one of these situations can hurt him, and as time goes on and the weight of these things really starts to accumulate (I mean, how many in the past six months alone?), that will also have an effect.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:11 PM on January 14, 2017 [11 favorites]


Yeah, because the press room is basically where the executive goes to present their case to the people via the press corp. Cutting the press corp out won't make them stop reporting; it'll just remove your ability to spin the things they're reporting on. Which is another example of these dipshits trying to be tough and shooting themselves in the foot.

That's what I was thinking. I wonder if it's based more on how they imagine the press room works since it doesn't seem like his inner team has any real practical experience with it's every day workings. Like they're there for admin's benefit and ease of access as much as the media's.
posted by Jalliah at 9:12 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


Speaking as someone who would certainly be a member of the "Fuck Off and Die" group, I would like to say this:

Fuck you, Paul Ryan. Fuck you and your selfishness and greed and general lack of empathy. I'd call you a reptile, but I've met reptiles more human than you. I will dedicate every waking moment of my life to fighting you, your cohorts, and what you've done to the US. So fuck you, Paul Ryan.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 9:14 PM on January 14, 2017 [48 favorites]


You can, on January 15th, go to Trump's website and request Inauguration tickets.

I had the same thought but that's not what this is. It's a "commemorative" paper ticket that you get after handing off your contact data. It is not required for admission and has nothing to do with the actual ceremony. It's not a real ticket to the inauguration ceremony.You still need tickets to get into the swearing-in seats, and those are still restricted to pre-registered through your congresspersons' offices. The rest of the inauguration activities are free to watch (from a distance), so Trump is offering tickets that no one needs for anything, that have no value, and serve only to collect data.

I happen to have 2 inauguration tickets that I requested when I thought it would be Hillary. My congressman's office has sent a couple of "are you DEFINITELY using these?" messages, all of which I have replied "yes!" to. I am using them. I am using them to create two vacant seats.
posted by Miko at 9:17 PM on January 14, 2017 [141 favorites]


It's becoming increasingly difficult to deal with the right-wingers in my life without becoming very, very angry. I'm considering cutting all the ones I can out and being done with it.

I don't really know any Right Wingers well enough to cut them off, but this subject has been coming up a lot lately. Many people I know are doing just that. Everyone seems to feel that this goes beyond politics and they just can't associate with people who support Trump.
posted by bongo_x at 9:25 PM on January 14, 2017 [16 favorites]


> What is it with these people and urine?
Something something Communist conspiracy something something precious bodily fluids.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 9:29 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


While I like my earlier phrasing of "Fuck Off and Die" group, I'm going to have to go with Death Pools.

Paul Ryan's plan is to stick everyone who gets sick into comically underfunded Death Pools.
posted by threeturtles at 9:29 PM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Washington (CNN)China's Foreign Ministry firmly pushed back Saturday against President-elect Donald Trump's suggestion that the "One China" policy on Taiwan is negotiable, calling it the "political foundation" of the relationship between the US and China.

This shit is what scares me the most. Some things in international relations are not negotiable. There are NO DEALS to be struck. If you push on them, the result is not that the other side gives in, but that they GO TO WAR.
posted by dis_integration at 9:31 PM on January 14, 2017 [21 favorites]


You know, Pope Francis really needs to have a word with whoever Ryan's priest is, and maybe a direct chat with Ryan himself. Paul Ryan is an embarrassment to Catholic ideals.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:31 PM on January 14, 2017 [41 favorites]


When I read about Shkreli getting pooped I went to Twitter to check his account & see what he had to say about it & then I remembered he got kicked off it & now I'm happy.
posted by scalefree at 9:32 PM on January 14, 2017 [28 favorites]


Paul Ryan is an embarrassment to Catholic ideals.

i'd like to dominus his vobiscum. and then et cum spirii tu tuo his ass.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


SNL Cold Open

I probably shouldn't have enjoyed Baldwin say 'pee pee' as much as I did.
posted by Jalliah at 9:44 PM on January 14, 2017 [12 favorites]


Watching that and laughing at it made me realize I have to pee.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:57 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Putin holding the 'pee pee tape' Is what did it for me.
posted by ian1977 at 9:59 PM on January 14, 2017 [8 favorites]


You know, I hadn't thought about this before, but as I'm slowly working my way through p3t3's link to the excellent "The Curious World of Donald Trump's Private Russian Connections" it just hit me that, with the money game being zero-sum as it is, any cash Donnie and pals have coming their way is cash someone else wants to see in their own pockets - from rival oligarchs in Putin's orbit to Russian mob figures to any number of middlemen who are so close to the money they can taste it, I have to imagine there is a lot of incentive to sing to intelligence agencies investigating this.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:02 PM on January 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


This is one of the best ways I've heard gerrymandering explained.

I wish we could go back to the time when voters chose their legislators, instead of the legislators choosing their voters

Zach Galifianakis Created a Gerrymandering Documentary Named ‘Democracy for Sale’ – Watch Clip

Zach Galifianakis’ documentary, “Democracy For Sale,” looks at how bad gerrymandering has gotten in his home state of North Carolina. The film was originally part of EPIX’s original docuseries “America Divided,” produced by Common, Norman Lear and Shonda Rhimes, which premiered back in September. Now, according to the News Observer, the doc will be screened across North Carolina in January and February.

---
posted by Jalliah at 10:05 PM on January 14, 2017 [34 favorites]


I want to believe, jason_steakums, but what trouble has he ever gotten in? We who care about facts, governance, and decency are 'outraged' - which he wants - and the conservatives are proven right, yet again.

Something I noticed during the debates was that Trump as a candidate had the privilege of passing the buck for all the hard problems right back onto Clinton as Secretary of State or Senator.

Now, I don't think he can. Reagan could, but Reagan was the figurehead in front of Tricky Dick's political machine and a career man himself. Unfortunately, I think that what will ultimately stick to Trump will be human lives.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:08 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Something I noticed during the debates was that Trump as a candidate had the privilege of passing the buck for all the hard problems right back onto Clinton as Secretary of State or Senator.

Now, I don't think he can. Reagan could, but Reagan was the figurehead in front of Tricky Dick's political machine and a career man himself. Unfortunately, I think that what will ultimately stick to Trump will be human lives.


Or: Winning is easy, old man. Governing's harder.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:10 PM on January 14, 2017 [25 favorites]


jason_steakums: The trick with a narcissist like Trump is to get him to think he might have a chance to make the deal. He's a sucker for that. If he thinks you won't even bargain in good faith, he won't know how to screw you because his game relies on everybody else at the table being more honorable than him to work. So he'll come back with the attack dog act.

I had the great misfortune to have a client very much like Trump (so much so that just the language in Trump's tweets are (whatever the word for a dread shudder caused by negative nostalgia is)). The attack dog response was not only the cornered response, but also the first default for any complaint (we would point out that the invoice terms were 30 days, not weeks... he would immediately find a million complaints with the work, etc.). If you are able to use it, it's a tactic that almost always works: people back down, they compromise, accommodate, they do the right thing.

I did reach the point (18 months work unpaid) where I tried being manipulative: I didn't go as far as actually lying, but I did step back and play to his ego, making it the killer deal. And it worked (not particularly well, the guy had bankrupted his own company living it large, but it worked a bit).

The other thing that seems to work is superior authority, I think Erich Fromm rather nailed it about petty narcissistic authoritarians shitting on everyone they consider below them, but positively worshiping those they consider their betters. [c.f. Trump <3 Putin].

Not sure how things work out when you make someone like that the most powerful person in the world, and they finally internalise that there is no one above them.
posted by Buntix at 10:28 PM on January 14, 2017 [19 favorites]


As to whom Trump (and the Republican Congress) will be passing the buck to, they've already started: President Obama will take a large share of their blame, then spread some to prior Democratic laws enacted in better times, and go all the way back to FDR getting Social Security enacted.

They already blame the ACA for perceived shortfalls in MediCare; that seems to have gone down well with their base--at least until those folks figure out that a lot of them may lose their only health insurance.
posted by Silverstone at 10:30 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


>>> "Fortunately, we have a plan."

>> Did you watch Battlestar Galactica?

> Seriously, how did they fuck that up? It was basically the show's mission statement.

> It's like winter never coming on Game of Thrones, or Star Trek forgetting to travel anywhere.
Their plan seems to have been pandering and spectacle, the better to keep the core audience returning and growing. Which seems to be how political parties work.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:33 PM on January 14, 2017


The other thing that seems to work is superior authority, I think Erich Fromm rather nailed it about petty narcissistic authoritarians shitting on everyone they consider below them, but positively worshiping those they consider their betters. [c.f. Trump <3 Putin].

What about the billionaires in NYC and the US in general? Did Trump ever consider them his betters?
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:36 PM on January 14, 2017



Putin holding the 'pee pee tape' Is what did it for me.


I'm wondering if Donald is going to manage to not tweetfit about this one. Maybe someone will be proactive and take his phone away. I expect he must want too.
posted by Jalliah at 10:38 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


Crap, posted too soon. Re who will Trump and others blame for their shortcomings, in terms of what happens on their watch, primarily foreign policy matters, I'm sure any failures track right back to Secretaries Clinton and Kerry and any security incidents will be on the intelligence services that President Obama will be blamed for ruining. It's really all very simple if you don't watch their hands moving the shells in their shell game.
posted by Silverstone at 10:41 PM on January 14, 2017


The burden isn't on you for them making parts of your life shitty, if you cut 'em out, hold your head high.

Yeah - one of my other New Year's Resolutions is to cut stressful people out of my life when I can, which is easier said than done. But I've changed and many of them have changed and I think it would probably be healthier for both sides if I ended it.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 10:47 PM on January 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


What about the billionaires in NYC and the US in general? Did Trump ever consider them his betters?

Possibly some. But it's more about power/strength/authority and the perception/display of than just money.

You could be the occasionally richest man in the world; but if your main use of said wealth is waging war against the culicidae then you probably aren't earning much respect in the locker rooms of birth-privileged cat-grabbing community.
posted by Buntix at 10:51 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


Doonesbury has gotten into the TrumpTwitter biz, via an account for its own "fake newsman".
BTW, Twitter is NOT "fake news", people. Tweeting = gossip's first draft, so definitely on reporting spectrum.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:04 PM on January 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


America is off the tracks
posted by Artw at 11:05 PM on January 14, 2017 [24 favorites]


Putin holding the 'pee pee tape' Is what did it for me.

I'm wondering if Donald is going to manage to not tweetfit about this one. Maybe someone will be proactive and take his phone away. I expect he must want too.
posted by Jalliah at 10:38 PM on January 14
[1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]


Of course he wants to. This is like 'the (cyber) porn' talking back to him in weird and confusing ways. He NEEDS to talk back. The 'world' is (cyber)porn and the world is talking BACK TO HIM!!!!!!
posted by ian1977 at 11:17 PM on January 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


America left the tracks after the 2014 election gave both houses of Congress and most of the State houses to the Republican Criminal Cabal. Trump winning the Presidency was our going over the cliff; his inauguration should be the first bounce on the rocks (and not the last). Honestly, this Constitution was never really meant to last this long...
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:20 PM on January 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


We need a fifth district mefi Meetup!! All the rest of y'all can come and experience what a fine place this is....
posted by pearlybob at 11:43 PM on January 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


There is not much I can do directly to protest the Trump inauguration considering where I live (of course phone calls, contributing money to PP, ACLU), but I plan to wear black, as in mourning, on the day. I thought about wearing a mourning band on my arm, but I think it might not be the best course. I am currently working at a school (K-12) so I don't think it would be really appropriate to make a very overt political statement. School politics can be so touchy. No one would really be bothered by me wearing all black; it wouldn't be seen as the same kind of statement that the band would, but for the people of the same opinion it might mean something.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 12:43 AM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


If you push on them, the result is not that the other side gives in, but that they GO TO WAR.

Or they just start dumping T-bills and imposing tariffs on exports to the US, while dumping Chinese owned, US-based real estate investments, and tank our economy.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:02 AM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


Please, please repost the tweets here. I can't stand pee jokes

Well, you're in for a treat, there are all sorts of comedy whiz kids dying for your ear at the moment
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:15 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


To go with the "ban the press from the press room" story, Page Six has an item that one of the rejected press secretary candidates proposed mandatory drug tests for the press corps back in November. That this would come out now is surely just a coincidence, right?

Just to back up to this for a second, our government is clearly about to be run by reasonably epic trolls, yet they have such thin skin about being trolled back in any way.
posted by zachlipton at 1:17 AM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


NYTimes: Women Who Voted for Trump, in Their Own Words.

I tried, but I can't understand the viewpoint of any of these voters and I don't see how they could be swayed by reason. Certainly not the one who cited Vince Foster! We're definitely going to need to tap into the pool of non-voters after the new administration introduces the Two Minutes Hate against the next opponent.
posted by stopgap at 1:59 AM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


Much obliged to jason_steakums for the link to Pod Save America. I was hoping the Keepin' It 1600 people would keep on keepin' on.
posted by valetta at 2:00 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


If you push on them, the result is not that the other side gives in, but that they GO TO WAR.

Or they just start dumping T-bills and imposing tariffs on exports to the US, while dumping Chinese owned, US-based real estate investments, and tank our economy.
posted by krinklyfig 44 minutes ago [1 favorite +] [!]


Among the more plausible nightmare scenarios that float around, this is the one I fear most. I don't believe Trump is stupid, I think he's capable of making and closing a deal (not necessarily running things after) but I don't think he has a good feel/understanding for the real ramifications of much of what he says. Talking about it with a friend, who reminded me that Trump is, after all, not much more than a Mobbed-up construction guy from New York (by which his soul is not all that different from Tony Soprano's). He has a certain world-view and stepping outside of that, the shock could be enormous.

One amazing/terrifying thing about his dalliance with Putin is that he's siding with an ebbing economy at the expense of strengthening ties with the largest and growing economy, chEYE-NA. One could pretend to see the logic behind jabbing at the One-China policy as a prelude to re-opening negotiations, softening them up, like. Except for the fact that US' position is only the most barely barely barely a position of strength. Pretending trade ties with Russia will make up for, or even provide the strength necessary to overcome China is - laughable...

None of it adds up. So I'm voting #1 quidnunc kid! There's still hope! Vote at your local corner-store/liquor mart!
posted by From Bklyn at 2:03 AM on January 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


Ok, that Boston Globe piece ArtW posted nearly gave me a panic attack. Just fair warning. Just the way it lays out how BUGFUCK INSANE everything currently is... *twitch, twitch*
posted by threeturtles at 2:09 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


NYTimes: Women Who Voted for Trump, in Their Own Words.

I tried, and only got through the first. Is the answer to all the rest of them "very obvious racism" too?
posted by ominous_paws at 2:11 AM on January 15, 2017 [18 favorites]


One of them was also actually "... but her emails!"
posted by Archelaus at 2:18 AM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


They were all some combination of racism and idiocy, ominous_paws.
posted by Justinian at 2:19 AM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Is the answer to all the rest of them "very obvious racism" too?

More or less, with a liberally applied sauce of anti-Islamic xenophobia. It was a repellent group of people.
posted by frumiousb at 2:20 AM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Among the more plausible nightmare scenarios that float around, this is the one I fear most.

Me too. China is not going to start a war with the US over trade, mostly because of M.A.D. They're not suicidal. But they are a state-controlled economic powerhouse willing to endure economic difficulties of their own in order to survive, if they can sufficiently punish an adversary that is attempting to weaken their position.
posted by krinklyfig at 2:22 AM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


It was a repellent group of people.

Well, they were Trump voters.
posted by Justinian at 2:24 AM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


So the New York Times is going to go full on "let's find random Trump voters and print whatever they've got to say no matter how racist or stupid" and never challenge any of their assumptions or just plain falsehoods for the next four+ years, while largely ignoring, say, the voices of cancer patients terrified of losing their insurance? Great.
posted by zachlipton at 2:29 AM on January 15, 2017 [43 favorites]


Indeed. I'm honestly having a very difficult time controlling my rage at the lot of them these days.
posted by frumiousb at 2:30 AM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Amusing coincidence: that Boston Globe article was written by Michael Cohen, who has the same name as the person who reportedly went to negotiate with the Russian hacking team on Trump's behalf.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:36 AM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ringling Brothers ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ announces closure same week we welcome Trump administration.

Bread and circuses, people. Now with less circus.
posted by hal9k at 3:04 AM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Sharing that link someone posted earlier about the effect of Russian propaganda on the Brexit vote made me think about what is going on here more from the Russian perspective. From that point of view it makes more sense.

It seems to me that the invention of the internet is like the invention of airplanes. Imagine one side in a war had airplanes and the other side were still using cavalry. Russia is able to use the internet to bypass our defenses and get disinformation into Western countries the same way an airplane can bypass any ground-based defenses and hit any target it wants. Western countries are particularly vulnerable to disinformation because we are democracies. The press has always had an important role in our systems, sending feedback to voters about how the government is doing. If you can screw with that process so that the message voters are getting is "terrible terrible your government is terrible your alliances are terrible your trading relationships are terrible your other ethnic groups and political parties are terrible" you can get voters to tear down the government and alliances and economy from within, and start fighting amongst themselves.

Publishing used to have "gatekeepers," editors who had names and citizenships and reputations. But on the internet, disinformation can fly right over those gates. And you can target your message directly to people who already believe the government is terrible and weaponize their outrage, and mix enough kernals of truth about weaknesses discovered via espionage with the lies that you want to plant that you sound credible. You can take internal ethnic and political conflicts and bring them to a boil that verges on civil war, weakening the country and its alliances to the point of powerlessness.

That is what Russia has figured out. From their point of view this all makes sense. Democracy has this inherent weakness and they are just exploiting that. They have struck first with a new kind of weapon. Now we need to scramble to find some defense against it.

We were in this historical moment anyway where newspapers were going bankrupt and cable and the internet were fracturing the video news market into tiny ideological slivers. We were already struggling to deal with "bubbles" and "echo chambers." With no gate keepers deciding what is verifiable and what is not, demanding fact checking and second sources, we are left just believing whatever sounds plausible to us based in our pre-existing theories about how the world works, whatever plays to the prejudices and biases we already have... That's what sounds believable to us, so that's what we believe, because we have no other yardstick for measuring credibility anymore.

Russia didn't create that situation. But they sure as hell seem to have figured out how to exploit it.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:54 AM on January 15, 2017 [133 favorites]


This NYT op-ed from last August, I guess, kind of lays out Putin's likely POV on this whole operation:
Fifteen years ago, a few months into his presidency, Vladimir V. Putin told Larry King on CNN that his previous job as a K.G.B. officer had been like that of a journalist. “They have the same purpose of gathering information, synthesizing it and presenting it for the consumption of decision makers,” he said. Since then, he has excelled at using the media to consolidate power inside Russia and, increasingly, to wage an information war against the West.

So the apparent hacking by Russian security services of the Democratic National Committee emails, followed by their publication by WikiLeaks, should come as no great surprise to Americans. It is only the latest example of how Mr. Putin uses information as a weapon.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:14 AM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


God, now I'm wondering how much of the right-wing crap that's circulated on the internet for years might have come from Russia, as opposed to from our own internal would-be masters of disinformation.

The stuff about "Jade Helm"? Any chance that rumor was started by Putin? The Birther Lie? We know that was promoted by Putin's puppet... We know Russian propaganda was spewing "Obama founded ISIS," so is there a chance they also came up with "Obama is coming for your guns"? FEMA camps? How long has Putin been doing this stuff?
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:31 AM on January 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


I'm inclined to believe that the seeds of the major american conspiracy theories are native to the USA. They've always been a big part of our culture (The Paranoid Style in American Politics, etc). We were obsessed with Catholic Papist plots for a lot of the 18th and 19th centuries, and Freemasons and so on, all before even the fear of communism. I don't think Jade Helm had to be fed to Alex Jones. That's not to say that Putin won't boost any nascent or latent conspiracy theory he can.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:39 AM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


Um.... How many of these conspiracy theories have come from Alex Jones specifically? I mean, in this light "Infowars" seems a little on-the-nose...

We've always had paranoia and conspiracy theorists for sure, and I don't think the John Birch society, for instance, was working with Russia... but it does seem to have become more intense in the last 15 years. I know there must be plenty of home grown conspiracy theories too, but it does seem plausible to me that some fraction were seeded into that hot house from outside.

Gah, now I have a conspiracy theory ABOUT Alex Jones! The irony is gonna kill me.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:48 AM on January 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


Or they just start dumping T-bills and imposing tariffs on exports to the US, while dumping Chinese owned, US-based real estate investments, and tank our economy.

China has already been selling piles of T-bills and USD to defend the yuan. Japan is the #1 holder of US debt and it's been switching back and forth over the past year and a bit.
posted by Talez at 4:50 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Cops: Greenwich Republican Insulted Town Worker, Then Pinched Her Groin
He allegedly replied: "I love this new world, I no longer have to be politically correct," according to the warrant.

As she walked by, he allegedly pinched her in the groin area, according to the warrant. She threatened to punch him if he ever did that again, the warrant said.

She said he "looked back with a really evil look in his eyes and said, 'it would be your word against mine and nobody will believe you,'" according to the warrant.

She declined to speak about the complaint, prompting him to say, "Was this about the little pinch I gave?" and further adding it was a joke and that he couldn't believe the 57-year-old woman could be offended, the warrant said.
Oh and the dumbest part?
Police said video footage from a surveillance camera on the day of the incident is consistent with the sequence of events described by the complainant.
Yeah, asshole. "Your word against mine", hey? But yeah, fuck Trump. Republican asshole truly thinks he can grab women by the pussy now that Trump is cockhead in chief.
posted by Talez at 4:55 AM on January 15, 2017 [90 favorites]


Um.... How many of these conspiracy theories have come from Alex Jones specifically? I mean, in this light "Infowars" seems a little on-the-nose...

There's a whole lot of debate about how much Jones is a (1) conman and rational actor or (2) an uncontrolled lunatic, or (3) something in between. I've tried to parse it myself and am still at a loss. Were he a Russian asset, it'd be a hell of a risk for Russia unless he's firmly in the (1) category. And if he is shown to have contacts with Russian intelligence it might not look great for Trump himself: he does, after all, do live interviews with him...
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:59 AM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


It seems like it's entirely possible that Russia manipulates Jones without his knowledge. This fits in more in with the M.O. of Putin. Plant the ideas with no way to trace their source. Putin has an army of Gríma Wormtongues. I don't think the Russians go around with wads of money telling people to do specific things.
posted by ThreeCatsBob at 5:29 AM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


I just looked Jones up on Wikipedia and one of the links took me to this story from 2014.

That is Jones repeating what was originally RT propaganda about the Malaysian Airlines flight that was shot down by Russia over Ukraine in 2014.

According to RT and Alex Jones, it was actually shot down by Ukraine... because the aircraft supposedly resembled Putin's and was flying a similar route, making the crash an assassination attempt on Putin... so... yeah.

Now I guess I'm wondering "useful idiot or knowing agent" about Jones as well as Trump. "Useful idiot" would indeed be a less risky strategy. If he's willing to just take RT's word for stuff then you really don't need to let him see behind the curtain in order to use him to spread disinformation.

But it does seem like at least some of his disinformation originates as Russian propaganda, whether Jones realizes that's what it is or not.

Maybe Putin has been successfully doing this for some time, and Trump is both his greatest success and the idiot who exposes the whole operation. I guess that's the risk of making a big move like that. You attract more attention.
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:30 AM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


There's a whole lot of debate about how much Jones is a (1) conman and rational actor or (2) an uncontrolled lunatic, or (3) something in between. I've tried to parse it myself and am still at a loss. Were he a Russian asset, it'd be a hell of a risk for Russia unless he's firmly in the (1) category. And if he is shown to have contacts with Russian intelligence it might not look great for Trump himself: he does, after all, do live interviews with him...

It's about the comment sections and discussion forums. Really. It's about boosting and spreading what is already in the wind. There is no need for Russia to direct someone like Jones. It's about 'yeah Alex you're so right on!', talking about it, posting about and hitting the share button. It's simple strategy really. You don't need to be the guy but you can support the guy and then more people join in when they see how much support the idea gets. Propaganda by 'upvote'. Also more then likely using digital tools like bots.
posted by Jalliah at 5:33 AM on January 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


I guess it doesn't matter whether he's a rational actor or not if Jones is accepting disinformation as if he's a useful idiot crazy person and not a knowing asset. I admit I do wonder a lot about what it's like inside Jones's head and what the ratio of crazy/stupid/evil really is.
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:36 AM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


"In the past, her stance on abortion was more the way I feel, just for the first trimester, then she did a 360."

made you dizzy, did it?
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:37 AM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'll just leave this here.
posted by HuronBob at 5:37 AM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


You know if Russian propaganda really had been decisive in the Brexit vote, we wouldn't have had such distinctive differences between regions, with Wales being all Leave and Scotland being all Remain and (minority-white British, super multicultural) London being all Remain.

The Brexit campaign was sold on xenophobia, even if some Leavers did have well thought out reasons for wanting to Leave (yes I actually believe that position was possible for a reasonable person to hold, it's just that that's not why the majority did it).

I'd point out that in my region, we had a banana factory advertising jobs with fluent Polish as a requirement, because he thought he could get the cheapest labour that way at the expense of local workers. He got stamped out pretty quickly, but you know what kind of message that sends.

Then you have UKIP advertising 350 million for the NHS if Brexit, then the day after Brexit Nigel Farage literally goes "ha ha we lied" but people believed it just long enough to vote, so hey.

Take all that stuff, combine it with the fact that a depressingly large number of people are just plain xenophobic arseholes, and we don't need Russia to explain Brexit. The whole thing is daft enough that Leavers didn't really need Russian help.

I mean, we don't want to get into a situation where we are checking under our sofa cushions for Russian agents. Reds Under The Bed all over again. Saying, but Brexit and Russia! Eh? Eh? That's difficult to disprove. Real conspiracies tend to be provable, even if long after the fact.

A propos of this, The X Files came on Amazon Prime and I watched one episode last week and it was so damn depressing. I liked it at first, but Mouldy and Sulky running around finding nebulous connections between OMG Stuff! and OMG Other Stuff! and never ever having a valid script because conspiracy, it got tedious after the first nine years or so.
posted by tel3path at 5:41 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


On places like Reddit for instance and I think there are some people that have been actually tracking it there has been a notable uptick on Trump support comments on anti-Trump threads during the Russian day time. So much so that there's a in joke 'Well breakfast time in Russia. Prepare for incoming'. And people have followed accounts that regularly posted in places like R_the Donald or by looking at comment history who after the election moved on to posting about Germany or Turkey.
It's why now there is a lot of response to Pro Trump commenters calling them comrade and jibs about bad English and grammar.
Twitter is another place for reasons that should be obvious.
posted by Jalliah at 5:44 AM on January 15, 2017 [42 favorites]




Unfortunately, we played into their hands, too. The misinformation campaign that places like Breitbart and Infowars rely on was unfortunately successful. It reminds me of the old adage that a lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 5:45 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Like I'm not saying it wasn't necessarily for want of TRYING about Brexit, but people are so impenetrably dumb I'm certain any propaganda just glanced right off them.

Whereas, something like Hillary being the subject of an FBI investigation twice within days of the election - well, if you just go off your impressions and emotions anyway, it's easy to see how that could be decisive. Trump has yet to be the focus of any investigation that's anywhere near that definitive.
posted by tel3path at 5:51 AM on January 15, 2017


Whereas, something like Hillary being the subject of an FBI investigation twice within days of the election - well, if you just go off your impressions and emotions anyway, it's easy to see how that could be decisive. Trump has yet to be the focus of any investigation that's anywhere near that definitive.

I know it was an uphill battle trying to convince even my moderate friends that Hillary wasn't "the lesser of two evils", she wasn't a second head of Bill, and that a lot of the stories about her were propaganda. They "just didn't trust her" or thought she was "incompetent".

I'm honestly sick of the "Whoever wins, we lose" attitude. Hillary wasn't a perfect candidate, but she had experience and has a history of listening to people, and I would have trusted her in the President position more than any of the Republicans but Trump most of all. Democracy relies on people participating and working to inform themselves, and the apathy going around, a lot of which could be traced to rumors about Benghazi and the emails, has become a serious problem.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 6:01 AM on January 15, 2017 [41 favorites]


Take all that stuff, combine it with the fact that a depressingly large number of people are just plain xenophobic arseholes, and we don't need Russia to explain Brexit.

We don't need Russia to explain Trump either. There are plenty of American xenophobes and racists too, with regional variations in their distribution that happen to be electorally unfortunate.

The idea is that Putin might take these pre-existing movements and try to give them a 3% or 1% popularity boost, and fire them up a bit, via propaganda. If as a result his preferred side wins an election, great. If not, what has he lost? He's still causing internal strife that weakens his rivals.

Here's another article on the Russian role in Brexit in particular:
The propaganda is even more blatant among the recent op-eds on RT and Sputnik. Among them are articles claiming that the EU was the creation of the CIA and two RT pieces decrying EU “brainwashing.” The leader of Britain’s U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), who was instrumental in forcing Cameron into calling the EU referendum, is also a regular guest on RT.

“One of the main lines in Russian propaganda is that Europe is in decay, in chaos, that it is divided, becoming increasingly irrelevant, and obviously a decision by the British to exit the Union would feed that line of argument enormously,” said Joerg Forbrig, from the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
It's a message the "leave" faction would have been pre-disposed to accept, so why not amplify it, drive up turnout by a bit if you can, if you're Putin?

I mean, it seems like there is no question that he was trying to. The question is how successful he was. Most likely, as with Trump, we'll never know how much different that stuff made. But, I mean, it probably wasn't zero difference. Was it bigger than the vote margin? No way to tell.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:02 AM on January 15, 2017 [21 favorites]


The issue is not whether Russia sways all the electorate (in Britain, the US, and now in Germany and France), it's whether Russia sways a decisive minority of the electorate.

The fake news campaigns are targeted specifically to create enough background noise and chaos that the voters who are already predisposed to listen to racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic nonsense do so AND spread it to their immediate surroundings.

Putin is getting pretty fucking good at it, by the look of things.
posted by lydhre at 6:24 AM on January 15, 2017 [29 favorites]




At least Trump is finally growing as a person. He didn't tweet about SNL being fake news.
posted by Talez at 6:33 AM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


America, I love you.
A dossier says that Trump has hundreds of millions in shady dealings with Russia. Ho-hum.
Trump is being blackmailed by Russia. Whatever.
He hired hookers to pee on a bed. Hey! Now you're going to far.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:34 AM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


That Colorado Town Hall was brilliant, and will bear repetition.

They used the best of the chants that arose during the campaign: "Show me what democracy looks like" "This is what democracy looks like". It's slightly syncopated rhythm makes it very effective. It is catchy, it stands out from the plodding competition, and it is fun to chant (and dance to).
posted by stonepharisee at 6:37 AM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


Reading that women who voted Trump article gave me that weird feeling where I almost feel like a jerk, because the most honest thing I can think of to say is "If you understood the way anything works, and you've been paying THE LEAST BIT OF GODDAMN attention to what Trump says or does, we'd at least be in 'Well, I guess that's your opinion' territory."
posted by Rykey at 6:39 AM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]




Ha ha. It's only "political" when it's politics they don't like.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 6:42 AM on January 15, 2017 [25 favorites]


For future reference: "that person is becoming extremely political" = "that person is about to be the target of political persecution"

Fascists tell the lies that are necessary to do the things they are about to do. It's a statement of intent.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:43 AM on January 15, 2017 [80 favorites]


"aught"?
posted by petebest at 6:46 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Roland B. Hedley Jr.
@RealRBHJr
Jan 10
Sessions, on whether grabbing a woman's genitals = sexual assault: “It’s not clear… how that would occur.” So sweet, different generation.

posted by petebest at 6:49 AM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Alec Baldwin, who plays Donald Trump on SNL, is also playing Trump in a biographical documentary this year.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:55 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Today is actually Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. If you have the ability to, check out this song that was written by a music teacher named Barbara Ames, and performed last year on video by Lin-Manuel Miranda and other graduates of his school.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:56 AM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


I'm not sure it's monocle-pop-worthy to consider information manipulation a thing Russia worked out.

It was US that developed it, weaponized it, deployed it with abandon in the Reagan era and went total war with it during Dubz FunHouse years.

A gentleman named Norm McChompsky has written extensively about it, such as in the made-for-tv movie "Manufacturing the Consense"
posted by petebest at 7:00 AM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Hillary wasn't a perfect candidate, but...

Honestly, after this election, I'm done ceding even this rhetorical ground. Hillary was the most qualified candidate on the ballot. Full stop. And I am no longer going to talk myself in circles about other Democrats either. They aren't the ones trying to destroy this country.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:08 AM on January 15, 2017 [99 favorites]


The tab on top of my browser cuts off the title of this post calling it "The Penultimate Wee".
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:09 AM on January 15, 2017 [45 favorites]


You know with Vince McMahon a fan of Trump, maybe he could do the announcing at the inauguration. "Ladies and gentleman, the P-resident of the United States."

Okay, I p-romise I'm done for a while.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:13 AM on January 15, 2017




Supreme Court Update: President-Elect Trump Has Started Interviewing SCOTUS Candidates: On Saturday afternoon, here in cold and snowy New York, President-elect Donald Trump interviewed Judge William Pryor of the Eleventh Circuit for the open sea.t on the U.S. Supreme Court…. Judge Pryor, more than any other potential Trump nominee, triggers strong opposition from liberal interest groups — civil rights groups, LGBT groups, and especially pro-abortion groups, who loathe his comments about Roe v. Wade (“worst abomination in the history of constitutional law”). But Jeff Sessions similarly entered his hearings as a hardline conservative with a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk of baggage, including accusations of racism that kept him off the federal bench in 1986.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:26 AM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Re the CO town hall that wasn't: nicely done all around. Our Republican senator hasn't had a town hall since 2013 and hasn't had any such event in the state's largest city ever. I'm itching to get my one R elected representative in the hot seat so I can yell at him but he's such a well known coward, pretty sure it will never happen. Tuesdays With Toomey is definitely making the very existence of his cowardice a public event, though.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:33 AM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


I just want to say that in this current world of utter chaos, reading this thread has a strangely calming effect. I think it's because you all are awesome.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:39 AM on January 15, 2017 [23 favorites]



lol? *cries*

Trump involved in ‘every detail’ of upcoming inaugural festivities


Donald Trump may be the future president, but that doesn’t mean he’s above choosing the place settings and tablecloth fabrics for this week’s inaugural festivities.

“He’s into every detail of everything,” Presidential Inaugural Committee Chair Tom Barrack told The Post. “I beg him all the time to go back to running the free world and let me focus on setting the tables.”

posted by Jalliah at 7:42 AM on January 15, 2017 [18 favorites]


roomthreeseventeen: "Rep. Pocan (WA-02) announces he isn't going. 22 names."

I need to call my rep Mike Doyle to urge him to boycott. Should I just leave a message or wait until Tuesday when the offices are open?
posted by octothorpe at 7:43 AM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


octothorpe, I sent an e-mail and a tweet yesterday to my representative, who announced later that night that he would not attend. They listen on weekends.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:46 AM on January 15, 2017


Octothorpe - the Indivisble playbook says that most effective is to call and to speak to someone.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:48 AM on January 15, 2017


Ha ha. It's only "political" when it's politics they don't like.

Yeah, that son of a bitch Cornyn has been emailing back people who demand that he not confirm Jeff Sessions with a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth plea to not let politics get in the way of a qualified candidate.

We have been coordinating responses along the lines of "I take it you plan to confirm Merrick Garland now, then?"
posted by sciatrix at 7:48 AM on January 15, 2017 [25 favorites]


Sessions, on whether grabbing a woman's genitals = sexual assault: “It’s not clear… how that would occur.”

At that point, some female senator should have gone down there and grabbed his balls. And twisted, for good measure.
posted by bibliowench at 7:49 AM on January 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


Rep. Pocan ([WI]-02) announces he isn't going. 22 names.

YAY! But Mark Pocan is my representative in Wisconsin, not Washington.
posted by BrashTech at 7:50 AM on January 15, 2017


Also I gotta call Lloyd Doggett and ask him to boycott. I actually trust him to potentially listen.

I wonder if it might be worth popping into one of his offices when I'm in DC to leave him a message thanking him for his work.
posted by sciatrix at 7:50 AM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


octothorpe, I sent an e-mail and a tweet yesterday to my representative, who announced later that night that he would not attend. They listen on weekends.

And I left a phone message for my rep, who announced his boycott a few hours later. He probably would have done it anyway, though.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:51 AM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'll get something out to Doyle over the weekend but might follow up with a call once the offices are open again. Belt and braces.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:54 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


I sent a message to my congress rep applauding her decision (Clark, MA 5th - I think she was the first), and asking her to escalate.

Congressmen are expected to participate in a lot of flag waving pageantry all around the calendar, and a lot of it is an implicit affirmation that all is right with the republic. All is NOT right, so it's time to withdraw from it. That's what I'm asking from her.
posted by ocschwar at 7:56 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yep, I just tweeted Doggett but will call on my way to Houston (where I'll leave from for DC) on Tuesday.
posted by sciatrix at 7:57 AM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I wonder if it might be worth popping into one of his offices when I'm in DC to leave him a message thanking him for his work.

Considering how passionate you are, a million times yes!
posted by maggiemaggie at 7:58 AM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]




Anyone hear names for Ag Secretary yet? Last one without a nomination, I think.

No surprise that boring stuff like farms and food aren't exactly top of mind for Trump, and anyway someone with a pocket to be lined will just whisper a Big Ag name in his ear and done deal, right?
posted by Caxton1476 at 8:05 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Sunday Herald (Scotland) TV section

My mouth dropped open. Holy heck batman that's hilarious on so many levels.
What sort of paper is the Sunday Herald?
posted by Jalliah at 8:19 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


The Sunday Herald is a perfect;y respectable Scottish newspaper (within the bounds of what that means), and most probably the sanest of the bunch. You'd expect the TV guide - one of the reasons people still read papers in the UK - to be straightforward, informative and at the most lightly witty.

So yes, this is a proper Glasgie piss-take.
posted by Devonian at 8:23 AM on January 15, 2017 [19 favorites]


The 25th Amendment deals with the succession of the Presidency, especially at a time when the sitting President becomes unable, incapable or unfit to perform the duties of his or her office.

Ahem. "Becomes." He's got you there.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:27 AM on January 15, 2017 [25 favorites]



So Andrea Bocelli has also backed out of the Inauguration. The official line is that his fans said they wouldn't listen to him anymore but right wing media is going with reporting that the real reason is he got death threats. Not linking those sites here.
posted by Jalliah at 8:27 AM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


They used the best of the chants that arose during the campaign: "Show me what democracy looks like" "This is what democracy looks like".

I feel I am obliged to point out this is not a new chant that arose during the campaign, but I'm glad you like it at least.
posted by corb at 8:29 AM on January 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


Ah, sending death threats. Remind me who normally sends them, and to whom? And remind me who's actually been caught trying to incite violence among left-wing protesters to discredit them?

On the balance of probabilities, and if death threats have actually been sent to inauguration performers, I would suspect it wasn't by anti-Trumpers.
posted by Devonian at 8:37 AM on January 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


NYT: Without Obamacare, I Will Get Sicker, Faster, Until I Die: But a little more than a year ago, something changed. I had trouble paying attention; my short-term memory worsened. I went to see a neurologist who noticed a slight tremor in one of my fingers. His words changed my life for a second time: “I think you have Parkinson’s disease.” I was 44.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:44 AM on January 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


> not a new chant
They rarely are.
posted by stonepharisee at 8:51 AM on January 15, 2017


@megh_wright My dad starts chemo Monday. Here's just ONE prescription he needs. It's really very simple: without Obamacare, within 8 months he'd be dead.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:52 AM on January 15, 2017 [13 favorites]




New private Texas detention center for transgender migrants raises concerns
Christina Fialho is the co-executive director of CIVIC, an organization that monitors the conditions of about 40 detention centers across the nation. She says the Santa Ana transgender unit was created in response to problems LGBT migrant detainees were facing while in confinement. In 2011, 13 asylum-seekers from across the country filed a complaint that stated detainees suffered from sexual assault, long-term solitary confinement and denial of adequate medical care while detained with the general population (PDF).

But the problems, Fialho says, continued in California’s transgender pod. She says Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not protect trans women in confinement.
I don't want to worsen anyone else's anxiety by raising the topic[s], but it is the creeping normalcy of things like this coupled with the already-starting erosion of civil rights and social services that has me personally feeling terrified for the future. With no large-scale opposition and Republicans just going wild with socially destructive policies, I am not optimistic for the short or middle term future (and long term, we kill our planet out of belligerent negligence). I fear there are too many people who simply don't care about things like this; on the face of it, it looks like a good thing to house trans migrants separately, but in reality will mean primarily abuse and torture, and the detention center itself is a symptom of deeper problems besides. People who are comfortable within their privilege likely won't step up en masse to stop rights, safety and dignity being taken from others. And it's a total waste of everyone's time to ask what could possibly change Republican voters' minds about Trump, Sessions, Bannon, et al because they demonstrably don't care. "Fake news" has done its damage and the rape allegations, the plausible Russian ties, the conflicts of interest, the concerns over civil rights erosion or anything else will be bluntly disbelieved by the Republican base. Imagining that lurid pee play will sway people is just more needlessly convoluted magical thinking.

Sorry for the doom and gloom. I want to step away from all of this, but it feels dangerous to look away. I think hope is foolish, right now. I'd love to look back on that thought in a year or two and see it as melodramatic or overreacting, but this is just where the world is right now.
posted by byanyothername at 9:04 AM on January 15, 2017 [21 favorites]


A friend just posted this on FB. I hope it's OK to share:

Reposting: A friend called Senator Warren's office to find to what she could do to speak up against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. This is what Warren's staffers told her:

"What would help the most would be to call the five Republican senators who have broken away from the GOP to demand a slow down of the repeal. Tell them how much you appreciate their efforts to stop the train wreck and share your story."

They are:

Senator Bob Corker - (202) 224-3344
Senator Lisa Murkowski - (202) 224-6665
Senator Rob Portman - (202) 224-3353
Senator Susan Collins - (202) 224-2523
Senator Bill Cassidy - (202) 224-5824
posted by staggering termagant at 9:21 AM on January 15, 2017 [77 favorites]


Filed under I went there so you don't have too:
(I'm purposing leaving out specific detailed names that can be searched. Ff people want the details they can be found in their subs on places like Reddit.

Not nice but it's good to keep tabs on these folks and in a dark way this is sorta good news. The Alt-Right movement who started fighting with each other near the end of the election is experiencing a fairly major shake-up right now. They're doxxing each other, one major website is down because of it, another main one that people use is in question. And the integrity of another main one The is up in the air. From what I gather the main upset is that one of their well known figures and media people, who was the founder of the website with started the ((( ))) anti-Jewish meme a while back has been exposed. He has a Jewish wife. They're arguing about the purity of the movement and the defacto leaders (cause some knew about it) is being questioned yadda yadda. Chaos.

The result which is good for the rest of the world is that the bickering is hampering their ability to get organized more then they have been. They're even arguing about the bickering.
posted by Jalliah at 9:27 AM on January 15, 2017 [19 favorites]


Counterpoint: calling congresspeople/senators outside of your district wastes everyone's time because they ignore those calls in their tallies. That's why they ask for your address when you call them, so they know you're a constituent. Someone pointed out that of course staffers are going to tell you to call someone else so they don't have to answer those calls. Here is someone specifically rebutting what you just shared.
posted by winna at 9:29 AM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Counterpoint: calling congresspeople/senators outside of your district wastes everyone's time because they ignore those calls in their tallies. That's why they ask for your address when you call them, so they know you're a constituent.

Soooooo . . . lie about it, then?
posted by CommonSense at 9:30 AM on January 15, 2017


Lying is a terrible idea. What, you're going to give a random address in their district?

There's enough real stuff to do without that.
posted by winna at 9:32 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Jalliah: just looked into the alt-right shakeup and holy moly, is this satisfying. On the message board I'm looking at, the pro [redacted shitheel] faction that's arguing for unity is saying the reason the Left is so strong is that they never turn on their own over ideological purity. Amazing.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:36 AM on January 15, 2017 [38 favorites]


I will say that neither Jeff Flake's nor John McCain's office has ever asked for my address.
On the other hand, I was only able to get through to a McCain staffer once, shortly after the election. It's always been a busy signal since then.

Rep. Gallego's office hasn't asked, either. Maybe Arizonans are more laissez-faire about the whole thing, I dunno. I'm always surprised to read about the level of verification that seems to go on when others make calls.
posted by Superplin at 9:40 AM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'd think if Warren's staffers are telling concerned people to do it, it might not be a complete waste of time?
posted by danapiper at 9:41 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


If you know anyone in Tennessee, Alaska, Maine, Ohio or Louisiana, you could contact them and ask them to call their senator. I don't think I actually do know anyone in any of those states, but it's a thought.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:41 AM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


George Takei has retweeted the Sunday Herald story on all hailing frequencies. I calculate the following probabilities, Captain.

Karroty Klingon sees tweet - 100 percent
UK trade deal going through - 0.01 percent
Glasgow being smoking glazed crater by 12:30 on 20th Jan - 99.99 percent

Putting donottauntthedynamitemonkey.gif on main screen.
posted by Devonian at 9:44 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Jalliah: just looked into the alt-right shakeup and holy moly, is this satisfying. On the message board I'm looking at, the pro [redacted shitheel] faction that's arguing for unity is saying the reason the Left is so strong is that they never turn on their own over ideological purity. Amazing.

Yeah stuff like that (dark humor) made wading through it bearable. And yeah it is satisfying but holy hell those people are awful. If it was just them arguing on their discussion boards that's one thing but it looks like it's taking out major pieces of their media and propaganda eco-system. This is a good thing.
posted by Jalliah at 9:44 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


If you need some Louisiana addresses memail me. I have plenty of Republican family you can pretend to be!
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:44 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'd think if Warren's staffers are telling concerned people to do it, it might not be a complete waste of time?

I know it's not as effective but I tweeted to everyone on the list to tank them for slowing the process down. It's the most I can do on a Sunday before a holiday.
posted by photoslob at 9:54 AM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Counterpoint: calling congresspeople/senators outside of your district wastes everyone's time because they ignore those calls in their tallies. That's why they ask for your address when you call them, so they know you're a constituent. Someone pointed out that of course staffers are going to tell you to call someone else so they don't have to answer those calls. Here is someone specifically rebutting what you just shared.

So, one of the things quoted in that rebuttal is: "Who represents you. American citizens that reside in one of the 50 states have three individuals elected to represent their interests in Congress: one Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and two U.S. Senators. Because of their limited resources, most Members of Congress only accept communications from those they represent."

That could be a pressure point - they're set up for weeding out the occasional letter from out of their district, but an overwhelming number of letters from across the US could have an effect. Getting the single biggest flood of letters they've ever had says something and still takes staff time and effort to sort through. Now, it looks like it would cost someone $137.71 in stamps to send a letter to every Republican in Congress, and that's not counting printing, paper and envelope costs, which is a big ask for a single person and probably beyond the means of most grassroots activists for a single action, but it could be divided up in a coordinated letter writing campaign.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:56 AM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


/health care stuff

When I transitioned off of my employers cadillac insurance COBRA to Medicare, I was taking IV antibiotics to combat a MRSA infection that had almost turned into sepsis and had gotten all the way to my bones, whatever fancy word for MRSA bone infection is.

When I transitioned to Medicare NYU was all, well, Medicare won't pay for IV antibiotics at home so off to a nursing home with you.

I'd never spent any time at a not so great nursing home. My Grams, prior to her hospice care, was in a very nice assisted living facility. My Gramps died a couple years after a series of strokes that left him unable to get out of bed without an expensive fancy sling thing. He died at home, as per their wishes.

Gramps was a retired bank prez, and had set up things so they could spend their last days in comfort.

When I went into the nursing home that took in people who had Medicare and not any supplementary insurance, it was like entering the halls of the damned. People screaming in terror because they were demented and they were terrified and they were left alone, isolated. I need catheters in order to pee and waited I think ten hours for the nursing home to get catheters so I wouldn't die, which is indeed what happens if you don't pee.

I mean I could give a lot of examples, but it was that experience that, I kid you not, has led me to define the contours of my living will thusly:
a) Get terminal diagnosis
b) Read, smoke weed, and do magic mushrooms until I'm too sick for that to be fun
c) Do some heroin for fun.
d) Do some heroin for dying purposes.

I am 100% serious about this, and my worry is that I'll end up in the ER through a fall/collapse/whatever and the SO will be LET HER GO SHE WANTS HER SHROOMS AND HEROIN and the med staff will be all, no that's cruel and inhumane, we have to warehouse her until her brains are pudding and she wakes up each morning crying because she hasn't died in her sleep.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's not like Ryan is all *brand new idea sick people EW*. We've been sick people neglecting for--well, eternity, it's just that some countries have evolved past us.
posted by angrycat at 10:03 AM on January 15, 2017 [88 favorites]


Buzzfeed are collating a database of Trump's companies and connections
posted by stonepharisee at 10:40 AM on January 15, 2017 [22 favorites]


I know it's a dumb gesture and no one will know about it but me, but I've wanted the March trilogy for a while and as I have to spend money on Friday anyway for reasons (meaning I can't participate in a no-spending protest), I may as well give myself the gift of buying something that day that will always remind me of the importance of resistance.

Also it puts a small amount of money in a great man's pocket and would deeply offend a certain someone with baby hands, so.
posted by palomar at 10:41 AM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


Cali's single payer just made it out of committee.

It's a purely public bill. No private option. Insurance companies would cease to exist in California.

It'll be interesting to see how the GOP reacts.
posted by Talez at 10:42 AM on January 15, 2017 [107 favorites]


And people have followed accounts that regularly posted in places like R_the Donald or by looking at comment history who after the election moved on to posting about Germany or Turkey.

Yeah the dots are connecting now - even during the election season, I was always kind of stunned by the fact that r/the_donald had a whopping 300k subscribers (compared to Bernie's 200k and Clinton's 30k).

I always thought the bulk of reddit was a shithole in the "most liberal dude in the frat house" sense, a bunch of faux-progressive/libertarian atheist LOGIC-THINKER STEM-bro types dictating the wider discourse on the site. So their love affair with Ron Paul and eventually Bernie Sanders made sense. But the mass support for Trump seemed so out of left field even for them...I mean we're talking about a bunch of self-proclaimed RATIONAL THINKERS and intellectuals praising and subscribing and upvoting the most idiotic and irrational candidate we've ever seen in our lifetime. Now it's obvious why.
posted by windbox at 10:43 AM on January 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


I swear we're going to have "The Autonomous Region of the Pacific Northwest" and "The Autonomous Region of New England" by 2020 at this rate.
posted by Talez at 10:44 AM on January 15, 2017 [17 favorites]


Who would have figured that when Republicans were screaming about death panels, it was the word panel that was freaking them out.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:45 AM on January 15, 2017 [25 favorites]


We've been on vacation in CA for the past week or so. Someone please let me know if this single-payer bill is actually going to become a thing so I can cancel our return flight and have the in-laws bring our pets out to us.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:46 AM on January 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


After some long chats with a close, very smart and well-informed friend last night, I offer to my friends here the only semi-optimistic scenario for next week that I've been able to ascertain, in the hope that it will at least lessen the weight of our impending reality just a bit, even if I'm completely being stupid with this. But: there is a whole lot of activity that appears to be a concerted effort to get proof and nail Trump before the inauguration, and there is some indication that it might be successful.

My own antennae were pinged by two very unusual bits of information last week, both actions by President Obama (I know, 'unusual' in our current context is meaningless, but I mean to say, unusual for the players involved whom we know to be reliable). First was the comment that Biden reported, from the initial briefing on "the dossier" that he and Obama had around 10 days ago, when Obama was told about the golden shower video: "what does this have to do with anything?" This puzzled me because, at the time, it seemed like this might be a concrete link, a demonstrable reason of why Trump is compromised, and I was surprised that Obama would be uninterested in what he apparently saw as a salacious bit of info that was not relevant. NOT RELEVANT??? HOW?

And second, the executive order he signed last week (12333, opening access to NSA's raw signals intelligence) just really gave me fundamental pause, because (as best as I can read this action) either the mask is being ripped off during the last few days of his presidency, and we all are well and truly fucked because the world government conspiracy is starting to reveal itself; or he had a very, very compelling and immediate reason to get information from one agency to another. The only way that made sense is if that information is so important--right now--that it's an acceptable sacrifice to broaden the surveillance state fairly massively in order to achieve whatever short-term goal is being pursued. (Obama has spoken openly about how, often, being President means making the best choice from among unacceptable options.)

Lastly, in the past two weeks, I've suddenly started feeling something long absent: respect for American journalism. This whole meta-story, about Russia, their hugely successful propaganda/disinfo/hyperreality work, Trump, all of it, is emerging in a coherent way through distributed reporting in multiple outlets, and this whole chain of events that has even raised a faint hope that we might be able to avoid President Trump was started by a tenacious investigative journalist who put that dossier in the right hands. In the reporting on this, it is clear that an intentional narrative is emerging, that is being told to the American people (and the world) consistently, clearly, and always connected to evidence. (The Boston Globe editorial linked above is a perfect example of this--today and tomorrow, if you pay attention, you will see a bunch of editorials and articles all coalescing on this set of facts and narrative.)

Other salient pieces that I see, in list form for concision (ha!):

1. Trump is obviously completely compromised, and hard evidence exists (though we may not have it yet--Biden is meeting with Ukraine's president today, maybe connected?)

2. The key person for actually proving collusion/treason/etc. is Flynn, and those five calls to the Russian ambassador. If there is response to actual criminal actions, it will focus on Flynn.

3. The FBI is compromised, and may be in process of trying to expose that and purge itself (story here is the Giuliani/Comey R faction, mainly in NY FBI office, are the traitors); or, other intelligence agencies are moving to do the same--Clapper vs. Comey, hope that Clapper will prevail.

4. As has been discussed, Russia did not have specific strategic aims here, but rather have a tactic that is wildly successful, as their disinfo/propaganda/hyperreality-leveraging intelligence work is utterly pervasive. We know about Brexit and the Trump election, but also take a look at the Calexit movement (popped up right after the election, led by a Californian who lives in Russia--fellow Californians, know this now: Calexit is a Russian attempt to leverage hyperreality to further destabilize the U.S.); the Green Party appears to be comprised, remember that weird December 2015 photo from the Russia Today banquet, showing that Flynn and Putin were sitting by each other and laughing? and everybody went, wait, why the fuck is Jill Stein sitting at that table too? I now think that Stein is compromised, and has been paid to be looney and ensure that the American Green Party never, ever grows into a substantial political party (remember that recount, and how it actually ended up working in Trump's favor? or how nobody could understand why Dr. Stein is an anti-vaxxer? She's not serious because she's likely paid well not to be). Paranoid? Sure, and I am not a paranoid person, but the Russians have been very savvy about this, and we simply cannot trust anything about any public actors or dialogue or etc. unless it is clearly supported by consistent patterns of behavior. I am at the point where I don't trust that anything is real, or true, or actually happening, unless I experience it in some way empirically. Me now: "You say there is a Calexit movement?? I haven't heard a single person express this sentiment in real life, ever, and I've lived here for almost two decades so fuck off." I also now think that a large chunk of the white nationalist bullshit is part of this (we've had some concerns on my state university campus, but when we examined our own, unfortunate homegrown "alt-right" org, there is no there, there--it's just a bunch of inferiority-complex suffering, amateur propagandists). This has been a surprisingly easy change in my thinking, though I detest defensive personal postures generally, because I long ago learned how to spot trolls pretty well online, and learned not to engage. This is the collective skill we now must practice in the real world: do not feed the trolls. And speaking of keeping an American Green party from ever truly emerging...

5. It's not about Russia per se. Putin and his power circle are patriots, I think, but more than that, they're the fucking mob. Putin is less a president than the most successful mob boss that has ever existed, and the business of the Russian mob is oil. On a geo-political level, this is about OIL and energy and global hegemony. Transneft is the state-owned monopoly, and if you want to know where the real power struggle is, what the game actually is, it's among Transneft, Exxon-Mobil, and everybody else--this is why the Chinese are really the only country reacting proportionally to the imminent threats to geo-political stability and their own security, they are the most vulnerable in this regard. (It doesn't seem coincidental that this year is the first time a Chinese leader is attending the Davos WEF.) Pay attention to Rex Tillerson, and to how Russia responds to what he says.

Look. I know that this rambly, likely-not-nearly-as-connected-as-I-imagine-it-to-be comment, and my larger sense of narrative here, is driven first by my faint, desperate hope that Trump's inauguration may yet be prevented, and only second by information, facts, reason, logic, and so forth. But as I look, and look, and try to make sense of nonsense, it's pretty clear to me that Trump is just one (horrifically fascinating) actor in this play, and is really more useful idiot than major player. I know that this useful idiot will be doing things, and allowing others to do things, that will be tremendously destructive and harmful to many people, and I am terrified and will do all I can to fight, protect, aid, anything for my fellow human beings and our collective welfare. I do not mean to minimize any of the specific horrors we're (mostly) all really scared about right now. But as I look, I see that what's really going on is not just about the United States, and not only about how what happens in the U.S. affects the world, but is about the whole world and who will have power and influence for the next few decades at least, and perhaps even how we will all know what is true and factual and real.

By luck or by skill and intention, or all of the above, the Russians have disrupted the state-based, geopolitical status quo in a fundamental way, and all major players are now scrambling to respond, defend themselves, and/or take advantage. Nobody expected the U.S. to just collapse internally like this, and while we're scrambling to save ourselves and our society, others are taking advantage of the simple fact that the U.S. is no longer minding the till. Trump is a buffoon, and that useful idiot allowed his voracious need to feed his narcissism to put our entire country right in the middle of it, to make us all a fucking useful idiot for Russia. Every Republican who supported him has proven themselves craven and self-serving traitors (yes, at this point if you are an official of the United States government and support Donald Trump, you are very likely a literal traitor to your country), and at this point the Republican party has two options: you're either all-in with the useful idiot, who will be proven to be a Russian asset sooner or later, and you will share his fate; or you lead the reckoning. One hopes that there are at least a few leaders in that party who see that there is a future only in the latter option.

So. I hope you've enjoyed my The World Still Makes Sense (Though Definitely Crazy) and Justice May Yet Prevail fanfic, and thanks for letting me share all of this. Trying to make sense of nonsense is the only catharsis I've found. Stay strong, cherish what is sacred and beautiful to you today, and remember how amazing it is that you're here to experience that. And call your reps, seriously.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:50 AM on January 15, 2017 [109 favorites]


Ok, so I work at a university, and the student government just called on students to, as a gesture of solidarity against hate, wear school colors on inauguration day. Which is sort of brilliant, because approximately 75% of all students wear school colors every day. We're going to look like we have so much solidarity against hate!

But not me. I don't wear the school colors, because they're ridiculously hideous on me. Maybe I'll just wear my pussyhat all day.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:51 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


There's nothing that can prevent his inauguration at this point. The 12333 expansion was in the works for month, it didn't just happen because they need to prove Trump is a traitor right now.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:55 AM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


I swear we're going to have "The Autonomous Region of the Pacific Northwest" and "The Autonomous Region of New England" by 2020 at this rate.

This is what we have to fight. One of Russia's wet dream scenarios is actual dissolution of the United States. As I keep reminding my friends and family, we did not choose this. Americans did not elect Donald Trump, we (collectively) chose Hillary Clinton. Through gerrymandering, manipulation of proportional representation checks and balances, and so forth, the Republican party has grabbed power against the expressed wishes of the American people, as demonstrated by actual, raw votes. Their regressive actions cannot be allowed to undermine the integrity of the United States as a nation. It is vitally important, for our collective, future material and physical well-being, that we are not persuaded to further otherize internally.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:56 AM on January 15, 2017 [52 favorites]


Trump has yet to be the focus of any investigation that's anywhere near that definitive.

You mean like the credible allegations he raped a 13 year old girl?
posted by mikelieman at 11:01 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Thank you, LooseFilter, for your thoughtful contribution. I find it connected and easy to follow, and well constructed. Worth thinking about.
posted by Altomentis at 11:01 AM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]



Gramps was a retired bank prez, and had set up things so they could spend their last days in comfort.


My mother in law is a retired nurse (and semi-retired union organizer--I married into the right family) who is several years younger than my father in law (so, high probability that she will live longer based both on age and sex). Because she knows the system from the inside, for the entire time I've known them, my father in law's Christmas present to her every year is paying the premium on a long term care supplementary insurance policy. To go with this gift so it's a tad more festive, he enlists my husband to produce a large single-panel cartoon depicting what might happen to her without this insurance. They have several years of these framed and hung in the hallway of their condo. Just a whole wall of extreme gallows humor depictions of our fucked up health care system.

I've been meaning to look into what age I should take out similar policies for myself and my husband. Because yeah.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:03 AM on January 15, 2017 [22 favorites]


Calexit, etc, leave everyone else here, and much poorer and weaker.

And honestly, Calexit would mean, eventually, rule by tech bros - I'm not sure I'd sign up for that if I were you. They may seem sorta liberal now when they don't have absolute power, but most of them would be Thiels in a minute if they really saw the chance for absolute power, drinking the blood of the young for immortality, etc.

And - you'll have refugee problems like whoa, and you'll have a border wall - and the politics to match. Without the coasts, this country will be one long scream. All of them/us (Minnesota is in a funny place - still relatively liberal, still economically strong, not quite like the coasts but not typical of the Midwest) will be headed your way, looking for jobs, freedom and healthcare. And while you individually may think that's grand, your leaders and most of your neighbors won't, and you'll end up militarized.

You think you'll be small and rich and left, but (and that's if there weren't a war - I think there'd be military occupation before the coasts were allowed to take their money and walk) you're forgetting that you're not an island.
posted by Frowner at 11:04 AM on January 15, 2017 [32 favorites]



Thanks Loosefilter. Your comment is awesome.
posted by Jalliah at 11:10 AM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


Cali's single payer just made it out of committee.

While this is a good idea, the financial logistics are problematic. Right now Californians with incomes over $250,000 are paying a federal tax to support Obamacare. There are other federal taxes as well. There is no way for Californian to opt out of the federal taxes in order to fund their own state system with state income taxes. Until they get that figured out, Californian's would be double taxed -- for a federal system they don't use and state system they do use. This would never fly. The double taxation would be huge.

So it isn't just a matter of California creating their own single payer insurance system. They would also need the cooperation of Congress to allow them to opt out of the federal system. It is unlikely that Republicans would cooperate since California is a cash cow for the poor red states.
posted by JackFlash at 11:10 AM on January 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


I often find the writings of Will Durant chillingly prescient. This was written 1930:

"The day of democracy as Rousseau conceived it and Jefferson practiced it began to end when great cities and great industries arrived. In America, political democracy was based on economic democracy, on an approximate equality of economic goods and power. When land was free for the taking, when almost every family lived in isolated sovereignty, growing its own food, hunting its own meat, weaving its own clothing, then men looked each other in the eye as literally "free and equal," and dared to elect to the Presidency heretics and rebels like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

For the economic bases of democracy -- free land, free competition, skilled labor, simplicity of tools, the economic self-sufficiency of the individual homestead -- have disappeared. In their place have come abandoned farms, crowded factories, congested cities, monopolies and mergers, centralized financial control, costly tools purchasable only by rich corporations, and masses of population easily manipulated by interesting misinformation.

The complexity of industry; the geographical expansion of America; the development of intricate foreign relations; the possibility of war; the replacement of political problems by economic problems, arising by hundreds every day before officials, elected not for economic knowledge but for political skill; the consequent diversion of power from elected incompetents to appointed experts and boards -- all these factors have cooperated to make the "free and equal" vote a delusion, and democracy unreal, a pretty window dressing for the rule of machines adept in herding votes, distributing favors, utilizing crime and barring the road to office for all but the subservient and corrupt."
posted by Altomentis at 11:11 AM on January 15, 2017 [19 favorites]


Women's March expecting 100,000, Atlanta sister march hoping for 10,000. Over 200 other demonstrations planned across the country.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:11 AM on January 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


My own antennae were pinged by two very unusual bits of information last week, both actions by President Obama

I saw some of the same things as you but I'm inclined to believe it's a case of apophenia, the ability to see patterns in complex or random information that aren't real. In Obama's case it's expressed as "he's playing 11 dimensional chess" which generally turns out not to be true.
posted by scalefree at 11:14 AM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


Thank you Loosefilter. Your comment is the first salient comment I've read in a while that wraps a lot of this insanity up and actually gives me a bit of hope. It's likely misguided hope but I'll take it.
posted by photoslob at 11:14 AM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


*shakes head* As Frowner says, Calexit is nothing less than an outright betrayal of those of us left in the rest of the country. It means leaving the rest of us to die unless we can escape, and hey: California would then be the only place accessible for escape for much of the Midwest and West Coast. Calexit could be more accurately written Calabandon, as far as I'm concerned.

California leaving us would break my heart to the point that I would lie down and abandon the things I am doing to try to lay groundwork to restore democracy to the nation. I would not be able to seriously believe in a liberal or safe future without the support of the most powerful single liberal state in the nation. This fight would be unwinnable, and would consign the rest of us to death.

I cannot say it more clearly than that. California leaving the Union would be an act of unconscionable betrayal to every American who is trying right now. Every one of us.
posted by sciatrix at 11:17 AM on January 15, 2017 [29 favorites]


Cali's single payer just made it out of committee.
Unfortunately, SB 810 was introduced in 2011, and killed in 2012. This news isn't current.
posted by books for weapons at 11:17 AM on January 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


I saw some of the same things as you but I'm inclined to believe it's a case of apophenia, the ability to see patterns in complex or random information that aren't real. In Obama's case it's expressed as "he's playing 11 dimensional chess" which generally turns out not to be true.

The 11 dimensional chess thing needs to die. What's happening and what Obama and other people have done/do is just boring basic chess. It's how you 'do' politics in any system large or small. It's just that in a larger system it can seem more spectacular and 'wow' and we get this idea that it is the most amazing thing that only an utter genius can pull off.

Obama and many others are quite skilled at it and a lot of politicians aren't so good. But really this all just doing politics and being good at finding leverage and power points in whatever social and political system you find yourself in.

It's just chess goshdurnit!
posted by Jalliah at 11:21 AM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


Who would have figured that when Republicans were screaming about death panels, it was the word panel that was freaking them out.

they were just worried that the government was going to take death panels out of the hands of private industry, that's all
posted by entropicamericana at 11:22 AM on January 15, 2017 [23 favorites]


Unfortunately, SB 810 was introduced in 2011, and killed in 2012. This news isn't current.

Damn. I thought it was today. There was a dateline up top.
posted by Talez at 11:23 AM on January 15, 2017


Regarding calling representatives who don't actually represent me, it'll take me 30 minutes and can't hurt. It won't keep me from calling the people who do represent me. So, as Donald says, what the hell do I have to lose?
posted by staggering termagant at 11:23 AM on January 15, 2017


There is no way for Californian to opt out of the federal taxes in order to fund their own state system with state income taxes.

While the relevant bill is dead, "single payer" in that context is just shorthand. They wouldn't mean actually totally severing healthcare in California from the federal healthcare systems. Whatever the next proposals are will almost certainly mean that there is one insurance company in California, and it's the state of California or a parastatal set up by California. Assuming FPOA that Obamacare continues, it wouldn't be instead of Obamacare -- it would just be the Obamacare plan that's on offer. And it wouldn't be instead of Medicaid, it would be how California administers Medicaid. And people with Medicare would keep on using Medicare, but presumably the only Part C plan available would be the state's.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:28 AM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


A key point to keep in mind is that it is likely and increasingly obvious that Trump is badly compromised, but while exposing and disgracing him goes in the right direction _it does not fix the problem or end the threat_. A huge chunk of America and the party it supports are compromised -- just not all by Russian moneyed interests. There are plenty of domestic bad actors also in need of dismantling.
posted by delfin at 11:30 AM on January 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


Re 11 dimensional chess: No one will save us except ourselves. Politicians are humans with exactly the same cognitive and energetic resources that you or I or any other human has, no more and no less.

There's a song, Matches, I've had on repeat for weeks now that says it as well as anyone else if you need a reminder:

There are no stories told in a vacuum
There is no prophecy lighting our way
There is just a lot of darkness to be afraid of
So it's a good thing we are not afraid!

There is no Superman in that phone booth
There is no rewarding our faith
There is no one who can save us
So it's a good thing we don't need to be saved!

There are no starships in low earth orbit
No aliens to save us from ourselves
There is no voice willing to speak for us
So it's a good thing we know how to yell!

There is no chosen one, no destiny, no fate
There is no such thing as magic
There is no light at the end of this tunnel
So it's a good thing we brought matches!

posted by sciatrix at 11:34 AM on January 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


CIA boss John Brennan says Donald Trump ‘doesn't understand Russia’ in scathing attack on President-elect

...Mr Brennan told Fox News Sunday that Mr Trump had indeed been briefed about the allegations before they were reported by CNN, despite the President-elect’s advisers saying he was not aware of them.

“What I do find outrageous is equating intelligence community with Nazi Germany,” Mr Brennan said. “I do take great umbrage at that.

“There is no basis for Mr Trump to point fingers at the intelligence community for ‘leaking’ information that was already available publicly,” he added.

posted by futz at 11:46 AM on January 15, 2017 [33 favorites]


Regarding calling representatives who don't actually represent me, it'll take me 30 minutes and can't hurt. It won't keep me from calling the people who do represent me. So, as Donald says, what the hell do I have to lose?

Because while you're tying up the line people who actually live there can't get through and it gives the staff the excuse to ignore all complaints as being noise from out of district.

I couldn't get through to call my senator the other day because his line was busy for hours. I don't understand why this is a difficult concept.
posted by winna at 11:47 AM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


Yes, right after I posted my "what's the harm" comment I thought about tying up phone lines. Maybe I'll just mail them a postcard of support instead.
posted by staggering termagant at 11:50 AM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Thanks, Loosefilter. I don't see the possibility of an imminent action that swoops in before inauguration, but I do think there are protections being put in place to try and (somehow) preserve a giant national security investigation of Trump's Russia ties that's obviously ongoing.

We know:
- A number of people associated with Trump (Flynn, Carter Page, Manafort, Burnett), and Trump himself, are tied politically and/or financially to figures tied to Putin.
- The FISA Court has issued at least one warrant related to an investigation into two Russian banks' communications (rumored to be with Trump's camp).
- The same night this (nascent?) investigation was reported (October 31), along with another story about "pinging" between Russian banks and the Trump campaign, FBI sources gave incorrect information to the NYT (that there was no real investigation), and that information was reliable enough for the NYT to base an extremely dismissive article around it.
- Someone feels comfortable enough to leak General Flynn's contacts with Russia's Ambassador to the press, and the White House says these contacts were not cleared with them.
- Comey personally briefed Trump on the Russia dossier because the other IC heads picked Comey to do that.
- Obama did not dismiss and replace Comey throughout this apparent godforsaken mess.
- Something about the full House and Senate briefings was serious enough to keep an inveterate pack of leakers from leaking much of substance.
- Senate Intelligence Committee (including GOP members) reversed itself in the span of 24 hours about whether to conduct an investigation.
- Members of the House were furious at Comey for not giving good answers about the Clinton letters and refusing to confirm or deny the existence of a Russia/Trump investigation.
- Someone is warning U.S. allies to be careful what they share with Trump.
- Intelligence agencies around the world have investigations into this issue.
- Comey's achilles heel before this fall was not a lack of patriotism, or a connection to dirty money, or a tendency to try and play with politics, but rather an overconfidence that his instincts for doing the right thing for the country was the right way, procedures and rules and other people be damned.
(good source for a lot of this)

We talked pre-election here about the problems with the NY FBI office, and how apart and different it was from other FBI offices. I still cannot for the life of me understand why Comey released the Clinton letters, but it makes sense to me that some other part of the FBI has been investigating this Russia issue all along without the NY office's knowledge or input and Comey hasn't commented because this is an extremely sensitive ongoing national security matter. Not that he's going to emerge from this chapter the hero of the piece, but it feels more like he's working hard on something serious than abandoning the issue.

I've been so checked out of the threads because the volume of news lately has been an immense firehose of "WTF?" but hope all my election buds are doing well. Can't wait for the March.
posted by sallybrown at 11:51 AM on January 15, 2017 [50 favorites]




My new favourite Trump name is 'Comrade Twitler.' I barely ever use nicknames, it's either Donald (mostly) or Trump. It makes me wish I did because this one is just so tragically darkly humorous.
posted by Jalliah at 11:52 AM on January 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


Priebus to Obama: ‘Step up’ and quiet Democrats who question Trump’s legitimacy

Vice President-elect Mike Pence separately criticized Lewis on Sunday for questioning Trump’s legitimacy in interviews on Fox and CBS, calling his remarks “deeply disappointing.” He also defended Trump’s recent tweets attacking Lewis, saying Trump “has the right to defend himself.”
posted by futz at 11:57 AM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Sallybrown Great summary.

Would also add that we have been told that other countries intelligence agencies are doing their own investigations including one 'major ally'. Possibly Five Eyes as well. Estonia has even been named as having done surveillance. Info that has come from 'unamed US intelligence sources'. Which translated means somebody wants this info out there.
posted by Jalliah at 12:00 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Does anyone know what the official style for a Tyrant is?

Is it 'the Tyrant Putin,' or 'Putin, the Tyrant,' or perhaps 'Tyrant Vladimir Putin?' Is he addressed directly as 'Your horror?'
posted by getting_back_on_track at 12:07 PM on January 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


The remaining question I have is, what protections exist or can be put in place to preserve a national security investigation into a sitting President? I don't see how our country could allow the IC to shield any investigation (or any detail of any investigation) from the President. (Like…I like Scandal as much as the next gal but that isn't real life.) I could perhaps see some rule saying the President is not able to block the IC from investigating something, but I don't know of any actual rule like this that exists.

Because the Senate Intelligence Committee opened an investigation, I would assume there are document preservation requirements that now kick in. Is the IC just prepping and preserving as much information as they can to share with Five Eyes / other intel entities and the Committee when the time comes?

For fans of hail mary passes, Obama's last press conference in office will be Wednesday.
posted by sallybrown at 12:11 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


MetaFilter: An immense firehose of "WTF?"
posted by kirkaracha at 12:12 PM on January 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


While this is a good idea, the financial logistics are problematic. Right now Californians with incomes over $250,000 are paying a federal tax to support Obamacare. There are other federal taxes as well. There is no way for Californian to opt out of the federal taxes in order to fund their own state system with state income taxes.
As far as I understand the Affordable Care Act, this is true but not at all relevant. Under Section 1332 [42 U.S.C. 18052] Waiver For State Innovation (the exit strategy, if you remember that round of BS from when the ACA was fresh) a state may opt-out of the specific provisions of the Affordable Care Act, provided that they meet four requirements (excuse my very fuzzy and likely grossly misleading paraphrasing)
  1. Meet or exceed the definition of a Qualified Health Plan (easy target, given the purpose of a single payer system),
  2. affordably (including by use of federal grants, the same grants as would be disbursed under an exchange as described by the ACA)
  3. to at least as many citizens as would be covered by the ACA (again, that's the purpose)
  4. and without increasing the federal deficit.
So a state might set up any sort of health care system it likes, provided the replacement meets those requirements. Funds already disbursed to all states through grants by the federal government would not (necessarily) decrease, as it is expected and required that states obtaining waivers will still provide healthcare to their citizens. (Who knows what dirty pool Congress might play with the next year's budget should any state be so bold as to murder its parasitic health insurers however...)

On preview, ditto what ROU_Xenophobe said.
posted by books for weapons at 12:13 PM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


Without getting too specific, the landlord of one of the two stores I own is someone who works in the Executive Office of the President. Because of his/her VERY high-up position, I have never once, in the over six years we've been a tenant in their property, spoken, emailed, or texted with this person, nor have I met them face-to-face. I've only interacted with this individual's spouse, who's been my sole contact in all these years.

The aforementioned spouse, however, is incredibly cool, down-to-earth, and easygoing, and will casually say they've been to the White House and met Obama tons of times, and met tons of foreign dignitaries, etc. the same way you and I might meet up with friends after work for a drink.

These people have a secure communications room in their home, like something out of House of Cards. The member of the couple I have contact with says they have no idea what a lot of their spouse's work has to do with, since so much of it is extremely classified. It's really quite wild.

I'm so tempted to send a quick text to this person along the lines of, "I know you don't know a lot about [spouse]'s work, and even if you did, you couldn't tell me. But just out of curiosity, has [spouse] been really busy lately, and been working at the White House longer hours than usual?" Because I want some kind of sign, something to cling to, that suggests that maybe we can all breathe a little easier, that the White House and intelligence agencies are on this, and that something's being done behind the scenes (preferably in time for Friday).

It's tempting, and this person would probably tell what little they know, but . . . I won't. Part of me is scared of hearing back, "no, [spouse] has actually been winding down and has had lots of time off lately, since their job with this administration is about to end. And boy, are we looking forward to the time off!"
posted by CommonSense at 12:15 PM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


LooseFilter: great commentary. Point number 5 is on target, makes me really wish The Oil Drum did not stop their regular posts (looks like some of the commentators are actively posting on their individual pages though).

I still have a bit of hope that despite this election cycle being out of fucks and evens it might still have some twists and turns left.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 12:28 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


The remaining question I have is, what protections exist or can be put in place to preserve a national security investigation into a sitting President? I don't see how our country could allow the IC to shield any investigation (or any detail of any investigation) from the President. (Like…I like Scandal as much as the next gal but that isn't real life.) I could perhaps see some rule saying the President is not able to block the IC from investigating something, but I don't know of any actual rule like this that exists.

I don't know about official protections or rules but would suggest that in IC world there is what is official and what is unofficial. Which is one of the reasons that the accountability of IC world has been a question and concern since they've existed and has history has shown in many cases entirely warranted. There have been numerous instances of conflict between admins of a state and their respective intelligence communities as well as factional conflicts within those entities.

I guess my point is as the viewing public we have no idea whether what may happen 'unofficialy' or whether anything will happen. Nature of the beast.
posted by Jalliah at 12:31 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


in the past two weeks, I've suddenly started feeling something long absent: respect for American journalism.

I'd respect them a lot more if they hadn't false-equivalencied us into this situation in the first place. Sure, there's a lot of yeoman work being done by individual journalists (Fahrenthold deserves, like, all the props in the world), but if journalism, as an institution, had not been spinning daily stories out of absolutely insubstantial Clinton psedoscandals...

It's a bit late in the day for them to be suddenly the good guys, is all.
posted by jackbishop at 12:33 PM on January 15, 2017 [38 favorites]


- Someone is warning U.S. allies to be careful what they share with Trump.

And we're back in the Cold War hall of mirrors. Take the UK-USA intelligence pact, which has been in place under different names and in different ways since the Sinkov mission in 1941; the two nations' agencies are deeply intertwined and very effective together. Who benefits most from creating mistrust and uncertainty there?
posted by Devonian at 12:37 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'd respect them a lot more if they hadn't false-equivalencied us into this situation in the first place.

This. CNN especially, and even MSNBC with Joe Scarborough, essentially acted as an official arm of the Trump campaign throughout the entire election cycle.

If it didn't so terribly effect all the rest of us, their downfall at the hands of the candidate they championed would be richly deserved.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:40 PM on January 15, 2017 [18 favorites]


I'd respect them a lot more if they hadn't false-equivalencied us into this situation in the first place.

The press is at least a decade too late. I believe climate change would be undisputed fact right now if they hadn't given corporate shills (both in and out of government) and various as assorted wackos a credible platform with which to poison the well.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:48 PM on January 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


For anyone keeping track, Berlusconi has decided to run again.

That'll be a whole other barrel of laughs for Europe. Sob.
posted by lydhre at 1:00 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Maybe a visit from Polonius Monk.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:02 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Should it matter that the next two years contain the centennial anniversaries of the October Revolution, Russian Civil War, and the deployment of American soldiers in Siberia?
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:06 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's a bit late in the day for them to be suddenly the good guys, is all.

This is all true. I'm not certain though that consistently slotting everything into a good guy, bad guy type binary is useful at times like this. The US is going full bore into situation not normal. Heck the world is. In order to 'fix it' so to speak it's going to take a lot of flexibility in not only understanding what is going on so one can resist it but flexibility in those methods of resistance.

When you're fighting a really, really bad guy with a hell of a lot of power it's important to try to recognize the spectrum that this resistance can take. So if the media is finally getting a bit of clue then take it and don't immediately discount it because it acted wrong before so they don't deserve kudos. If someone realizes, 'oh shit made a mistake, lets fight' then take it. If someone or something is 80% okay and the 20% not okay is something that doesn't really hamper dealing with the big problem then maybe take it and not base the decision on the context that was 2 years ago.

This doesn't mean celebrating and handing our cookies, or that you don't forget what they may or may have done. No, not all, but look more in the context of what is the now. Difficult because while it's possible to see how it happened and even why it happened, it's has happened.

In a not normal situation normal the usual ways of looking at it don't necessarily work like they may have before.
posted by Jalliah at 1:13 PM on January 15, 2017 [27 favorites]


One of the reasons for the "n-dimensional chess" thing goes back to Obama's first term where LGBTQ activists were told by some Democratic partisans to back off on DADT and marriage equality because there was some plan involving intangible political capital. This argument tended to ignore the fact that Obama openly endorsed LGBTQ activism on those issues, so that activism was apparently part of the plan.

Granted, we're fond of overthinking the plate of beans here, but we need to be thinking less of chess and plans, and more in terms of total war. Or ok, maybe in game theory we're playing amateur Bridge. Finesse may get you an extra point, but we can't rely on finessing every hand, and we need to make use of every card we have available.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:21 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Another Russian move? [NYT] Serbia and Kosovo have an uneasy co-existence. Serbia doesn't recognise Kosovo, and nor does Russia, but everyone else does. Now the Serbs show up at the border with a train decked out with Orthodox Regalia and the slogan "Kosovo is Serbian". Kosovo cries foul. Serbia speaks immediately of war, defending its territory, etc.
posted by stonepharisee at 1:22 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Please, like a war would ever start over something that happens in Serbia.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:24 PM on January 15, 2017 [43 favorites]


Dear Whoever,

Please just say "sexually assaulted." This usage is not cute or appropriate and demeans the victim.

Thanks,
Goddamn It Everything Sucks
posted by Cookiebastard at 1:25 PM on January 15, 2017 [16 favorites]




And I think Chess is a bad metaphor for politics anyway. It comes from an age where capturing the king and holing him for ransom was a big deal. In the famous Opera Game, Morphy sacrificed nearly everything except what's essential to force checkmate. Chess play is dominated by two extremes, patzers like me recognize familiar tactical blunders and punish them aggressively to a lopsided victory. Grandmasters jockey for positional stalemates that may or may not break to highly technical winning endgames.

I don't know that any of that is applicable to our present political situation.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:43 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


No board game analogy fits when the opponent's favorite "strategy" is to flip the board. And the only reason Obama LOOKED like he was playing "11-dimension" was how he sat quietly while getting the board flipped 10 times...
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:47 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]




Now that I know what kinds of forces were trying to tear it apart, I think Obama really deserves that Nobel Peace Prize for holding the country together for 8 years.
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:50 PM on January 15, 2017 [33 favorites]


Here's how the Serb figure argues:

“My suggestion now is only to talk in Brussels when this train is allowed to pass,” he said. “If there is no freedom of movement, what kind of Western civilization are we talking about then?”

Expect some support for Serbia stet.
posted by stonepharisee at 1:51 PM on January 15, 2017


“Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Myth of Free Markets,” Ian Bruff, Roar, 18 December 2016
posted by ob1quixote at 1:52 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Cough-in at Trump Hotel this afternoon.

Love it.
posted by Jalliah at 1:55 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I love how they turned the coughs into a chant

*a-cough a-cough; a-cough a-cough cough*
posted by angrycat at 2:01 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Metaphor.
posted by Wordshore at 2:12 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


This morning on Fox News
WALLACE: Does the intelligence community have any information — I’m not talking about rumors, information — about contacts between the Trump camp and associates of the Kremlin about discussions during the campaign about hacking the Democrats?

BRENNAN: The intelligence community collects foreign intelligence on foreign parties, entities or people. If in the course of our intelligence collection, we pick up information related to U.S. persons or officials, which we refer to as incidental collection, we share that information with the appropriate authorities. In most instances, that’s the FBI.
And so, if we did come into contact with that type of information, it would have been shared with the FBI, and we would make sure that our intelligence committees then were aware of it as well.

WALLACE: So, is there such information?

BRENNAN: As I said, if we came into — if we had that type of information, we would share it with the FBI.
posted by hydropsyche at 2:15 PM on January 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


I shouldn't laugh but I did.

BRENNAN: As I said, if we came into — if we had that type of information, we would share it with the FBI.

Don't make me keep repeating myself Wallace. FBI, FBI. Come on you can get it.
posted by Jalliah at 2:20 PM on January 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


Mod note: "I have always been deeply interested in and sympathetic with the total work of the Planned Parenthood Federation." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. PDF
posted by kirkaracha (staff) at 2:20 PM on January 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


Good name for a band...or could be the butcher's section in a fancy grocery store...

FOX: 'Bikers for Trump' to Form 'Wall of Meat' If Inauguration Protests Get Out of Hand

Anybody else thinking "Altamont"?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:21 PM on January 15, 2017 [17 favorites]


FOX: 'Bikers for Trump' to Form 'Wall of Meat' If Inauguration Protests Get Out of Hand

Anybody else thinking "Altamont"?


I was thinking "Trumpabteilung" myself.
posted by kafziel at 2:23 PM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


It's a bit late in the day for them to be suddenly the good guys, is all.

When the metaphorical Judas comes running up to the hypothetical Golgotha and is all like ZOMG we gotta get him down, I'm - it's - no. Number one, fuck you. Number two, no shit. There is no number three.

heh. Number one.
posted by petebest at 2:27 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Five bucks says Bikers for Trump is just Gathering of Eagles under a rebrand.
posted by corb at 2:28 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


It'll be interesting to see how the GOP reacts. Well if it gets to the SCOTUS, it'll be struck down as bad for business.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 2:28 PM on January 15, 2017


First was the comment that Biden reported, from the initial briefing on "the dossier" that he and Obama had around 10 days ago, when Obama was told about the golden shower video: "what does this have to do with anything?"

LooseFilter, I'm confused about what you are making of this. Could you explain? It seems like a really weird response and I'm finding it hard to figure out the significance one way or another.

I also find it so hard to believe that that briefing was the first Obama knew of the dossier. How is this possible when the FBI had had it since summer (and following), and it seems that all the major news orgs not to mention half of Congress had seen it as well. (Exaggeration there--but it definitely seems like it was fairly widely spread about.)

I've been so checked out of the threads because the volume of news lately has been an immense firehose of "WTF?" but hope all my election buds are doing well.


Wow, same here, sallybrown. Also I've been so depressed since the election I've barely had the energy to look at metafilter.
posted by torticat at 2:30 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


The bikers thing is Putin-adoration. I doubt there's anything there. 200,000 members? Inflation is running amok.
posted by stonepharisee at 2:31 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Vice: An Incredibly Upsetting List of All the New Republican Congress Members
Rep. Roger Marshall (Kansas 1st District)
This guy right here is the freshman congressman who grounded his son for dabbing next to Paul Ryan at the congressional swearing-in ceremony. Marshall's apparent authoritarian tendencies extend to his policy platform as well.

Even though he's an OB/GYN, he is staunchly anti-abortion and is open about how he has convinced his patients to carry non-viable miscarriages. On his website, he proudly displays a testimony from a woman who he convinced to continue carrying a non-viable pregnancy: "12 years ago, before politics were even on his mind, I was in the middle of a miscarriage. After the ultrasound, it was discovered that the baby's heart was still beating," the woman wrote. "I'll never forget what Dr. Marshall said to me: 'I will not take a living baby.'" She had a miscarriage a few days later.
Be wary. Reading this list of white men (and 2 white women) who are far Right wingers that rode Trump's coattails into congress will make you gnash your teeth and want to hit the bottle. Each one of them deplorable in their own way.

And would someone kindly explain this: Rep. Andy Biggs, Arizona 5th District, "also voted for harsh abortion restrictions in the state—which included a provision that would have mandated doctors to tell women they could "reverse" a medical abortion using an unproven procedure" What the hell is that?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:33 PM on January 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


I mean, would you want to be the one to have to tell the President of the United States about the entirely unconfirmed piss dossier making the rounds in Washington? Does that sound like an enjoyable conversation? Wouldn't it be easier for everyone to simply not tell him? Repeat that process for a few months.
posted by zachlipton at 2:33 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


'Bikers for Trump' to Form 'Wall of Meat' If Inauguration Protests Get Out of Hand

I wonder how tricky it would be to fill water balloons with A-1 sauce.

Don't actually do this, please.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:35 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Given the timing of the wikileaks releases and the GOP platform release on Ukraine I think it's very plausible there was a quid pro quo. But I don't know what could possibly come of it even if it were true.
posted by Justinian at 2:38 PM on January 15, 2017


Bikers for Trump was a thing during the campaign for sure. I attended a Trump rally in Pensacola, Florida and a bunch of them showed up. They were basically there as sort of Biker Cheerleaders, getting the crowd to do The Wave and whatnot.
posted by Cookiebastard at 2:39 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


For the economic bases of democracy -- free land, free competition, skilled labor, simplicity of tools, the economic self-sufficiency of the individual homestead -- have disappeared. In their place have come abandoned farms, crowded factories, congested cities, monopolies and mergers, centralized financial control, costly tools purchasable only by rich corporations, and masses of population easily manipulated by interesting misinformation.

Cool story. But it skips two crucial steps that undermine its moral arc. 1) the land wasn't free for the taking, it required a state-sponsored genocide to "empty" it of its owners (so yeah the narrative of yeoman farmer equality is a cover story for that) and b) In between the rough equality of settler colonial small agriculture and the industrial cities and unions and bankers was a little few-centuries-long mode of production called "plantation slavery," without which the US would not have become an economic and military powerhouse and the descendants of the victims of which remain a permanent criminalized subproletariat.

There is no golden age of American democracy, except if you skip those parts of the story.
posted by spitbull at 2:40 PM on January 15, 2017 [33 favorites]


So there's an almost certainly fake video in the wild of Trump and some ladies engaging in watersports. Sure doesn't look like the Ritz and the video quality is terrible and extremely suspect, but just as a warning, this is probably the Next Thing.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 2:40 PM on January 15, 2017


Another Russian move?...Serbia and Kosovo have an uneasy co-existence.

If true, this seems like a miscalculation. Trying to re-fight the Kosovo conflict would probably galvanize NATO. It's a less fraught scenario than the Baltics, or Ukraine/Crimea.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:41 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Orange One's tweet from this afternoon made me snort. It is unbelievably childish and above all purposeless: For many years our country has been divided, angry and untrusting. Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. IT WILL CHANGE!!!!

I mean, what is that? Is it a threat? Is it a promise? Does he honestly think we are going to fall in love with him and everything will be sweetness and light?

So there's an almost certainly fake video in the wild of Trump and some ladies engaging in watersports. Sure doesn't look like the Ritz and the video quality is terrible and extremely suspect, but just as a warning, this is probably the Next Thing.


Is this the Tom Arnold video that he has been promising?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:43 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


NATO is not in good shape right now.
posted by stonepharisee at 2:43 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


So there's an almost certainly fake video in the wild of Trump and some ladies engaging in watersports. Sure doesn't look like the Ritz and the video quality is terrible and extremely suspect, but just as a warning, this is probably the Next Thing.

If the GOP's efforts to preserve a Trump administration is how we get kink acceptance, I'm going to go live in a fucking cave.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:44 PM on January 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


One of the reasons for the "n-dimensional chess" thing goes back to Obama's first term

THE GAME IS POKER, ALRIGHT? Chess is a game of perfect information. Bridge is a bit closer, but it is poker that best describes the game Obama has been playing, where you don't know what your opponent has and he doesn't know what you have, though you may have hints of strength or weakness. And bluffing is a major component of play.

Poker is the game that John von Neumann obsessed over, the strategy to which John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind fame) sharpened, resulting in MiniMax and the Cold War strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction. Poker turns out to be an almost perfect distillation of such geopolitical games, so much so that when Nash developed the Nash Equilibrium, we shared the math with the Soviets so they would understand our strategy.

And throughout Obama's term, it has turned out that Republicans fucking suck at poker, which is how we got the ACA and gay marriage and multiple other things. Libraries have been written about poker strategy, just in the form where you're playing with 52 cards. Obama has spent eight years playing poker with his political opponents here and our rivals overseas and, given the crappy hand he was dealt when he was elected, pretty much rocking it.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:45 PM on January 15, 2017 [41 favorites]


NATO is not in good shape right now.

Yeah, I agree. Which is why Kosovo is a weird fight to pick, if you want to keep it that way.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:46 PM on January 15, 2017


The leader/organizer of the bikers is Lawnmower Guy. Remember the dude that was arrested for mowing the National Mall? I think it was the Mall...
posted by futz at 2:47 PM on January 15, 2017


Is this the Tom Arnold video that he has been promising?

My constant twitter refreshing has led me to this part of the internet. I must say that Tom Arnold is being surprisingly confident but also funny and charming.
posted by Brainy at 2:48 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


CIA boss John Brennan says Donald Trump ‘doesn't understand Russia’ in scathing attack on President-elect

Definitely, I think the most significant thing in that interview was Brennan's confirmation that Trump HAD been briefed. This question has been the substance of all of Kellyanne Conway's attempts at redirection and muddying the waters. Was he briefed? Did the 2-page appendix even exist? Even if it did, was Trump orally briefed on it, and if not, why not, if it was so important? If there was an appendix, did he get to KEEP it, or did the intelligence people take it away after the briefing? I mean she managed to waste like 24 minutes of Anderson Cooper's time arguing about shit like this instead of talking about anything of any substance.

So much bullshit--it is great that Brennan just came out and said yes, he was briefed.

I find the Trump Team's reaction to the news of the past week more damning than anything else regarding the Steele memo(s). Redirect, stonewall, redirect, redirect. They really are not acting like the memo is a completely unfounded made-up piece of garbage; they are acting like there is a shitload of stuff they really don't want to talk about.
posted by torticat at 2:48 PM on January 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


An obviously fake video would seem like a good way to distract attention from more serious issues around collusion.

Speaking of which, it seems like Trump finally got around to watching the SNL tape.
posted by zachlipton at 2:51 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


tweets incoming zachlipton?
posted by futz at 2:52 PM on January 15, 2017


You know, I must hate Trump with the power of ten thousand blazing suns, because normally I would look at the protests and be like *stay away from the crowds of people* instead of telling myself that while filling balloons with A-1 sauce is clever snuffleupaugas has warned me not to do it can I please NO calm down okay.
posted by angrycat at 2:53 PM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


I'm pro pee tape. I hope it exists and all the suburban Trumpists have to see it.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:55 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]



tweets incoming zachlipton?


He needs some new material.

.@NBCNews is bad but Saturday Night Live is the worst of NBC. Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job. Really bad television!
posted by Jalliah at 2:56 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


LooseFilter, I'm confused about what you are making of this.

The dossier was apparently floating around for months, but had never been treated officially, with any regard by the intelligence community. When the President and Vice President (and subsequently, the President-Elect) were briefed last week, it was the first official presentation of that information (which matters). I was confused by Obama's reaction ('what's this have to do with anything') because I was assuming he already knew everything that was in there, and because I thought the pee video was part of what was the emerging story ('Trump is compromised because of old fashioned blackmail'). It's looking like it's much worse than that, and my sense is that Obama knew that at the time, and didn't understand why they'd waste his time talking about vice-based blackmail when there are much larger ways and reasons that Trump is compromised.

Also, about the press: please do not otherize. There is no 'them,' journalists are not a single entity, acting in concert. When you say "fuck them" but "the individual journalists doing great work right now should not be included in that, they're OK," you're just saying that they're OK because they're one of the good ones, and I don't think I need to draw out the analogy further for you to see how odious the otherizing in the characterization of an entire, multi-faceted field of professional endeavor as "THEM" is. Otherizing is the weapon that empowers our enemies.

Also also: what's today, Day 3 of absolutely no Kelly-Anne Conway? She had those two big gaffes and BOOM vanished....
posted by LooseFilter at 2:57 PM on January 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


Yeah this is going to be his Sunday job-- criticizing SNL-- because god knows the Dept. of Ag can go fuck itself.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 2:58 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Yup, nothing too exciting. Just the usual complaining about mean dumb SNL being mean and dumb. Sad!
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:58 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job. Really bad television!

SNL or Trump's last press conference?
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:58 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


He really is not a very good TV critic. On the bright side, every other show on NBC can now advertise themselves as "not the worst of NBC -- The President of the United States."
posted by zachlipton at 2:59 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


an obviously fake video

Yeah tread carefully. My social media are awash in fake news posted by naive "liberal" friends ("friends" perhaps), there's obviously a huge amount of chaff in the air, some of it misdirection to obviously over the top claims that this or that bombshell is about to explode as soon as the Croatian hooker's story is vetted by the Mossad or whatever. A lot of this Booker frenzy has been stoked by fake news sites too, trying to get liberals back to arguing about the primaries as a way to counter the solidifying anti-trump majority.

Strange times. I'm doubting every single piece of news I see.
posted by spitbull at 3:00 PM on January 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


I'm telling you, Agriculture is going to go to whoever most envisions Silent Running as a vision of a utopian future of terraformed planet earth.
posted by Yowser at 3:01 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


BTW, how many of those 600 some posts are still empty?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:01 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yes, it is the mostly way the Trump-team are acting which is damning them, when seen from outside. But the frightful thing is that most people just don't follow the news that closely.
Most people I know are really scared of the Trump-precidency, and worry about what will happen. But they haven't even heard of this whole Russia-connection, or maybe what they have heard is only about the kompromat. I was just at a dinner party, and no one at the table had heard about the economic ties, or Flynn's phone-calls.
On my facebook, plenty of people both left and right quote "news" and "analysis" from Russian propaganda sources. I don't expect them to believe anything from US intelligence. (Though actually, weirdly, they might trust the Israelis — I think that even while most of my Russia-loving FB-friends despise Israel, they somehow respect them).
posted by mumimor at 3:02 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Also also: what's today, Day 3 of absolutely no Kelly-Anne Conway? She had those two big gaffes and BOOM vanished....

She tweeted yesterday: "the pen is ready."

I have a few unprintable suggestions regarding the positioning and utilization of said pen.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:02 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


I mean, would you want to be the one to have to tell the President of the United States about the entirely unconfirmed piss dossier making the rounds in Washington? Does that sound like an enjoyable conversation? Wouldn't it be easier for everyone to simply not tell him?

What? Why? McCain put it straight in the hands of the FBI and Reid as much as referenced it in his letter to Comey. Why wouldn't someone want to be the one to tell the President? Are you suggesting Obama is squeamish? I just find this response weird.

Also the seamy parts of the dossier are almost all in the first couple/few pages. There really isn't much of it. The rest is MUCH more interesting stuff about quid pro quo activities during the campaign, Putin's goals and motivations, dissent among higher-ups in the Kremlin about their meddling, and so on.
posted by torticat at 3:03 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]



Donald is very happy with Bob Woodward, he garnered two thank you tweets.
But at the same time he also gave even more verification that he did indeed lie at his presser and that Kellyanne's spin was all lies so that's mildly amusing.

Trump thanks Bob Woodward, blasts intelligence community over dossier

President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday afternoon to again blast the intelligence community and the media, after it was reported last week that he had been briefed on an unverified dossier alleging Russia had compromising information on him.

“Thank you to Bob Woodward who said, ‘That is a garbage document...it never should have been presented...Trump’s right to be upset (angry)...” the president-elect tweeted Sunday afternoon, name-checking the famed Washington Post journalist who helped break the Watergate story.

Earlier, on “Fox News Sunday," Woodward called the dossier a “garbage document” that “never should have been presented as part of an intelligence briefing.”

posted by Jalliah at 3:04 PM on January 15, 2017


BTW, how many of those 600 some posts are still empty?

Let's go check the tracker...

Of 690 Senate-confirmable positions: 663 awaiting announcement, 27 announced. Sounds like it's going great.
posted by zachlipton at 3:07 PM on January 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


BTW, how many of those 600 some posts are still empty?

I dunno, how many cabinet positions can you leave unfilled before you trigger Article 25? Good to know though that I can skate by with the bare minimum effort and use the transition team's performance as the bar to clear.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:07 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Added Woodward, with immense self-regard, "there's a big difference between getting your information from a garbage bin and a parking garage." [fake but holy shit am I tired of Bob]
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:09 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Just the usual complaining about mean dumb SNL being mean and dumb.

I'm hoping this means that he is much too preoccupied playing defense on all fronts.

I'm doubting every single piece of news I see.

Also, every comment online written by a person whom I don't know in real life. Redditors are finally seeing how utterly infested that site is, and I've even noticed a couple of newer users here, when their comments did not seem to be in good faith, and consistently tried to derail, obfuscate, or confuse conversations. Given Metafilter's moderation style, and very strong community self-policing, I think it's much less susceptible to this exploitation, though.
posted by LooseFilter at 3:09 PM on January 15, 2017 [13 favorites]



Is there anyway to know how this number compares to the same time with other admins?
posted by Jalliah at 3:10 PM on January 15, 2017


I hope Trump chooses a vengeance on the IC which avoids disrupting US counter-terrorism programs, or it's going to be 9/11 all over again.
posted by Coventry at 3:11 PM on January 15, 2017


> But the frightful thing is that most people just don't follow the news that closely.

We are so awash with news that even us news junkies can't keep up. Not only are there two sides of everything there is just too much going on every day. Good example: I listened to Primary Concerns and Adam Serwer, Senior Ed. for the Atlantic was discussing Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing. I learned a lot about Sessions and I was surprised at how much I didn't know-- even though I had been following that story fairly closely.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:14 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm telling you, Agriculture is going to go to whoever most envisions Silent Running as a vision of a utopian future of terraformed planet earth.

Maybe they're just waiting to get SCOTUS up and running again so they can just appoint the Cargill corporation itself.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:14 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump Calls NATO Obsolete and Dismisses EU in German Interview

We are so fucked, and so is anyone who has ever relied on America as a military or intelligence ally.
posted by Artw at 3:16 PM on January 15, 2017 [32 favorites]


We might be about to see if time travel is possible.
posted by bongo_x at 3:18 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


The FT reports on the DNI report.... I understand from a reporter there that two more stories on the same subject are still in the process of finalization and are likely to appear soon
posted by Coventry at 3:19 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


You know what's fun? Going back through old right wing blog posts where they were pushing the "No, Clinton is the one with too many Russia connections!" before they pivoted to "Russia is our ally!" Remarkable how prescient they are, in a way:

Red State: "How Deep Does Vladimir Putin’s FSB Have Their Hooks Into Hillary Clinton?"
August 25, 2016

"One thing you can bet on with mathematical certainty is that the Russian FSB has compromised Hillary Clinton and her inner circle to such an extent that you can bet that US policy will be subordinated to the Kremlin’s strategy."

...as Trump bad mouths NATO and plans his first trip to meet Putin.
posted by bluecore at 3:19 PM on January 15, 2017 [34 favorites]


We are so fucked, and so is anyone who has ever relied on America as a military or intelligence ally.

FTA:

Quoted in German from a conversation held in English, Trump predicted Britain’s exit from the EU will be a success and portrayed the EU as an instrument of German domination with the purpose of beating the U.S. in international trade. For that reason, Trump said, he’s fairly indifferent whether the EU breaks up or stays together, according to Bild.

mega omg.
posted by futz at 3:20 PM on January 15, 2017 [17 favorites]


I saw a guy wearing a Bikers for Trump shirt at a bar this summer. It featured a crude illustration of naked ladies drinking in another bar.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:20 PM on January 15, 2017


Trump thanks Bob Woodward, blasts intelligence community over dossier

Which I find pretty amusing because it was Carl Bernstein who helped break the Trump-Russia blackmail scandal and is credited on the CNN story.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:20 PM on January 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


For CNN no less.
posted by spitbull at 3:22 PM on January 15, 2017


For what it's worth, I just filled in a rudimentary healthcare.gov application based on expected unemployment benefits, my wife's employer's FUCK YOU NOT SUBSIDIZING SPOUSES policy, and other info. The cheapest plan available after subsidy is about $2750/year for $40/primary visit and everything else subject to a $7K deductable.

The penalty for non-enrollment would be about $1125. I'm starting to see why some people who Know They'll Never Get Sick and Know They Can Dodge All Oncoming Trucks go that route. Luckily, I have a much better grasp on reality, mathematics and probability.

And the point remains, quite strongly: I have _the opportunity_ to sign up for this plan. Should healthcare.gov go tits-up, I have absolutely no idea where I would look should I remain out of work. And I am far from alone in that.
posted by delfin at 3:22 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Apologies if already posted (?).

Trump has been interviewed by sycophantic opportuno-Brexiteer Michael Gove for The (London) Times. If you don't have a subscription, that's okay because someone *cough* may be able to MeMail you the text if you'd like.

Brexit highlights, since that's what interests me:
But no Republican, indeed no president, has come to office facing anything like the level of scorn and condescension from British politicians and commentators as Mr Trump. When we talked last Friday, however, he had nothing but kind words and generous sentiments for a nation he believes will be his strongest ally.

I was invited to see the president-elect, along with my colleague Kai Diekmann, from the German newspaper Bild, because Mr Trump wanted to chat about Britain, Brexit, Europe and the world. The Trump team knew that Kai was close to German chancellors, from Kohl to Merkel, and was aware of my role as a campaigner for Brexit. We chatted, on and off the record, for an hour in his corner office in Trump Tower, surrounded by mementoes of his past successes, commercial and political.

British politicians tend to hide photographs, cartoons and front pages that chronicle their careers in the loo to appear self-deprecating. With Mr Trump, everything is on display in his glitzy, golden man cave, from admiring profiles in magazines to Christmas cards from world leaders.

And, ultra-competitive as he is, the president-elect was particularly keen to remind me that, almost alone among international figures, he had had the natural good judgment to foresee our departure from the EU.

“I sort of, as you know, predicted it. I was in Turnberry [his Scottish golf course] and was doing a ribbon cutting because I bought Turnberry, which is doing unbelievably, and I’ll tell you, the fact that your pound sterling has gone down? Great. Because business is unbelievable in a lot of parts in the UK, as you know. I think Brexit is going to end up being a great thing.”

And would he, as our government hoped, move quickly to seal a new trade deal with the UK? “Absolutely, very quickly. I’m a big fan of the UK, we’re gonna work very hard to get it done quickly and done properly. Good for both sides. I will be meeting with [Theresa May] — in fact if you want you can see the letter, wherever the letter is, she just sent it. She’s requesting a meeting and we’ll have a meeting right after I get into the White House and . . . we’re gonna get something done very quickly.”

The president-elect is much less sanguine about the future of the EU itself. A combination of economic woes and the migrant crisis will, he believes, lead to other countries leaving. “People, countries, want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity. But, I do believe this, if they hadn’t been forced to take in all of the refugees, so many, with all the problems that it . . . entails, I think that you wouldn’t have a Brexit. This was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. . . I believe others will leave. I do think keeping it together is not gonna be as easy as a lot of people think. And I think this, if refugees keep pouring into different parts of Europe . . . I think it’s gonna be very hard to keep it together because people are angry about it.”
Really makes you feel for transcribers.

The Guardian and Beeb have summaries.
posted by Quagkapi at 3:22 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


For what it's worth, a German national I know describes Bild as much more Daily Mail than Washington Post. Your mileage may vary on that. Then again, who's to say who's reputable any more in this post-reality reality?
posted by delfin at 3:25 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


The universe can provide me with evidence I'm being overly pessimistic on the whole collapse of western democracy thing any time, I tell you. Any time.
posted by Artw at 3:29 PM on January 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


Trump has invited Australia's foremost racist politican to the Inauguration.

Pauline Hanson is a leader of the minor party One Nation, a bunch of reactionary racists who recent added anti-science types, climate denalists, libertarian morons and garden variety idiots to the Senate.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:30 PM on January 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


I know this has been said before but we are never going to be trusted by any country ever again. Why would we be? We are obviously schizophrenic. Every four years we have the possibility of swinging from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde and if you sign a treaty with us, who knows how long it will last?

I am especially pissed that he can so radically change our foreign policy before he is even sworn in.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:30 PM on January 15, 2017 [27 favorites]


In fairness, every other country may descend into fascism or be invaded by Russia by the time his term is out, so it may not be relevant.
posted by Artw at 3:31 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


For what it's worth, a German national I know describes Bild as much more Daily Mail than Washington Post. Your mileage may vary on that. Then again, who's to say who's reputable any more in this post-reality reality?

With Teen Vogue being at the forefront of critical journalism, everything is open
posted by mumimor at 3:32 PM on January 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


Holy shit, I've actually made it to the end and read every comment. My eyes may start to bleed but my soul is taking great comfort in all of your voices.

So much of this is an unprecedented horror show out of the twilight zone -- so much so that the most succinct slogan I can think of writing on my sign for the upcoming protest is just: WTF?! Everything else is a novel about the nature of evil.
posted by ohyouknow at 3:32 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Best part about the cough-in is that they walked out/got kicked out before getting the check.
posted by mudpuppie at 3:33 PM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


From the Bloomberg article linked by Artw
In line with his threats against other automakers, Trump said Bayerische Motoren Werke AG would face a 35 percent import duty for foreign-built BMW cars sold in the U.S.
He really thinks he can just slap a 35% tariff on BMWs and nobody is going to try and stop him? Just wait til the dentists of America hear about this!
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:34 PM on January 15, 2017 [27 favorites]


Well, everyone knew Trump was an anti-dentite before the election anyway...
posted by stopgap at 3:37 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


For what it's worth, a German national I know describes Bild as much more Daily Mail than Washington Post.

I agree that it is super good to be wary but the interview was videotaped so in this instance I am ok with the quote. From what I have seen of the video, the write-ups didn't quite quote trumpski accurately. What trumpski actually said is a bit worse than what they reported.
posted by futz at 3:37 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


In line with his threats against other automakers, Trump said Bayerische Motoren Werke AG would face a 35 percent import duty for foreign-built BMW cars sold in the U.S.

Welp, that looks like the start of a trade war.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:37 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Seconding praise for p3t3's link to The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections.
It brings up something I've been angry about for 20+ years: we in the West created the kleptocracy in Russia, by forcing extreme libertarian policies on the the broken and demoralized Russian society. Yet another catastrophe we created for ourselves.
posted by mumimor at 3:39 PM on January 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


I'm ok with keeping BMWs out until they install turn signals in them.
posted by spitbull at 3:39 PM on January 15, 2017 [33 favorites]


Has anyone tracked down who makes all his cabinet secretaries' cars?
posted by zachlipton at 3:39 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Welp, that looks like the start of a trade war.

Yeah I was being jokey but that's the big news in all this. He always made claims about a 35% tariff on imports from China but I never thought congress would allow that to happen-- too much stuff in WalMart comes from China and the ensuing tariff wars would be insane. But I guess he is serious or pretending to be "tough negotiator" serious anyway. What happens if BMW does not build their plant in the US? Will he honestly go through with his threat or will he just pretend it never happened?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:43 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Adding inflation to my Domesday prediction scenario.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:44 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


"But the frightful thing is that most people just don't follow the news that closely."

>We are so awash with news that even us news junkies can't keep up.


I disagree with both because; most people follow information sources closely - it just tends more to the entertainment/sports/consumer/"non-political" worlds which still provides political context but at synapse-jarring levels of crap.

And being awash in news would be great if there was higher signal-to-noise; by the time we process openings, ads, teasers, recaps, gish gallops, ads, teasers, ads, pop-up subscription windows, ads, boilerplate transliteration i.e. "The State Department today said . . .", banner ads, non-functioning tweety links, Twitler suprises, ads, and the sub-political inauguration preparation stories, it - oh, and ads - it isn't that much actual news.

But it could be.

And it could be useful and draw more people away from CSI reruns or whatever. At the risk of otherizing good reporters, make-up artists, post production technicians, that intern that gets the good sandwiches, the remote van drivers, etc., I wish to point out this is not ad science, it - okay it is ad science, but it can also be simple; present facts clearly as if one were speaking to an intelligent adult. Let's start there.

This comment brought to you by Brainify - the app that helps you think outside of the head box. Brainify. It's all so clear now.®
posted by petebest at 3:50 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


Adding inflation to my Domesday prediction scenario.

I see a trillon-dollar coin in our future, the first time Trump can't get funding for his programs through congress.
posted by Coventry at 3:53 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yeah it's a weird time to be a stoner:

STONED: like, whoa, dude, this is some extreme shit. this is like, history, man. like, isn't it fucking heavy that *all this* is really happening? when there's probably a mirror universe where HRC is prez and meaningful steps are taken on climate change? A reality where most likely nobody is going launch a nuke in the next four years? Our first female president? Where Western Democracy is still still seen a strong, viable alternative to all other forms of government?

NOT STONED: All that stuff I was thinking during the time I was stoned--I dunno, maybe should cut back. Getting like my 9/11 Truther acquaintance. *reads news* FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

It's like my stoned self would be better in the apocalypse, because there would only be these statements about how heavy everything is, where as my sober self would either be in denial or running around shrieking
posted by angrycat at 3:54 PM on January 15, 2017 [20 favorites]


I do some ESL tutoring and a student asked me about the word "compromise." Unbidden, a sentence leapt to mind: "President Obama tried to govern by compromise, but being compromised will govern President Trump."

(I rejected that in favour of a less opaque explanation, btw.)
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:55 PM on January 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


I'm telling you, Agriculture is going to go to whoever most envisions Silent Running as a vision of a utopian future of terraformed planet earth.

I'm sure Trump has men -- TOP men -- scouring the US for the real Old MacDonald.

He has a farm, you know.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:06 PM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


From the Guardian article linked above:
The president-elect – who will be inaugurated on Friday – also spoke of his belief that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had made an error when she opened Germany’s doors to migrants. “I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals,” he said.
That's a very interesting use of the word "illegals." He is referring to Syrian refugees that were invited into Germany but in his mind they have the same status as any person entering America without the proper visas. It shows how he clearly has no real grasp of world affairs or of nuances.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:07 PM on January 15, 2017 [74 favorites]


Many weeks ago, I commented that a lot of Trump could be understood by understanding the construction industry, and just the other day I was reminded of that. I was at a semi-public meeting, where people who have spent the last 12 years trying to bankrupt and take over my company were making a last ditch attempt at voiding the deal we have actually made now to prevent this from happening. Their idea was a to create a public outrage over our demands. This is complicated, so no details, but I made a speech explaining to the audience how not abiding with the law could have very serious consequences, up to jail time. Most people were appropriately silenced by this. But one guy, after hearing all the arguments, asked my main opponent: why didn't you just stiff her? When I don't want to pay someone, I just don't, and after a while they give up because they can't afford the lawyers. Seriously, it was like listening to Trump. And it was just a normal small building entrepreneur who thought he was saying something obvious to all. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of these guys and their wives out there, and they really can't see the problem with Trump. For this guy, with his recently acquired mail-order bride, a pee-video would not make any difference. Foreign affairs are boring and complicated, ignorance is more trustworthy than knowledge and threatening immigrants is a necessary element of keeping them down, so they don't make any demands (because obvs he hires plenty). If anything, the election of Trump and Brexit has emboldened these guys. He wouldn't have said something like this in public 6 months ago, but now, a woman who knows about boring legal stuff is fair game.
posted by mumimor at 4:08 PM on January 15, 2017 [52 favorites]


That's a very interesting use of the word "illegals."

"Illegal" as a noun has come to mean "a nonwhite human being you think you can get away with deporting." Actual immigration status, country of origin, and even citizenship are not important in this definition.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:09 PM on January 15, 2017 [47 favorites]


"Illegal" as a noun has come to mean "a nonwhite human being you think you can get away with deporting

Or shooting in the back.
posted by valkane at 4:11 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


It is so profoundly frustrating that we're just about to walk away from NATO not because of a war or something, the kind of thing that actually tests an alliance, but just out of general apathy (and the culmination of a decades-long effort by Russia to divide it).
posted by zachlipton at 4:19 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yes, that's my point. Trump thinks Germany's attitude toward their Syrian refugees must be exactly the same as his attitude towards illegal immigrants. Smoking hot babes you want to marry is one thing but "illegals" taken as a class is simply an easy tool to rouse the masses. I doubt he has ever met a Syrian refugee or spoken to any German people about their feelings towards Syrians (although he probably has gotten an earful from Nigel Farage) much less talked to the German Chancellor.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:20 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]



And we're back in the Cold War hall of mirrors. Take the UK-USA intelligence pact, which has been in place under different names and in different ways since the Sinkov mission in 1941; the two nations' agencies are deeply intertwined and very effective together. Who benefits most from creating mistrust and uncertainty there?


DO bear in mind that DC has been a notoriously leaky place for decades, because leaks are the currency by which aspiring DC apparatchiks advance their interests before the press.

US allies have always thought twice before disclosing anything to agencies in the US. It's just that now things are much worse.

And yes, a separation of MI6 and the CIA for the next 4 years is better than MI6's secrets winding up in Putin's hands. For all involved.
posted by ocschwar at 4:24 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump has invited Australia's foremost racist politican to the Inauguration.

Well they sure know how to get a rise from us liberals. Maybe they can invite Geert Wilders next and introduce him as "The next Prime Minister of Holland".

Yes I know it's The Netherlands. THATSTHEJOKE.JPG
posted by Talez at 4:26 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


If you, like me, are unsure of Trump's path to legally imposing tariffs on imports, I found this CNN Money article helpful. Unfortunately it looks like it would be pretty easy and does not require Congress.
Trump could invoke the "Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917" to hit Mexico and China with tariffs as high as he wants. Under the law, the president can restrict all types of trade "during time of war." That definition is very loose though.

America doesn't have to be at war with China or Mexico -- it just has to be "at war" somewhere in the world in order to apply tariffs against China or Mexico.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:28 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Orange One's tweet from this afternoon made me snort. It is unbelievably childish and above all purposeless: For many years our country has been divided, angry and untrusting. Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. IT WILL CHANGE!!!!

I mean, what is that? Is it a threat? Is it a promise? Does he honestly think we are going to fall in love with him and everything will be sweetness and light?


Trump's a narcissist, so it's possible he does think that.

But I think it's equally probable that this is very similar to I've been watching how the conservatives in my circle use "divided" and it's totally authoritarian. There's not really thought about compromise or other forms of studied resolution to legitimate difference behind it. They mean that they're offended by people who disagree with them, and believe the fault is with those people, and if we just got those troublemakers to shut up, we'd finally be able to enjoy our great country in peace.
posted by wildblueyonder at 4:30 PM on January 15, 2017 [30 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump
.@FoxNews "Outgoing CIA Chief, John Brennan, blasts Pres-Elect Trump on Russia threat. Does not fully understand." Oh really, couldn't do...much worse - just look at Syria (red line), Crimea, Ukraine and the build-up of Russian nukes. Not good! Was this the leaker of Fake News?


He's not letting it go. 14 minutes between parts 1 and 2. Also....phrasing at the end.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:30 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Illegals has come to mean Latinos and Middle-Easterners.

This is the (Oxford dictionary) definition of "anchor baby": noun. offensive. Used to refer to a child born to a noncitizen mother in a country which has birthright citizenship, especially when viewed as providing an advantage to family members seeking to secure citizenship or legal residency.

Excluding the "especially" part, by this standard, the three children of Ivana Trump (Donald, Ivanka, and Eric) and the one child of Melania Trump (Barron) were anchor babies. Both mothers became citizens after their children's births.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:33 PM on January 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


With his latest tweets, really brilliant media strategy to take a Sunday show interview from a departing official that not a ton of people noticed and broadcast it out to millions more.
posted by zachlipton at 4:36 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


muminor: But one guy, after hearing all the arguments, asked my main opponent: why didn't you just stiff her? When I don't want to pay someone, I just don't, and after a while they give up because they can't afford the lawyers.

Having done a lot of reading due to above mentioned reasons, it's amazing how stacked the system is in favour of people who think like that. There's even pre-pack administration (English law) where a company can declare bankruptcy, stiff all its debtors, and then buy back the company assets at cost from the liquidator and continue trading under another name. The trend towards the gig economy where everyone is a freelancer empowers them even more as they can use the same tactics to default on payment for people who in the past would have been employees with protection from labour law and unions.

Trump really does seem to be the canonical example of this.
posted by Buntix at 4:41 PM on January 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


I originally thought the Trump plan to remove all the current federal staff regardless of whether there are replacements ready was just a partisan power move or an attempt to further delegitimize Obama, but seeing the intelligence battle heat up and Trump's recent statements, it's looking more like they did this to make it harder to remove Trump by prepping the clusterfuck that would remain.
posted by p3t3 at 4:44 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


There's even pre-pack administration (English law) where a company can declare bankruptcy, stiff all its debtors, and then buy back the company assets at cost from the liquidator and continue trading under another name.

Pro tip for contractors: If you start to see strange people "taking inventory", get your invoices paid and run.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:45 PM on January 15, 2017 [14 favorites]




Another pro-tip: my opponent basically admitted publicly that a huge part of this whole thing was a game of chicken. And I thought to myself, for the first time in all 12 years, I had been allowed by my board to not blink, and it worked like magic. Message to the Democratic Party in the US, to Merkel, and to all the others being threatened now: don't blink. You have nothing to loose and everything to win.
posted by mumimor at 4:56 PM on January 15, 2017 [38 favorites]


Excluding the "especially" part, by this standard, the three children of Ivana Trump (Donald, Ivanka, and Eric) and the one child of Melania Trump (Barron) were anchor babies. Both mothers became citizens after their children's births.

And in Melania's case, that's questionable. If you work illegally on a tourist visa, then commit fraud on your green-card app by lying about it, is the citizenship subsequently attained invalid due to the illegal and fraudulent acts?

Does she have to self-deport, go to the back of the line, and follow the law, or what?
posted by mikelieman at 4:57 PM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


Re Loosefilter's post, just wondering:

Is there any difference in the legal ramifications if (presumably) treason charges are brought against Trump after he becomes president rather than as president-erect? (Chess aside, Obama does presumably know his constitutional law).

Would Pence really take over in that situation, surely if Trump is proven to be compromised then his whole coterie should be considered to be also, unless unequivocally proven otherwise. To make a (admittedly flawed) analogy: if someone hacks the root account on your server you don't just lock it out and start using toor instead, you reformat any only re-import any data that can be proven good...
posted by Buntix at 4:59 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump meets with Princeton physicist who says global warming is good for us

-- Yes, Donald Trump met with Al Gore. But on Friday, according to the Trump transition team, the president-elect also met with William Happer, a Princeton professor of physics who has been a prominent voice in questioning whether we should be concerned about human-caused climate change.

-- “All trees, and many other plants, wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton, etc., are handicapped because, by historical standards, there currently is too little, not too much, CO2 in the atmosphere,” read a slide contained in Happer’s testimony.

-- In a 2011 essay in the journal First Things, Happer further argued that “the ‘climate crusade’ is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types — even children’s crusades — all based on contested science and dubious claims.”

If you want to read more about Happer and his "science" & publications:

Trump meets with Princeton PhD scientist who called ‘global warming’ fears ‘pure belief disguised as science’
posted by futz at 5:00 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]




Another pro-tip: my opponent basically admitted publicly that a huge part of this whole thing was a game of chicken.

Seconded, especially if you can give the impression that you're a bit nuts and think a head on collision could actually be kinda fun. Another thing is to essentially think of them as a child (remarkably easy in Trump's case) and calmly and clearly (NPOV style) explain to them what they are doing, that it isn't as big or clever as they think, and what the consequences will be. [Hope Merkel et al are taking notes here... :D ]
posted by Buntix at 5:07 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Okay, I've been piecing this together.
Ivana Zelníčková. First Austria.
Melanija Knavs. Later, the Balkans.
Then Trump makes a deal with Russia.
And then?
It's a God-win-win situation.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:08 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Bread and circuses, people. Now with less circus.

If Republicans get their way and destroy SNAP, there'll be less bread too.
posted by zachlipton at 5:10 PM on January 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


[Happer] also ripped the EPA’s climate policies in 2016, declaring: “The EPA is just completely bonkers, CO2 will benefit the Earth.”

Yep! However...
posted by delfin at 5:11 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Add a trillion dollar coin

Surely to be known as the "Golden Shower" among numismatists.
posted by spitbull at 5:24 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


A corollary to the playing-chicken thing may also have some explanatory power as to why Trump is so thin skinned and twitterly incontinent when it comes to criticism. When someone who uses said bullying tactic to game the system are faced with an opponent who doesn't blink, or otherwise fails to follow the script, it does throw them for a loop.

Surely to be known as the "Golden Shower" among numismatists.

Raising "spending a penny" to a whole 'nother level.
posted by Buntix at 5:26 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Happer is a real physicist who deserves to be at Princeton based on his work on the magnetic properties of individual atoms and of vapors. But he's not a climate scientist. Same with Dyson... a good nuclear physicist, a good writer, not a climate scientist.
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:27 PM on January 15, 2017 [22 favorites]


Right, it's like Ben Carson. By all accounts a superb brain surgeon. But I sure wouldn't want him, say, setting government policy for urban developme... oh. oh shit.
posted by Justinian at 5:31 PM on January 15, 2017 [44 favorites]


Well to be fair Linus Pauling fooled the whole world into thinking he was a nutritionist and now millions of people believe vitamin C cures the common cold.
posted by spitbull at 5:32 PM on January 15, 2017 [15 favorites]


There's not really thought about compromise or other forms of studied resolution to legitimate difference behind it. They mean that they're offended by people who disagree with them, and believe the fault is with those people, and if we just got those troublemakers to shut up, we'd finally be able to enjoy our great country in peace.

Unfortunately this seems to be a bipartisan position. I'm getting increasingly creeped out by some of my lefty war vet friends who are starting to get to the stage of actually hoping people die - not politicians, citizens - to sort this all out. It's really uncomfortable and I don't know what to say or how we move on from here.
posted by corb at 5:32 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Head of MI6 used information from Trump dossier in first public speech (Speech was in Dec. 2016)

Sir Alex Younger’s briefing notes for his first public speech as head of the Secret Intelligence Service contained some of the material supplied by Mr Steele, according to security sources. Drawing on the alleged hacking carried out by Moscow in the US presidential campaign, he warned of the danger facing Britain and Western European allies, and especially to elections due to be held next year.

Security sources stress that MI6 had extensive information, British and international, on the Russian threat apart from that of Mr Steele. But they pointed out that he is held in high regard and the contribution he provided was valuable.


Not really anything new here other than another exclamation point on the trust they have in the intel.
posted by futz at 5:32 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]



Happer is a real physicist who deserves to be at Princeton based on his work on the magnetic properties of individual atoms and of vapors. But he's not a climate scientist


He's also not much of a biologist if he thinks CO2 is a Liebig Minimum for any common crop.
posted by ocschwar at 5:33 PM on January 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


Princeton based on his work on the magnetic properties of individual atoms

So is he the guy who knows how magnets work? couldn't resist.

Ben Carson is a great comparison. Happer should really shut the fuck up about climate science.
posted by futz at 5:35 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


> Yes, that's my point. Trump thinks Germany's attitude toward their Syrian refugees must be exactly the same as his attitude towards illegal immigrants.

He was ranting about Syrian refugees for much of 2016. The BBC reports from the interview:
he said he believes the West should have built safe zones in Syria - paid for by the Gulf - to limit the surge.
Trump:
"Countries want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity, but I do think if they hadn't been forced to take in all of the refugees than you wouldn't have a Brexit."
(Bizarrely contradicting his own insistence that Brexit is a good thing.)

There is a perception in Europe that Syrian refugees were not adequately planned for, and this is what Nigel Farage was exploiting with his abhorrent "Breaking Point" poster, what Merkel will have to defend against later this year, and surely what Le Pen will invoke in France as well. Trump swallowed that message whole, spun with his own terrorism fearmongering. Uncertainty leads to fear and thence to racist hate.

The international community must do a better job sharing and handling and transparently planning for refugees, and we must all be ready to contribute and pay for this with tax. Countries collapse almost regularly. Even if this were handled well aleady (it isn't), this perception of a planning vacuum has allowed xenophobes and racists to flourish.
posted by Quagkapi at 5:37 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


No no no, don't you all see that when you become educated and talented at a niche bit of knowledge this automatically makes you an expert in all areas of knowledge? This is why I was able to successfully parlay my nursing degree into automobile engineering and design, based on my extensive research via watching The Flintstones. Because I know how to read cardiac rhythms I also automatically know how combustion engines work! With feet!
posted by supercrayon at 5:42 PM on January 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


Trump:
"Countries want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity,
This is blatantly and openly racist - and it clearly shows that "brown" is about as granular as Donnie can understand.
posted by porpoise at 5:46 PM on January 15, 2017 [21 favorites]


Trump vows ‘insurance for everybody’ in Obamacare replacement plan

The story is that Trump claims to be on the verge of announcing his own healthcare plan (but only after Price is confirmed, and they haven't scheduled a hearing for that yet), he won't say what it is, but he'll demand that drug companies negotiate directly with Medicare and Medicaid and reiterated his claims that he'll cover everybody, somehow.

Then a bunch of gibberish on tax cuts, claiming a 35% tax on "cars or other products" made overseas.

My sense is that middle class families will not appreciate a tax cut as much if everything sold at Wal-Mart suddenly costs 35% more.
posted by zachlipton at 5:48 PM on January 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


I was just going to go watch some TV and then this happened:

WaPo Trump vows ‘insurance for everybody’ in Obamacare replacement plan

It's a magic plan with no details but guess what everyone will be talking about tomorrow.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:49 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Watta scoop!
posted by petebest at 5:51 PM on January 15, 2017


Rand Paul previews Obamacare replacement plan

IE make sure there are a lot of "cheap " plans available.
posted by ThreeCatsBob at 5:51 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


1) He says he will force BigPharma to sell us cheaper drugs just like he forced Lockheed to make cheaper F-35s.

2) He says he will not cut MediCare.

3.) He says the insurance will be cheaper and "better."

4.) And it will pass congress even though they have their own plan "I think we will get approval. I won’t tell you how, but we will get approval."

Oh and he is building that wall immediately and ramming through a massive tax cut. So that deficit should be blowing up right about now.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:54 PM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


It's a magic plan with no details but guess what everyone will be talking about tomorrow.

Kind of like the republican plan Ryan has been touting. I actually took the time to look at the PDF today and half the doc is devoted to the "failure of Obamacare." The other half is lots of promises with very little details on how republicans will pull it off. I honestly wonder if 3 months from now when millions are being dropped from their ACA plans if that's about the point folks in the rust belt will wake up and realize they've been had. I know, stupid question, not going to happen.

Once again, we are so fucked.
posted by photoslob at 5:55 PM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


ThreeCatsBob, that link is not working.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:55 PM on January 15, 2017


Just out of curiosity, has any politician with a Secret Plan ever delivered on it? Has one ever worked?

(not counting actual military operations)
posted by Etrigan at 5:55 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


I can't wait for Kellyann Conway and Reince Priebus to go on air and give us two completely different versions of what's on offer.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:57 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Unfortunately this seems to be a bipartisan position. I'm getting increasingly creeped out by some of my lefty war vet friends who are starting to get to the stage of actually hoping people die - not politicians, citizens - to sort this all out. It's really uncomfortable and I don't know what to say or how we move on from here.

I don't want anyone to die, but I do want many people to suffer major hardships. But there's a very good reason for that.

Even in a best-case election we can't get 2/3 of eligible voters to come out. In this cataclysmic clusterfuck we just went through, 40% who were eligible stayed home. Millions and millions who didn't think Trump was worth filling in an oval for or against. Midterm elections, local elections, that sort of thing? Even worse. And that is because lots of people couldn't give a wet shit about politics unless something slaps them HARD across the face. They, their wallets, their families, their close friends and neighbors, their businesses, their livelihoods have to be personally affected. And even then, some are happy to do without what helps them as long as THOSE PEOPLE don't get help either. They have to be kicked in the head by government action to a point where they simply can't rationalize it away easily.

There are some true believers who could be targeted by the Donald Trump Personally Wants Insert Your Name Here To Die Act and still believe that it's all Obama's fault and gay marriage is to blame. But lots of people vote the way they do because they are being consistently misled by what they read, what they watch, what they hear, what their friends and family post on Facebook. My father, for instance, is a reasonably rational person in most things and I catch him repeating provably-false-by-a-single-Google right wing bullshit several times a week.

We cannot fix this by telling them the truth because they simply do not believe it. It's Mainstream Media Lying Again, it's Fake News, it's Libtard Propaganda. We have to hope that enough of them get reality-checked by the coming Austerity World Tour 2016 to realize that, hey, we put these people completely in power AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED. That's the only chance we have to get enough of them back. (Also, it would be nice if what remains of the Democrats are offering alternative plans loudly and often at that point. Also I would like a pony.)
posted by delfin at 5:58 PM on January 15, 2017 [11 favorites]


Fixed link to Rand Paul previews Obamacare replacement: Link
posted by birdheist at 5:59 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thanks Secret Life Of Gravy, Birdheist.
posted by ThreeCatsBob at 6:03 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon joined Trump six months ago.

I was wondering who's been with Trump the longest - not counting immediate family and Meredith. Because at the height of Pussygate, he only had two people willing to publicly go to bat, and for one of them, that was her job.

Rude Guiliani was the other. He desperately wanted the SoS job, but was hustled out and given a posthumous "Cyberczar" award or something. Yeah probably the Russian FBI thing but still - Hole got the boot months earlier for his Bridgegate liability, and he was as critical as anyone in hoisting _rump into office.

So outside of Ivanka are we to see a procession of outcasts from Trumpland as everyone gets stiffed, presumably for doing bad work?

Between that and flipping off the spooks - well, its something else that doesn't bode well.
posted by petebest at 6:03 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Does my last comment make me a callous, unfeeling asshole? Nope. I was one already.

People I know, people I love, people who are a part of my life are going to suffer. People I have never met are going to suffer. I do not any of that to happen, but it will. The way of life we are used to is going away and our only comfort is that we -- thinking human beings -- are not the ones who shat this into motion.

I am not doom-and-glooming because much of this IS salvageable. I wish there was another way to do it. But we, as Americans, are past the tipping point where it can be done without eggs being broken. We will catch as many falling eggs as we can.
posted by delfin at 6:04 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


OK so Rand Paul's plan is just Rand Paul's plan...and boy is it Randian. Basically you get to live if you are rich or healthy because if you are poor and sick, you are screwed.

So we now have 3 plans! An embarrassment of riches if you will.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:04 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


The question is why the hell is this being reported as "Trump vows ‘insurance for everybody’ in Obamacare replacement plan?" He doesn't have a plan. He promised he'll have one. Which is the same promise he's been making for at least a year now. He's promised it will be the best plan, that it will cover everyone, that it will be cheaper, that the deductibles and co-pays will be lower, that it will provide unicorns to every sick child. But he hasn't actually delivered one.

Why is the headline not "Trump claims to have healthcare plan, refuses to share any details?" Or "After year of stonewalling, Trump still making excuses for lack of healthcare plan?" Or "Trump still claiming to have the best healthcare plan, won't say what's in it?" Because that's the story here.
posted by zachlipton at 6:06 PM on January 15, 2017 [68 favorites]


So outside of Ivanka are we to see a procession of outcasts from Trumpland as everyone gets stiffed

That's the thing; there is a world of people who hate Trump, and practically no one in the world who is loyal to him. I wouldn't even count on his family. It seems nearly impossible that he won't get screwed over. I will try not to cackle too loudly.
posted by bongo_x at 6:08 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Why is the headline not "Trump claims to have healthcare plan, refuses to share any details?" Or "After year of stonewalling, Trump still making excuses for lack of healthcare plan?" Or "Trump still claiming to have the best healthcare plan, won't say what's in it?" Because that's the story here.

Why indeed.
posted by petebest at 6:13 PM on January 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


I know the media love to cover Trump in a breathless bread and circuses way, but I would love to see them pivot towards covering the entire administration as bumbling incompetents because that's what they are. Three different replacement plans? One of which is secret, and the other two rely entirely on people never getting sick or not being extremely wealthy? So...no plan then.

Also aside from the catastrophic loss of health care coverage, and the corresponding skyrocketing number of preventable hospital admissions, medical bankruptcies, etc. (like that's not enough right?), what about the loss of jobs? It's being predicted that 3 million people will lose their jobs. Why is this not being hammered on as well? Trump "saved" 1000 Carrier jobs? What about the millions of hardworking nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, respiratory techs, etc that will be put out of work? And then, because the ACA will be gone, I guess also lose their health insurance?
posted by supercrayon at 6:15 PM on January 15, 2017 [36 favorites]


Why is the headline not "Trump claims to have healthcare plan, refuses to share any details?" Or "After year of stonewalling, Trump still making excuses for lack of healthcare plan?" Or "Trump still claiming to have the best healthcare plan, won't say what's in it?" Because that's the story here.

FUCK YES. I'm starting to think that in addition to phoning our representatives we need to start ringing our media outlets all the damn time too. Cut the damn crap and tell the truth. Trump HAS NO PLAN. I doubt he could even give a two sentence definition of the ACA let alone understand it enough to craft a replacement. His "plan" is the same plan he's had since forever, to lie and bluster and count on never being accountable because history has shown that this works for him.
posted by supercrayon at 6:19 PM on January 15, 2017 [39 favorites]


Not good! Was this the leaker of Fake News?

My god. CIA chief goes on Fox and says he "takes umbrage" at Nazi comparisons and accusations that the IC did the leaking... and Trump responds by questioning whether CIA chief himself was the leaker?

wtf?? I don't know why I continue to be shocked, especially after the Lewis tweets, but I continue to be shocked. He is off the rails, and maybe even scarier, no one close to him seems to be able to keep him inside any boundaries whatsoever.
posted by torticat at 6:19 PM on January 15, 2017 [48 favorites]


Kind of like the republican plan Ryan has been touting. I actually took the time to look at the PDF today and half the doc is devoted to the "failure of Obamacare." The other half is lots of promises with very little details on how republicans will pull it off.

I spent I don't know how many wasted minutes trying to wrap my head around the concept of the high risk pool. It still makes zero, ZERO, sense. So his bright idea is you take out the costliest patients from the general population coverage and put them in their own special pool. Since you use the healthy individuals to help pay for the neediest individuals, if you remove those who need the most costly coverage, your left with only healthy people and naturally their rates fall. But now you have this pool of really expensive people who need a lot of coverage and what is the government's plan for them? Is the government going to cover their costs? Then why not just leave them in the general pool to begin with? Is the government not going to cover their cost? Then as was pointed out days ago on this very website you have 6 year olds dying of cancer and no way for their parents to pay the hospital bill.

I just can't tell if there is some advantage I am missing or if this is Ryan's attempt to camouflage how terrible his replacement ideas are. "High Risk Pool" is certainly a phrase and it is a phrase in English but it makes no sense from an Insurance point of view.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:22 PM on January 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


Excluding the "especially" part, by this standard, the three children of Ivana Trump (Donald, Ivanka, and Eric) and the one child of Melania Trump (Barron) were anchor babies.

No, they weren't, because there are no anchor babies in the US. US citizens cannot sponsor their families for residency or citizenship until they are 18 or 21 (can't remember which). If you're not here legally and have a US citizen kid, ICE will happily give you the choice of putting the kid in the US foster system when you're deported or taking the kid with you when you're deported. But you're getting deported.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:24 PM on January 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


I am a bit surprised to see that Evan McMullin seems to have been pretty serious. So there's at least 1 conservative who hasn't kissed the ring yet.
posted by bongo_x at 6:24 PM on January 15, 2017 [20 favorites]


Is there any difference in the legal ramifications if (presumably) treason charges are brought against Trump after he becomes president rather than as president-erect?
...Would Pence really take over in that situation


I have been wondering about this also--or rather, I've been wondering about the opposite, what happens if charges are brought before the inauguration? Is there any precedent or provision for this? I don't think there is; would it trigger a constitutional crisis?

After the election, presumably Pence would take over. Unless he also were impeached (and it certainly seems like there could be grounds)--but that doesn't seem like something Republicans would pursue. In any case, I'd rather have a constitutional crisis than have power handed seamlessly to Pence, so I'm still hoping something will blow up this week.

(Funny typo up there, btw!)
posted by torticat at 6:31 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Three different replacement plans? One of which is secret, and the other two rely entirely on people never getting sick or not being extremely wealthy? So...no plan then.

Supercrayon, you hit the nail on the head. ObamaCare took 16 months to craft and a lot of work went into figuring out what to do and how to get it passed by a lot of smart policy wonks. The Republicans have been passing legislation to repeal it almost from the day it passed and have been promising a replacement almost as long. They Have Had YEARS to work out a good plan. Donald Trump has been campaigning on repeal/replace since he entered the race in June of 2015 so he too Has Had YEARS. And they all are trying to scurry around and cobble together some piece of shit nonsense and pass it off as better because...whoops...people really do need insurance and have gotten used to having insurance so better give them something.

Hey, maybe electing a jackass who had no real policy wasn't such a terrific idea after all.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:31 PM on January 15, 2017 [25 favorites]


Well here's some sunshine for that corporate media rainshower!

Corey Lewandowski Is Now A Cable News Pundit for One America News Network. Oooooh CNN slam!, et tu USA Today?? (dailybeast link)

Where did i hear OANN mentioned before? Hm.

Also, he's representing Puerto Rico, for some scammy-sounding reason.

The newly elected governor of Puerto Rico is in discussions to hire Lewandowski’s lobbying firm, at a time when the island’s creditors are hoping that the incoming Trump administration will be more sympathetic to them than the Obama administration has been. Such a shift would add to concerns that the new administration’s tight ties to banks and investment funds could tilt its policies in favor of Wall Street.
posted by petebest at 6:38 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


The stupid thing is that you don't need high risk pools if your actual goal is to lower premiums for healthy people by subsidizing care for sick people (as opposed to Ryan's actual goal, which is really a tax cut masquerading as a healthcare plan, but insofar as it involves health policy it's to lower premiums for healthy people by fully pricing sick people out of the market, dressing that up with "high risk pools" so it sounds like he's giving them a real option for coverage). You just pay insurance companies directly to take care of sick people. Which isn't very crazy at all; its basically what all the ACA risk corridor stuff did anyway, not to mention the ACA's lower out of pocket costs for lower income families. The government can just tell insurance companies on the exchanges it will pick up the tab for expensive care under certain circumstances, and use that subsidy to force premiums down for everyone, no need to put the sick people in any kind of special pool.
posted by zachlipton at 6:40 PM on January 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


I was so beside myself when I read that shitty 'Trump vows ‘insurance for everybody’ in Obamacare replacement plan' article that I emailed the author. I have pasted my email below, please feel free to email the author as well if you agree. I intend to begin writing versions of this email every single time I see mealy mouthed bullshit from WaPo. Also zachlipton I borrowed your alternative headlines as I thought they were perfect, I hope that's alright with you.

I am a subscriber to the Washington Post, and I enjoyed this article, which I thought was well-balanced and informative. However I take issue with the headline. Given that there's overwhelming evidence that many (possibly most) people only ever read the headline of an article and never even bother to read the text, I think it's incumbent upon our media to reflect on how they portray the people in power.

Why was the headline not "Trump claims to have healthcare plan, refuses to share any details?" Or "After year of stonewalling, Trump still making excuses for lack of healthcare plan?" Or "Trump still claiming to have the best healthcare plan, won't say what's in it?"

Because frankly, Trump does not have a plan. This is obvious. The incoming administration is demonstrably the least qualified in history. Trump himself is ill suited temperamentally to the office he is about to assume - one only need look at his twitter feed to see that. He has no mandate, lost the popular vote, has never released his taxes, is the most unpopular candidate to ever assume office, and is attempting to staff his cabinet with unqualified people openly hostile to the mission of the department they are about to head. He is very possibly compromised by Moscow. And he has shown himself over and over again to be a liar. Not a bullshitter, not someone who is playing politics or engaging in spin. An outright, blatant, outrageous liar.

We will be relying more than ever on our institutions to protect us from the coming administration, and that includes our fourth estate. I understand the impulse to remain neutral, to report and let your readers decide, to borrow a phrase. However there are times when neutrality itself is taking a political position, and I would suggest that this is one of those times. The repeal of the ACA is incredibly unpopular, and our fellow citizens health, wellbeing, and in fact very lives in some instances are at risk if it is repealed. These are the stakes. The GOP is willing to wager the lives of Americans to satisfy their extremist political ideology, and we desperately need brave journalists willing to stand up and look the incoming administration in the face and tell the truth.

Please be brave for us. We're all counting on you.
posted by supercrayon at 6:45 PM on January 15, 2017 [66 favorites]


I'm serious: I can respect someone embracing accelerationism but only if they adjust their lives accordingly.

Accelerationism is a terrible idea, a form of theory gone hopelessly disconnected from reality. Most revolutions in history were led by middle class or political elites who were comfortable and privileged enough to have the luxury of time and resources for plotting. Even those that branded themselves as populist uprisings were mostly initiated by frustrated elites who still had some degree of power and influence. When things get really tough for people, they're too busy trying to survive and feeling like worthless dirt to entertain elaborate ideas about fighting the system and establishing universal justice. Injured people just lash out in pain at whoever's closest and easiest at hand to lash out at, generally. They don't suddenly become fluent in Marxist theory and start taking poli-sci seriously. It's an idea that seems to completely ignore human psychology and practical reality. We don't live in an age where angry peasants with farming tools for weapons can mount any kind of serious threat to anybody with wealth and political power on their side short of staggering consensus and solidarity. We can't seem to make and sustain that kind of momentum and unity long enough or deeply enough to even keep existing gains for much longer. Making life worse for everybody as a way to make life better for everybody has a nasty Orwellian doublespeak quality to it, doesn't it?
posted by saulgoodman at 6:46 PM on January 15, 2017 [37 favorites]


Hi kids! It's time for Uncle Xenophobe's Periodic Guide to How Amazingly Hard It Is To Get A Treason Conviction In The US!

Treason is one of those things that suffers because the real-world common-sense definition of treason is SOO MUUCH wider than the definition of treason in the Constitution, so there's a huge list of things that are obviously treason in the normal sense of the word that aren't formal, punishable treason against the US.

You can only be convicted of formal treason for two things:

(1) Making war against the US
(2) Giving aid and comfort to "the enemy," which doesn't mean "countries we aren't getting along with" or "countries we have broadly adversarial relations with." It's been previously defined to mean only "countries we're at war with."

And you can only be convicted with multiple witnesses to the same overt act or by confessing in the courtroom.

We are not at war with Russia and until we are, there is nothing Trump can do in Russia's favor, no matter how traitorous, that would constitute formal treason.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:47 PM on January 15, 2017 [23 favorites]


The fact Russia currently poses a direct hostile military threat to US NATO allies we're treaty bound to defend doesn't qualify? We justified much worse for less during the Cold War.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:53 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


Accelerationism is indeed a terrible thing. But there is a difference between seeing a tidal wave coming your way and cheering it on.

It doesn't take Cassandra to see that hard times are coming. I wish they weren't; I voted against them. But if they are coming, and I don't see how they're avoidable in the short term, let some good come of them and let many misled people start seeing more clearly.
posted by delfin at 6:53 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


I just worry some are still really underestimating how hard to escape psychological manipulation systems like totalitarianism are and how effective just keeping everybody feeling confused about what's actually happening and how much it matters can be...
posted by saulgoodman at 6:56 PM on January 15, 2017 [10 favorites]


"High Risk Pool" is certainly a phrase and it is a phrase in English but it makes no sense from an Insurance point of view.

If Ryan wanted to be more accurate he would rename the High Risk Pools to These People Can Fuck Off And Die Pools. That's what they are under his plan. No, the government is not going to pay for them. No-one is going to pay for them. They are in the Fuck Off And Die Pools.
posted by Justinian at 7:01 PM on January 15, 2017 [19 favorites]


The fact Russia currently poses a direct hostile military threat to US NATO allies we're treaty bound to defend doesn't qualify?

Correct.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:01 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


I just worry some are still really underestimating how hard to escape psychological manipulation systems like totalitarianism are and how effective just keeping everybody feeling confused about what's actually happening and how much it matters can be...

If it was at all easy to stop this, we'd have done it. It's not like the Republicans were perfectly rational and normal until Trump came along and then WHAM fascism. This crisis has been decades in the making.
posted by delfin at 7:05 PM on January 15, 2017 [19 favorites]


New GOP branding: No to Death Panels, Yes to Death Pools.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:06 PM on January 15, 2017 [29 favorites]


He is off the rails, and maybe even scarier, no one close to him seems to be able to keep him inside any boundaries whatsoever.

Given the people that he has chosen to surround himself with there will be no keeping him in check. They are probably pissed that he hasn't wreaked more havoc. They are probably chomping at the bit for him to go further to the right (alt reich), demolish the fourth estate, and destroy everything that doesn't directly benefit them or their causes. Boogie men and monsters do exist. They hate us (for many reasons but...) because we see through them and they cannot control us.
posted by futz at 7:08 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


Yeah but ROU_Xenophobe, the bar for impeachment isn't that high. What about "bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors"?

Clinton was impeached for perjury for god's sake. You don't think if the claims in the Steele report were verified, the charges against Trump would reach that level? They sure as hell would.
posted by torticat at 7:09 PM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]




Yeah but ROU_Xenophobe, the bar for impeachment isn't that high

The bar for impeachment is nonexistent. The House can impeach, and the Senate convict, for whatever it wants to.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:16 PM on January 15, 2017 [16 favorites]


Seems to me that if Putin or other Russian state actors colluded with the Trump crew to help him win the election, we have a case of espionage. As president Trump would be privy to state secrets. That was the usual Cold War charge, as I recall.
posted by spitbull at 7:22 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


"High Risk Pool" is certainly a phrase and it is a phrase in English but it makes no sense from an Insurance point of view.

Call them Death Pools. Because premiums will be so high that no sick person can afford them.

Branding is important.
posted by JackFlash at 7:26 PM on January 15, 2017 [21 favorites]


The House can impeach, and the Senate convict, for whatever it wants to.

Okay, fine, the bar for conviction. I'm questioning why Uncle Xenophobe's Periodic Guide is relevant when a charge of treason is not necessary for Trump's removal from office.
posted by torticat at 7:28 PM on January 15, 2017


Because people kept talking about Trump being tried for treason?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:30 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


The bar for impeachment is nonexistent.

Also I don't really see this. The grounds for impeachment ARE laid out in the constitution. It's true it doesn't say "if and only if," but certainly Congress has historically treated the grounds laid out as restrictive guidelines.
posted by torticat at 7:34 PM on January 15, 2017


White House Correspondents balk at Trump team's talk of moving the press briefing room.

wow. Balking. Man, that's . . . terrible. What an uproar.

STOP! WeaselTime!

"I know that some of the folks in the press are uptight about this, and I understand," Priebus said. "The only thing that's been discussed is whether or not the initial press conferences are going to be in that small press ... the press room that people see on TV is very, very tiny."

"So no one is moving out of the White House. That is the White House, where you can fit four times the number of people in the press conference, allowing more press, more coverage from all over the country ... That's what we're talking about."

Such a move would mark a potential change in access for reporters as the current briefing room is only steps from the Oval Office. The White House Conference Center had been used as a temporary press room during the George W. Bush administration.


So it's the across-the-street-White-House then? Fun fact: There was a washingtonexamner link that said the press found it "inacceptable", but when I went back to get it it was gone . . .
posted by petebest at 7:34 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Also I don't really see this.

There's no appeal from impeachment trials. So if the House impeached Trump for shitty hair, and the Senate convicted, he's still removed from office even though shitty hair remains legal.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:36 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


If the US were to declare pro-forma war on the Russian Federation this week, would that provide sufficient grounds to charge Trump for treason? Asking for a friend...
posted by Coventry at 7:37 PM on January 15, 2017


The secret health care plan cannot be shared yet because it would ruin the element of surprise and the terrorists might then gain American health care coverage.
posted by p3t3 at 7:37 PM on January 15, 2017 [61 favorites]


I have to say though, that any plan centered around "high risk pools" should be, if Schumer and co. somehow don't screw it up (of which I have almost zero faith), a dream to fight publicly. Why the hell wants to be told "oh, if you have a pre-existing condition, we'll just move you on over here to the high risk pool?" High risk pools sound like something you'd find on a cockamamie game show: "well Mike, you could take the money and go home, but you can double that if you just complete a physical challenge here in the *audience shouts in unison* HIGH RISK POOL." People do not like being shoved into pools.

Of all the Obamacare polling, one consistent factor has been that people really, really, really do not like the phrase "pre-existing condition" and are glad it is gone and banished from the lexicon. Any plan that leads with "and don't worry all y'all with pre-existing conditions; have we got a special treat for you" is fightable simply on the grounds that it re-introduces that dreaded concept.

The problem, of course, is that it won't be a fight between what we have now and the Ryan plan. It will be a fight between "repeal everything and go screw yourselves" and the Ryan plan. And we'll all be stuck because the only choice will be "we're going back to 2008 one way or another. Would you like a tax cut with that?"

Anyway, speaking of secret plans that never seem to materialize, whatever happened to Trump's secret plan to fight ISIS?
posted by zachlipton at 7:41 PM on January 15, 2017 [24 favorites]


It consists of letting Putin genocide Syria, I believe. It got underway shortly after the election, and I'd be disappointed at the lack of pushback except it's not clear what actually can be done.
posted by Artw at 7:46 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]


"I have a secret plan I can't reveal until Tom Price is confirmed" sounds an awful lot like "I hope Tom Price has a plan when he gets in"
posted by jason_steakums at 7:50 PM on January 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


Of all the Obamacare polling, one consistent factor has been that people really, really, really do not like the phrase "pre-existing condition" and are glad it is gone and banished from the lexicon.

People who had for years concealed things from doctors for fear of becoming uninsurable, or made sure that doctors didn't write down speculation about diagnoses, now have a bunch of pre-existing conditions on record. Not every pre-existing condition has a large charitable and lobbying org associated with it, but there are plenty that do, and which are quite good at mobilising nice polite small-c conservative people.
posted by holgate at 7:54 PM on January 15, 2017 [37 favorites]


bongo_x: I am a bit surprised to see that Evan McMullin seems to have been pretty serious. So there's at least 1 conservative who hasn't kissed the ring yet.

While I find many of McMullin's policy proposals to be unacceptable, his recent statements on Twitter are fantastic. He and Mindy Finn have even laid into Chaffetz a bit for threatening the director of the Office of Governmental Ethics. I hope he will continue to fight the radical--they lost any claim to the term 'conservative'--Trumpist right-wing.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 7:56 PM on January 15, 2017 [18 favorites]


Ooh I didn't know that McMullin floated the possibility of running against Orrin Hatch in the Senate in 2018. Yes, please. If we've still got Trump by then, that's where McMullin would be most effective.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:03 PM on January 15, 2017 [22 favorites]


While I find many of McMullin's policy proposals to be unacceptable, his recent statements on Twitter are fantastic.

His tweets are better and tougher than anything from the "liberal" media.
posted by bongo_x at 8:10 PM on January 15, 2017 [46 favorites]


His tweets are better and tougher than anything from the "liberal" media.

Yeah, I wish they'd ask McMullin to write the headlines and ledes.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 8:17 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


whatever happened to Trump's secret plan to fight ISIS?

Um, hello, it's a SECRET!

Meanwhile, here's my crazy fantasy: I thought that the Democrats could have worked a lot harder on the whole "Congress has better healthcare than most; shouldn't the people have the same health benefits as Congress?" angle. To that end, I really want the next move by Dems to demand that all of Congress has to join the Death Pool. I bet that's one way to make the plan popular with the people!
posted by TwoStride at 8:29 PM on January 15, 2017 [6 favorites]




Well, I mean, he'd just have to switch back three months later.
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:30 PM on January 15, 2017 [25 favorites]


Kelly O'Donnell: Transition sources tell me @realDonaldTrump intends to keep using his own account as president, not switching to @POTUS himself

This is actually good news.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:30 PM on January 15, 2017 [36 favorites]


Someone please make a Twitter bot that responds to every Trump tweet with variations on "Stop tweeting and get back to work, you ridiculous bloviating asshole".
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:31 PM on January 15, 2017 [22 favorites]



I glad I'm not going to have to read Donald tweets with an @POTUS address. Whatever, let him do his ego thing. The concerns over Presidential recording keeping is mostly a non-issue because his tweet history is going to be saved and tracked to the point that his twitter history will likely be the largest 'recorded' collection of copies of a Presidential record in history.
posted by Jalliah at 8:38 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was thinking it would be great if everyone responded to his tweets with a simple "Fuck You", no matter what the topic.

A "Fuck You" postcard campaign would be good too. Going postcard shopping.
posted by bongo_x at 8:39 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]




Oh man, I just realized that trump has officially taken all the fun out of pissing on his grave when he goes. Someone should have told Thatcher about watersports.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:41 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Someone please make a Twitter bot that responds to every Trump tweet with variations on "Stop tweeting and get back to work, you ridiculous bloviating asshole".

I'm serious about this, BTW. Does anyone know how to make a twitter bot?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:41 PM on January 15, 2017


i could probably whip something up in the morning.
posted by localhuman at 8:44 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


People are going to start tweeting how happy they are that trumpie isn't using @potus that he will start using it out of spite or change it to @TRUMP_POTUS because it is all about the branding with him. yuck.
posted by futz at 8:45 PM on January 15, 2017


Clapper vs. Comey, hope that Clapper will prevail.

Hell fucking yes. One of these men has kept his head down and gotten the job done; the other has interfered in the processes of democracy, at best can't seem to run his own bureau competently and at worst is a Russian mole. (Might be worth watching Clapper and NSA Director Rogers testifying the other week. See what you think of Clapper's public behaviour vs. Comey's, last year.)

Sorry for the doom and gloom. I want to step away from all of this, but it feels dangerous to look away. I think hope is foolish, right now. I'd love to look back on that thought in a year or two and see it as melodramatic or overreacting, but this is just where the world is right now.

That's actually what I showed up to talk about. Probably the least fun thread on Metafilter in the past year was the day-after election post-mortem. Why: It's highly obvious Metafilter leans left politically. I don't, but I love this place because a) even our super-lefties are usually humane and brilliant b) almost everybody here values the truth, the high standard of discourse, above all else, and consequently they're willing to acknowledge good ideas even if they come from people with few shared political views. And, all you lovely people have been being fantastic citizens for the most part. The number of people who went out door-knocking when that clearly wasn't really your cup of tea was heartening to behold, because you all were fulfilling the office of citizen extremely well. So Trump's victory was particularly disheartening.

I think the Metafilter community has learned a particular lesson from that. The feeling seems to be one of disillusionment that the world is darker than we thought, that the forces of ignorance and stupidity have run roughshod over the Right Thing happening and society becoming healthier. That despite our best efforts the forces of Wrong have prevailed.

I want to suggest that's the wrong lesson to learn.

It's become increasingly clear the level of Russian meddling in the election is more severe that most people realised. That makes a marked difference, because it means that society is healthier than you think. It's taken an unusually high degree of malice from outside interests to help bring about the current result. So you need to factor that in: America is X% healthier than it looks, where X is a function of what 20 or 30 intelligence agencies (globally) figure out in the coming weeks.

Keep your chins up, everyone. (And if you need a pick-me-up today, check out this thread, originally about knife-cleaning, but eventually an eiptome of why Metafilter is great and yall are some fantastic motherfuckers.)
posted by iffthen at 8:47 PM on January 15, 2017 [67 favorites]




i could probably whip something up in the morning.

My hero. How can I help? I can provide various insults.

Stop tweeting and get back to work, you:
- ridiculous bloviating asshole
- gibbering shitweasel
- cream-faced babbling fool
- obnoxious festering canker
- asinine ragemonger
- moronic lying shitgoblin
- idiotic cantankerous toad
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:53 PM on January 15, 2017 [9 favorites]


Seen at a Mexican souvenir stand

Holy shit! It's the shirt I wished for. Sometimes dreams do come true.
posted by bongo_x at 9:08 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


I just searched DDG for "fuck trump tshirt" and it came back "including results for 'fuck donald trump'"

Duck.Duck.Go.
posted by bongo_x at 9:11 PM on January 15, 2017 [4 favorites]


Presumably including "donald" excludes all the queef results (the literal fuck trump).
posted by Buntix at 9:15 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I am a bit surprised to see that Evan McMullin seems to have been pretty serious. So there's at least 1 conservative who hasn't kissed the ring yet.

John Kasich. Probably the most prominent GOP politician who has yet to give into Trump in any way. Even Ben Sasse and Justin Amash have been warmer to Trump than Kasich has been. It has cost him politically and influence-wise and he still won't give in. (And yes, I know about his bad policy ideas.)
posted by sallybrown at 9:31 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Oh man, I just realized that trump has officially taken all the fun out of pissing on his grave when he goes. Someone should have told Thatcher about watersports.

what if I told you

you should take a dump on it instead
posted by Existential Dread at 9:33 PM on January 15, 2017 [18 favorites]


what if I told you

you should take a dump on it instead


Did we just become best friends?
posted by supercrayon at 9:37 PM on January 15, 2017 [14 favorites]


China threatens to 'take off the gloves' if Trump rips up status quo on Taiwan

China has stepped up its rhetoric against Donald Trump, with a Communist party-controlled newspaper declaring Beijing will have no choice but to “take off the gloves” if the incoming president insists on tearing open a Pandora’s box over Taiwan.

Taiwan’s assertive president, Tsai Ing-wen, meanwhile declared her country’s determination to “walk on the international stage” after two stopovers in the US that angered Beijing.

The China Daily warned on Monday that Beijing needed to ready itself for a “costly” battle with the property tycoon after he takes office on 20 January. An editorial said Trump’s repeated threats to abandon the “one China” policy could no longer be dismissed as “bluster or miscalculation” but instead appeared to be a deliberate and intolerable ploy designed to extract concessions from Beijing.

“If Trump is determined to use this gambit on taking office, a period of fierce, damaging interactions will be unavoidable, as Beijing will have no choice but to take off the gloves,” warned the China Daily, which the Chinese government uses as an international mouthpiece for its views.

The editorial was accompanied by a cartoon of Trump brandishing a hand grenade labelled “Trump’s China Policy”.


This is actually very serious. Does donnie recognize that? Does he care?
posted by futz at 9:38 PM on January 15, 2017 [35 favorites]


Oh man, I just realized that trump has officially taken all the fun out of pissing on his grave when he goes.

Maybe it's just my social scientist side talking, but this seems like a hypothesis that will need high-N empirical verification when the time comes.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:40 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


The word "costly" used by China could mean a lot of things but is probably related to the Trillion+ US Bonds that they own. Quite the expert business move there donnie.
posted by futz at 9:49 PM on January 15, 2017 [5 favorites]


Oh man, I just realized that trump has officially taken all the fun out of pissing on his grave when he goes.

Actually, since the reason he (allegedly) hired the prostitutes to urinate on the bed was to defile it (and thereby Obama), then it seems very likely that he would consider having his grave pissed on the gravest of insults.

This is further bolstered by his apparent disgust when Hilary went to the bathroom during one of the debates : "saying her use of the restroom at the last Democratic debate was "too disgusting" to talk about".

The evidence suggests that he finds urination (possibly in particular female urination), abhorrent. If it happened, any titillation he found from the golden showers incident was presumably from the domination and defilement than the urination in of itself.

Revised null hypothesis suggestion: Zombie Donald Trump is equally upset by males urinating on his grave than he is by females.
posted by Buntix at 9:56 PM on January 15, 2017 [22 favorites]


The urine thing is a non issue.

His money (or lack therof) is.
posted by porpoise at 9:59 PM on January 15, 2017 [2 favorites]


So, regular pissings at Trump Tower and all hotels them?
posted by bongo_x at 9:59 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


I guess I kept thinking of Donnie's idiot saber rattling with China as some kind of singular stupidity separate from the Russia concerns, but then I remembered that a weakened EU and China dumping t-bills and engaging in trade wars with a flailing US could make the future look bright for the SCO. So now I'm thinking this China stuff could probably be at the behest of Putin too, with Donnie thinking he's getting a Russo-American alliance against China out of it and Putin laughing all the way to the bank.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:03 PM on January 15, 2017 [12 favorites]


Yep. I think that's the deal.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:08 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


China's also moving big on renewable investments, and Russia is oil country.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:10 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


So, regular pissings at Trump Tower and all hotels them?

And, en masse at his golf-course, could make a festival of it... P-in-the-park...

Can't see the course's neighbours objecting. Probably even get Gov't approval since even the Tory leader up here called him "clay-brained guts, a knotty-pated fool."
posted by Buntix at 10:11 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Turns out, he hasn't invited the Australian PM.

To be fair Turnbull was shitting on him a little during the election. Shorten was shitting on him harder but I don't expect Trump to realize the difference between them being a complete fucking idiot.
posted by Talez at 10:16 PM on January 15, 2017


"China's also moving big on renewable investments, and Russia is oil country."

It's driving me crazy that Trump's putting in all these irrelevant dinosaurs whose time has passed who are acting like it's the 80s or even the 60s, while meanwhile we're down to the wire on global warming and EVEN IF THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN THAT, it's pretty freaking clear that renewables is a huge growth sector. And they're all like, "No, no, since my attitudes towards the world remain in 1982 and I refuse to conform my beliefs to reality, I'm going to ensure that not only do we all die from global warming, but I'm going to permanently hobble my country commercially and let the Chinese get way, way ahead of us in manufacturing and commercially-important technology."

Like, the Bushies did a bunch of stupid shit, but they at least had an eye on the main chance w/r/t money-making and commercial advantage (even while they talked a 1950s game to the electorate, they were pushing 2000s commercial policy in legislation and on Wall Street). The Trumpistas not only want to set on the world on fire, but they appear to ACTUALLY BELIEVE the shit they say about turning the economic clock back to 1950. I want to go shake the GOP and be like, "AREN'T YOU THE PARTY OF BUSINESS INTERESTS? DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENS IF WE LET CHINA AND EUROPE GET FOUR YEARS AHEAD OF US IN RENEWABLES WHILE WE FUCK AROUND WITH COAL SUBSIDIES AND DUMB CAR MANUFACTURING?"
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:28 PM on January 15, 2017 [73 favorites]


Yep. I think that's the deal.

If that's what the game is, Russia and China have a great hand to play. India and Pakistan are on their way to joining the SCO, India is a huge get and could make the SCO into major economic competition against a disarrayed west. Russia wants Iran in as well, and China's been making a lot of relationships in Africa.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:32 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]



Stop tweeting and get back to work PERIOD.
posted by mikelieman at 10:34 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


W/r/t China in Africa, I dunno, I sorta see them repeating the same goddamn mistakes as the Europeans, with the same eventual outcome.
posted by aramaic at 10:36 PM on January 15, 2017


Oh totally. But as was the case with Europe, the hangover is tomorrow's problem.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:38 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Stop tweeting and get back to work PERIOD.
Considering Donald's proven business judgement, I'd say KEEP TWEETING!! TWEET ALL THE TIME!!!
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:38 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


W/r/t China in Africa, I dunno, I sorta see them repeating the same goddamn mistakes as the Europeans, with the same eventual outcome.

Slight tangent, but China used to have great trading relations with Africa, apparently, and they did so fairly (unlike the Europeans): http://newafricanmagazine.com/chinas-long-history-africa/. Admiral Zheng He as previously on MeFi
posted by Buntix at 10:41 PM on January 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


So it appears the fine for public urination in NYC is $50. Just throwing that out there.
posted by bongo_x at 10:54 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


It's driving me crazy that Trump's putting in all these irrelevant dinosaurs whose time has passed who are acting like it's the 80s or even the 60s, while meanwhile we're down to the wire on global warming and EVEN IF THEY DON'T BELIEVE IN THAT, it's pretty freaking clear that renewables is a huge growth sector.

Oh, it is so fricking weird!!! Everyone knows the money to be made is the future money, especially if you're an America Uber Alles type, you must be for the future money. All of America's past money, except for the slavery money, has been betting on the future money. Industry money, war money, consumer money, finance money, all of it future money. During the election, the more future money money was all for Hillary, and it lost. Today, post election, future money is sidelined, yesterday money is ascendant, and everybody knows we've made the wrong choice, but we're going with old money over new because those are the rules. Shrug. Even yesterday money advocates recognize this! It is so maddening. Can we not punch ourselves in the face when it comes to money, too? Can we get Capitalism right?

No we cannot. Feh.
posted by notyou at 11:04 PM on January 15, 2017 [8 favorites]


The Rules for Democrats Begin to Take Shape, and They're as Bad as You'd Expect
Oh, this feud is ushering in hyper-partisanship? Because it wasn't already happening? You mean -- just to take some examples from this week -- there was no hyper-partisanship in Senate Republicans' decision to hold an Obamacare destruction vote in the middle of the night, followed by a House vote to begin the dismantling in earnest, both of which were strictly along party lines? There was no hyper-partisanship in House Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz's vow to continue investigating Hillary Clinton's emails, or in the president-elect's tweet describing Clinton as "guilty as hell"?

Oh, right, I forgot: There's no hyper-partisanship when Republicans portray Democrats as people unfit to live in decent society and Democratic policies as willfully destructive -- it's only hyper-partisanship when, as Lewis did, Democrats push back, or otherwise assert themselves.

[...]

I agree that Democrats should stay on offense. I agree that they should attack Trump on issues. But is Martin seriously suggesting that it was a mistake to stick up for Lewis? Is Martin saying that it was strategically unwise to defend a fellow Democrat, and express outrage that a man of Lewis's bravery and moral standing was maligned? [...]

Regrettably, that's where we stand right now. Defending John Lewis is playing into Trump's hands. Attacking Trump on his Russia ties reeks of partisanship if it's done by Democrats. And partisanship truly begins only when Democrats fight back.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:18 PM on January 15, 2017 [37 favorites]


Stop tweeting and get back to work PERIOD.

The big problem is he doesn't think he works for us. He sees being POTUS as a purely leadership role where he gets to wield as much power as he wants doing whatever he wants. He is now the king and we are merely his subjects; he does not answer to us, we answer to him. If we are lucky he may throw us a bone or two but he will spend most of his time and effort on building himself and his fortunes up.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 11:24 PM on January 15, 2017 [13 favorites]


I was thinking it would be great if everyone responded to his tweets with a simple "Fuck You", no matter what the topic.
A "Fuck You" postcard campaign would be good too. Going postcard shopping.


Trump lives in anger, traffics in anger, wallows in anger. Anger energizes him. Anger doesn't work.

Apparently, what works is laughter and mockery. When you're angry at someone, there's a tacit acknowledgement that they wield some kind of power to harm you. But when you're laughing at someone, you're unafraid of them, at least momentarily. I mean, the guy genuinely can't help himself from lashing out on Twitter every time Alec Baldwin appears on SNL. Remember the footage of the White House Correspondents Dinner from five or six years ago, where Obama tears him several new assholes from the podium while the entire room laughs? And the camera pans over to Trump, and he's just sitting hunched over at his table, stone-faced, immobilized, simmering with rage? That's his psychic kryptonite -- to know that the whole room thinks he is an absurd, inconsequential little creature.
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 11:41 PM on January 15, 2017 [50 favorites]


The reply to Trumps tweets should be, "BORING! NEXT!"
posted by From Bklyn at 11:43 PM on January 15, 2017 [7 favorites]


Apparently, what works is laughter and mockery.

I do harbour a secret hope that one of the bands at the inauguration plays this (preferably as mid-song segue from Hail to the Chief).
posted by Buntix at 11:51 PM on January 15, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also, about the press: please do not otherize. There is no 'them,' journalists are not a single entity, acting in concert. When you say "fuck them" but "the individual journalists doing great work right now should not be included in that, they're OK,"


There are journalists, there are the editors, then there are the owners. Don't pretend like we don't live in a class based society and don't pretend like newspapers aren't hierarchical, authoritarian organizations.

reporters don't make all the decisions within a press workplace, it's ok to hate their bosses for their editorial positions and the positions on which stories are covered and which are not covered, regardless of the quality of the job the journalist does.
posted by eustatic at 12:02 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


fwiw, i found this month-old speech by newt gingrich 'explaining trumpism' interesting in the 'how they see themselves' vein (vs. how we paint them) -- (gnostic)* saviors of course, whether it's comprehensive or not :P count the military references (granted it's at the national defense university ;) and hunting metaphors! establishing security and acquiring provisions justifies all kinds of (primitive)† behavior from 'tribal chiefs' and also highlights the (shameless!) accuse-them-of-what-you're-doing aspect of their politicking. like in the Q&A at the end, i thought this was telling:
If you look at why is Haiti not developed? More than enough money has gone into Haiti to develop Haiti. You can't develop Haiti right now because the elites don't want it developed. It'll break their control. Why is it, in Africa there are countries that do not go to modern telecommunications? Well, because there are powerful local families making money off of highly rationed, inadequate communication system. I went to the World Bank, and I said, why is this going on? They said, well, because the local folks don't want change. I would say, we want to be in the business of really effective implementation. We want State and AID to be a part of a coordinated national strategy.
so elites in defense of an ancient régimes?

which brings me to...
What Vladimir Putin really wants from Donald Trump - "The Kremlin craves a world in which national interests replace international rules..." (multicultural cosmopolitanism is a thread to transnational fascism, cf. 'brexit saviours')

alongside this you have, as the grinch would have it: "the third great effort to break free from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal system that has dominated American government for more than 80 years." (to fully turn back the 'third revolution' of progressive gov't)

> It seems to me that the invention of the internet is like the invention of airplanes. Imagine one side in a war had airplanes and the other side were still using cavalry. Russia is able to use the internet to bypass our defenses and get disinformation into Western countries the same way an airplane can bypass any ground-based defenses and hit any target it wants.
The Germans have swept through Poland. They've swept through France. It's the summer of 1940. George Marshall is Chief of Staff, calls in the Head of Cavalry, and says, "You've seen all this happening, what are you going to do about it?" And the Chief of Cavalry says, "Yes, we've studied it very carefully. We understand what the Germans did, and we understand why Polish cavalry failed. We believe this requires the development of trucks that can carry horses close to the edge of the battlefield so they will be fresh, and we think that's the key" and Marshall says, "Really? That's fascinating. This has been a most helpful meeting." The guy leaves, he calls in Beetle Smith, who was the Secretary at the time. He says, "I want you to retire him as of noon, and abolish the post of Commandant of Cavalry". We forget, one of the reason we fought World War II so well. Marshall was cutting out people ruthlessly, particularly if they were intellectuals but idiots...

The other candidates are all buying TV ads. He's showing up at a mass rally, which is covered live on television. He then has 20,000 people with smartphones who take his picture. They all send it out on Facebook and Instagram. If you figure 40 people per person, a 20,000 person rally, is an 800,000 person system, about twice the size of MSNBC. For free. There's no exchange rate you can create that makes sense. It's like trying to compare Polish cavalry and the Wehrmacht in 1939. These are totally different exchange rates.

Trump also understands that you have to be on permanent offense. If you look at the Wehrmacht, the Army of Northern Virginia, and the Israeli Army, they all have the same doctrine. If you are surprised, one third of your forces go into defense, two thirds go on counterattack. You never give up the initiative. That's Trump. Trump's core model is, you hit me, I hit back, and I hit harder than you hit. He learned it in the New York media when he was a business man. He's on permanent offense. He gets up in the morning figuring out, how am I going to stay on offense? He understands that the media has to chase rabbits, so he gives them rabbits to chase, because if he doesn't give them rabbits to chase, they'll invent a rabbit.

If you were to go back, for the last two weeks, and look at how many stories there were about Mitt Romney, and say to yourself, do you think Trump minded that the media was fascinated by whether or not Mitt Romney would be Secretary of State? He bought two weeks of non coverage because he gave them junk they could talk about, and the media has to talk about something. The simpler and more stupid it is, the easier it is for them to do it. He doesn't try to give them lectures that are complicated, because they can't cover it. He just releases a rabbit, often by tweet, and the media goes trotting after it happily.
so with media saturation (monopolizing attention) and kompromat on the other: "We have no models currently, for winning the fight over social media..."

oh and re: china/taiwan
I think the fact that Trump went for Tillerson to be Secretary of State tells you something. The fact that he went for General Mattis tells you something. He's going to have very sophisticated people around him. He's also sending a signal to the Chinese, which I think is very fair. I was actually swapping emails with a friend of mine who really understands China much better than I do. He was reminding me, once again, that in Beijing this whole problem of One China is central to their identity.

I wrote back a very simple message, which is also something Trump has said. You want to collaborate, or you want to compete? If you're going to build islands with no one else's approval, and you're going to set up air security zones over contested islands, with no one else's approval, and you're going to devalue the Yuan with nobody else's approval, don't come and tell us what we're allowed to do. If we happen to hit one of your hotspots, fine. You think they're going to go to war over Taiwan? They might, if Taiwan declared its independence. They won't if Trump just accepts a phone call. Plus, Trump's other point. We sell billions of dollars of weapons to Taiwan while refusing to take a phone call. Well, which is it?

I am absolutely for defending the territorial integrity of Taiwan as a free country, as long as we also remind the Taiwanese every morning, they can't declare independence. That's the balancing act. I think the Chinese need to understand, when the Director of National Intelligence staff said this year that the Chinese last year, stole 460 billion dollars in intellectual property, that the DNI's estimate, I think the Chinese are going to face some very tough negotiations, and they ought to get used to it. I think we're not going to tolerate being run over, and we're not going to tolerate being lied to and cheated. If that makes some people unhappy, fine. I think a certain amount of reassertion of American interest is legitimate.
that's the mindset (or newt's) at least; i'd be more like, 'steal' all the 'IP' you want :D esp photovoltaic technology; more power to you! but i'm guessing this is some kind of balance of power/global realignment plan that pits russia/US vs. china or something, back to replacing international rules with national interests.

---
† viz. "Our mental processes — our expectations, instincts, biases, heuristics — have formed over tens of thousands of years to handle a short, joyless life. We are coded to survive, not to choose, indulge and frolic."
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM on January 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


It's going to be the Axis v the Allies all over again, just with a few small adjustments to team make-up and a wholesale swap of ideologies. Except Russia.
posted by Devonian at 1:03 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Or as Simon Schama puts it:

American Isolationism, Little Englandism and appeasement - the three moral pigmies of history now do their grim little smirking dance again

Courage, mes braves.
posted by Devonian at 1:15 AM on January 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


I'm mostly writing this comment as part of a process of thinking this whole thing through.

I think I mostly get Trump, himself, and why he's doing this. Alluded to up thread, he's basically a construction guy - and as big as the Trump Org is, it's basically just a juiced up family construction firm that's grown some tentacles. Mix that with serious narcissism, an aggressively confident but fundamentally not very bright mind, an ego the size of Manhattan, and possibly some dementia, and you can basically explain most of his behaviour.

What I don't get is the Republicans who have been kissing the ring, especially this week. I mean, if the Russian stuff is true (and it sure looks like it may be) then we're talking treason that will echo through history, here. We're talking the word Trump becoming synonymous with Benedict Arnold, kind of treason. We're talking, like, Judas.

The heat from that firestorm would surely destroy the careers of anybody contaminated by association, and would very likely destroy the Republican party.

That's the risk. Maybe it's not true - but if I were a Republican, I'd want to be damn sure. Even if it had a 10% chance of blowing up, the consequences of the explosion would be so dire I'd want to be certain.

So what are they thinking? I can only see a few options. They may simply buy the party line that it's trumped up bullshit like the Hilary emails and will eventually blow over. They may worry that it's true, but be confident that a smoking gun will never see the light of day. Maybe the think that even if there is a smoking gun, the American public won't care.

I guess I still don't understand why you wouldn't put some daylight between yourself and Trump, as even the slightest chance of Trump treason has massive consequences. Just in case.

If I were a Republican, I'd be very nervous this week. It looks like the IC is winding up for one solid punch before Friday. I'd be wondering what they have.
posted by generichuman at 1:45 AM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


The Republican leadership think they can get away with it, and they're probably right. Their calculus is: if it's not true, then we benefit from closer relations with the WH and excitement from the base. If Trump did collude with Russians, then we can all put on our shocked faces for a week or month, and then get back to repealing Obamacare. Only this time it will be with Pence.

There will be no shortage of Democrats available for bipartisan news conferences and investigations, if the worst is true. The feckless Republicans will use them for cover. "Who coulda ever suspected?!? We all acted as soon as we knew and we'll go forward, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans to restore our nation's future." You can easily imagine Schumer and McConnell at the podium together. Looking oh so serious & solemn.

This all hinges on Trump being found out shortly. Before any real damage is done. Once Trump dissolves NATO, encourages the Russian forces burning Kiev, and secretly transfers all the gold in Ft. Knox into Russian hands, then the above calculus and cover probably won't save the GOP leadership.
posted by honestcoyote at 2:38 AM on January 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


"So no one is moving out of the White House. That is the White House, where you can fit four times the number of people in the press conference, allowing more press, more coverage from all over the country ... That's what we're talking about."

They probably want a bigger room so that they can hold press briefings (not press conferences) like Putin's annual ones. More room for journalists from Better Homes & Gardens and Sports Illustrated.
posted by rory at 2:55 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


That's the risk. Maybe it's not true - but if I were a Republican, I'd want to be damn sure. ... They may worry that it's true, but be confident that a smoking gun will never see the light of day.

Hello there, and welcome to the 21st century!

The words "true" and "not true" don't mean what you think they mean anymore, and they are certainly not as important.
posted by sour cream at 4:17 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


The words "true" and "not true" don't mean what you think they mean anymore, and they are certainly not as important.

I should have said more accurately, I'd want to be sure that there wasn't a media-friendly narratival smoking gun. Like a piss-tape. Or actual footage of, like, Conway taking a briefcase full of money from a Russian gangster.

In Obama's farewell address, he reminded us all that reality has a way of catching up. That can be taken a encouragement to you and me, but just as much as a threat to the Republicans. In that spinning chamber of the Russian roulette pistol they're playing with, there miiiiight just be a bullet.
posted by generichuman at 4:26 AM on January 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


Apparently, what works is laughter and mockery.

See also: Mel Brooks' Springtime for Hitler
posted by mikelieman at 4:57 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Phew: the EC says UK can't negotiate any trade deals with the US until after Brexit. Which won't be before 2019.
posted by tel3path at 5:00 AM on January 16, 2017 [18 favorites]


What makes you think Trump, the GOP-controlled Congress and Theresa May will give a shit what the EC says? If you want the EU to fall apart, ignoring the EC is a decent way to light a match.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:11 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't know.
posted by tel3path at 5:11 AM on January 16, 2017


the EC says UK can't negotiate any trade deals with the US until after Brexit.

Not to derail, but what if they do negotiate anyway? Does the EU have any means to stop them? What could they do to stop them?

And to bring this back on track, sometimes I think that Trump has a better handle on reality than many of his critics. He realizes that what is or is not "allowed" does not necessarily coincide with what is or is not possible.
posted by sour cream at 5:12 AM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


I know that, and in fact have always known that. I'm just trying to figure out what, as a UK citizen, to do next, and I guess I was hoping someone might have some constructive suggestions, other than sneering at my naiveté and reminding me of the total depravity of everyone with any influence at all over either of our respective governments.

Of course that would've been too much to hope for even under the best of conditions, which do not currently apply.
posted by tel3path at 5:16 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


@AFP: Merkel says Europe's fate is "in our own hands"
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:17 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Stop tweeting and get back to work PERIOD.

I opened a Twitter account just to talk back to him. It's been amazingly cathartic.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 5:17 AM on January 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


if I were a Republican, I'd want to be damn sure. Even if it had a 10% chance of blowing up, the consequences of the explosion would be so dire I'd want to be certain.

So what are they thinking?


Honestly I think most Republicans are just trying to keep their heads down until after the inauguration. He was JUST elected. He's still popular with their constituents. Most of them endorsed him (and I still suspect some of them may have been threatened/bribed/extorted into doing so).

If they publicly turn on him now, they look like idiots. They enrage the constituents who elected them, and him. Besides, they can't remove him before he is inaugurated.

They are waiting for him to become toxicly unpopular. Then and only then can they impeach him without destroying their own careers.

I do believe that most of them are rooting for that to happen sooner rather than later.

Ryan is too prominent to hide. He is walking a tightrope right now.

...Why they decided to start moving on Obamacare right NOW under those circumstances is what I really don't understand. It seems like it can't end well for them, politicly. They don't have a better plan. Because the problems with Obamacare deep problems with the healthcare sector, actually, not trivial flaws in the plan. The more serious Republicans must know this, and know that their constituents are not going to be satisfied with the realistic outcomes of "repeal and replace."

And unless they nuke the filibuster, they can't really put a new plan into place anyway. All they can do is blow up the current system and screw everybody, including big insurance companies, who must be lobbying them hard not to do that.

So... What is in it politically for them to move this fast? Why not ignore the reconciliation option, propose a straightforward repeal, let the Dems filibuster their bills... and then blame Democratic obstruction when nothing changes? That seems like the better political move.

I'm wondering if they are trying to go fast so they can blame whatever disaster happens on Trump, before they dump Trump. Maybe?
posted by OnceUponATime at 5:19 AM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


In order to know what is 'possible' requires judgement and I'm not convinced Trump has that. C.f. his goading China with Taiwan. Without doing a little reading, a little studying how can you be sure you know all the wrinkles? He might have a tight sense of how to win the room, but that doesn't mean what he has brought to the room is the smartest/best deal possible.
Sadly I think the best explanation for what guides his behavior is pressure from Russia.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:25 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


They had a WaPo correspondent on Ontario Morning half an hour ago to talk about the impending inauguration. She was saying that obviously everything is ready but the mood of the capital towards this one is not very celebratory, which makes for a weird atmosphere. Then she launched into the musical acts the Trump admin were able to book, saying "...3 Doors Down, which I had to google."

TL;DR: ain't no one excited
posted by Kitteh at 5:27 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


This is actually very serious. Does donnie recognize that? Does he care?

While Trump's Dr. Lebowski is away grooving to the sounds his new air conditioner is laying down, perhaps there's some way we could discuss the idea that the guy who's going to crash everything into the nearest tree on Friday is not very sane?

Mental health discussions, here as in other places, are very delicate and our T-rump discussions are not, so it's a bit of a sticky wicket but it seems like we should be talking more about that.

If for no other reason than to transmute the infinite lack of evens into more nuanced takes of his ever-bizarre actions.
posted by petebest at 5:34 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


TL;DR: ain't no one excited

Everyone I know in DC is either protesting or getting the hell out of the city for the weekend.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 5:36 AM on January 16, 2017 [18 favorites]


Well? In my unqualified opinion, he probably has a personality disorder, but it's not clear whether a personality disorder counts as a mental illness:

The British Journal of Psychiatry Feb 2002, 180 (2) 110-115; DOI: 10.1192/bjp.180.2.110

And not to be cynical, but I would expect that certain personality disorders predispose some people to run for political office, so where do you draw the line? Can you see how problematic it could be to prevent certain people from taking office on the basis of a personality disorder diagnosis?

I mean, I agree that Trump is overtly unfit for office, but unless he were displaying signs of actual psychosis then it seems to be a matter of taste what degree of personality dysfunction is acceptable, and enough of the voting public have made their tastes sufficiently clear. Short of proving direct tampering with actual voting mechanisms, it would seem that their votes stand. (No, the UK doesn't have proportional representation either.)

Short of proving that Trump is having hallucinations or whatever, I doubt there's any way of disqualifying him now on grounds of mental incapacity.
posted by tel3path at 5:45 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Incoming press secretary Sean Spicer spoke with Tamron Hall and Willie Geist of the NBC TODAY Show Monday, and briefly used the platform to rail against the cold open from this past weekend’s Saturday Night Live.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:51 AM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


The reason why Republicans are supporting Trump is because, like, they want to hold on to their jobs? Sure, only 35-40% of voters currently have a favorable opinion of Trump. But those people are Republicans. Who elect Republican politicians. Who need Republican support to stay in office.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:52 AM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


I also don't know why Republicans are blindly supporting Trump. He is already toxic and unpopular.

Some combination of:
1) Pure human denial and groupthink. Thinking they'll somehow come out of this clean as long as they behave like everyone else.
2) Authoritarianism is a prime predictor of conservative ideology and they're cowering before the silverback.
3) They didn't expect him to win in the first place, planning instead to spend another 4 years being shitty obstructionists, without a backup plan, and are screaming behind quietly sad eyes.
4) Actual preference for Nero With Nukes as long as he's racist enough and opposed enough to human rights.
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:55 AM on January 16, 2017 [31 favorites]


I opened a Twitter account just to talk back to him. It's been amazingly cathartic.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 5:17 AM on January 16


This. Although I haven't been sassing back at Trump so much as I have been praising my state senators for standing up to him (and encouraging them to boycott the inauguration) as well as sending my awful rep data on why the ACA works.

I also like sending Ryan data on the ACA and use Twitter to amplify my district and state Indivisible group.

I am still calling my rep and my senators regularly- tweeting doesn't replace that -but it feels good to do a little public pushback.

Oh and my other Twitter account I use for sending advertisers screenshots of their ads on Breitbart as part of Sleeping Giants - that also feels good because they are having success.
posted by hilaryjade at 5:57 AM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


The reason why Republicans are supporting Trump is because, like, they want to hold on to their jobs? Sure, only 35-40% of voters currently have a favorable opinion of Trump. But those people are Republicans.

Yes, but those numbers are not guaranteed forever. How many Republicans had a good opinion of Nixon, or even George W., by the end of their presidencies? Smart Republicans should be able to see that Trump's approval numbers have nowhere to go but down. Do they want to go down with him?

(This is all assuming our political system stays basically intact and that none of them have been waking up with horseheads in their beds, though...)

I forget which prominent Republican said that all they needed out of a president was someone who could work a pen, to sign their bills into law. I kind of think that's what Reagan and W were. But while it worked out for the party with Reagan, W shows how it can backfire. With Trump, it is likely to backfire spectacularly.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:02 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


With Trump, it is likely to backfire spectacularly.

I am impressed by your optimism, and wonder where it comes from.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:05 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Was hoping Buntix's link would go here.
posted by pxe2000 at 6:06 AM on January 16, 2017


Well, because the Republican majority will have a President who won't do what they want.
posted by tel3path at 6:08 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Some combination of: ...

I'd add

5) They expect the worst result will be a return to the status quo (in a slightly reduced position).

Taking UK politics as an illustrative microcosm: recently 2 of the longest running political parties in history have been torn apart by the centripetal forces of their willingness to forgo all historical principles in the pursuit of power [particularly north of the wall].

The dead pool odds for the Republican party really aren't good (for them) at this point. But it's kinda even between them and all-of-us who survives to poll another day.
posted by Buntix at 6:10 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Well, because the Republican majority will have a President who won't do what they want.

Depends what they want, really. They are not like us, they are not driven by the same things. there may be a lot more than we despise they are willing to give up if they feel the right people are being hurt.
posted by Artw at 6:14 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Congressional GOP are not moving against Trump yet because they are still waiting to see to what degree he will 1) sign off on legislation they want to pass and 2) not push programs that are wildly unpopular that will make the GOP lose seats in 2018.

I really believe they won't move against him until it is politically expedient to do so. His approval is gobsmackingly low, but it was gobsmackingly low before the election and the GOP did OK. They know this.

That is why it is very important to keep calling your MoCs and to recruit other people to do so. Let your elected officials know that we are out there, we are pissed, we are growing, and we are ready to vote them the hell out.
posted by Tevin at 6:16 AM on January 16, 2017 [22 favorites]


Also quite a few elected Republicans are dumber than a sack of hammers (Gohmert, for one) and haven't learned to do anything but yelp the right catchphrases on cue.
posted by emjaybee at 6:18 AM on January 16, 2017 [31 favorites]


Yes, I understand that Republican politicians do not have the same values as me. That had not escaped my awareness.

I also understand that THEY know what side their bread's buttered on. Trump does too, but it's not the same loaf of bread, and his fellow Republicans are not high on his priority list.

It may not be inevitable that Trump's party will turn on him. But it is absolutely inevitable that Trump will turn on his party. Do you see what I mean?
posted by tel3path at 6:24 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Goodness, Trump actually tweeted something I have no reservations about.
Celebrate Martin Luther King Day and all of the many wonderful things that he stood for. Honor him for being the great man that he was!
For a moment I thought I was reading @MatureTrumpTwts!
posted by Coventry at 6:25 AM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


Did someone already link this story about a Dem/Bernie rally? It's good stuff.

Democrats and labor organizers spent Sunday at dozens of rallies across the country, pledging to fight in Congress against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and any attempt to change Medicare or Medicaid. The party’s leaders faced crowds ranging in size from dozens to thousands of people, urging them to call Republicans and protest the push for repeal.

“Nobody’s gonna shut us up! Nobody’s gonna turn us around!” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the Democrats’ 2016 vice-presidential candidate, at a rally in Richmond that drew a crowd of at least 1,000. “We’re standing in the breach and battling for tens of millions of Americans!”

“Our First Stand,” the catchall theme for the protests, represents one of the earliest protests by an opposition party against an incoming president. Brainstormed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic leaders in Congress, each rally introduced crowds to men and women who had faced death or bankruptcy before the ACA went into effect, then challenged Republicans to listen to their stories.

posted by emjaybee at 6:26 AM on January 16, 2017 [26 favorites]


I am baffled by the faith in "good Republicans" on display. From here in the heart of let's-outlaw-trans-women-and-also-abortion land, Republican support for Trumpism requires exactly zero convoluted theorizing to understand. I had thought we had already hit that point on a national level, but I guess not.

I suppose I'll keep posting these kinds of things, then, until it sinks in. The status quo is a sunk ship. This is "normal" now.

New Bill Aims To Make Abortion a Felony in Texas
Previously, as with HB 2, GOP lawmakers have hidden behind the thin veil of “women’s health” when making laws that limit access to abortion in the state. But the new proposal is clear in its motive and comes after the Republican Party of Texas declared “abolishing abortion by enacting legislation to stop the murder of unborn children” as a priority for the legislative session.

The bill, which directs state officials to ignore “any conflicting federal” laws, would criminalize abortion except when a mother’s life is at risk due to pregnancy complications. The bill classifies a fetus as a “living human child” from the moment of conception, and it argues that a fetus has the same privileges and rights as “any other human child.”
posted by byanyothername at 6:29 AM on January 16, 2017 [30 favorites]


FWIW there are barricades up in DC as of yesterday (including the Library of Congress) and military folk in uniform walking around on the streets (more than is usual). The mood on Capitol Hill is not celebratory at all. It is the sort of nervousness that accompanies a forecast of confirmed, imminent bad weather.
posted by datawrangler at 6:31 AM on January 16, 2017 [26 favorites]


It's been amazingly cathartic.

Indeed it has.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 6:36 AM on January 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


Anyone know of a reliable list of current Breitbart advertisers? That seems like an easy fix -- targeted boycotts to take down the ones most vulnerable to controversy and consumer choice, scare the others away. It's worked well for reducing the power and reach of Rush Limbaugh, albeit helped by his reliance on a dying medium (and dying audience).

There are no good republicans. There are only republicans who act out of ignorance and ideological brittleness and fear more than malice. I know a few of them. Of course their ignorance is malicious in effect. And a lot of "nice" republicans are covering up a private level of (usually racist) malice.
posted by spitbull at 6:37 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Speaking of the new normal, today while driving into a large, liberal, metropolitan city, I saw a swastika.
posted by corb at 6:38 AM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


When did I say anything about good Republicans? I said Trump was inevitably going to turn on the Republicans. To be clear, all I meant that to imply was self-interested Republicans.
posted by tel3path at 6:39 AM on January 16, 2017


To be fair, in our liberal, modern, cosmopolitan city you and I, corb, are contributing our very high taxes to the expensive protection of a fascist demagogue, and he lives in midtown.

Not to Godwin or anything but wtf Trump Godwined us all .... Berlin was a liberal, modern, cosmopolitan city in 1933.
posted by spitbull at 6:40 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


"High Risk Pool" is certainly a phrase and it is a phrase in English but it makes no sense from an Insurance point of view.


I worked for a year as a Personal Lines Insurance analyst in Ontario. Ontario has a 'high risk pool' for automobile insurance (we are a no fault insurance province). It works by putting all of the drivers that are high risk from all of the insurance companies into one large pool that is run independently of all of the insurance companies and jointly funded by them based on their percentage of the market share. It's basically a small tax on all insurance companies working within the market.

It has to exist because everyone who drives is required by law to have insurance, even the truly terrible drivers. If a customer tries to sign up with an insurance company that company HAS TO INSURE THEM. They get no choice - in fact they were considered to be insured from the moment of contact before they even pay anything or sign anything. So companies dump the customers that they don't think will be profitable into the risk pool.

The funny thing is ...the year I worked as analyst the risk pool was actually profitable and beat some of the regular car insurance books because regression to the mean can sometimes bite your ass hard.

It's pretty unlikely to work that way with health care though since getting really sick is usually a one way street, a lot less random than driving accidents and with fewer alternative treatment options.
posted by srboisvert at 6:41 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Anyone know of a reliable list of current Breitbart advertisers?

Spitbull, check out Sleeping Giants--people are tweeting snapshots of advertising and encouraging companies to stop.
posted by armacy at 6:42 AM on January 16, 2017 [22 favorites]


Thanks armacy.
posted by spitbull at 6:44 AM on January 16, 2017


I am baffled by the faith in "good Republicans" on display.

Yeah, some Republicans may, individually, be decent and honorable people who want what they think is best for the country (I've been surprisingly impressed by Evan McMullin, recently, for instance); but the Republican Party as a collective is morally and ideologically bankrupt; their platform is an ugly mishmash of bigotry ("religious freedom to discriminate" laws, persecution of trans people, etc), spite ("I don't want my tax dollars going to those people"; this is the animating force behind things like Social Security and welfare cuts and ACA repeal), ignorance ("climate change is a hoax!"), misogyny, and authoritarianism ("blue lives matter!", willingness to spend a fuckton of $$$ on the military, the police, and prisons even if they're gutting everything else). And if you vote Republican, you're enabling all this. Republican officeholders are by and large endorsing it by virtue of that "R" next to their names. Pretending that there's any good faith there seems kind of foolish.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 6:44 AM on January 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


It continues to amaze me that it really can get worse every single day. The fact that Trump is going to actively work to break up the EU kind of crept up on me. I mean the writing was on the wall, but I'd been too focused on other horrors to really stop and think about this particular disaster.
posted by diogenes at 6:44 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


"Just wait until [authoritarian x] does something really crazy -- then you'll see his party turn on him!" -- a thing said in history, what, a billion times?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:45 AM on January 16, 2017 [31 favorites]


byanyothername, this is not new, and is of course going to be challenged assuming it passes. It's an attempt to take down Roe v. Wade, one in a long line of attempts. Given the situation on the Court, of course, there's a chance it might work, but even then it's going to take some time and the prochoice side is veterans in fighting this kind of thing.

I'm not minimizing it; I've definitely learned this year not to assume the stupidest/least Constitutional/worst-case thing CAN'T happen. But we're past panic and on to strategy.

Abortion remains a constant problem largely because, as Fred Clark at Slacktivist so brilliantly explained, once segregation became unacceptable, it was a fallback moral "high ground" that gives cover to other, less palatable Republican positions. In other words, if you can call someone "baby killer" you make it harder for them to criticize your kowtowing to the very rich and dismantling civil rights and infrastructure.

It's a sort of nutshell example of the Democratic problem: an issue that is nothing but moral grays and requires nuance and some scientific understanding and also respect for women. The Republican argument tosses all that messiness out, appeals to misogyny, and thus remains powerful for their base.
posted by emjaybee at 6:46 AM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


All right then, Trump is never going to turn against the Republicans. Saying he is, is just an expression of my contemptibly naive belief in virtuous Republicans. Got it.

I'll just sit here and wait for whatever happens next to us here in the isolated UK. Thanks for your support, friends.
posted by tel3path at 6:47 AM on January 16, 2017


There are no good republicans. There are only republicans who act out of ignorance and ideological brittleness and fear more than malice. I know a few of them. Of course their ignorance is malicious in effect. And a lot of "nice" republicans are covering up a private level of (usually racist) malice.

Up here in Canada if I'm really interested in finding out what a 'nice' or 'good' person is like deeper down I'll bring up something to do with First Nations. It barely ever fails as a litmus test. With other groups there seems to be an understanding that you can only talk freely with people you know feel the same so it doesn't always work.
posted by Jalliah at 6:49 AM on January 16, 2017 [27 favorites]


This is all assuming our political system stays basically intact

sssssOooooh, bad news there.

I would expect that certain personality disorders predispose some people to run for political office, so where do you draw the line?

I'd sayyyy . . . Inability to complete a sentence or elucidate a complex thought?
A manic need to lie or steadfast inability to answer direct questions?
An exclusive reliance on Fox news and twitter for intelligence briefing (admittedly a difficult one to define)?
A definite and predictable pattern of insults and misinformed judgements as sole communication with our global partners and governmental agencies?
Continued and flagrant lack of respect to the office, the government, federal law, his immediate direct reports?
Permanent inability to learn complex concepts such as economics, diplomacy, world affairs, or basic empathy?
An inability to accept criticism at any time in any form?
An immediate rush to lash out when criticized in any way?
Violent comments against genders, groups, or nations as standard fare?

Y'know, like that.
posted by petebest at 6:49 AM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


Trump is already advocating positions that go against Republican orthodoxy. Your mistake is thinking that Trump will not turn against Republicans, but that's backwards. It's Republicans who will find ways to excuse Trump's behavior and then, slowly, adopt them.

Denigrating NATO -- not currently a GOP position, but give it a few months.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:49 AM on January 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


Seconding byanyothername's comment on the centrality of abortion to many Republicans' adherence to Trump, and to Trump's likelihood of being re-elected.

There are HUGE numbers of people out there for whom "progress" on this issue - measured by the overturn of Roe v. Wade - would be sufficient reason to vote for Trump, either again or for the first time.

Every other setback in their own lives, and in the life of their community, can be plausibly blamed on Democrats generally and Obama specifically, especially on the time scale of a mere four years. Take away their healthcare, tweet us into wars (trade and real), rig the tax code for the rich, make life miserable for any minority you care to name, force us to think about whatever scandal you think will matter. None of that will make one microspeck of difference. He saved unborn children. Let's reward him and the senators/representatives who stood grinning with him while he did it.
posted by Caxton1476 at 6:50 AM on January 16, 2017 [20 favorites]


what if they do negotiate anyway? Does the EU have any means to stop them? What could they do to stop them?

Trade sanctions come to mind.
posted by Coventry at 6:50 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


*looks out from blanket fort*

"Is it over yet?!"
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:51 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


"With Trump, it is likely to backfire spectacularly."

I am impressed by your optimism, and wonder where it comes from.


Oh, that's pessimism. I'm saying he's likely to screw up badly, hurt the country, to be a terrible and deeply unpopular president. Even the most thoroughly conned mark eventually realizes they've been conned.

If we still have a democracy, then association with Trump will come back to bite Republicans in the ass, assuming you pessimisticly believe he will totally screw everything up.

Of course there's still a question as to whether our democratic system will survive. If not, the opinion of the people won't matter. On that question I am starting to become more optimistic, because of the size of the backlash we're seeing, and the momentum of the scandals barreling down on him. But it's still a very cautious optimism. The threat to democracy is still very real.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:54 AM on January 16, 2017


I don't know if you're referring to me, but when you say

Your mistake is thinking that Trump will not turn against Republicans

that is not in fact my mistake, because what I said was

it is absolutely inevitable that Trump will turn on his party.

But whatever, like I said, the UK government just made a Chamberlain-style agreement with this guy and not only am I completely alone in trying to figure out how to deal with this, but I'm already getting my arguments mischaracterized here as not-left-enough or whatever.

But then, you guys appear to be in much more immediate danger, for now, and there's nothing whatsoever that I or anyone can do to help you, so I'll have to figure out on my own if there's anything I can do to help my fellow UK citizens here.
posted by tel3path at 6:56 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Speaking of the new normal, today while driving into a large, liberal, metropolitan city, I saw a swastika.

In sort of fairness, in large, liberal metropolitan cities that isn't something that only racist skinheads do. It's also something that especially clueless young white doofuses do in the guise of "reclaiming the symbol" or similar twaddle. So very brave.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:56 AM on January 16, 2017


Yeah, the abortion thing is kind of this impossible third rail, that I keep hoping advances in technology will make unnecessary. Like that maybe someday pregnancy tests will be advanced enough they would alert when fetuses could be removed at just handful of cells, which could be removed and preserved for anybody who wanted to adopt them. Or as I call it, the SciFi Will Save Us solution.
posted by corb at 7:03 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


My comment was inartful, tel3path. I meant to say that you're not wrong in thinking that Trump will upend GOP thinking and, at times, take positions oppositional to conservative ideology and his own party. My argument is that it won't matter, because elected Republicans will offer little, if any, pushback. That's at least been the story so far. One just needs to look at all of his rivals who have so quickly and cowardly fallen in line. If that trajectory changes, I'll be happy for it, but I just don't see it.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:04 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


That would count as birth control, which they are also against.
posted by Artw at 7:05 AM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


I'll just sit here and wait for whatever happens next to us here in the isolated UK. Thanks for your support, friends.

Well it may not mean much but last I heard Canada isn't abandoning you regardless of what happens.

Canada is finding itself in a very disorienting position in all this. It's like we're sitting here, being really quite normal, with no major threats to social progress we've made, relatively minor issue with immigrant inspired animosity and we're watching the world we closely tied to go sideways.
WTF do we do?

FFS sake I overheard a conversation of our local McDonalds senior coffee klatch debating about who we should side with now since the US is going Russian.
posted by Jalliah at 7:05 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Or as I call it, the SciFi Will Save Us solution.

Or as pro-choice advocates call it, permanent criminalization of a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:05 AM on January 16, 2017 [24 favorites]


I am also Canadian.

I am about to renew my passport, not out of panic but as a matter of routine. Feels like being caught between a rock and a hard place though.
posted by tel3path at 7:07 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


This is quite interesting: A machine-learning competition for the identification of fake news.
posted by Coventry at 7:08 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


A machine-learning competition for the identification of fake news.

Great, now instead of A/B testing and focus groups the disinformation vendors can just test their stories against an algorithm.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:11 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was raised Catholic. At 13, I realized that my local church was pressuring us to vote Republican in elections based on the abortion issue and demonized abortion providers, portraying them as callous monsters who didn't care about children or their patients, which clashed with my own research on the issue. So I rejected both the propaganda and the demonization as soon as I knew that was what they were doing, and I was honestly off-put even then that they were trying to influence our political views at such a young age. There are many reasons I ultimately rejected my church (LGBT+ rights and women being unable to become priests other major ones), but that was a big one.

But a lot of my peers didn't do research to get the other side of the story. I'm willing to bet a lot of them are reliable GOP voters now.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 7:11 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


uh, I'm not allowed to show you because it's classified -- Trump attempts to leak classified intel, poorly.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:13 AM on January 16, 2017


Like that maybe someday pregnancy tests will be advanced enough they would alert when fetuses could be removed at just handful of cells, which could be removed and preserved for anybody who wanted to adopt them.

I would take abortion and a prison term over the terrible violence that would do to my moral system, which is pretty rudimentary all things considered but, I am proud to say, does still exist. If I don't have a child there is no one to whom I am infinitely responsible and thus nothing to be guilty of, but knowing that I made the raw materials for a child and put them in the human equivalent of a take-a-penny, leave-a-penny jar for any pro-life woman-hater to pick up and pocket and make miserable all their days? no, I will take the home surgery and the septic shock and the public shaming if I survive, first. the products of my body deserve better than to be given out like lollipops at the dentist's office to any fucker who wants them.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:13 AM on January 16, 2017 [48 favorites]


"We are sorry to inform you that robot Bleep Bloop Max 2000™ did not detect your pregnancy within the first four days of fertilization. However, since your fetus is now nearly the size of a poppy seed, termination is outlawed per the Every Baby A Miracle Act of 2017. Any harm that comes to your baby will be punishable in accordance with your state's laws regarding unlawful death. Thank you for visiting your local Uber Health Clinic! If you've enjoyed your experience, will you please let us know? And as always, tips are appreciated!"
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:13 AM on January 16, 2017 [42 favorites]


In sort of fairness, in large, liberal metropolitan cities that isn't something that only racist skinheads do. It's also something that especially clueless young white doofuses do in the guise of "reclaiming the symbol" or similar twaddle. So very brave.

"Are you telling me I can't do something because of the color of my skin? You're the racist! I'm taking it back, you watch!" /s
posted by Talez at 7:14 AM on January 16, 2017



This makes me feel better (and proud) but I'm also realistic enough to know that Justin and Canadian officials are more then likely going to have to play some 'kiss-ass' Trump diplomacy so we don't get utterly kicked in the teeth over trade deals. Even though I know this is why it's still going to be hard to watch.

Asked about Trump, Trudeau promises to stand for feminism and diversity

During a town hall forum in Belleville, Ont., Trudeau was asked about how a Trump presidency would impact Canada's relations with the United States. Trudeau joked that everyone in the audience leaned forward when the question was asked.

As he has in the past, Trudeau focused first on the economic ties between the two countries. He said the Liberal government emphasized those links in their initial discussions with the new administration.

"Canadians expect their government to have a constructive working relationship with the incoming American administration, and that's exactly what we're going to do," he said.

"We're going to make sure that we are fighting for Canadian jobs, Canadian economic growth, for opportunities for Canadians as it regards both our relations with the United States and indeed with the world."

But Trudeau also enumerated his own principles.

"At the same time, Canada is a separate country from the United States and there are things that we hold dear that the Americans haven't prioritized," he said.

'Immigration is a source of strength'

"And I'm never going to shy away from standing up for what I believe in — whether it's proclaiming loudly to the world that I am a feminist, whether it's understanding that immigration is a source of strength for us and Muslim Canadians are an essential part of the success of our country today and into the future."

The audience applauded.

posted by Jalliah at 7:16 AM on January 16, 2017 [28 favorites]


(not trying to derail things into my favorite abortion discussion just wanted to affirm that this shit is not new)

(carry on)
posted by emjaybee at 7:17 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


From Martin Luther King's Nobel Lecture in December 1964, a month after Goldwater was crushed in the presidential election. Sad that America was able to live up to MLK's ideals 50 years ago, but not today.
Another indication that progress is being made was found in the recent presidential election in the United States. The American people revealed great maturity by overwhelmingly rejecting a presidential candidate who had become identified with extremism, racism, and retrogression. The voters of our nation rendered a telling blow to the radical right. They defeated those elements in our society which seek to pit white against Negro and lead the nation down a dangerous Fascist path.
posted by chris24 at 7:17 AM on January 16, 2017 [23 favorites]


finished up the get back to work twitter bot. account is here:
https://twitter.com/you_work_for_me


Heres the source on github if you'd like to fork, or suggest some insults to add:
https://github.com/localhuman/backtowork
I'm still working on some documentation so it can easily be setup by others.

The bot selects a random insult from a list, and then selects a random emoji from a list to append to the end. It does this since twitter doesn't like tweets that are the same.

It runs on a cron every 5 minutes to check for new tweets and reply to them if the bot hasn't already done so.

It hasn't yet replied in real time, since our dear leader to be hasn't tweeted since i finished the setup, but we'll see what happens the next time he does.
posted by localhuman at 7:22 AM on January 16, 2017 [66 favorites]


The main objection I have to the MLK Day tweet is that Trump has demonstrated through his actions, right back to calling for the executions of the Central Park Five, that he has no respect for what MLK and others fought for in innumerable ways already. It's a completely empty, hollow gesture.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 7:22 AM on January 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


uh, I'm not allowed to show you because it's classified -- Trump attempts to leak classified intel, poorly.

What is he even trying to talk about? Holy hell.

"I looked at something uh, I'm not allowed to show because it's classified - but I just looked at Afghanistan and you look at the Taliban - and you take a look at every, every year and it's more, more, more, you know they have the different colors - an you say, you know - what's going on?
posted by Jalliah at 7:25 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Does breaking up the EU jive with any strain of traditional conservative thought, or is it pure Putin?
posted by diogenes at 7:28 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


What is he even trying to talk about? Holy hell.
Trump-speak is typically off-the-cuff, unconsidered, contradictory, strongly expressed, and essentially transitory. It mixes long-held beliefs and prejudices with barely-grasped facts and dawning realities. It’s like a bloke talking loudly in the pub who “just read this stuff in the paper”.
A guide to Trump-speak (grauniad)
posted by Mister Bijou at 7:30 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Well there is the evangelical belief that the EU is part of the Antichrist's gang during the End Times and therefore bad.
posted by emjaybee at 7:30 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


What is he even trying to talk about? Holy hell.

Yes. That.

Now when he starts talking back to voices only he can hear, what do we do?
posted by petebest at 7:32 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I never thought I'd see a U.S. President who was more inarticulate and ill-informed than GWB, but here we are...for the time being, at least.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:33 AM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


I looked at something uh, I'm not allowed to show because it's classified - but I just looked at Afghanistan and you look at the Taliban - and you take a look at every, every year and it's more, more, more, you know they have the different colors - an you say, you know - what's going on?

I guess he saw a map showing that the Taliban has been gaining territory in Afghanistan, but he's not clear on how the colors on the map convey that. Like he saw a map, and someone told him something, but he can't quite wrap his head around the relationship between the two.
posted by diogenes at 7:33 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


"I looked at something uh, I'm not allowed to show because it's classified - but I just looked at Afghanistan and you look at the Taliban - and you take a look at every, every year and it's more, more, more, you know they have the different colors - an you say, you know - what's going on?

His standard catch phrases of "what is going on?" and "something is going on" aren't going to work in a week. It's his job to know or find out, "what is going on" and fix it, or take the blame for "what's going on."

Or at least that's how government has historically worked. Now that nothing matters and we live in a post-truth, post-facts society, I guess who knows. Maybe he can rule by constantly having no answers and asking "what is going on?" at every public appearance. Rust Belt voters haven't cared yet, and there's no evidence they ever will.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:34 AM on January 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


@softreeds:
Trump says it's impossible Russia has anything on him because he's too careful
Trump confessed to sexual assault while wearing a lapel mic
posted by chris24 at 7:37 AM on January 16, 2017 [81 favorites]


"What's going on?" will become "I think you all know what's going on *wink wink*" whenever he'll need a scapegoat or a distraction.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:39 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Reading his wordsalad tea-leaves can't work. Other than as morbid entertainment.

He can either figure out how to communicate as a sane adult PEOTUS, or we can begin the (additionally) long, terrifying process of removing him for his "inability to discharge the duties of his (sic) office".
posted by petebest at 7:39 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Where/how can citizens of various localities be apprised of threat levels and suggested actions/precautions this week?
posted by slipthought at 7:39 AM on January 16, 2017


His standard catch phrases of "what is going on?" and "something is going on" aren't going to work in a week.

He's going to switch to saying "Hey, Wha' Happened?"
posted by diogenes at 7:39 AM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


I would take abortion and a prison term over the terrible violence that would do to my moral system, which is pretty rudimentary all things considered but, I am proud to say, does still exist. If I don't have a child there is no one to whom I am infinitely responsible and thus nothing to be guilty of, but knowing that I made the raw materials for a child and put them in the human equivalent of a take-a-penny, leave-a-penny jar for any pro-life woman-hater to pick up and pocket and make miserable all their days? no, I will take the home surgery and the septic shock and the public shaming if I survive, first. the products of my body deserve better than to be given out like lollipops at the dentist's office to any fucker who wants them.

I was just logging in to say the same thing! If I don't feel that I am ready to have my child, I'm sure as fuck not going to give the little winn-child to random unknown people who want one. The HELL with that.
posted by winna at 7:40 AM on January 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


I guess he saw a map showing that the Taliban has been gaining territory in Afghanistan, but he's not clear on how the colors on the map convey that. Like he saw a map, and someone told him something, but he can't quite wrap his head around the relationship between the two.

Someone suggested elsewhere something similar, he's speaking about a map with the colors representing different factions, so lots of colors.
It makes me think that it really isn't going to matter a whole lot in the end if he does get regular intelligence briefings because if you can't process the info properly then that causes it's own problems. Plus the fact that he basically just said 'Oh here is something classified that I saw' which really it looks like the only thing stopping him from actually divulging it was because he didn't really understand it.
This isn't someone trying to speak about something they saw in nuance that's for sure.
posted by Jalliah at 7:41 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Look, if Trump has not had a psychotic break by the age of 70 (no, he hasn't) then he's not likely to have one now.

He may be stupid and pathologically narcissistic, but neither of those things counts as mental incompetence for any official purpose as far as I can see.
posted by tel3path at 7:42 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


finished up the get back to work twitter bot. account is here:
https://twitter.com/you_work_for_me


you're doing god's work, son
posted by entropicamericana at 7:42 AM on January 16, 2017 [20 favorites]



I'm wondering if there is going to end up being two sets of briefings, one that IC writes for their own records and one where somebody takes that and dumbs it down for Donald and crew to increase the possibility that he might actually be able to understand it.
posted by Jalliah at 7:46 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


I think it's unlikely they'll give him any "classified" information that they don't want to fall into enemy hands.
posted by tel3path at 7:47 AM on January 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


Would it be legal/ethical for the folks giving him briefings to provide information to him in such a way that they would know if he leaked it another source? Similar to how moles are smoked out in spy movies? Or is that only a spy movie trope?

Because I think Trump is dumb enough to fall for it.
posted by Tevin at 7:52 AM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


Well, but then what? As pointed out, Russia is not actually an enemy of the US because the US is not currently at war with Russia.
posted by tel3path at 7:56 AM on January 16, 2017


The Rosenbergs were still executed.
posted by Artw at 8:03 AM on January 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


Given that the evidence does seem to suggest that Russia is, y'know, attempting to influence our elections to elect suggestible asshats in bad toupees, I think we can dispense pretty readily with the idea that they want to be -friends-.
posted by Archelaus at 8:05 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]



Would it be legal/ethical for the folks giving him briefings to provide information to him in such a way that they would know if he leaked it another source? Similar to how moles are smoked out in spy movies? Or is that only a spy movie trope?

Because I think Trump is dumb enough to fall for it.


It's not a trope. I've successfully used this tactic during a political battle when I was at University.
It's a pretty basic sort of maneuver in a corporate world as well.
posted by Jalliah at 8:06 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


As pointed out, Russia is not actually an enemy of the US because the US is not currently at war with Russia.

Espionage != treason.
posted by Etrigan at 8:08 AM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


I am not saying Russia are friends, I am saying they aren't legally US enemies for the purpose of indicting Trump for treason if he gives classified information to them, because the US is not currently at war with Russia.

Presumably the President of the US has some discretion in what he's allowed to say. I don't know what his legal status would be if he gave away classified information.
posted by tel3path at 8:08 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


But he's no puppet. If it's as warm as forecast on Friday, how will Donny be able to wear a coat big enough to hide Putin.

@SkyNewsBreak:
Russian government spokesman says Russia agrees with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that NATO is obsolete
posted by chris24 at 8:09 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


The funny thing is ...the year I worked as analyst the risk pool was actually profitable and beat some of the regular car insurance books because regression to the mean can sometimes bite your ass hard.

I can speak to this. I did IT for a chain of P&C brokers ( and finance agency ) specializing in financing assigned-risk policies ( didn't quite get the third piece of the integration in place, selling our own insurance policy )

They printed money. Progressive bought us to see if storefronts were a good idea. They decided to sell us to a bunch of fucking amateurs. That's about when I bailed.
posted by mikelieman at 8:12 AM on January 16, 2017


Look, if Trump has not had a psychotic break by the age of 70 (no, he hasn't) then he's not likely to have one now.

I suggest that his statements and actions make a good case for the hereditary dementia that his father suffered from.
posted by mikelieman at 8:13 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Look, that doesn't matter. There were plenty of people who argued that Reagan had Alzheimer's during his term of office, it didn't change anything then and it won't now.

As for giving away information to Russia, if he does that, it's already been explained that that doesn't count as treason.

Trump will NEVER be affected on legal grounds as long as there is ANY possible argument to excuse him. And, as pointed out, most likely no matter how good a legal case there is. I don't know what it would take to make a legal move against him, but whatever it is, we apparently still don't have it.

His conflicts of interests will NEVER be held against him, that much is clear.
posted by tel3path at 8:18 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm wondering if there is going to end up being two sets of briefings, one that IC writes for their own records and one where somebody takes that and dumbs it down for Donald and crew to increase the possibility that he might actually be able to understand it.

Well, this sort of thing is always done, for a variety of reasons, from "We don't need to tell the President something he might accidentally reveal" to "We don't need to bog down the President with a discussion of how this collection system works" to "We get one hour on his schedule and we have two hours worth of stuff, so let's gloss over this part quickly and if he wants to know more, you can answer follow-up questions."
posted by Etrigan at 8:18 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Honestly, in terms of mental health, Trump just proves that money and privilege are two protective factors to serious negative consequences.

He may not have psychosis , but I think I can safety say he is delusional.
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:21 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Flynn will do the actual passing of the information on to Russia, so what he sees is possibly more important.
posted by Artw at 8:21 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Well, I may have to consider a BMW in a few years, and just install my own turn signals. Jalopnik: BMW Commits To Mexican 3 Series Plant Despite Trump Tariff Threats
posted by spitbull at 8:22 AM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


No, he just believes whatever is convenient for him to believe. That's not psychotic, it's normal. That's why it doesn't seem odd to major sections of the population.
posted by tel3path at 8:24 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]



Just thought to add if the tactic of planting false information to see where it goes is ever used it likely wouldn't be just something done to catch Donald. I expect that whatever Russian connection that exists doesn't just happen through him. It's also through the people around him, maybe even more so.
This is also why in the future don't be surprised if it looks like his flackies are being hammered with things seemingly unrelated. Sometimes to get to the guy at the top you go after the underlings in the hierarchy. Donald with all of his connections is actually extremely vulnerable to these sorts of strategies.
posted by Jalliah at 8:25 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


The Rosenbergs are a great example now of the double standards we hold less powerful people to. We executed Ethel when no one even seriously believed she was actively complicit, too.

Whether or not Trump could be charged with treason depends very much on whether you consider a major cyberwarfare campaign an act of war. If so, and Trump's team colluded with Russia, treason would be exactly the right charge, because he effectively came into office through a calculated act of war.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:27 AM on January 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


An analysis of Donald Trump’s election win and the prospects for his presidency

Some of the most cogent writing I've seen on the topic (sorry)
posted by piyushnz at 8:28 AM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


Well, so far, only John McCain has used the words "act of war"... :D
posted by tel3path at 8:29 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


It is useless to discuss Trump in terms of mental health. He is the physical embodiment of the fact that if corporations were humans they would be psychotic.

It is to his benefit to be an amoral creature with a flexible sense of what is true and what isn't. He's everything American business is. This is what it looks like when we follow through on that "treat America like a business" nonsense. We get someone who, were he not a millionaire businessman, would suffer for profoundly antisocial behavior, but because he is, and because that's the sort of business America supports, it works for him.

But government is not supposed to be business. It's supposed to be where we govern, not rule, and we are supposed to govern at the consent of the people and with their interests in mind. He isn't capable of that.

It's not a good sign that what would be insane for everyone else is perfectly sane, and in fact reasonable, for a millionaire businessman. It's a worse sign that that's now what we get for a president.
posted by maxsparber at 8:29 AM on January 16, 2017 [48 favorites]


There are some good quotes there piyushnz.

My favorite:

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

I think that really gets to the problem in a way I had not been able to articulate before. Good read.
posted by Tevin at 8:31 AM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


I'm not arguing whether or not Trump is diagnosable as psychotic or not - I'm arguing he is unfit to discharge the duties of his office.* That does matter, it's not normal, and there is provision in the Constitution to address it.

* More specifically, I'm arguing we should be able to discuss his mental condition in terms of fitness for office. If we can't discuss it here, there's no way the country can discuss it at all.
posted by petebest at 8:34 AM on January 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


We still don't agree on when cyberwar is war. It sounds like hacking the DNC (at least before it became "critical infrastructure") might not qualify.

It could still be a felony if collusion was proven.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:35 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


As for giving away information to Russia, if he does that, it's already been explained that that doesn't count as treason.

It wouldn't be formal treason. Lots of stuff that isn't formal treason will still see you receiving a lethal injection.

The semi-interesting question for presidents is whether their revelation of classified material is a crime or whether that revelation only declassifies the information.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:36 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


fuck fuck fuck fuck

Sometimes putting the subtext into text is important.
posted by Artw at 8:36 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


If the NSA or CIA had evidence of substantive Russian involvement such that it would constitute an act of war, then surely they'd be doing more. Their entire purpose is ostensibly to defend the USA from foreign powers.

Thus, it's probably not as significant as many seem to desire. I mean it would literally be a coup.
posted by knapah at 8:37 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


FFS sake I overheard a conversation of our local McDonalds senior coffee klatch debating about who [Canada] should side with now since the US is going Russian.

Australia, too, could soon have to choose between the crucial economic relationship it has cultivated with China over the past 30 years and its 70-year-plus history of following the US into every military engagement going.
posted by rory at 8:38 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Well, so far, only John McCain has used the words "act of war"... :D

Keep in mind this is the same John McCain who has called for the bombing almost all non-Western countries at one time or another.
posted by srboisvert at 8:39 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm arguing he is unfit to discharge the duties of his office

Oh, he's not fit to hold office. You won't get any argument from me on that.

At best -- AT BEST, he's a compulsive liar and white collar criminal who lucked into a position of leadership he has no background in thanks to a weird historic collusion of racist vote suppression and media overreach that managed to net him a few thousand votes that only count in the electoral college and put him over the most popular presidential candidate since Obama.

At worst his a career criminal whose money has come, in part, from laundering money for foreign governments, who has been compromised by one of the governments, and whose win is, in part, based on the collusion of that government, the candidate, and an intelligence official who deliberately sabotaged the other candidate despite knowing this one might be compromised.

Either way, he's the human embodiment of a Twitter egg account, a self-confessed sexual assaulter, a miserable businessman whose only trick is to bust out his businesses gangster style and personally benefit from their losses, and not only should be nowhere near the presidency, there should probably just be a blanket protection order preventing him from coming within 500 feet of any other human.
posted by maxsparber at 8:42 AM on January 16, 2017 [37 favorites]


Australia, too, could soon have to choose between the crucial economic relationship it has cultivated with China over the past 30 years and its 70-year-plus history of following the US into every military engagement going.

They'll get us expats in the internment camps by asking "is it a trunk or a boot?"
posted by Talez at 8:44 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


> FFS sake I overheard a conversation of our local McDonalds senior coffee klatch debating about who [Canada] should side with now since the US is going Russian.

If Russia and the US decide they want to carve Canada up it won't matter who we side with.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:46 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Most of the talk about the ethical concerns about Donald's business connections are about the corruption of him being able to use them to enrich himself and his family, which is just more then likely to happen. There is less talk about the massive and unprecedented security risk it posses to the US in general because it opens up gaping avenues for pretty much anyone in the world to play tricky skullfuckery with the President of the US.

No one with a brain believes that his sons are gonna just skip around the world making their 'deals' and not talk to Dad about it. It's like they now have big flashing signs on their heads saying "Manipulate me, screw with me' and the more Donald tells the rest of the World to 'Fuck off' the more motivation he provides to do it. Many people seem to assume that it's just about greedy people making deals with greedy people and yes that's true and will happen. But take a country like China for instance. Do you really think they're not looking at how to get to him through his businesses and his family? It's just an blatantly obvious avenue to use.

It's a perfect example of something where what a person considers their greatest strength is also their biggest weakness and vulnerability.
posted by Jalliah at 8:49 AM on January 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


GOP County Official In Georgia Calls John Lewis A 'Racist Pig'

Hunter later said in a Facebook message to the Journal-Constitution that calling Lewis a "racist pig" was "probably an overreaction out of aggravation.”

“While I am grateful for what the Congressman did in Selma and other times during the civil rights movement, you get respect by showing respect,” Hunter said. “He is using his fame as a way to continually divide the races and in this case standing on the very much unsubstantiated claim that the guy I voted for [Trump] is racist and only won because of Russians hacking the election—which, of course, we all know didn't occur.”


Screenshots of the Facepals posts are choice.
posted by petebest at 8:49 AM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


>If Russia and the US decide they want to carve Canada up it won't matter who we side with.

Hold your horses there, friend. [SL Wikipedia]
posted by Tevin at 8:49 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Canada is finding itself in a very disorienting position in all this. It's like we're sitting here, being really quite normal, with no major threats to social progress we've made, relatively minor issue with immigrant inspired animosity and we're watching the world we closely tied to go sideways.

Let's not kid ourselves; we have threats. The current Conservative leadership race is exhibiting some of the same levels of wonkiness that got into the Republican Party between Kellie "Canadian Values" Leitch and Kevin "Senate Seats are a Profit Centre" O'Leary. My in-laws and I were mocking them over the weekend, but I also pointed out that I mocked the heck out of Trump when he started his run, and look where we are now. I live in Alberta, which (strangeness abounds) has the only NDP government in the country at the moment, but that seems to be inspiring a new level of political gamesmanship on the right.

The world does appear to be going sideways; we are not immune and we should not be complacent. This rise of right-wing authoritarianism - or whatever label - that is happening in the US and in Europe can spread here quite easily; "sunny ways" isn't enough. We have to stay vigilant and engaged.
posted by nubs at 8:52 AM on January 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


If Russia and the US decide they want to carve Canada up it won't matter who we side with.


Wonder what the Canadian version of "Wolverines!' would be.


'Mooooooose!'

'Poooooutiiiiiiine!'
posted by Jalliah at 8:54 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Most of the talk about the ethical concerns about Donald's business connections are about the corruption of him being able to use them to enrich himself and his family, which is just more then likely. There is less talk about the massive and unprecedented security risk it posses to the US in general because it opens up gaping avenues for pretty much anyone in the world to play tricky skullfuckery with the President of the US.

And for the rest of the world, it looks like we're going to get Trump attempting to destablise our currencies to maximise his companies profits: "Over the weekend, Trump said business at Turnberry, which he bought for £34m in 2014, was doing “unbelievably” thanks to Brexit because “your pound sterling has gone down”.

"When Trump officially reopened the resort the day after the EU referendum in June, he said: “If the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry. I think it could very well turn out to be a positive.”"
posted by dng at 8:55 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


'Mooooooose!'

Do not mess with the moose.
posted by nubs at 8:55 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Wonder what the Canadian version of "Wolverines!' would be.

Uh, Wolverine is the Canadian version of Wolverines.
posted by maxsparber at 8:56 AM on January 16, 2017 [19 favorites]


Hamilton Creator Pens West Wing Ode to President Bartlet & Co. — WATCH

Lin-Manuel Miranda teamed up with the podcast The West Wing Weekly (Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway) on this video, "What's Next?," to pay tribute to The West Wing.

This is highly effective pandering to my interests and the interests of many on this thread. It's also LMM's birthday today, so go join the gif party and wish him a happy birthday on Twitter.
posted by zachlipton at 8:57 AM on January 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


It looks like the IC is winding up for one solid punch before Friday. I'd be wondering what they have.

generichuman, what makes you think this? I would love to believe it's true but what is the evidence?
posted by torticat at 8:59 AM on January 16, 2017


Let's not kid ourselves; we have threats. The current Conservative leadership race is exhibiting some of the same levels of wonkiness that got into the Republican Party between Kellie "Canadian Values" Leitch and Kevin "Senate Seats are a Profit Centre" O'Leary. My in-laws and I were mocking them over the weekend, but I also pointed out that I mocked the heck out of Trump when he started his run, and look where we are now. I also live in Alberta, which (strangeness abounds) has the only NDP government in the country at the moment, but that seems to be inspiring a new level of political gamesmanship on the right.

The world does appear to be going sideways; we are not immune and we should not be complacent. This rise of right-wing authoritarianism - or whatever label - that is happening in the US and in Europe can spread here quite easily; "sunny ways" isn't enough. We have to stay vigilant and engaged.


I'm well aware and have already spent time fighting 'Leitch think' in my own riding. This is why I couched my comment in relative terms. Ironically I can see the largest defense against it growing more is Donald himself. The more he screws around the harder it is for people to listen to Canadian trumpers touting how awesome he is.
That same coffee klatch just a few weeks ago would have been discussing Trump and the US in more 'well we need to wait and see' 'Trump not so bad' terms. I know I heard them. Very different tone now.
posted by Jalliah at 9:00 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Uh, Wolverine is the Canadian version of Wolverines.

Nah, Logan would say all that hub-bub wasn't worth the trub, bub, and just go get drunk.
posted by cortex at 9:00 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Uh, Wolverine is the Canadian version of Wolverines.

Come on we can't copy everything. Our resistance should have it's own unique identity. Though I suppose we could use it 'ironically' but maybe that's too hipster.
posted by Jalliah at 9:03 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


If the NSA or CIA had evidence of substantive Russian involvement such that it would constitute an act of war, then surely they'd be doing more. Their entire purpose is ostensibly to defend the USA from foreign powers.

Thus, it's probably not as significant as many seem to desire. I mean it would literally be a coup.


I think it's unlikely that they have evidence that is concrete enough to warrant a coup, but if they did, January 20th is the real deadline for taking visible action.
posted by diogenes at 9:03 AM on January 16, 2017


The world does appear to be going sideways; we are not immune and we should not be complacent. This rise of right-wing authoritarianism - or whatever label - that is happening in the US and in Europe can spread here quite easily; "sunny ways" isn't enough. We have to stay vigilant and engaged.

The election of Trump prompted me to immediately begin my citizenship process here in Canada so I can do a lot more on my part to make sure this doesn't happen here. Canada can upon occasion seem smug to outsiders, and while we have a lot of problems of our own, I'll be damned if I let that shit infect the country I've come to love.
posted by Kitteh at 9:04 AM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


Come on we can't copy everything. Our resistance should have it's own unique identity.

How about "Martens!!"

Another mustelid like wolverines, but more adaptable and wily; also native to your area.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:06 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Uh, Wolverine is the Canadian version of Wolverines.

Aaaaaannnnnnd I just realized how slow I am today.

Oh wait Wolverine, X-Men

vs

Wolverines - Red Dawn

Pop culture can be tricky.
posted by Jalliah at 9:09 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Nah, Logan would say all that hub-bub wasn't worth the trub, bub, and just go get drunk.

You trying to throw down punk,
I got the low-down, punk
On Logan spitting out slogans
Don't you give me that junk
Punk
Enemy of the state yo
Compiled 2008 yo
Logan bands with the hand
To do as they planned
Working for Hydra
My my my ha
Spreading terror through the land
Yo
You gonna rap battle with me
On Logan? Seriously?
How did the series end
Friend
With its curves and wends,
friend
A moment of clarity
From Wolverine
A rarity
And what was the plan
from the band of the Hand?

To assassinate the president
Of the motherfucking
US of A
Bae.
posted by maxsparber at 9:15 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


The election of Trump prompted me to immediately begin my citizenship process here in Canada so I can do a lot more on my part to make sure this doesn't happen here. Canada can upon occasion seem smug to outsiders, and while we have a lot of problems of our own, I'll be damned if I let that shit infect the country I've come to love.

That's funny. The election of Trump prompted me to immediately suspend my citizenship process here in the United States. I live in a liberal part of MA, my vote won't affect a D turnaround, and if push comes to shove with the whole overt fascism rather than cryptofascism, I would rather be kicked out as a foreigner than be forced to live behind Trump's wall as a citizen.
posted by Talez at 9:16 AM on January 16, 2017


Well, I'm not planning on going home to the US for four years, barring family emergencies. I've opted to become a citizen of someplace else and I am content with the decision (it was going to happen anyway, truthfully, but I can be incredibly lazy).
posted by Kitteh at 9:18 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


as of now we are up to 18!

18 House Democrats to skip Trump’s inauguration


25 now: No Thanks! These Democrats Plan To Skip Donald Trump's Inauguration
posted by indubitable at 9:22 AM on January 16, 2017 [16 favorites]




25 now: No Thanks! These Democrats Plan To Skip Donald Trump's Inauguration

Is the normal to expect Congress to show up and if you don't it's noticed? I know it's not normal to announce your not going which makes this great because it's a need political statement. Just wondering if in other years if members just quietly didn't go for one reason or another and no one really cared.
Did all of the Repub members attend Obama's?
posted by Jalliah at 9:28 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Donald Trump is Highly Unpopular

...when it comes to opposing Trump I say let more or less every flower bloom — policy attacks and character attacks from every point on the left spectrum. Who knows what shiny object will attract the media? Hell, twice in 16 years the GOP has gotten presidential elections close enough to steal over fake quotes and email server management. Who knows what will resonate? See what sticks. Hit him on the ACA. Hit him on everything Ryan is trying to do. Hit him on his ongoing corruption. Hit him on his alleged sexual trysts in Moscow. Try everything that might work.
posted by emjaybee at 9:32 AM on January 16, 2017 [34 favorites]


What I don't get is the Republicans who have been kissing the ring, especially this week. I mean, if the Russian stuff is true (and it sure looks like it may be) then we're talking treason that will echo through history, here. We're talking the word Trump becoming synonymous with Benedict Arnold, kind of treason. We're talking, like, Judas.

The problem is, we immediately think of Benedict Arnold, Judas... but not Jefferson Davis. Because an uncomfortably large portion of this country is fine with what he did.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:33 AM on January 16, 2017 [23 favorites]


From The Times interview transcript, as summarized by me.

Q: Do you have any models, heroes, people you look up to from the past?
Trump: "Well I don't like heroes." I learned things from my father, but some of that stuff are natural traits anyway. Did I mention how great I am and how impressive it was that I won? I'm a natural at this stuff. Oh yeah, I learned a lot from my father.
posted by zachlipton at 9:33 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I live in a liberal part of MA, my vote won't affect a D turnaround

You have more credibility as an organizer/contributor if you're a citizen, though.
posted by Coventry at 9:35 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Today from cartoonist Tom Tomorrow: The Unbelievable Baby-Man - a.k.a. The Man Without Shame!
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 9:36 AM on January 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


It's not a real ticket to the inauguration ceremony.You still need tickets to get into the swearing-in seats, and those are still restricted to pre-registered through your congresspersons' offices. The rest of the inauguration activities are free to watch (from a distance), so Trump is offering tickets that no one needs for anything, that have no value, and serve only to collect data.

Still... It occurs to me that Jake and Elwood probably don't have anything better to do that day, so I'd better sign them up.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:37 AM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


You have more credibility as an organizer/contributor if you're a citizen, though.

Not really. When I was working on the HRC campaign in NH people didn't ask it and I didn't volunteer it.
posted by Talez at 9:38 AM on January 16, 2017


Not nice but it's good to keep tabs on these folks and in a dark way this is sorta good news. The Alt-Right movement who started fighting with each other near the end of the election is experiencing a fairly major shake-up right now.

That's some very nice reporting Jalliah; thanks for sharing it. This story has started to hit the press:

Raw Story: Neo-Nazi media outlet collapses after fellow racists discover the founder’s wife is Jewish
Salon: The alt-right eats its own: Neo-Nazi podcaster “Mike Enoch” quits after doxxers reveal his wife is Jewish.

This is one of the more appalling details:
Peinovich’s wife appears to have been aware of the entire situation. She even appeared on “The Daily Shoah” several times, including a special holiday-season segment in 2015 where she read a neo-Nazi parody of “The Night Before Christmas.” Introducing the clip, which can be found online, Peinovich said his wife was “very proud of it.”
posted by zachlipton at 9:40 AM on January 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


Sanders on whether Trump is a legitimate president: "Well, I think he's going to be inaugurated" (video)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:44 AM on January 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


My parents, who live on the Canadian side of the border, are pretty apathetic about politics and had no idea what I was on about when I recently told them my wife and I will almost certainly not be visiting the U.S. for the immediate future for any reason whatsoever (the hardest part will be forgoing visits to Chicken In The Rough). They don't think much of Trump, but as far as they're concerned this is just another election with a winner and a loser and things will be back to business as usual after Trump takes office.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:47 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


...when it comes to opposing Trump I say let more or less every flower bloom — policy attacks and character attacks from every point on the left spectrum. Who knows what shiny object will attract the media? Hell, twice in 16 years the GOP has gotten presidential elections close enough to steal over fake quotes and email server management. Who knows what will resonate? See what sticks. Hit him on the ACA. Hit him on everything Ryan is trying to do. Hit him on his ongoing corruption. Hit him on his alleged sexual trysts in Moscow. Try everything that might work.

A thousand times this. You keep the pressure on a wide and diverse range of fronts, and then when some of those bear fruit you start to coalesce around them, and if they don't pan out you go right back to the default of throwing everything at him with new lessons learned. I think what makes it feel so disorganized is that it's not top-down, in this model new leaders will emerge from the bottom up, and existing leaders will glom on to what's hitting him the hardest in the moment where they've got political capital to burn, which makes you feel leaderless. This kind of schismatic Schumer tactics vs Bernie tactics vs Warren tactics vs Pelosi tactics vs etc... thing isn't leadership, partly because it really shouldn't be where we look for full-party leadership. They're leaders of coalitions, not Democrats as a whole. We need people to speak for the movement who can stand above the coalitions and promote their shared values instead of falling into "Pelosi/Warren/Lewis/Bernie/Schumer/Booker/whoever is going about this wrong and my way is the only way forward" crap. Call out people in the party who actively work against those shared goals, absolutely, but there's a difference between that and a power struggle for a one-way future in the Democratic party. This is what Obama was good at, it's what Ellison seems to want to do, it's what Rev. Barber is doing absolutely next-level work on, so it seems pretty clear to me that what you need in a party like the Democrats is top-tier community organizers out front.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:02 AM on January 16, 2017 [30 favorites]


I'm getting impatient for my first Canadian passport to arrive. Once that gets here, I start on my son's citizenship certificate paperwork. I left Canada when I was three years old, but have felt for a long time that I have much more Canadian than American values. Which I definitely did not learn from my Canadian father, who is an Objectivist (yes, Virginia, Canadian Objectivists etc).
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:04 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I just got back from MLK Parade. Which has multiple layers of issues in terms of coalition-building vs. community as a white person representing a majority white congregation.

Anyway, I think this sort of reveals the dysfunction in American culture. While my city is majority black, it isn't 90% black like the parade audience. So we have a problem where my white neighbors don't bother to show up for MLK Day, but will for Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Saint Patrick's day, which is a local celebration. My view on Trump observing it is that it's part of his fucking job as POTUS to show up and deliver the right ceremonial motions on National holidays. Rituals, religious or secular, are part of what holds a culture together.

I wasn't going to post about this until I saw the comment above about "racial division." To paraphrase MLK, we are divided. Civil rights advocates just make that division impossible to ignore. On the other side, someone last week on Daily Kos accused identity politics of being "transactional." Criticism of capitalism and the need for economic reform was baked into the American Civil Rights movement, Feminism, and Queer Liberation from their birth. Its just that people take MLK and now Barber for granted when they talk about economics.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:06 AM on January 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


We need people to speak for the movement who can stand above the coalitions and promote their shared values ...

"Perhaps that is how we need to begin to understand ourselves: Not as the already conscious leaders waiting for the deluded dreamers to awaken, but as one community of resistance, struggling to stay awake and aware ourselves, one community of resistance to the hate and the violence, ready to partner with other communities of resistance—climate activists showing up at Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and Black Lives Matter banners marching in pride parades—communities of resistance willing to build a more embracing dream together.

Because resistance is what love looks like in the face of hate. Resistance is what love looks like in the face of violence."

-The Rev. William G Sinkford
posted by diogenes at 10:09 AM on January 16, 2017 [26 favorites]


When I was working on the HRC campaign in NH people didn't ask it and I didn't volunteer it.

I have a noticeable accent, and I was asked about my immigration status quite often. One person was quite threatening about it.

I never worked off a targeted list of doors to knock, though.
posted by Coventry at 10:10 AM on January 16, 2017


As an example of how it's not transactional, every LGBTQ activist I follow has been campaigning for ACA, not out of a quid pro quo, but because health care access is a queer issue.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:13 AM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]




I'm well aware and have already spent time fighting 'Leitch think' in my own riding.

Sorry, Jalliah, I wasn't meaning to imply you weren't. That comment was just meant as a general reminder that we Canadians aren't immune, because I know I sometimes slide into some complacent thinking myself and have to confront it with my own family. My mother told me at one point not to worry, because "the system won't let Trump just do whatever he wants". Which, yeah, how's that working out so far, Mom? At the same time, I'm kind of glad because my Mom is pretty much on the right side of the political spectrum so to see her at least a little worried about what he plans is heartening.
posted by nubs at 10:25 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Guardian: Germany hits back at Trump criticism of refugee policy and BMW tariff threat
“The US car industry would have a bad awakening if all the supply parts that aren’t being built in the US were to suddenly come with a 35% tariff. I believe it would make the US car industry weaker, worse and above all more expensive. I would wait and see what the Congress has to say about that, which is mostly full of people who want the opposite of Trump.”

[...]

Asked what Trump could do to make sure German customers bought more American cars, Gabriel said: “Build better cars.”
lol
posted by jason_steakums at 10:27 AM on January 16, 2017 [35 favorites]


CNN to Sean Spicer: Jim Acosta 'has our complete support':
CNN responded in its statement on Monday: "As we have learned many times, just because Sean Spicer says something doesn't make it true. Jim Acosta is a veteran reporter with the utmost integrity and extensive experience in covering both the White House and the President-elect."
This is an extraordinary statement from a media outlet about the incoming White House Press Secretary.

This is also a good time to mention that time when Spicer told a reporter "I don't know. I'm not a lawyer." when asked whether Trump's comments on the Access Hollywood tape constituted sexual assault. Then he denied ever saying that to a different reporter. Then the original reporter produced an audio tape. That guy is about to become the press secretary.
posted by zachlipton at 10:33 AM on January 16, 2017 [46 favorites]


Consider this scenario: Suppose Russia supported Trump meaning for his presidency to be a psychological weapon to use against America, a kind of political H Bomb (or maybe Agent Orange is more the kind of appalling weapon it's most comparable to), because they knew he'd be a disaster and his alignment with white supremacist and other intolerance oriented groups could be used to further incite sectarian division in America.

Now suppose Trump dealt with Russia, naively hoping to form a good faith foreign policy alliance for our mutual benefit, but of course, Moscow didn't bargain in good faith or let slip their true intentions in bargaining with the Trump team: Trump temperamentally could never admit he got beaten in the deal, so he'd deny it at a fundamental, psychological level, making him an ideal mark and unwitting stooge. Narcissism is also a hell of a weakness in the long run, even if it can seem like an asset short term.

Also, I don't think it should matter for the purposes of Treason charges, in theory, if Trump didn't know he was colluding with a foreign power in an act of information warfare. He knew he was colluding with them and was willing to help open the U.S. up to such an attack whether he understood the point of it was only to make him a useful puppet or not.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:37 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Apparently, what works is laughter and mockery.

See also: Mel Brooks' Springtime for Hitler yt


See also: Trumped
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:38 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I wonder how long CNN seemingly growing a spine will last. Probably it will be a McCain like on and off thing.
posted by Artw at 10:38 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I believe the correct response to being caught in an easily disprovable lie like Spicer has is to shout "FAKE NEWS" and ignore the reporter. Seems to be working so far.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:39 AM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


The more the press are attacked directly, the more they seem to care. That was a pattern we saw in the campaign, right?

If they can't speak up for vulnerable, marginalized Americans maybe they will at least speak up for themselves.
posted by Tevin at 10:40 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Yeah, it really is an encouraging thing to read from CNN and here's hoping the spine keeps growing, but standing up for one of their own is a far cry from standing up for the rest of us.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:41 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]




I wonder how long CNN seemingly growing a spine will last.

Slightly longer than it takes for Trump to learn to accommodate them.
posted by Coventry at 10:46 AM on January 16, 2017


The MLK History Forgot
Almost 50 years after his death, we remember MLK as the transcendent figure who helped lift the South out of Jim Crow. We also remember him as almost preternaturally calm in the face of great pressure and danger. He was indeed all of these things. But the passage of time has obscured his dimensionality. In the last years of his life, King expanded his vision beyond the former Confederacy and took on a broader struggle to dismantle America’s jigsaw edifice of racial and economic discrimination—a struggle that took him deep into northern states and cities, where onetime allies became bitter enemies. He did so even as he strained to keep a fractious civil rights movement unified, and in the face of unremitting sabotage from federal authorities.
...
King envisioned such compensatory programs as benefiting African Americans and poor whites, whom he regarded as “derivative victims” of slavery and Jim Crow. In this regard, King drew on the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, who once posited that poor and working-class whites gained nothing from Jim Crow but psychological “wages of whiteness.” In return for the psychological advantage that “whiteness” gave them, poor whites surrendered political and economic power to better-heeled white elites.

As the 1960s wore on, King increasingly viewed American politics through the lens of class. In his 1967 book, Where We Go From Here, he wrote, “In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out: There are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and Negro alike.” King appreciated, of course, that African Americans suffered a very specific and targeted form of discrimination. But he embraced a radical economic critique that viewed racism as a cultural touchpoint that prevented working-class white people from acting in their better economic interest.
Won't somebody please think of the white working class?
posted by kirkaracha at 10:54 AM on January 16, 2017 [20 favorites]


I just got back from MLK Parade. Which has multiple layers of issues in terms of coalition-building vs. community as a white person representing a majority white congregation. Anyway, I think this sort of reveals the dysfunction in American culture. While my city is majority black, it isn't 90% black like the parade audience.

It recently occurred to me that the United States failed to actively pursue racial integration in one space that's really, fundamentally important: churches. And of course, that's because churches were the one public place that the federal government could not force integration.

I kinda now think it's the basic reason we're still such a segregated society, residentially and culturally. If you don't mix your houses of worship, you do not become a truly integrated community. Within reason, of course, and respecting various faiths and denominations, but as an example, I live in the middle of California's very diverse Central Valley, and here in town there is a large, traditional Catholic church that is fairly integrated, but decades ago the affluent white folks built their own Catholic church (and K-12 private, Christian schools attached) so that they could have 'their own' church. Our very Christian, very churched region worships mostly along color lines. We have a very large Assyrian population, but they remain insular among us, centered around their churches; Portuguese Catholics (mainly from the Azores) have their own churches and congregations; white evangelicals have a hundred flavors of their own made-up, pseudo-Protestant Christian churches (most with K-12 schools attached, natch); white fundamentalists (we have our fair share of Quiverfulls) skulk around to their shopping-mall-unit 'worship centers' in their extended-length, always-white Ford vans (to hold their 9-12 children); most Mexican Catholics have their own places of worship; African-Americans mostly worship at the gospel church on the west side of town, but mixed-race folks tend to go to a more evangelical-gospel church south of town.

When I first moved here, I was astonished at the tapestry of people and cultures just slammed together here in California (and still am), but find it to be a culture curiously apart--as in, folks work side-by-side just fine, diversity is normal, weirdness even in this conservative region is taken as a fact of life, stuff that you would expect California to be. But I also find that there is still this odd separateness, where cultures haven't integrated very much, and the quote I pasted up top reflects that. Until MLK is taken as a personal hero to all people, he will continue to be viewed as a "black icon," and 90% African-American crowds will turn up for parades today.

I look forward to the first cohort of boys named Barack, and hope that a whole bunch of them are white.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:57 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Martin Luther King III just spoke on MSNBC at Trump Tower after a meeting with PEEOTUS, and the lawyer who spoke right before him (evidently someone who worked with MLK, Jr.) held something up and talked about a "Trump Card" the audience would soon be reading about. So I'm guessing maybe a national ID system?
posted by XMLicious at 11:00 AM on January 16, 2017


I kinda now think it's the basic reason we're still such a segregated society, residentially and culturally. If you don't mix your houses of worship, you do not become a truly integrated community.

And yet Jews were at the front lines in the civil rights movement and beyond.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 11:01 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


And yet Jews were at the front lines in the civil rights movement and beyond.

Solidarity and integration are two different things. Many people of all kinds fought for civil rights, yet here we are.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:03 AM on January 16, 2017


TPM claims that Monica Crowley is backing out. "Pursuing other opportunities" that probably don't bring up her plagiarism cases as much, I guess...
posted by TwoStride at 11:11 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


I, for one, think it is interesting the King was assassinated only after he began publicly speaking opposition to the war and began speaking about class and wealth inequity.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:13 AM on January 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


Speaking of backing out, the B Street Band backs out of the Inaugural Gala citing "respect and gratitude" for Springsteen.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:13 AM on January 16, 2017 [49 favorites]


So who IS going to perform? 3 Doors Down and...?
posted by ian1977 at 11:15 AM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hunter later said in a Facebook message to the Journal-Constitution that calling Lewis a "racist pig" was "probably an overreaction out of aggravation.”

Ah, Gwinnett County, about which we've heard plenty during the past year: majority-minority; middle-class non-white people moving into the western surburbs around Norcross and Duluth; white flighters in eastern McMansion subdivisions and rural types playing militia games; one early voting location because hey, why not. For various reasons, I was at the Lawrenceville mall last month, and it looked like... well, like America.

So who IS going to perform? 3 Doors Down and...?

No Puppet, No Puppet Show.
posted by holgate at 11:17 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yeah the Crowley-backing-out story is all over the place. Guess she didn't want to face the barrage coming her way.

Columbia, hopefully, may yet take action on her substantially plagiarized PhD dissertation. As usual, the right wing can only win by cheating. She's gotten by as "doctor" Monica Crowley for years. What a crock of shit.
posted by spitbull at 11:17 AM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


So who IS going to perform? 3 Doors Down and...?

Toby Keith. Because of course he is.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 11:21 AM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Can lack of ability to book musical acts trigger Article 25? I mean, there will probably be larger challenges the POTUS has to face during his term...
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:21 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]




And yet Jews were at the front lines in the civil rights movement and beyond.

Even in the 1960s, there were a visible number of Jews who were people of color. The Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago is primarily black, and dates back to 1918.

Jews never segregated their synagogues the way white Christians segregated their houses of worship, which was deliberate, meticulous, a product of Jim Crow, and is tacitly supported to this day. I know Jews who are people of color and have criticisms of their experiences in mainstream Judaism, so I don't mean to make this sound like Jews are without problems, but we aren't literally taught segregation at the pew.
posted by maxsparber at 11:30 AM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


Musical acts and congresspersons are okay for a start, but until Supreme Court Justices start saying they won't attend the inauguration will still be going forward.
posted by yhbc at 11:31 AM on January 16, 2017


At least here in southwestern Ohio, the Indivisible thing is really picking up steam. I went to a constituent coffee today in my gerrymandered district, and the place was PACKED. I went on my own, not sure if I would see anyone I knew, or what it'd be like. Turns out lo and behold I sat at a table full of people who had just decided to create an Indivisible group for our district.

This is the first glimmer of hope I think I've had since the election.
posted by mostly vowels at 11:32 AM on January 16, 2017 [43 favorites]


Regarding Crowley, she backs out over plagiarism, parcels of unqualified, criminal white men remain. What a world, what a world,
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:33 AM on January 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


Meanwhile, US Marines landed in Norway today, the first foreign troops to be stationed there since WWII. Certainly can be reversed by Trump, but, like kicking out the Russian spies, he'll have to do it publicly.
posted by bluecore at 11:43 AM on January 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


-The Rev. William G Sinkford

Hey, I've met him. He came to our little UU church back when he was serving as the Unitarian Pope.
posted by octothorpe at 11:44 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yeah, you have to think those Norway troops will be back stateside next weekend.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:45 AM on January 16, 2017


Some news everyone can be happy about:

Scalpers losing money on tickets to Trump inauguration
posted by Artw at 11:50 AM on January 16, 2017 [59 favorites]


GOP County Official In Georgia Calls John Lewis A 'Racist Pig'

I am not going to let this go.
posted by bongo_x at 11:54 AM on January 16, 2017 [20 favorites]


The segregation of churches was actually a shock to me as a kid, when I found out that we had a black "sister church" affiliated with ours. Before that I just assumed no black people wanted to come to our church, if I even thought about it. Our church was white, fairly wealthy, with a big new auditorium and lots of programs and events.

Once we invited some of the other church's speakers and I think a trumpeter to participate in our services. And I remember some of the adults looking distinctly grump/uncomfortable about it. I was so naive that I didn't understand why, since they did a perfectly fine job.

Then the following week, my youth group visited our "sister church," which met in a tiny, rickety old wooden building. It was an energetic service, a woman got slain in the Spirit, which made our little white teenager selves nervous, and we never went back while I was there.

I did ask my folks "Why do we have to have separate churches?" and was told "THEY prefer it that way!"

And even as clueless as I was, I thought "Ok but their church is about to fall down, if they are our sister church, why can't they have a nice building too?" but I could sense there was no answer that wasn't "deep down, our church/denomination is racist."

I would wholeheartedly agree that church segregation feeds endemic racism. But then again, black churches are a safe space away from white people, and a source of strength for black people, so I would never want to say they should just meld into the white churches or white people should flood into them.

I'm not sure what the answer is. This stuff goes deep.
posted by emjaybee at 11:54 AM on January 16, 2017 [34 favorites]


For a scalper, you'd hope he'd have a better handle on the sunk cost fallacy than to attend a ceremony he didn't want to just because he couldn't sell the tickets...
posted by ominous_paws at 11:56 AM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


GOP County Official In Georgia Calls John Lewis A 'Racist Pig'

Not having to be politically correct anymore is going to be the rope *someone* gets hung with, for sure.
posted by Artw at 11:56 AM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Toby Keith. Because of course he is.

Keith is basically the country-music restaurateur version of Trump.

17 of the 20 locations for Keith's "I Love This Bar And Grill" chain abruptly closed in 2014/2015, most of them defaulting on their leases, and skipping out on their wait and kitchen staff's final paychecks.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:56 AM on January 16, 2017 [23 favorites]


Wonder what the Canadian version of "Wolverines!' would be.

"Sorry!"
posted by srboisvert at 12:01 PM on January 16, 2017 [23 favorites]


Cultural integration of churches is a pretty tough nut. In my lifetime, I think a better possibility are the kinds of multi-faith coalitions advocated and built by Barber.

More critically in my mind is the lack of integration in our civic rituals, especially the one happening today.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:05 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I recognize that MLK also spoke up about economic equality - and I'm not suggesting what I'm about to describe is happening here when that aspect of his career is brought up here at metafilter - but the people sharing "MLK was a socialist" stuff in my social media today tend to be the same Sanders supporters who were tailing against blacks for not supporting their candidate en masse. To whit, it smacks of "I told you so" or, more generously, "economics is what was really important about MLK." It's one facet of the man, but it seems to be just another way to subtly make the black experience in America subservient to a white narrative.

It is possible I'm being over sensitive.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:08 PM on January 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


I, for one, think it is interesting the King was assassinated only after he began publicly speaking opposition to the war and began speaking about class and wealth inequity.

When he gave the 'I have been to the mountaintop' he was in speaking support of AFSCME strikers. There are plenty of people right now trying to bask in his reflected glory whose life work has been a sustained and systematic attack on unions.
posted by srboisvert at 12:09 PM on January 16, 2017 [20 favorites]


The Potrumpkin Village presidency starts Friday.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:09 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


We're all the "P" in the Trump logo now.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:13 PM on January 16, 2017


A shitty comedian whitesplaining MLK and the Civil Rights movement to John Lewis is pretty much the last year in a nutshell.

@RobSchneider:
Rep. Lewis. You are a great person. But Dr. King didn't give in to his anger or his hurt. That is how he accomplished & won Civil Rights.
posted by chris24 at 12:18 PM on January 16, 2017 [28 favorites]


I simultaneously wish I had and am relieved that I do not have the sheer fucking balls required in order to feel like you're qualified to lecture John Lewis on the right way to do civil rights.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:24 PM on January 16, 2017 [53 favorites]


held something up and talked about a "Trump Card" the audience would soon be reading about. So I'm guessing maybe a national ID system?

He's probably just going to rename the existing Real ID compliance just coming into force. Perfectly in character, take someone else's work and slap his name across it in the most crass and tacky manner possible.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:24 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm so old I remember when Trump called NATO obsolete in March 2016. But I guess we were thinking it was a "campaign device" as Newty would say.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:25 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yeah, it really is an encouraging thing to read from CNN and here's hoping the spine keeps growing, but standing up for one of their own is a far cry from standing up for the rest of us.

It was an incredibly eye-rolly thing to read from CNN after our prominent cable infotainment network spent the entire election lavishing free air time and favorable coverage on Trump. You reap what you sow, you craven dingbats.
posted by indubitable at 12:25 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


If I was Rob Schneider, I would shove my face into my cereal bowl and never come up for air. And that's just from reading his own filmography.
posted by delfin at 12:25 PM on January 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


I simultaneously wish I had and am relieved that I do not have the sheer fucking balls required in order to feel like you're qualified to lecture John Lewis on the right way to do civil rights.

Not to mention that Lewis personally knew and worked with Dr. King. What gall.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:26 PM on January 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


Great Twitter response: Don't whitesplain MLK to the man who literally sat at the table with MLK. Man, Rob Schneider is a bigger idiot than I imagined, and that's really hard to do.
posted by TwoStride at 12:26 PM on January 16, 2017 [38 favorites]


....I didn't think that I could feel less respect for Rob Schnieder. But wow, what new depths there are to discover. What a piece of shit.
posted by Neronomius at 12:27 PM on January 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


And now Rob Schneider has done something even more stupid, boneheaded, and inane than Norm of the North.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 12:30 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I recognize that MLK also spoke up about economic equality - and I'm not suggesting what I'm about to describe is happening here when that aspect of his career is brought up here at metafilter - but the people sharing "MLK was a socialist" stuff in my social media today tend to be the same Sanders supporters who were tailing against blacks for not supporting their candidate en masse. To whit, it smacks of "I told you so" or, more generously, "economics is what was really important about MLK." It's one facet of the man, but it seems to be just another way to subtly make the black experience in America subservient to a white narrative.

That's a good point, thank you. I kind of see that as the flip side of what I was responding to, the claim that "identity politics" has no economic agenda at all.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:30 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


"From the makers of Rob Schneider is The Stapler comes, Rob Schneider is...a racism denier!"
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:30 PM on January 16, 2017


This year is particularly egregious, but MLK day is also National White Nonsense Day pretty much every year.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:30 PM on January 16, 2017 [32 favorites]


I'm pretty sure that Adam Sandler would be so fucking ashamed of Rob Schneider right now if he were still alive.
posted by Etrigan at 12:33 PM on January 16, 2017 [20 favorites]


Lewis personally knew and worked with Dr. King
And Schneider personally knew and worked with Adam Sandler. Ah, the days when the S in SNL stood for Shitty.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:33 PM on January 16, 2017


held something up and talked about a "Trump Card" the audience would soon be reading about. So I'm guessing maybe a national ID system?

Or maybe this?
posted by aeshnid at 12:34 PM on January 16, 2017


See also: Mel Brooks' Springtime for Hitler

My local indy theatre is showing The Great Dictator on inauguration day.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:34 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Hey, I have a question: I'm seeing a growing number of Congressfolk announcing their boycott of the inauguration (including my own representative, the inimitable Earl Blumenauer) but I haven't seen any senators speak up on this yet, just House members so far.

Pardon my civic ignorance, but does anyone know whether there's a legal reason for this? Maybe senators are required to be there for some procedural reason? Or is it just a matter of no senators having the courage to speak up? Just checking before I call my senators and encourage them to sit this one out.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:34 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Martin Luther King Would and Did Fuck Trump's Shit Up (Housing Edition)
King always believed that he had failed in Chicago, especially since Mayor Daley didn't abide by promises he made to King about open housing. But his assassination in 1968 was followed almost immediately by President Lyndon Johnson signing the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited housing discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, and sex. And this is where we get to Donald Trump.

Five years after King's death, in 1973, Trump Management was accused by the Justice Department of violating the civil rights of blacks and Puerto Ricans under the Fair Housing Act. Fred Trump and his son, Donald, were specifically named as defendants. And while the case was settled without an admission of guilt, well, c'mon, the evidence was pretty damning that Trump rental agents deliberately steered non-white clients away from all-white apartment buildings. Trump Management agreed not to discriminate and to advertise that all buildings were open to everyone.

So, remember, on this MLK Day, that when Trump attacks Rep. John Lewis, one of King's closest associates, the President-Elect is also going after the man and the group that fucked his shit up early in his career. That King continues to do so to this day speaks to how much he will always be far more powerful than Trump ever could hope to be.
posted by homunculus at 12:35 PM on January 16, 2017 [65 favorites]


...it is interesting the King was assassinated only after he began publicly speaking opposition to the war and began speaking about class and wealth inequity.

For people interested in the history of King's assassination, Hellhound On His Trail is a spellbinding read.

There were some shadowy figures behind James Earl Ray who could conceivably have pointed him at King and assisted with his escape in order to shape economic policy. Ray himself was almost certainly motivated by pure racial hatred, though.
posted by Coventry at 12:36 PM on January 16, 2017


@RobSchneider:
Rep. Lewis. You are a great person. But Dr. King didn't give in to his anger or his hurt. That is how he accomplished & won Civil Rights.


I had no idea there were that many gif's of people shaking their heads no. Damn.
posted by photoslob at 12:38 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


If King hadn't been murdered we would probably have a bunch of quotes from him in the 80's about what a shit Trump is.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:40 PM on January 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


Rob-a-rama, being an idiot on Twitter... The Rob-a-rino, whitesplainin'.... The Rob-meister... Washed-up has-been.... The Robster!

what is the deal with shitty former SNL cast members being dingbat conservatives? i'm lookin' at you dennis miller and victoria jackson, okay? hey cha cha, you're not ed murrow up on the roof in a london fog reporting on the blitz.. i mean it!
posted by entropicamericana at 12:42 PM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


one of the tweets supporting Schneider is all way to go you are using the liberal's weapons of "intelligent's" and compassion against liberals.

why yes, I do expect my snobbery w/r/t literacy to keep me a little warmer in my fallout shelter, thank you.
posted by angrycat at 12:49 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


I wonder how long CNN seemingly growing a spine will last.

Until Jeff Zucker is forcibly ejected from an upper-story window (metaphorically), this is Not A Thing.
posted by petebest at 12:52 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


one of the tweets supporting Schneider is all way to go you are using the liberal's weapons of "intelligent's" and compassion against liberals.

I have to correct you here. That tweet says 'compansion' not compassion. Hee hee.
posted by Jalliah at 12:53 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


why yes, I do expect my snobbery w/r/t literacy to keep me a little warmer in my fallout shelter, thank you.

Pedantry: the coat you wear on the inside.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:53 PM on January 16, 2017 [32 favorites]



I really like the word compansion. It's fun to say out loud.
posted by Jalliah at 12:57 PM on January 16, 2017


what is the deal with shitty former SNL cast members being dingbat conservatives? i'm lookin' at you dennis miller and victoria jackson, okay? hey cha cha, you're not ed murrow up on the roof in a london fog reporting on the blitz.. i mean it!

Don't forget about Joe Piscopo.
posted by octothorpe at 12:58 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Pedantry: the coat you wear on the inside.

Actually, that word means something else.

Sorry, couldn't help it.
posted by byanyothername at 12:59 PM on January 16, 2017 [12 favorites]




Don't forget about Joe Piscopo.

I've been trying, but goddamnit
posted by Existential Dread at 1:11 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Are any Republican lawmakers skipping the inauguration?
posted by yoga at 1:19 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


The John Lewis thing is reminiscent of when a prominent Brexit donor mansplained the Fall of Rome on twitter to noted Classicist Mary Beard.
posted by Rumple at 1:20 PM on January 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


Trump HHS pick introduced bill aiding company soon after his investment

--Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, raising new ethics concerns for President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary.

-- Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until 2018 a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulation that industry analysts warned would significantly hurt Zimmer Biomet financially once fully implemented.

-- After Price offered his bill to provide Zimmer Biomet and other companies relief from the CMS regulation, the company's political action committee donated to the congressman's reelection campaign, records show.

-- The new revelation is the latest example of Price trading stock in a health care firm at the same time as pursuing legislation that could impact a company's share price. The issue has become a major liability for the congressman after The Wall Street Journal reported last month that he traded roughly $300,000 in shares over the past four years in health companies while pursuing legislation that could impact them.


Welp. The Swamp welcomes its next occupant.
posted by futz at 1:20 PM on January 16, 2017 [31 favorites]


"Sorry!"

I can imagine that spray-painted on the side of a burning APC
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:28 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Then the rebels decamp to Yonge Street
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 1:37 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Don't forget about Joe Piscopo.

I forgot about Joe Piscopo once.
(Raises finger slowly)
Once.
posted by maxsparber at 1:42 PM on January 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


I remember when people said there's no way there would be a video of Rob Ford smoking crack.
posted by Damienmce at 1:48 PM on January 16, 2017 [22 favorites]


More than 30 Democratic lawmakers now skipping Trump’s inauguration

Each time this gets posted I ctrl-f for my rep Sheila Jackson-Lee, she's a pretty big bandwagoner so I could see her doing it, but also she loves being in the background of every important photo ever so I imagine she's torn... Now if we could get media coverage of the reps all skipping it together somewhere I think she'd be a lock.
posted by DynamiteToast at 1:58 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


I can imagine that spray-painted on the side of a burning APC

Also how to spot Canadian trump trolls on twitter.
posted by effbot at 2:02 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Enemies Among Us: An Open Letter to Those Attacking Senator Cory Booker

"Most recently, you've gone up in arms against Senator Cory Booker, who was one of thirteen Democratic senators to vote against Senator Bernie Sanders' proposed amendment that would lower the cost of prescription drugs. Amid criticism that he is in the pocket of big pharma, Booker offered to explain his vote by stating his concern over a lack of consumer protections that he felt the amendment did not adequately address. The amendment itself fell 8 votes short of the needed 60 for passage, so Booker's vote was in no way the deciding vote. Yet, of the thirteen senators who voted against it, Booker had the highest profile so he became the prime target of your rage. For that, I have one simple two-word phrase:

Grow. Up. "

Every one of Bookers facebook posts now has someone excoriating him about this as the top comment on every post. In fact, often multiple top comments. Funny, for the other 45 senators who elected to not testify against Sessions, their top comments are not "Why didn't you testify against Sessions?" on all of their posts. Huh.
posted by supercrayon at 2:02 PM on January 16, 2017 [41 favorites]


DynamiteToast there's the Houston Women's March on the 21st, maybe there'd be a good photo op for the representative there? (not to mention the obvious benefit of getting more support and visibility for the march ofc)
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 2:03 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Another Lewis who thinks Trump is a puppet? Takes one to know one...
posted by ericbop at 2:17 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yep, they're starting in early on Booker having proved liberals love a circular firing squad with their long efforts to tarnish Hillary Clinton with the "just something untrustworthy about her" trope.

And we fucking fall for it every time, like Charlie Brown and the football. Booker isn't the Second Coming of Eugene V. Debs, and he isn't Mitch McConnell's puppy dog either. He's a politician. Oh and he's something else that makes him a clearer target than Bernie or Elizabeth Warren, namely, African-American and ambitious.
posted by spitbull at 2:18 PM on January 16, 2017 [29 favorites]


Rob Schneider, despicable as his tweets and movies may be, is half-Filipino and probably shouldn't be accused of whitesplaining.
posted by galvanized unicorn at 2:20 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]




Rob Schneider, despicable as his tweets and movies may be, is half-Filipino and probably shouldn't be accused of whitesplaining.

You're implying that there's some sort of underlying logic to the concept of race in our society. There isn't.
posted by billyfleetwood at 2:25 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


Rob Schneider, despicable as his tweets and movies may be, is half-Filipino and probably shouldn't be accused of whitesplaining.


Wow, I did not know that and am glad to have it explained to prevent myself from doing that.

He's also the father of "Ex's and Oh's" singer Elle King.

Now today you've possibly learned two new trivia facts about some celebrity you probably haven't given thought to for a very long time until they said something stupid sucking up to power.

Welcome to the Trump Administration!
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:27 PM on January 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


Rob Schneider, despicable as his tweets and movies may be, is half-Filipino and probably shouldn't be accused of whitesplaining.

I will cheerfully say that he's nonblacksplaining or just assholesplaining.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:29 PM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]




In my social media, the Booker fire was fueled by an onslaught of outrage-bait headlines from known fake news mills, anyway. It was a distraction. It's irrelevant right now. Booker isn't running for president yet. Demonizing him on the left played into right wing hands. I'm not saying he's especially good either. But we wuz had.

/done with Booker topic
posted by spitbull at 2:39 PM on January 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


If you enjoy white privilege, which Schneider does, then you can be accused of whitesplaining.
posted by rocket88 at 2:42 PM on January 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


Interesting rumor: Trump labor pick Andrew Puzder has voiced second thoughts about nomination

Someone says "he may be bailing," no ethics or financial paperwork posted, hearings were scheduled this week but are now on hold.
posted by zachlipton at 2:43 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


That New Yorker cartoon with the marshmallow bit has been haunting me since I saw it this morning (from this study, for those who get the gist but not the reference); like, it's good sass, but fuck me if it isn't also way too on the nose. Trump's enough of a functional, seasoned bullshit artist that you don't really believe he'd take the first marshmallow, but there is no way in hell he wouldn't (a) fidget and stare at the thing during those 15 minutes and then (b) take enormous credit for managing to wait, for displaying AC-u-men, and throw in some comments on the side about how he was tempted for a minute there, and who knows, maybe he should have eaten the marshmallow, who here would like that, yeah? Yeah, you thought about it too. But he didn't! And that's why he won. And—

And a week later he'd still be tweeting about it.
posted by cortex at 2:44 PM on January 16, 2017 [52 favorites]


In my social media, the Booker fire was fueled by an onslaught of outrage-bait headlines from known fake news mills, anyway. It was a distraction. It's irrelevant right now. Booker isn't running for president yet. Demonizing him on the left played into right wing hands. I'm not saying he's especially good either. But we wuz had.

Only if you're already prepping for the next presidential campaign. That's a long way away. Booker might be nobody by then. He doesn't need special protection from criticism now. Now is the time -- at least within the Democratic party -- for the base to pressure politicians to live up their supposed ideology.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:46 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


Interesting rumor: Trump labor pick Andrew Puzder has voiced second thoughts about nomination

Someone says "he may be bailing," no ethics or financial paperwork posted, hearings were scheduled this week but are now on hold.


Just leaving the seat empty will fuck the DoL. Appointing a union-hating executive fucknugger helps to destroy it but they're not entirely needed.
posted by Talez at 2:46 PM on January 16, 2017


Re: the cartoon, I think there's an appreciable chance that Trump flubs the oath. Perhaps not quite this badly, but probably in a way that dredges up oath-retake arguments from January 2009.

Trump has never been one to do things out of "an abundance of caution," so maybe we'll finally get a definitive answer as to whether the exact text of the oath matters, constitutionally speaking.
posted by Leslie Knope at 2:50 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


That New Yorker cartoon with the marshmallow bit has been haunting me since I saw it this morning (from this study, for those who get the gist but not the reference); like, it's good sass, but fuck me if it isn't also way too on the nose. Trump's enough of a functional, seasoned bullshit artist that you don't really believe he'd take the first marshmallow, but there is no way in hell he wouldn't (a) fidget and stare at the thing during those 15 minutes and then (b) take enormous credit for managing to wait, for displaying AC-u-men, and throw in some comments on the side about how he was tempted for a minute there, and who knows, maybe he should have eaten the marshmallow, who here would like that, yeah? Yeah, you thought about it too. But he didn't! And that's why he won. And—

And a week later he'd still be tweeting about it.


There was never a marshmallow. The marshmallow story's been disproven. Everyone knows it. But they won't leave me alone about it. That's what they do, folks. They lie and make things up. Sad, really.
posted by rocket88 at 2:55 PM on January 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


Trump has never been one to do things out of "an abundance of caution," so maybe we'll finally get a definitive answer as to whether the exact text of the oath matters, constitutionally speaking.

I think you set your standards too high. Not everyone leans the oath of office by heart at eight years old like yourself.
posted by Talez at 2:55 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Today is the day that Neo-Nazis were to have their armed march through the streets of Whitefish, Montana, until enough of the community came together to stand against them and refuse them a platform. There's been no unexpected excitement in town today: instead the local resistance and human rights organizations I follow on social media are all posting messages about MLK day.

Small as the victory is, there are going to be many more like it in the dark days to come, and we will need to remember them as we try to light the way ahead.
posted by Rust Moranis at 2:55 PM on January 16, 2017 [48 favorites]


It'd be like the $2B Dubai deal he claimed he was offered and refused. "I declined it, because it was right to, but I totally could have done the deal, and that would have been right, too."
posted by notyou at 2:55 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


I live in Maine, with Paul LePage, who has said a lot of vile things, and has been an obstructionist and getting in the way of people getting their jobs done. Pretty much he has not helped our state, but he has helped himself and his Koch Brother related sycophants and his daughter.

Every time he has said something vile: the press reports it. Nothing is done.

They tried to impeach him but no one would stand up to him: nothing was done.

Meanwhile, we were denied the healthcare expansion, despite a population who desperately needs it. And no one did a thing. They all allowed LePage to keep bleating his nasty statements, such as, "The NAACP can kiss my ass," and other vile things, that no one in a leadership office should be allowed to say.

So for people who think that just this! Will automatically devalue Donald Trump. Guess what? It won't. He will blunder through and say whatever he wants and piss people off and not a one Congressperson or Senator will do a goddamn fucking thing about it. You'll be left wondering why or how this could be so: it's because none of them has the fucking balls to do anything about it, because it does NOT serve their interests, and therefore, we, as mere constituents, had better just eat shit and die, as far as they are concerned. Get ready, because this is your life now, America.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 3:00 PM on January 16, 2017 [35 favorites]


Re whiteplaining vs nonblacksplaining vs whatever:

Maybe when in doubt we can just go with assplaining? Seems a reasonable catchall word for all values of n-splaining.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 3:03 PM on January 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


I've never understood why Pazdar wanted the job. Why, if you hate workers, would you take on the job to protect their rights? I suppose you could take the job in order to make sure their interests are not promoted and their rights are not protected but what a miserable way to spend your days.

In fact I have wondered why any of these Billionaires have wanted jobs where they have to work for someone else and actually do work that is not promoting their own business. I get Tillerson because he will be promoting the interests of Exxon and De Vos because she is driven by something other than accumulating more wealth but if I was a billionaire (especially an older guy with only another 20 years or so of health left) I would not want to waste my time being a tool for Trump, subject to his whims and criticisms.

And then there is Ben Carson. I don't know what the fuck he is doing and I suspect neither does he. He does not believe in helping the poor and he doesn't know how to work in government so it should be a pretty bad fit all around. Maybe Steve Harvey's job is to jolly him along.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:05 PM on January 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


from this study, for those who get the gist but not the reference

The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment: much more enjoyable than the Stanford Prison Experiment.
We've been going about this all wrong. This Mr. Stay Puft's okay! He's a sailor, he's in New York; we get this guy laid, we won't have any trouble!
posted by kirkaracha at 3:06 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Are any of the millionaires actually expected to turn up and do anything?
posted by Artw at 3:11 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]




it's because none of them has the fucking balls to do anything about it, because it does NOT serve their interests, and therefore, we, as mere constituents, had better just eat shit and die, as far as they are concerned. Get ready, because this is your life now, America.

My husband and I had a little talk this afternoon. He says he wants to give up, return to being a Nihilist. I was the one who convinced him to vote for the first time for Barack Hussain Obama. This election broke his heart and it's made him bitter. However, I pointed out that Nihilism looks a lot like apathy and we both despise those apathetic voters who stayed home and thereby helped put Trump in office. We're not important people but if we throw our weight around and we get other people to throw their weight around and they get other people-- pretty soon you got yourself a powerful force that cannot be denied.

We must fight to protect our rights otherwise they will be stripped away from us slowly but surely. I am not bitter. I am not defeated. I am angry and ready to start throwing my weight around.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:16 PM on January 16, 2017 [29 favorites]


Are any of the millionaires actually expected to turn up and do anything?

I guess we are going to find out. We are also going to find out what happens when the President prefers to stay home all day and watch TV. I'm laying odds on the first one to quit and I'm thinking it will be Carson because I don't think he is a corrupt weasel in it for the power and the loot. Maybe after a year of trying to wrap his head around the job he will realize he is wasting everybody's time and offer his resignation.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:22 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Are any of the millionaires actually expected to turn up and do anything?

Besides tent their fingers?
posted by rocket88 at 3:22 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


So for people who think that just this! Will automatically devalue Donald Trump. Guess what? It won't.

I know this, I know this, intellectually I know this so hard, but every time anyone I care about checks their phone and says something like "oh, wow," there's this fraction of a second of hope that leaps into my throat before I ask what news they're looking at.

I expect I'll miss it, when this feeling is gone.
posted by deludingmyself at 3:25 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Re: the cartoon, I think there's an appreciable chance that Trump flubs the oath.

"I promise to protect and defend the Constitution, you know, like the literal piece of paper in the basement, that's what I'm gonna do."
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:25 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


"I promise to protect and defend the Constitution, you know, like the literal piece of paper in the basement, that's what I'm gonna do."

Nicholas Cage Watch 2017: beginning this Friday.
posted by deludingmyself at 3:27 PM on January 16, 2017


We must fight to protect our rights otherwise they will be stripped away from us slowly but surely. I am not bitter. I am not defeated. I am angry and ready to start throwing my weight around.

Fucking I'm angry too, or I wouldn't have posted my comment. I was just saying that the thing gets said and nothing happens, the Robber Barons take over and they bluster their way through it and no one stands up to them.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 3:29 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Follow Avril Lavigne
posted by armacy at 3:29 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


"Do you, Donald J. Trump, solemnly swear to faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of your ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?"
"What was that middle part again?"
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:31 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Uhghggh. This reads like the exact same argument that people were making about those who were critical of Hillary Clinton, and it doesn't seem like it worked out so good for Democrats. Maybe people should stop with the whole "I'm a real progressive because I want change slowly and I never criticize any politician who is at least 51% good." Jeez, maaaaayyyyybe cheaper prescription drugs are on the tip of everyone's minds right now and it's okay to criticize him for that, maybe Booker's explanation of how he voted didn't seem very convincing to people.

Articles like this make it sound like progressives should never criticize any progressive politician, but instead we should definitely spend our time ripping new assholes for other progressive voters for telling politicians they hate how they voted.


It's the same tired garbage that career liberals always trot out to insulate themselves from leftist criticism. How dare you criticize me for my terribleness, it is you that is really terrible for bringing it up and hurting morale, as long as I'm better than the other guy I must never be questioned (especially about why we should settle for "not the worst" in the first place).

Look at how many people, on this site and in this thread even, announce proudly how post-fact they are about the election. Honestly, after this election, I'm done ceding even this rhetorical ground. Hillary was the most qualified candidate on the ballot. Full stop. and whatnot. This mad desperation of the Democratic Party to refuse to learn from its mistakes is what's killing it.
posted by kafziel at 3:32 PM on January 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


Yes, I too, find not listening, ignoring facts to the contrary, and focusing on strawman arguments to be easier.
posted by asteria at 3:34 PM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


Follow Avril Lavigne

She's been through a lot with her lyme disease treatment and what not. That shit is really not fun.
posted by Talez at 3:37 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]




Shouldn't we be following Aamir Khan instead? I mean, knocking TrumP down from 68 would be... nice.
posted by Etrigan at 3:41 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


This mad desperation of the Democratic Party to refuse to learn from its mistakes is what's killing it.

There is really nothing significant to be learned from Clinton's loss and it's a waste of time better spent on fighting Trump and making sure our coalition can vote in 2018 and 2020. Clinton barely lost the EC while winning the popular vote as a sui generis candidate to a sui generis candidate against a set of incredibly unique external circumstances. Almost 11 million more people voted against Trump than for him. Making gigantic decisions in the heated moment after a loss based on what axe people have to grind won't help anybody. Because in an election this close, almost anything could've made the difference. So people who think Bernie would've won, or that she campaigned poorly, or that we didn't focus on WWC enough, or she didn't visit WI, can all claim to be right. But that says nothing definite about what truly made the difference or the general mood of the electorate. Remove any one of a dozen things and Trump isn't president. Trying to manage for a black swan is a fool's errand. Take out Comey, or Russia, or Clinton being a woman, or racial grievance after a black president or whatever and there would be no need to remake the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party would've won.

In 2004 everybody said Dems had to go after value voters to win, i.e. white Christians. Turns out we didn't. Obama won huge in 2008 by embracing the multi-cultural coalition the Dems had. In 2012, everybody said Republicans needed to pass immigration reform and attract PoC. Even Republicans said it in their autopsy. Turns out they were wrong. Trump won by doubling down on whites. Any decision we make now is likely to be wrong.

Dems don't need an autopsy, we need to get up off the table and keep fighting, because we're not dead yet. We're viable as is. Our ideas were more popular, our demographics are growing, our cause is right. If we want to analyze things, then analyze down-ballot, because that is where more of an issue was and one that has more meaningful impact going forward into 2018 and 2020. Because we can still win the presidency as constituted, if we fight Trump and make sure we can vote, and get that vote out.
posted by chris24 at 3:41 PM on January 16, 2017 [103 favorites]


Another story on a different pay-to-play deal involving Price: Trump’s HHS Nominee Got A Sweetheart Deal From A Foreign Biotech Firm

His team either didn't thoroughly vet their nominees or they were lied to. Probably a bit of both.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:42 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


Mayor de Blasio has posted that he will join the Trump protest on Thursday night.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:42 PM on January 16, 2017 [19 favorites]


Imagine if we applied this level of scrutiny to the dealings of everyone in Congress, even when they aren't nominated for cabinet-level positions.
posted by zachlipton at 3:43 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Liberals who have the small minority opinion among even their own allies give up in frustration because they can't make people understand that if everyone would just change their positions to match the minority opinion 100% there wouldn't be a problem with building a coalition.
posted by bongo_x at 3:44 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Look at how many people, on this site and in this thread even, announce proudly how post-fact they are about the election.

Don't be ridiculous. If you really believe that the statement "Hillary was the most qualified candidate on the ballot" is false, then make that claim and defend it. I don't think you can but I'm willing to watch you try. Who was more qualified than Clinton on the ballot, and why?

If in the run-up to the election some of us fell into the habit of saying things like "she's not a perfect candidate", it's never been because we believed she was unqualified to serve. In most cases I think it's just our habitual (and usually, futile) instinct to build bridges that led us to position Clinton that way, and I think it's that instinct -- to seek consensus when people argue against our candidates or our ideas -- that may need reappraisal, in an environment where the other side (and inexplicably, factions among our own side) would rather argue and deny and obstruct than do anything that might look like constructive progress.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 3:47 PM on January 16, 2017 [26 favorites]


Liberals who have the small minority opinion among even their own allies give up in frustration because they can't make people understand that if everyone would just change their positions to match the minority opinion 100% there wouldn't be a problem with building a coalition.

That's an awfully large number of words to say "People think they're right and get annoyed when people don't listen".
posted by Talez at 3:50 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Imagine if we applied this level of scrutiny to the dealings of everyone in Congress

Ah, but there you run into a brick wall because they've exempted themselves from most of the transparency and disclosure stuff that applies elsewhere, and how dare you question their honesty?
posted by holgate at 3:53 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Post-fact

What part of "Hillary was the most. qualified candidate on the ballot" is not a 'fact' exactly?

And here we are again, peeing into the tent.
posted by spitbull at 3:55 PM on January 16, 2017 [18 favorites]


but emails guys
posted by Justinian at 3:56 PM on January 16, 2017 [30 favorites]


Terrific. Just when we could have used a stronger, more informative cable news show

@GoAngelo MSNBC's Greta lauds Trump for healthcare plan that doesn't even exist, later adds that Dems need to work w/him to fix healthcare [twitter link with video]

What the fuck did they hire this FOX-tainted pundit for?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:56 PM on January 16, 2017 [21 favorites]


Ah, but there you run into a brick wall because they've exempted themselves from most of the transparency and disclosure stuff that applies elsewhere, and how dare you question their honesty?

Whoa, there, Mr. Circular Firing Squad! Stop peeing into the tent!
posted by indubitable at 3:56 PM on January 16, 2017


The worst is a circular tent-peeing squad.
posted by spitbull at 3:58 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


It's the same tired garbage that career liberals always trot out to insulate themselves from leftist criticism.

Dude, no. I voted for Nader when I was 18, and in New Zealand I'm registered with the Green Party. I am the national union delegate for my geographic area. I am very far left politically. I am far further left than the majority of Americans, and I am further left than most New Zealanders. And yet I think there needs to be a balance between holding our elected officials accountable - and yes this includes Democrats! - and trying to push them further left versus keeping our eye on the fucking ball.

I disagree with how Booker voted in this instance. I think people are right to say, Hey dude not cool. And right to scrutinize how he votes on this issue going forward to see if the pressure on him worked. Booker is a strong ally on some issues. He may be a shitty ally on others. The point is not to chuck him into the dumpster, the point is to push him further left and if he does that we should be happy our pressure worked, not go "THIS DUDE IS A CORPORATE SHILL ARGHLE BARGLE NEOLIBERALISM TO THE THRASH HEAP WITH YE." and then write off all his other efforts.

Politicians will let you down on some issues. Bernie consistently lets me down and pisses me off on racial and LBGTQ and womens issues. The head of the of the biggest nurses union in the United States said she thought we were more likely to get Single Payer healthcare under Trump than under HRC. Shall I write both of them off? Or do I recognize they're leading effective efforts in some areas even while sucking in others?

When politicians on your side of the aisle flail around the point is to pull them up (kicking and screaming if need be) to where you want them to be, not knock them down so someone from the opposition can take their place. Eye on the fucking ball - the ball is pushing out the opposition. We need to push them out of every elected position we possibly can if we're going to have a shot at undoing the political poison they've injected into our entire government. We don't need to never criticize our own side, but we need to not lose sight of the score on the board either.
posted by supercrayon at 3:58 PM on January 16, 2017 [60 favorites]


Although Trump might enjoy it.
posted by spitbull at 3:58 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


One Year Ago Today . . . *trilling harp music*

Gingerly, Donald Trump Tries Out Some Campaign Conventions

In Manchester, N.H., on Monday, after a traditional town hall-style event, the candidate who prefers dashing home from speeches on his private jet stopped by the Red Arrow Diner and ordered a cheeseburger plate piled high with French fries.

His debate performance Thursday night was polished, a clear result of some forethought and of absorbing lessons from debates at which he seemed to wing it. On Saturday morning, he will visit a barbecue in New Hampshire hosted by former Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts. Then he will speak at a Tea Party convention in South Carolina in the afternoon.

Until now, Donald J. Trump’s campaign has broken all the rules, eschewing rope lines, diner visits and decorum in favor of one-hour rallies, Twitter commentary and one provocation after another. But now, as some polls have tightened and voting nears, Mr. Trump is, very gingerly, starting to balance his unique style with running “the Iowa way” and “the New Hampshire way,” letting his unconventional instincts accommodate certain conventions.


Hey, he's just like us! And doing super! Golly, thanks New York Times!
posted by petebest at 4:00 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


Mod note: One comment deleted. Maybe let's not go through another round of the circular firing squad about circular firing squads; enough.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 4:01 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


MSNBC was in as much shock as the rest of us in November, and they are trying to keep up. Also, Greta and Rachel Maddow are friends. Somehow.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:02 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


@Yashar tweetstorm: THREAD: Here's how Trump may easily get re-elected: he will aggressively communicate about his admin's counterterrorism efforts

In short, a regular stream of tweets about drone strikes and special forces operations, bragging about killing alleged terrorists, because he can't help himself. It will play very well domestically because people will think "thank god someone is doing something about this," while spreading more hatred worldwide in a continuing cycle of hate and violence.
posted by zachlipton at 4:06 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


So there's no sourcing on this & it's yet to be confirmed. But the claim is out there that Michael Cohen was in Prague after all using an Israeli passport. The claimant, Thomas Theiner, is a writer who used to live in Ukraine.

The Michael Cohen, who arrived in #Prague on August 21st with an #Israel passport was born 8/26/1966.
#Trump's Cohen birthday: 8/26/1966

posted by scalefree at 4:06 PM on January 16, 2017 [38 favorites]


But the claim is out there that Michael Cohen was in Prague after all using an Israeli passport.

Oh please, oh please, oh please.
posted by diogenes at 4:08 PM on January 16, 2017 [21 favorites]


But the claim is out there that Michael Cohen was in Prague after all using an Israeli passport.

This makes it all the more perfect that he thought he was "debunking" everything by tweeting a photo of the cover of his American passport.

His American passport.
posted by CommonSense at 4:14 PM on January 16, 2017 [23 favorites]


Oh please, oh please, oh please.

We know from Cohen's metadata that there's no possible way to get to Prague and back in between the posts that were all from inside the United States. I'm not sure where this is coming from.
posted by Talez at 4:16 PM on January 16, 2017


Oooo scalefree, that's juicy. Normally I don't like spy thrillers but this one is keeping my interest.

MSNBC was in as much shock as the rest of us in November, and they are trying to keep up. Also, Greta and Rachel Maddow are friends. Somehow.

So in other words they have decided the way to stay relevant is to become more moderate and even slightly right wing now that we have a far right government. Terrific. Just what Trump needs to keep him in line is a softer approach, less scrutiny, and a whitewashing of his actions.

In other media news it came to me in an epiphany this afternoon as I was listening to Pod Save America that podcasting is the Left Wing Radio we always wanted. I listen to so many things: comedy, trivia, and politics all day long without leaving my comfortable left wing bubble. And if something is too moderate for my taste I simply hit the Unsubscribe button. Hah!

Also, I started reading Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Really good except it makes me so frustrated and angry I can only take it in small doses.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:19 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


We know from Cohen's metadata that there's no possible way to get to Prague and back in between the posts that were all from inside the United States. I'm not sure where this is coming from.

I thought that this wasn't necessarily a perfect alibi because geo-tags can easily be manipulated and even manually chosen.
posted by Jalliah at 4:19 PM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


For those who are more knowledgeable about campaign finance, is this kind of thing normal?

FEC: Excessive, Prohibited, and Impermissible Contributions Donald J. Trump for President, Inc (256-page PDF)
posted by zakur at 4:20 PM on January 16, 2017 [9 favorites]


I thought that this wasn't necessarily a perfect alibi because geo-tags can easily be manipulated and even manually chosen.

He was definitely in Socal on August 23rd. If he was there it was a meeting in the airport coffee shop because it's minimum 14 hours Prague to LA.
posted by Talez at 4:21 PM on January 16, 2017


This makes it all the more perfect that he thought he was "debunking" everything by tweeting a photo of the cover of his American passport.

His American passport.


Would love it to be true but I expect it's in the too good to be true file.
posted by Jalliah at 4:23 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


NYT feature: For Trump, Three Decades of Chasing Deals in Russia
Asked about the issue at his news conference last week, Mr. Trump was emphatic on one point: “I have no dealings with Russia.” And he repeated: “I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away.”

As recently as 2013, Mr. Trump himself was in Moscow. He had sold Russian real estate developers the right to host his Miss Universe pageant that year, and he used the visit as a chance to discuss development deals, writing on Twitter at the time: “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next.”
Goes into extensive detail about Trump's Russia dreams over the past few decades.
posted by zachlipton at 4:26 PM on January 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


And here we are again, peeing into the tent.

No, that's the other guy's thing.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:26 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


He was definitely in Socal on August 23rd. If he was there it was a meeting in the airport coffee shop because it's minimum 14 hours Prague to LA.

I mean, why not? If it's possible to do whatever needs to be done in person quickly and make people doubt the timeline if rumors ever get out, it makes sense. August 21st to August 23rd with a couple 14 hour flights in there, who here hasn't crammed insane hours into a couple of days when the work needs to be done?
posted by jason_steakums at 4:29 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


He was definitely in Socal on August 23rd. If he was there it was a meeting in the airport coffee shop because it's minimum 14 hours Prague to LA.

It's also a 9 hour time change in your favor, such that you effectively land 5 hours after taking off local time. So he could've had tons of meetings in Prague on the 21st, left on the morning of the 22nd on Lufthansa and been in LA by 3:30pm. And get a good night sleep before his SoCal activities on the 23rd.
posted by chris24 at 4:29 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


If they had thought they we're going to lose why would they go through all this cloak and dagger? Why not just chat on the phone.
posted by ian1977 at 4:31 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I know this, I know this, intellectually I know this so hard, but every time anyone I care about checks their phone and says something like "oh, wow," there's this fraction of a second of hope that leaps into my throat before I ask what news they're looking at.

I expect I'll miss it, when this feeling is gone.
posted by deludingmyself


goes in the dictionary under the definition of eponysterical
posted by torticat at 4:32 PM on January 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


Why not just chat on the phone.

Maybe they had some idea that they were the target of FISA warrants?
posted by diogenes at 4:32 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Why not just chat on the phone.

Because while Trump & Co are idiots, Russian FSB are not.
posted by chris24 at 4:34 PM on January 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


Help me, deux ex machina! You're my only hope.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:35 PM on January 16, 2017 [24 favorites]


And now we interrupt the political news with this important LULZ

@RealAlexJones: I will break an ultra important story tomorrow at 2:30 east dealing with high level trump operatives targeted for murder.

Oh Noes! Hillary is at it again!
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:38 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


If they aren't idiots then surely they can sort out how to secure a line? Or is that an impossibility?
posted by ian1977 at 4:39 PM on January 16, 2017


Maybe they had some idea that they were the target of FISA warrants?

Not unbelievable if some of the FBI fears are true. Or it could be instead of Cohen himself, whoever Cohen had to talk to was under heavy surveillance. Or cash needed to change hands without involving more middlemen, or someone needed to be sure they were talking to the right person... and I'm sure actual intelligence professionals could think of many more reasons.
posted by jason_steakums at 4:39 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


The point is not to chuck him into the dumpster, the point is to push him further left and if he does that we should be happy our pressure worked, not go "THIS DUDE IS A CORPORATE SHILL ARGHLE BARGLE NEOLIBERALISM TO THE THRASH HEAP WITH YE." and then write off all his other efforts.


QFT and because this is IMO a strong liberal tendency in many areas. A lot of liberals are obsessed with "purity" and as soon as someone steps one toe out of line or makes one bad statement or is for whatever reason on the wrong side of an issue the answer is to cut that person off completely for all time. Whether that means never voting for them or unfollowing them or not seeing any more movies they make or whatever. We seem to have a real problem understanding that humans are humans and literally no one can be perfect. Especially in a lifetime of public life.

Booker took a stand no other Senator was willing to against Jeff Sessions. That was important and he should be seriously applauded for it. All other Senators should be facing tough questions about why they didn't stand with him.

Instead the left is busy denouncing Booker over an insignificant vote that wouldn't have made any difference EVEN IF he was the deciding vote and EVEN IF it had passed.

I mean, access to lower cost healthcare is one of my main issues and yet I can totally see how importing meds from Canada is a RUSE and not a long-term solution to the basic issue of jacked up prices.
posted by threeturtles at 4:40 PM on January 16, 2017 [41 favorites]


That Times story is built in part around Trump's partner Felix Sater, describing his guilty plea in a massive market manipulation scheme, but doesn't really go into detail, even though it's shady as hell and hasn't really been explored nearly enough yet, and it's very disappointing the Times didn't really have much to say about him here.

This paragraph of Sater's Wikipedia page should give you an idea of how how profoundly shady this is:
In 1998, Sater was convicted of charges of fraud in connection to a $7.9 million penny stock pump and dump scheme through his employer, White Rock Partners. In return for a guilty plea, Sater agreed to assist the US government in issues of national security, working in Asia for the CIA.[10] He was ultimately sentenced to a $25,000 fine, and no prison time as a result of gratitude for service to his country. As a result of his assistance, Sater's court records were sealed by Loretta Lynch.[11] Several illegal attempts have been made to extort Sater through the use of these sealed documents as evidence from a corporate hard drive by former Bayrock Group co-workers Jody Kriss and Michael Chudi Ejekam, as part of a $1 billion lawsuit against Sater, Donald Trump, and many others.[12]
You are, pretty much by definition, involved in something pretty ridiculous when the US government lets you off from a $8 million stock fraud scheme with sealed court records, a penny-ante fine, and no jail time in exchange for being able to help out the CIA. That's the guy with a Trump Organization business card describing him as "Senior Advisor to Donald Trump."

Some resources:

Adam Khan's tweets (tied together, sort of, in a mostly unverified way, in tweet 28, read text in both photos)
BillMoyers.com - The Donald Trump Story You’re Not Hearing About
NYT - Donald Trump Settled a Real Estate Lawsuit, and a Criminal Case Was Closed
posted by zachlipton at 4:40 PM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]



I looked at his twitter. He's still posting about more proof of where he was in August. Which is fine I guess. Really though, if it is bunk, this is the wrong strategy from a PR perspective. It makes Donald's base supporters happy because it gives them more 'liberal tears, liberal loser' material but for everyone else not so much. This is exactly the sort of thing that happen with Clinton and we know that it was effective. *Drip, drip, drip, chip, chip, chip*

They seem to only know how to do PR in campaign mode.
posted by Jalliah at 4:41 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Politico Trump’s divided state of America
There was a thank you tour, but no listening tour. Visits took him to the heart of Trump country, but none to a state he didn't win—unless those motorcades between Trump Tower and LaGuardia count. A few Democratic senators and mayors have been brought in for meetings, but none have been brought into his Cabinet.

Trump said in his victory speech that “it's time for America to bind the wounds of division.” His time since then shows little evidence of binding, and he’s opened up new wounds along the way.
This is a good test to see if some norms should not be broken. He is making zero effort to pretend he is President of all of America and it will be interesting to see what that costs him.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:53 PM on January 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


This was a really great comment, chris24, thanks.

While there's no use relitigating the election or the primaries at this point, I wanted to add (confess) that HC's loss was so painful to me primarily because she would have been our first woman president. And she is flawed, yes, but also enormously qualified for the job, as qualified as any candidate in history. When I put her compromises/centrism/flipflops/errors-in-the-past against the fact that now I do not feel I will see a woman hold the office of president in my lifetime, it breaks my heart, as I desperately wish for that event for the sake of all American girls (and boys).

That Clinton lost to a person like Trump (because of all the accidents of circumstance that chris24 outlined) feels not just like heartbreak, but like a vicious kick in the face. I have three daughters and I feel like they were kicked in the face. I know there were/are other issues at stake, but this one alone is clarifying enough for me.
posted by torticat at 4:53 PM on January 16, 2017 [45 favorites]


He's still posting about more proof of where he was in August.

And it's odd proof.

"My daughter instagrammed the two of us in #LosAngeles this summer celebrating my birthday. #NotPrague"

Nobody is claiming that you were in Prague for the entire summer!
posted by diogenes at 4:54 PM on January 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


"My daughter instagrammed the two of us in #LosAngeles this summer celebrating my birthday. #NotPrague"

And if his claim is for his actual birthday, and the birthdate information above (8/26/1966) is correct, the birthday celebration is reasonably well after the fact.
posted by Brak at 4:59 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


And if his claim is for his actual birthday, and the birthdate information above (8/26/1966) is correct, the birthday celebration is reasonably well after the fact.

The photo he posted was for August 25 so it would be the day before.
posted by Jalliah at 5:02 PM on January 16, 2017


Springsteen Cover Band Drops Out of Trump Inauguration Party

"We felt that we had to make it known that we didn't want to seem disrespectful, in any way, shape or form, to Bruce and his music and his band," Forte says. "I don't want to upset them. We owe everything to him and our gratitude and respect to the band is imperative above all else. It became clear to us that this wasn't working and we just had to do what we thought was the right thing to do and that was to pull out."
posted by zakur at 5:02 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


Cohen protests a lot, doesn't he?

FWIW Prague airport is a little way outside the city. 20km. And if you've just been to the airport, you haven't really been to the city, have you?
posted by Quagkapi at 5:09 PM on January 16, 2017




The amateur sleuthing about Cohen's whereabouts, though certainly encouraged by his ridiculous posting of a passport cover as proof of absolutely nothing whatsoever other than the fact that he obtained a photo of something generally resembling a US passport, is increasingly resembling low-grade Pizzagate activity, and it's not a good look.
posted by zachlipton at 5:11 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


increasingly resembling low-grade Pizzagate activity

I forget, was Pizzagate presented to the President by the intelligence community?
posted by diogenes at 5:13 PM on January 16, 2017 [47 favorites]


Hehheheeheeeeeeee

Bruce Springsteen tribute band bows out of inauguration because they didn't want to disrespect...

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

hee hee heee heee hee
posted by tel3path at 5:15 PM on January 16, 2017 [45 favorites]


What the fuck did they hire this FOX-tainted pundit for?

To put on along side Trump-nutsack-sucker-in-chief-Joe-Scarborough.

MSNBC is shedding their "liberal FOX" persona, somewhat slowly because Maddow, Hayes and Lawrence still have a big audience, but ever since the Comcast merger, they've steadily fired liberal hosts and replaced them with conservative ones. The made no move to rein in Scarborough's blatant improprieties during the campaign and afterwards took on Greta from actual FOX.

I expect Maddow and Hayes to be out before long, probably this year, and the rebranding will be complete. Hopefully they will find another outlet besides RT, where Ed Schultz ended up, barbecue now we see Putin's ulterior motives in hosting left media firebrands: formenting dissent any way possible. MSNBC is not the liberal media we're looking for. Probably no corporate-conglomerate controlled national cable network can be.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:17 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


The amateur sleuthing about Cohen's whereabouts...is increasingly resembling low-grade Pizzagate activity, and it's not a good look.

Meh, it's something to do. For my part, I don't actually have any real interest in jumping to conclusions before more information comes out of the ongoing investigations.
posted by Brak at 5:20 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


But I will nevertheless refrain going forward, so as not to litter these teetering threads with otherwise meaningless speculation, so your point's taken.
posted by Brak at 5:21 PM on January 16, 2017


Look at how many people, on this site and in this thread even, announce proudly how post-fact they are about the election. Honestly, after this election, I'm done ceding even this rhetorical ground. Hillary was the most qualified candidate on the ballot. Full stop. and whatnot. This mad desperation of the Democratic Party to refuse to learn from its mistakes is what's killing it.

Oh, hey, thanks for taking my words out of context. I meant that I am going to stop undercutting my arguments as I make them in the name of being completely precise in my answer, thereby losing an argument before it starts. That is not the same thing as not being critical of what's going on around you.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 5:22 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


He's going to take a four day weekend as the very first act of his presidency.

Trump: Monday will be day one of administration


“…[D]ay one – which I will consider to be Monday as opposed to Friday or Saturday. Right? I mean my day one is gonna be Monday because I don’t want to be signing and get it mixed up with lots of celebration.”
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:25 PM on January 16, 2017 [10 favorites]


I expect Maddow and Hayes to be out before long,

I'd take that bet.
posted by Justinian at 5:25 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


He can take as many four day weekends as he wants. Heck, I hear 7 day weekends are really deluxe and for winners.
posted by ian1977 at 5:30 PM on January 16, 2017 [28 favorites]


Let's see if he can break Bush's vacation days record. Spend as much time at Mar-a-Largo as he wants, we won't miss him.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:31 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


It seems like MSNBC found its audience by providing a channel for unhappy liberals during the Bush years. I have a lot of problems with Keith Olbermann, for example, but he showed that there was a market for voicing the outrage that a lot of people were feeling. The Bush years are about to start feeling like the good old days...you'd think there'd be *some* network out there willing to corner that market.
posted by uosuaq at 5:31 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


For the ultimate in double gold plated relaxation...I hear leaving our cell phone with your personal assistant is pretty chic these days.
posted by ian1977 at 5:33 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]




The problem with MSNBC is a lot like the problems that Air America had; the target audience just doesn't consume that kind of media very much. The only people I know who watch cable news with any regularity are in their sixties at least.
posted by octothorpe at 5:44 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


“…[D]ay one – which I will consider to be Monday as opposed to Friday or Saturday. Right? I mean my day one is gonna be Monday because I don’t want to be signing and get it mixed up with lots of celebration.”

Well he is certainly the eager beaver excited by the chance to get started! Remind me now of all the things he was going to do on Day One.

NYTimes Donald Trump’s Long To-Do List for Day 1
WASHINGTON — On the morning of Jan. 21, 2017, his first full day in office, President Donald J. Trump will take a minute to settle behind the 19th-century Resolute desk, first used in the Oval Office by John F. Kennedy.

Then he will get very busy — if he follows through on his campaign promises for what he will do on his first day in office.

On Day 1, Mr. Trump has promised, he will redirect immigration enforcement, alter trade relations with China and other nations, relax restrictions on energy production, impose new rules on lobbyists, halt efforts to combat global warming, lift curbs on guns, push for congressional term limits and demand a new strategy for defeating the Islamic State. He may face some legal and procedural hurdles, but most of his Day 1 pledges involve issuing presidential directives, executive orders or memorandums that do not need legislative approval.
There's more. It looks like Day One Three is going to be veeeeeerrrry busy. Too busy for tweeting or watching CNN for sure. Hope he has plenty of fentanyl stamina.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:44 PM on January 16, 2017 [15 favorites]


At the moment he is busy patting himself on the back and criticizing the media:

"@levisteveholt: @realDonaldTrump I appreciate your use of Twitter to keep us informed and maintain transparency." Very dishonest media!

posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:48 PM on January 16, 2017


Is donnie going to actually live at the white house?
posted by futz at 5:49 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


@realDonaldTrump
At 9:00 P.M. @CNN, of all places, is doing a Special Report on my daughter, Ivanka. Considering it is CNN, can't imagine it will be great!


He can't pass up on any opportunity to promote the brand, even if he has cornered himself into having to call his branded product garbage.

"Eat at Joe's! The food's terrible! And the portions are so small!"
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:53 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


Also, have any of the long term permanent staff quietly resigned? If that is even possible to know.
posted by futz at 5:54 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also on Day One, Trump will be going mano-a-mano with Paul Ryan.

Roll Call Ryan Bucks Trump, Says Congress Will Not Raise Tariffs

but Trump plans to do it without Congress.

Politico How Trump Could Declare a Trade Emergency

Trade Wars, the Movie. Coming to a theater near you!
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:55 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm wondering what super top secret special sessions will be happening during overnights this weekend since Cheeto will apparently be counting on Pence.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 5:56 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Gravy, don't REMIND him ffs. He might actually do those things
posted by tel3path at 5:56 PM on January 16, 2017


What the fuck did they hire this FOX-tainted pundit Scientologist for?

What I wonder is: did Van Sustren go crazy slowly or was she always nuts? Because back in the '90s I don't recall her being any nuttier than your average mainstream pundit. Then flash forward a decade and some and GretaWire, her branded forum, is a hotbed of birtherisn and Greta always looks like she's moments away from carving a swastika in her forehead.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:04 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


You think he reads the comments down here?! Pfffft. He has lost interest and gone back to twitter to search for tweets from guys named DeplorableBob.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:05 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maddow has really gone to bat for Greta and I hope it bites her in the ass.
posted by futz at 6:07 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


The amateur sleuthing about Cohen's whereabouts, though certainly encouraged by his ridiculous posting of a passport cover as proof of absolutely nothing whatsoever other than the fact that he obtained a photo of something generally resembling a US passport, is increasingly resembling low-grade Pizzagate activity, and it's not a good look.

I don't think it's really comparable to Pizzagate, that was entirely accusations by bad faith actors where no evidence to disprove it would ever be accepted by the accusers, but I get what you're saying. For the record, I do find the "two Michael Cohens" thing plausible as a simple mistake, and the second Israeli passport gets into speculation built on speculation unless something more comes out. But this is just a frustrating thing in general because there's a bunch of showing and saying things that are so weirdly adjacent to proof but don't actually mean anything, and it feels like being trolled, and I feel like I'm going crazy if I don't say something and get some verification from someone else in a place I mostly trust that yeah, this is weird as hell, especially in the midst of all the other authoritarian mind games going on that make a person feel nuts. I try to think of what I'd do in that situation if I really wasn't in Prague and a lot of good ideas come to mind, like showing my passport to someone my accusers would trust if I'm worried about identity theft from publicly showing a picture of the inside. Instead it's, take a picture of the cover, have Donald Trump himself say he saw the passport and it's all good, have a weird moment on Hannity where even in a total softball interview where he's 100% on Cohen's side and talking to the echo chamber Sean just holds up the closed passport and jokes about opening it but doesn't open it, instead of some "look, folks at home, I can't show you the inside of this for concerns about Mr. Cohen's privacy, but trust me, I'm looking at this and he's not lying." It's weird. It's, as you say, not a good look. I'm 50/50 on whether there is something really damaging there or he really wasn't in Prague and he's playing a game to keep everyone chasing ghosts but either is awful. I could see him being innocent but capitalizing on this to help Trump, I could see him being guilty and cornered and scared, but I don't think he's just an idiot who doesn't realize how it looks.

I will try to refrain from speculation too, and especially speculations built on other speculations which is something that can go to a bad place, but there are a lot of these just plain weird things around this that I do find interesting to discuss. I will say, it should be trivial for the intelligence services to verify whether this Prague thing is true or false - I mean he had to leave and return through US airports - and if it's verified to be false they should publicly clear his name ASAP. Nobody should be left hanging on something like this.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:12 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Maddow has really gone to bat for Greta and I hope it bites her in the ass.

Right, I don't get it. I wonder how Maddow would feel if they brought on a virulently homophobic person and told her to just give 'em a chance.
posted by Justinian at 6:13 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Ah, Octobersurprise, thank you for that. I thought I remembered she was a decent journalist but the last time I saw a clip of her I was stunned. I figured I must have misremembered or gotten her confused with someone else.

All the info on MSNBC was interesting to me because I stopped watching cable news maybe 10 years ago but caught an occasional Maddow now and then. I thought they were still solidly liberal so I wasn't aware of their re-branding. Where does Joy Reid fit in?

Think Progress: Trump moves forward with a foreign deal less than a week after vowing not to
According to the Guardian, which first reported the story on Sunday, the Trump Organization is moving forward with a plan to greatly expand the president-elect’s Trump International Golf Course Scotland, located in Aberdeenshire. The plans include construction of another 18-hole golf course, a new 450-room five-star hotel, a timeshare complex, and a private housing estate. The expansion would greatly increase the value of the property to the Trump Organization, according to the Guardian’s report.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told the Guardian that “implementing future phasing of existing properties does not constitute a new transaction” and therefore the Trump Organization plans to proceed with the deal, despite Trump’s assertion that he would no longer pursue foreign investments relating to his company.
We are going to be hearing a lot of "This thing he is doing now doesn't count."
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:15 PM on January 16, 2017 [31 favorites]


A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told the Guardian that “implementing future phasing of existing properties does not constitute a new transaction” and therefore the Trump Organization plans to proceed with the deal, despite Trump’s assertion that he would no longer pursue foreign investments relating to his company.

Well hey, all of his companies are existing properties, so nothing should be off limits! Glad we got that solved.

gaaaaaahhhhh
posted by jason_steakums at 6:18 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


The obvious follow-up question is who's financing this project. Because a golf course, 450 room hotel, timeshares, and a private housing estate do not sound cheap. That money has got to come from someone.
posted by zachlipton at 6:24 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


Trump: Monday will be day one of administration

Dude, you don't get weekends off with this job.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:29 PM on January 16, 2017 [29 favorites]


I thought they were still solidly liberal so I wasn't aware of their re-branding. Where does Joy Reid fit in?

She's largely banished to the weekends or brought on to play the role of token liberal from what I can tell. The rebrand has been pretty overt.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:29 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


who's financing this project.

buh buh buh but he's a billionaire! No funding needed when you have very helpful and friendly friends in shady places.
posted by futz at 6:29 PM on January 16, 2017


I will try to refrain from speculation too, and especially speculations built on other speculations which is something that can go to a bad place, but there are a lot of these just plain weird things around this that I do find interesting to discuss. I will say, it should be trivial for the intelligence services to verify whether this Prague thing is true or false - I mean he had to leave and return through US airports - and if it's verified to be false they should publicly clear his name ASAP. Nobody should be left hanging on something like this.

I doubt we'll hear anything official one way or another at least for a while. If they've found out that he was indeed in Prague then it would likely be put in the pile of the larger investigation where releasing it could be detrimental to whatever the big picture is. If they've found no evidence then unless there is a specific reason they think it's useful to release it why would they. It's likely just one piece of the larger investigation of the info in that dossier. Investigators are under no obligation to release piece by piece findings of every thing they're looking into.
posted by Jalliah at 6:29 PM on January 16, 2017


The obvious follow-up question is who's financing this project. Because a golf course, 450 room hotel, timeshares, and a private housing estate do not sound cheap. That money has got to come from someone.

It's okay, after Theresa May makes her brexit speech tomorrow, it'll only cost about four of your American dollars to build all that.
posted by dng at 6:31 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


David Weixel, WaPo: Some Democrats are criticizing John Lewis’s ‘legitimate’ jab at Trump. That means it worked.

Will rudeness hold the same benefits for Democrats as it did for Republicans? In electoral terms, maybe not. Although Trump is the least popular president-elect in popular memory, the seats Democrats need to win in 2018 are in more Trump-friendly turf than the country at large. You'll see Democrats in purple or red districts refuse to agree that Trump is "illegitimate," or refuse to make a "golden showers" joke. Plenty of Trump-mockery can be dismissed as empty choir-preaching, like how John Oliver's "eviscerations" of Trump go viral only with people who hate Trump already.

But this is how we live now. Trump, who will soon be etched in history books alongside George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, has not given up his habit of Twitter-fighting with people who are mean to him. Democrats have figured out that a #ThisIsNotNormal hashtag is not the way to respond. Their antidote is the New Rudeness.

posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:31 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


My new favorite Tweeter - @bessbell. Replies to Trump with sweet, sweet nothings of the most delicately patronizing sort.

Sample:
It's just...What did we say about external validation being the keystone of your emotional stability, Donald?
posted by hilaryjade at 6:32 PM on January 16, 2017 [23 favorites]


MSNBC is not the liberal media we're looking for. Probably no corporate-conglomerate controlled national cable network can be.

Ayup.

Rachel, we've had our good times. Our chance meeting on Air America, the times we laughed with Letterman . . . I'll always remember that twinkly smirk you'd get right after announcing the latest GOP atrociousness.

But alas, t'was not to be. Mostly cause - y'know. Kellyanne. Greta. I mean, I guess you're just not that into me. I understand. Stay well. And hey, thanks for introducing me to your friend Joy.

*clicks remote*
posted by petebest at 6:32 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Lean Backward.
posted by uosuaq at 6:33 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


So I wonder where the money is coming from.

8 years ago he promised Scotland a $1.25 Billion investment which is how he got the go ahead to build on the environmentally protected dunes. Later, when he broke his promise, when he only invested $50 million and the 6 thousand jobs never appeared, Alex Salmond came out and said giving him planning permission was a big mistake. This happened in 2008 and that's also about the time he stopped contributing to his own foundation and started using it like a checkbook. Also around that time, 2008 or 10, the Atlanta condos were foreclosed on. I figure that must have been the time when he starting finding it difficult to get loans to cover his already over-stretched empire. He has certainly penny-pinched his way through the campaign. Now however it looks like the money is flowing back in. Hmmmm


(Took me awhile to write this comment because there were a few things I had to look up. I see the question has already been asked by others but everybody should be asking it. Where is the money coming from????)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:36 PM on January 16, 2017 [20 favorites]


"Trump: Monday will be day one of administration"

Dude, you don't get weekends off with this job.


Further evidence that Trump has never had a real job with an actual boss, most people can't start work and immediately ask for the next two days off.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 6:36 PM on January 16, 2017 [28 favorites]


Lean Backward.

Lean Rightwards.
posted by futz at 6:37 PM on January 16, 2017


David Weixel, WaPo: Some Democrats are criticizing John Lewis’s ‘legitimate’ jab at Trump. That means it worked.

That's fine. It moves the discussion to "is Trump legitimate and do these things cast doubt on his legitimacy?" Just having that discussion is a huge step even if not everyone agrees with Lewis.
posted by zachlipton at 6:38 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


In any case Maddow seems to have been afflicted with Echoplexia for a while now. Her redundant, patronizing, unnecessarily dramatic and overly detailed monologues make me feel like I'm watching a John Cleese bit. Without the funny parts. Or, you know, John Cleese. Did I mention redundancy?

We are pretty much done with MSNBC. Greta was the last straw, and the sad, submissive way Rachel vouched for her purported "friend" spoke volumes. That should have been Joy Reid's job. She owned the election coverage with more gumption and charisma than anyone else on that network. Fuck MSNBC.

I'm guessing Rachel is replaced with Megyn Kelly within the year. Surely they didn't hire Kelly at NBC to do daytime chat.
posted by spitbull at 6:40 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


He's already defined Day One: "Day one, my first hour in office, those people are gone."
posted by kirkaracha at 6:40 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Joy Reid basically owns MSNBC on the weekends. #AMJoy is always the #1 hashtag on twitter for large portions of Saturday and Sunday. I think she's fine.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:42 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Further evidence that Trump has never had a real job with an actual boss, most people can't start work and immediately ask for the next two days off.

It's not a job to him. He's not President, he's King.
posted by Artw at 6:43 PM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


In any case Maddow seems to have been afflicted with Echoplexia for a while now.

Yes! I had to stop watching her even though I remembered her fondly from the Bush era. But my god the woman repeats herself. Over and over beyond the point of aggravation. I really don't remember her doing that when she first started.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:43 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Like 45,000 people maybe watch weekend MSNBC coverage. It's shockingly small.
posted by spitbull at 6:44 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


MSNBC is not the liberal media we're looking for

Remember the whole perfect vs the good thing? They may not be the liberal media you're hoping for, but they're what you've got.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 6:44 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yes! I had to stop watching her even though I remembered her fondly from the Bush era. But my god the woman repeats herself. Over and over beyond the point of aggravation. I really don't remember her doing that when she first started.

Not to mention the over the top incredulousness. Cringe city.
posted by Talez at 6:45 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's not a job to him. He's not President, he's King.

I hear you and we are on the same page. I just can't bring myself to favorite this comment because it makes me so sad.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 6:47 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


maddow is making me so mad with her adulation of greta. i watched tonight because there was supposed to be a hard-hitting interview with ivanka. i gave greta a chance. she failed miserably.
posted by waitangi at 6:47 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Like 45,000 people maybe watch weekend MSNBC coverage. It's shockingly small.

I mean, if so, they completely take over social media, so good for them.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:47 PM on January 16, 2017


Maybe that's just your social media? I don't see it and mine leans far left.
posted by spitbull at 6:50 PM on January 16, 2017


Is donnie going to actually live at the white house?

From the Times of London interview:
Ya know this is a very, very big change — I led a very nice life and ya know successful and good and nice and this is a lot different — but ya know my attitude on that is when you’re president, you’re in the White House which is a very special place — you’re there for a limited period of time — who wants to leave? Like I’ve liked President Obama, he’s been very nice, yeah he’s been nice one on one, but maybe not so nice in other ways — but who wants to leave the White House to go to some other place and be away on a vacation? The White House is very special, there’s so much work to be done, I’m not gonna be leaving much — I mean a lot of work to be done — I’m gonna be in there working, doing what I’m supposed to be doing — but who wants to leave the White House?
So, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by kirkaracha at 6:51 PM on January 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


Maybe that's just your social media? I don't see it and mine leans far left.

No, I'm only talking national twitter hashtag trends.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:53 PM on January 16, 2017


Yes! I had to stop watching her even though I remembered her fondly from the Bush era. But my god the woman repeats herself. Over and over beyond the point of aggravation. I really don't remember her doing that when she first started.

My parents love her. She and O'Donnell and Facebook are pretty much where they get the US news from. They say they like her because she makes things easy to understand. Maybe repetition is part of it. I don't watch cable news at all but I can't say it must be all bad because they're staying pretty well informed.
I get my news mostly online and filtered through here and there's not many times that when I come downstairs and say 'Hey did you hear about what happened with so and so? Did you hear what Donald did today?" that they haven't heard or know about it already.
posted by Jalliah at 6:54 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


That's fine. It moves the discussion to "is Trump legitimate and do these things cast doubt on his legitimacy?"

What about, "What will convince you Trump is mentally unfit to serve, and should be removed"?

- goes on a Michael Richards-esque 'n-word' tear at SOTU
- shows up unannounced at Oscars, clumsily grabs as many trophys as he can fit in his pants
- shoots someone in the face on 5th Ave (trick question, that was Don Jr)
- gives half of speech replacing "America" with "Russia"
- "fires" American Eagle, replaces with Hooters logo
- starts every other sentence in a wispy falsetto à la Jim Gaffigan
- refuses to sign anything "until the check clears"
- Presidential order: he's 'technically' married to Ivanka
- actually does anything he said he would
posted by petebest at 6:54 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Remember the whole perfect vs the good thing? They may not be the liberal media you're hoping for, but they're what you've got.

With Greta and Scarborough and Chuck Todd I'd just as soon have nothing.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:56 PM on January 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


I will try to refrain from speculation too, and especially speculations built on other speculations which is something that can go to a bad place, but there are a lot of these just plain weird things around this that I do find interesting to discuss.

I don't have a problem with speculation on this subject. Cohen's whereabouts are part of a dossier of raw intelligence from a source that US intelligence believes to be credible. Trying to understand which (if any) of the items in the report withstand scrutiny is an entirely reasonable exercise right now.
posted by diogenes at 6:56 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh god, the repeating. So much airtime wasted.

On preview: the over the top incredulousness. Cringe city. Yup.

Remember the whole perfect vs the good thing? Yup but when you want to throw the remote at the TV and it pains you to watch, the message is lost so if "that is what we've got" we're fucked. And then she leans sincerely into the camera and praises Greta to the mountain top, well, barf.

I don't hate her or anything. She is just my personal fingernails on a chalkboard. I loved her for years and still wish her well.
posted by futz at 6:58 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


For the record, Great Van Sustern has 1.3 million Twitter followers, and Joy Reid has 64,000 and change. I don't get Twitter, and I don't know how hashtags are ranked in absolute or relative terms.
posted by spitbull at 6:58 PM on January 16, 2017


That should have been Joy Reid's job. She owned the election coverage with more gumption and charisma than anyone else on that network. Fuck MSNBC.

Last time Reid had a weekday show her ratings were absolute trash. They're not running a charity.

That said, fuck 'em for giving it to Greta.
posted by Justinian at 7:02 PM on January 16, 2017


I'm glad the Cubs got to go to the White House while President Obama is still in office.
posted by SisterHavana at 7:04 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Rachel lives 2 blocks down on my street when she's in NYC. If I ever run into her walking her dog (surely she has a dog) I am going to bore her to tears describing what a lovely day it is outside.
posted by spitbull at 7:04 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Q: Do you have any models, heroes, people you look up to from the past?

May I suggest that whenever Trump presides over any sort of gathering with military personnel or veterans they display this quote from him on a huge banner: "The Concept of Heroes is Never Great"
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:07 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


If I ever run into her walking her dog (surely she has a dog)

Of course she has a dog (photo).

Bonus content: Rachel Maddow Kisses A Dog To Feel Better About Trump (December 2015):
Bewildered by Trump’s popularity, Maddow moaned, “It is nice to have a dog around when it turns out that the rules don’t make sense anymore, when deliberately defending huge swaths of the population and being crude to the point where other people are afraid to quote you, when that helps you run for president, it is nice to have a four-legged friend who doesn’t really have words. Right? He doesn’t really speak English. He does know a few commands, and I mean a few. But he doesn’t know.”
posted by zachlipton at 7:11 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm glad the Cubs got to go to the White House while President Obama is still in office.

Even better, they made the express decision to do so, breaking with tradition where the team goes the next summer when playing the Orioles or Nationals. They all interrupted their off-seasons to make a special trip specifically to see Obama.
posted by chris24 at 7:19 PM on January 16, 2017 [23 favorites]


To be clear, I too have fond feelings for Rachel going back to AirAmerica days and especially the Bush years. And she is the only major evening news program that devotes consistent time to reproductive rights and gender-based rights issues, which is a huge and important service. Literally no one else touches those topics.

But at some point a decision was made to dumb her show down. It's clearly intentional and maybe it is meant to hold elderly viewers or results from her inability to get enough major guests (republicans mostly boycott her show). Nonetheless it is stultifying on a regular basis.

Lawrence O'Donnell can still engage me while I finish my evening scotch and feed the cat. His righteous rage at Trump is a tonic.
posted by spitbull at 7:20 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]




factba.se is a very useful searchable database of Trump's tweets, speeches (all nicely indexed to YouTube videos), and policy papers (but not most press interviews).
posted by zachlipton at 7:23 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


I don't feel I have the luxury of playing fantasy football with last year's primaries, and I'll worry about next year's when candidates have announced themselves.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:24 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Lawrence O'Donnell can still engage me while I finish my evening scotch and feed the cat. His righteous rage at Trump is a tonic.

While he's almost universally right on policy I find him a tediously smug blowhard.

What about Chris Hayes? Can we agree on Chris Hayes? I like the cut of his jib.
posted by Justinian at 7:27 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Chris Hayes is fantastic, and a good Twitter follow as well (@chrislhayes) for current stuff going on.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:28 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


I... Trump gets inaugurated on Friday at noon. And he's apparently planning to take the weekend off. He's planning to start working as President of the United States on Monday.

I wasn't aware President got weekends off. Fuck we're in trouble.
posted by Justinian at 7:36 PM on January 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


Exit interview with CIA Director John Brennan in the WSJ. Fiery stuff:
“Tell the families of those 117 CIA officers who are forever memorialized on our wall of honor that their loved ones who gave their lives were akin to Nazis,” Mr. Brennan said. “Tell the CIA officers who are serving in harm’s way right now and their families who are worried about them that they are akin to Nazi Germany. I found that to be very repugnant, and I will forever stand up for the integrity and patriotism of my officers who have done much over the years to sacrifice for their fellow citizens.”

Mr. Trump’s aides didn’t respond to requests Monday night for comment.
posted by postagepaid at 7:40 PM on January 16, 2017 [56 favorites]


Before presidential run, Trump called Russia the 'biggest problem' and geopolitical foe of U.S.

These interviews are approx 4 months after the alleged Piss Party defiling the bed that President Obama slept in. I have heard some of this before and comrade trumpski's flip flops are nothing new but to see the total 180 flip is interesting imo.

In a series of interviews in March of 2014, Donald Trump singled out Russia as the United States' "biggest problem" and greatest geopolitical foe.

Trump's comments more than two years ago, which came in the wake of Russian incursions into Crimea, offer a sharp contrast to the Russia-friendly rhetoric he has employed since launching his presidential campaign.

In the interviews reviewed by CNN's KFile from March 2014, which occurred on NBC News and Fox News, Trump goes as far as to suggest imposing sanctions to hurt Russia economically and then later says he supports such sanctions. Trump also expressed his agreement with former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's 2012 assessment that Russia is the United States' number one "geopolitical foe."

..."And we have to show some strength. I mean, Putin has eaten Obama's lunch, therefore our lunch, for a long period of time," he said. "And I just hope that Obama, who's not looking too good, doesn't do something very foolish and very stupid to show his manhood. I just hope that doesn't happen."
(WTF does this even mean?!)

manhood.
posted by futz at 7:41 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


‘Never Trump’ national-security Republicans fear they have been blacklisted

-- They are some of the biggest names in the Republican national security firmament, veterans of past GOP administrations who say, if called upon by President-elect Donald Trump, they stand ready to serve their country again.

But their phones aren’t ringing. Their entreaties to Trump Tower in New York have mostly gone unanswered. In Trump world, these establishment all-stars say they are “PNG” — personae non gratae.

-- “Before he won, the conversation was, ‘We really would love for you to change your mind and join us,’ ” Peter Feaver, a National Security Council special adviser under President George W. Bush, said of informal talks with Trump aides. Feaver, who signed both letters, added that, “Since he won . . . the conversation is, ‘There likely will be a blacklist of people who signed the letters who won’t themselves be eligible for a post.’ ”

-- Last week, the Trump transition held a private briefing for secretary-of-state nominee Rex Tillerson to prepare him for his Senate confirmation hearing. One former Bush national security official who works at a Washington think tank said that some of his younger staff assistants were invited to participate but that he was not. He assumes it was because he signed the letter.

“It’s hostile,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of further retribution. “It’s not just that we’re frozen out. . . . I was told they said there was an enemies list.”

posted by futz at 7:55 PM on January 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


One day hopefully soon being on that list will be looked back on as a badge of honor.

You know, if we all survive a nuclear war.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:01 PM on January 16, 2017 [28 favorites]


In fact I have wondered why any of these Billionaires have wanted jobs where they have to work for someone else and actually do work that is not promoting their own business.

Once the fox makes it into the henhouse, I wouldn't say he's working anymore.

None of Trump's Cabinet picks are going to "work" every day in the way that normal people understand working. And in between their long ski vacations and even longer lunches, every action they do take in their new "jobs" will be in direct service of their own businesses. That's why they want them.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 8:01 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


An enemies list is concerning, not to mention passing up qualified people, but if you sign a letter calling someone a danger to the country, especially when that person is known for being extraordinarily thin-skinned and vindictive, you really can't be surprised if that person doesn't promptly turn around and hire you.
posted by zachlipton at 8:01 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Wasn't the previous reporting on this subject along the lines of "there aren't many qualified people left to hire if you rule out those signatories"? That should be clarifying: if you just want a job, then sit on your hands; if you're shitting yourself about the security of the nation (and the world), you already know who to talk to off the record at the top of the permanent ranks.
posted by holgate at 8:04 PM on January 16, 2017


Like, these guys aren't dutifully answering the call of their beloved republic, humbling themselves in service. They're the barbarians at the gates of Rome. Dividing the spoils isn't work.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 8:05 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


It's not a job to him. He's not President, he's King.

Indeed:

According to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make [Kasich] an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?

When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.

Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?

“Making America great again” was the casual reply.

posted by dhens at 8:12 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh, goody, we've got secret Nazis spray-painting "1488" on the local Islamic Center in Peoria, on MLK Day. I'm sure they're amateur hooligans with internet access who restrict themselves to anonymous vandalism, but STILL. I hate Illinois Nazis.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:15 PM on January 16, 2017 [29 favorites]


..."And we have to show some strength. I mean, Putin has eaten Obama's lunch, therefore our lunch, for a long period of time," he said. "And I just hope that Obama, who's not looking too good, doesn't do something very foolish and very stupid to show his manhood. I just hope that doesn't happen." (WTF does this even mean?!)


Dear Barack Obama,

I know you and I have our differences, but whatever you do, DO NOT have a pee party in a Russian hotel. Even if you get a discount and it's a great deal.

Regards,

Donald J. Trump
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:43 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


Donald J. is not going to give advice to anybody NOT to do something he has done, because in his mind, he has never made a mistake.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:08 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Republican says with Trump ‘impeachment needs to be on the table’

Northwestern University Law Professor Steven Calabresi served in two Republican administrations, was an adviser to Attorney General Edwin Meese under Ronald Reagan and wrote speeches for Vice President Dan Quayle. He is co-founder and board chairman of the conservative Federalist Society.

So it raised a few eyebrows when Calabresi told a law school audience in San Francisco that when it comes to Donald Trump, “impeachment needs to be on the table.”

Even though both houses of Congress will be controlled by his fellow Republicans, Trump, a party outsider, will be “on a short leash. There could be a spectacular end,” Calabresi said in a recent panel at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools.


Calabresi was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and another prominent conservative, Appeals Court Judge Robert Bork, and served in the Justice Department under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

In the Reagan administration, he was an influential advocate of expanded presidential power and the use of “signing statements” declaring a president’s intention to disregard portions of a newly signed law. That became common under President George W. Bush.
posted by futz at 9:11 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


Also on Day One, Trump will be going mano-a-mano with Paul Ryan.

Wouldn't that be manocito-a-mano?
(My Spanish isn't what it used to be...)
posted by uosuaq at 9:12 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Donald Trump tweets at wrong Ivanka during daughter's CNN interview

His daughter’s longtime Twitter handle is @IvankaTrump — not @Ivanka, an account used by Ivanka Majic. Trump failed to correct his daughter’s username while editing Goodstein’s original tweet: adding a comma and lowercasing “Great.”

Maybe if he wasn't so busy choosing place settings and napkins for the inaugural dinner he might have retained the brain space to remember First Daughter's Twit name.
posted by futz at 9:21 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


And yeah, he forgot Tiffany.
posted by holgate at 9:29 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Ultimately that will be to Tiffany's advantage.
posted by Lyme Drop at 9:42 PM on January 16, 2017 [20 favorites]


fwiw, I'm sceptical about the Michael Cohen / Prague story because he seems a) a bit thick; b) deployed by the Family Business to threaten people. More of a kick-downer than a kiss-upper.

Also around that time, 2008 or 10, the Atlanta condos were foreclosed on. I figure that must have been the time when he starting finding it difficult to get loans to cover his already over-stretched empire.

2008: credit crunch, liquidity crisis, even junk credit dried up. If you're sluicing funds across disparate business entities and rely upon refinancing, then that's the time when you're going to end up at the loan shark whose repayment penalties involve a baseball bat.
posted by holgate at 9:46 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


And @drgoodspine, "retweeted" by Trump (except he doesn't know how to retweet), has now deleted his account.

It's sort of the digital version of the President just showing up without notice in a random family's living room, with all the phenomenal inconvenience and national attention that brings with it.
posted by zachlipton at 9:47 PM on January 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


It's not a job to him. He's not President, he's King.

I've been listening my way back through Slate's "Trumpcast", and there was one recently ("Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Revisited") had this headologist suggesting that Trump's sense of grandiosity is likely to become supercharged, leading to him believing that he can do whatever he wants (or feels impelled to in any given moment) and it will be the right thing. He is President, he has the power, anything he does becomes legal and good by definition as he is the one doing it. Fortunately there isn't any sign of that happening yet*, but something to watch out for.

A couple of other ones:

"Corporatists, Conservatives, Cronies, and Cranks" - primarily about Steven Mnuchin and the predatory forclosure of reverse mortgages. Being a follower of science I hold the concept of evil to be a superstition based anachronism. That guy is pure fucking, sub-Cthulu-class, evil though. Evil.

"The Conspiracy Guru Behind Donald Trump" - with Jon Ronson about the words whispered softly in the ear of Trump by Alex Jones.

For those with access to BBC iPlayer: Trump: The Kremlin Candidate? (Panorama):

"On the eve of the new president's inauguration, Panorama investigates Donald Trump's strange bromance with Vladimir Putin. John Sweeney - who has confronted both men in the past - travels to Russia, the United States and the battlefields in Ukraine to report on what's behind their mutual admiration. He investigates whether Russian cyber-warriors helped get Donald Trump into the White House and asks how safe the world will be if they stay friends - or if the bromance falls apart."

* Apart from the massive 8000 foot high flashing neon signs that it's happening already, of course.
posted by Buntix at 9:49 PM on January 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Amanda Hess, NYT: Trump, Twitter and the Art of His Deal
All of this works because one group is as intoxicated by Twitter as Mr. Trump is: journalists. It’s hard to explain to a normal person — one of the 79 percent of American adults who don’t use Twitter — why the platform mesmerizes the news media. Its all-powerful search function means you can conjure material on any kind of news topic — or just spend your time searching for your own name. Reporters still crave the ego rush of a published byline, but that pales in comparison to the animated feedback loop that Twitter offers. The more time you spend, and the more tweets you send, the bigger your following becomes. But Twitter provides little actual reach — compared with Facebook or Google, it hardly drives any traffic to articles. It’s like a video game for professional validation.
Found, of course, on Twitter.
posted by zachlipton at 10:04 PM on January 16, 2017 [18 favorites]


Someone please make a Twitter bot that responds to every Trump tweet with variations on "Stop tweeting and get back to work, you ridiculous bloviating asshole".

Guys.

The twitter bot.

localhuman's twitter bot.

It did the thing:
‏@you_work_for_me -
.@realDonaldTrump get back to work, you ridiculous bloviating asshole
🌲
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 10:06 PM on January 16, 2017 [94 favorites]


In lighter (?) news: Trump Honors Sacrifices Civil Rights Activists Will Have To Make Under His Presidency

"NEW YORK—Paying tribute to the efforts of countless men and women who are united by their deep commitment to equality and justice for all people, President-elect Donald Trump spoke at a ceremony Monday honoring the sacrifices civil rights activists will have to make under his presidency. “Our nation owes a great deal to the brave activists and political organizers who will have to fight so hard for freedom and equal rights over the next four years,” Trump told assembled members of the press, explaining that civil rights leaders deserve particular commendation for standing up for what’s right in spite of the intense opposition, brutal crackdowns, and smear campaigns they will encounter from his administration...(cont)"

In less lighter news: it's occurred to me that Trump is about to inherit a large army of flying death robots and the ability to extreme-prejudice people out of existence pretty much anywhere on the planet. As such, the previously proposed P-in-the-Park festival is on indefinite hold.
posted by Buntix at 10:20 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Republican says with Trump ‘impeachment needs to be on the table’

I'm still pretty firmly in "I'll believe it when I see it" territory with impeachment, but it's interesting to think about the fact that there's only one real risk the Republicans face in doing so: Trump's overall popularity sucks but they'd still be pissing off key parts of their base by impeaching him. That's all that stands between them and President Pence (buy stocks in rubber stamps!), no pissed off trade partners or nuclear powers to get in the way of business as usual, and no risk of Trump dragging them down with him.

And in light of that it's worth thinking about how well this Russia thing works to mitigate their risk: it can tank his popularity among all but the most die-hard segments, it gives the option of ripping the bandaid off fast and letting time and a lot of Republican red meat legislation take the sting off the base, it allows them to do the old "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" and stick with him until the last possible moment looking like ardent defenders who just hate that it came to this, it allows them to take cover under the Democrats by letting them play the heavy in bipartisan investigations.

Frankly if any establishment Republicans are still harboring a grudge after the way he went after them in the election and they were "forced" (by political expediency, not actual force...) to eat shit and line up behind him - and of course they are, Ted Cruz may be a miserable human being but Trump drug him and his wife through the mud and he can hold a grudge like no other - this Russia business is a huge gift that they'd be kicking themselves for letting go. Even if they do sweep the Russia thing under the rug for now, you can bet on a Comey-style "new evidence has come to light and we're reopening the investigation" plan in their back pockets, just in case.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:40 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


Emily Nussbaum in The Nëw Yorker kills with How Jokes Won the Election
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:14 AM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


Please, no.
posted by Buntix at 12:19 AM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


I seriously don't know what scares me more - Trump or Pence at the wheel. I am from and currently live in Indiana and Pence at a national level scares the shit out of me...just in different ways from the cheeto.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 1:25 AM on January 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


So if he's going to flaunt his Scottishness at the inauguration, and he owns land in Scotland, and is so pleased at Brexit and looking forward to doing a trade deal with the UK veryfast, does that mean he expects to take over Scotland fairly sharpish?
posted by tel3path at 1:30 AM on January 17, 2017


Please, no.

Lawd, after that faux Scootish lyric poetry, how about a follow up with Andy Stewart's jaunty 1960 minor hit "Donald Where's Your Troosers?"
posted by Mister Bijou at 1:52 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Lawd, after that faux Scootish lyric poetry

I found it helps to imagine it read by the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre (and congrats to McGonagall on his new position of second worst poet in history!)

does that mean he expects to take over Scotland fairly sharpish?

Trump may feel Scottish, but Scotland ain't feelin' him. He's probably less welcome here than he is anywhere (with good reason).
posted by Buntix at 2:04 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


*reads linked poem*
*sputters*
What the hell is that?!
Where the hell does this come from?
Fascinating and revolting. But you better figure that shit out because it's not a joke, not even a bad one. And the people who read it and think 'yeah, that's great and appropriate' are real and unless they are reckoned with we will never figure out how to make a thing like the PEOTUS not happen again.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:24 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


The writer of that poem is one Joseph Charles McKenzie who, on his site, takes the time to let you know one of his professors thought his poems were superior to Shakespeare's, so there you go.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:34 AM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Holy fuck, that poem!!!! Not by any means the most spectacularly bombastic triumphalist ignominious claim within, but as an academic, I'll see myself out now.

Academe now lies dead, the old order rots,
No longer policing our words and our thoughts;
Its ignorant hirelings pretending to teach
Are backward in vision, sophomoric in speech.
Now we learnèd of mind add ourselves to the crowd
That cheers on the Domhnall, the best of MacLeod!

posted by stonepharisee at 2:34 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I want him to be standing at the 18th hole on his Scottish golf course, look out to see and there's nothing but windmills as far as the eye can see.
posted by Grangousier at 2:35 AM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Oh WOAH NELLIE!!!

Just discovered it's called "Pibroch of the Domhnall" (also a couple more verses in this version).

The Pibroch: often pronounced PeeBreak among Ceilidh musicians, as it's their chance to hit the head and get some more beers in while the piper's busy showing off... :D
posted by Buntix at 2:35 AM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Whilst hapless old harridans flapping their traps
Teach women to look and behave like us chaps,
The Domhnall defends the defenseless forlorn;
For, a woman’s first right is the right to be born.


OMFG.

OMFG.
posted by threetwentytwo at 2:38 AM on January 17, 2017 [35 favorites]


Joseph, the poet of Trump,
Proved a bit of a grump
His inaugural verse
Just couldn't be worse
It's as if he pulled it from his rump
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:43 AM on January 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


Hooooooolyy fuck, that poem. That's a new feeling for me in relation to the Trump election in the US. That deep feeling of embarrassment on behalf of others.
posted by generichuman at 3:01 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I think I need to rinse my mouth out with whisky.

This was a really bad week to take a break from alcohol.
posted by generichuman at 3:03 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


So only the Vogon poetry researchers will be funded now I guess
posted by tel3path at 3:05 AM on January 17, 2017 [31 favorites]


I think the article at that "please, no" link has been changed - didn't it say earlier that Trump wanted the poem read at the inauguration and that he was considering reading it himself? I was hoping that would come true just for its pro-leve ludicrousness.
posted by scrowdid at 3:42 AM on January 17, 2017


The morning the Jalli reads Metafilter and realizes that there is a high chance that Donald Trump is related to the founders of the town she lives, so lots and lots of people around here. And of course this means related to members of her own immediate family and possibly her.

This is fine.
posted by Jalliah at 3:45 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


So please tell me the poem is a joke
posted by stonepharisee at 3:48 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


You know, I was beginning to think that "Hey, they're Scottish, so of course it's funny" trope had been run into the ground (Mike Meyers, Pixar's Brave). Now I see what is much worse is outsiders trying to take Scots seriously.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:49 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Sooo, like many here, I wondered what kind of competition recognized this poet's earlier work. Turns out the phrase Scottish International Poetry Competition only ever appears in poets "About me" blocks in Google, with prizes in the 1998-2004 range, conveniently pre-google. One person claims in passing to have been to the events, but still...what's the poetic equivalent of a degree mill?
posted by persona at 3:50 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


And in typing that comment, I made it untrue for any further Google searches. Reminds me of the good old days of the Heisenwhack.
posted by persona at 3:52 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's easy to criticize. Let's see YOUR sheaf of verse that sounds like Tennyson after he was kicked in the head by a horse.
posted by thelonius at 3:57 AM on January 17, 2017 [43 favorites]


I realize that distant ancestry is distant but MacLeods from Lewis is part of my family lore and historical identity and is ingrained to the point where I now have a part of me that feels personally embarrassed and like I should apologize like you would for a mean drunken cousin that's fucking around in the neighborhood pub.

Sorry world.
posted by Jalliah at 4:09 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


One person claims in passing to have been to the events, but still...what's the poetic equivalent of a degree mill?

That seems to be suggesting it's something to do with the Callander Poetry Weekend, which is a real (and respectable, as much as poets ever are) thing (that I keep meaning to go to every year, and not getting round to). I can't really see the Trump poem guy winning anything there, unless they did just mistake his work for a McGonagall parody.

Jalliah, to balance things out here's a talented poet MacLeod: Poems by Iain Banks and Ken MacLeod. (also for that matter the head teacher at my primary school was MacLeod from Lewis, complete with the excellent accent they have - Trump is the exception, not the rule).
posted by Buntix at 4:38 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


That poem is really scary. It's really going to be read at the inauguration? I am constantly amazed by just how far right these people are - not just in their beliefs but in their exterminationist attitude toward other people - that's an exterminationist poem, in particular the verse about women. I know that when someone talks about women acting like men, they are inciting violence against women and queer people, and to have someone do it from the podium at the inauguration is frightening.
posted by Frowner at 4:47 AM on January 17, 2017 [37 favorites]


I have no idea if the Independent is a real news source in the UK, but nobody else is reporting that poem.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:58 AM on January 17, 2017


It is.
posted by ominous_paws at 4:59 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Well that awful joke of poem needs a palate cleanser.

Burns inspired comic lament about "walloper" Trump wins first prize in poetry competition

A Scot’s Lament fur her American Fellows (Oan their election of a tangerine gabshite walloper).

America, aw whit ye dain?!
How could ye choose a clueless wain
Ti lead yir country? Who wid trust
A man sae vile?!
A racist, sexist eedjit
Wi a shite hairstyle?

Yet lo, ye votit (michty me!)
Ti hawn’ this walloper the key
Ti pow’r supreme, ti stert his hateful,
Cruel regime.
A cling ti hope that this is aw
Jist wan bad dream.

But naw, the nightmare has come true,
A curse upon rid, white an’ blue,
An’ those who cast oot Bernie
Must feel sitch regret
Fur thinkin’ Mrs. Clinton
Was a safer bet.

So noo we wait ti see unfold
Division an’ intolerance, cold;
A pois’nous bigotry untold
Since Hitler’s rule
As the free world’s hopes an’ dreams
Lie with this fool.

Alas, complainin’ wullnae change
The fact this diddy has free range
Ti ride roughshod ow’r human beings
That fall outside
The cretinous ideals borne of
His ugly pride.

Awch USA, we feel yir woes
An’ pour oor wee herts oot ti those
Who ken this oarange gabshite isnae
Who they chose,
But jist sit tight; Trump’s cluelessness
Will time expose.

Fur sittin’ there beside Obama
Efter the election drama,
Trump looked like reality
Had finally hit:
Aboot the role of president
He knew Jack shit.

Poutin’, glaikit through this farce,
His mooth wis pursed up like an arse,
His Tangoed coupon glowin’ like
A skelped backside.
Despite all his bravado
Trump looked keen ti hide.

Let’s therefur no despair an’ greet,
Or see this outcome as defeat.
Let’s wait an’ watch this bampot
Flap his hawns an’ squirm
When presidential pressures
Crush him like a worm.

Hawd oan ti values you hold dear,
Don’t let this numpty bring yi fear,
His chants of hatred don’t speak fur
The human race.
Love will endure despite this
Oarange-faced disgrace.

So USA, in ma conclusion,
Know we Scots feel your confusion:
We are also chained ti those
Not of oor choosin’.
Stand firm fur unity will break
Through Trump’s delusion.

posted by Jalliah at 5:00 AM on January 17, 2017 [37 favorites]


Frowner, as scrowdid noted above the Independent article has been edited to remove any mention of it being read at the inauguration. So it may be just a case of lone-bigot-and-poetry-butcher writes poem, stating it's for the inauguration, papers take him at his word because, well, eyeballs... (The Scotsman were the first to report it: http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scotland-inspired-poem-created-for-donald-trump-inauguration-1-4340260 )

The verse about women also reveals how little the poet actually kens about Scotland, the word 'chaps' is glaringly incongruous as it's a very English term (tallyho chaps!).
posted by Buntix at 5:02 AM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


I have no idea if the Independent is a real news source in the UK, but nobody else is reporting that poem.

It's in the Scotsman
posted by Jalliah at 5:02 AM on January 17, 2017


But is it in the True Scotsman?
posted by thelonius at 5:05 AM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


It's in the Scotsman

Unless I'm missing something, all that article says is that the poem was written to commemorate the inauguration. Not that it's going to be read or that Trump even knows about it. I can't believe I'm defending the Trump team, but this strikes me as nothing to get worked up about, and fake news.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:05 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Okay, the most likely candidates as to where Trump starts his first war (updated):

1. Scotland.
2. China.
3. Mexico.
4. Andorra.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:13 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Unless I'm missing something, all that article says is that the poem was written to commemorate the inauguration. Not that it's going to be read or that Trump even knows about it. I can't believe I'm defending the Trump team, but this strikes me as nothing to get worked up about, and fake news.

I agree as it looks like the correction has been made. I wouldn't call it fake news. It's news that got a fact wrong and was corrected. Though I guess the originally concept of 'fake news' meaning news purposely created to mislead and be spread as propaganda has been so abused and changed over the past weeks that it's lost it's meaning.
posted by Jalliah at 5:14 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I was told they said there was an enemies list.

Oh man, they told me I would be on a list, but I initially figured it was hyperbole! Well, at least I seem to be in good company, and maybe we can all help form a post-apocalypse government.
posted by corb at 5:16 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Terminator (SCC) Donald Trousers (with Garret Dillahunt).
posted by porpoise at 5:17 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


The polls are all phony and rigged again. A lot of September and October's (excuse for) rhetoric is coming back in the lead-up to the inauguration.

@realDonaldTrump
The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.

posted by Rust Moranis at 5:28 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Can the US and the UK start negotiating a trade deal straight away? Of course. Will that break existing international agreements? Of course. Does it matter that nations demonstrate contempt for international law? Of course What will happen? Well, we could start the tariff wars on Tuesday, if you like, and then we're back to the sort of itransnational anarchism which ratchets up until somebody invades someone else.

If our governments abandon the rule of law, I don't think oppositions will feel quite the same need either. Messy, much?
posted by Devonian at 5:29 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


The twitter bot.
localhuman's twitter bot.


it is not my twitter bot, its the American people's twitter bot.
posted by localhuman at 5:31 AM on January 17, 2017 [73 favorites]


"Rigged," "fake news," and "fraud" are becoming my least favorite words. They're basically meaningless, now, but they sure do get people riled up!
posted by Tevin at 5:33 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


MOSCOW (@AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin accuses outgoing US administration of trying to undermine Trump’s legitimacy

WaPo: Donald Trump waits in his tower — accessible yet isolated: He does not use email and rarely surfs the Internet, meaning that telephone calls, television appearances or physical proximity are the best ways to reach him. As his three successive campaign managers quickly learned, whoever controls the flow of information to Trump controls the man — at least as much as he can be contained.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


@realDonaldTrump
The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.


He really does watch a lot of CNN doesn't he. These polls aren't new, the numbers aren't new, others have done them but once it hits CNN...boom...tweet.

At least we know that people not liking him is getting to him.
posted by Jalliah at 5:46 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


"Probably a poem about how women 'have the right to be born' (so bear in mind that you are alive on our sufferance, as well as that you had better pop out babies) isn't going to be read at the inauguration" is one of about four or five goodish pieces of political news in the past week. Sigh.

It's really galling that this is all so stupid. There's no good reason that we couldn't have, at worst, the usual crony capitalists who are interested in international stability. My credit card company would be a better president than Trump, because they're interested in consistent, predictable revenue instead of chaos.
posted by Frowner at 5:48 AM on January 17, 2017 [29 favorites]



I feel like it's at the point where if you want to get an idea of what Donald knows about the world watch CNN because this is not the first time that something has hit CNN and...tweet.
posted by Jalliah at 5:49 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


My credit card company would be a better president than Trump

3d20 would be a better president than Trump.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:50 AM on January 17, 2017 [36 favorites]


Donald Trump waits in his tower

This is a bedtime story I don't wanna hear
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:51 AM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


Someone on one of my boards argued that they detected a pattern to his tweets, suggesting that he wrote most of them out on the toilet in the morning. Now I can't forget it.
posted by Miko at 5:52 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Can someone pay CNN to hide subliminal messages in their broadcasts? Maybe something with the words RESIGN, QUIT, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS, GO PLAY GOLF.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:54 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Someone on one of my boards argued that they detected a pattern to his tweets, suggesting that he wrote most of them out on the toilet in the morning. Now I can't forget it.

In my head he tweets in his underwear, undershirt and wears those garter suspender socks.
posted by Jalliah at 5:56 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


My cat would be a better president than Annoying Orange.
posted by tel3path at 5:57 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


It’s hard to explain to a normal person — one of the 79 percent of American adults who don’t use Twitter — why the platform mesmerizes the news media.

1) Reporters, even good reporters, are lazy. Like anyone who thinks "writing" is work. Pfft.
2) Twitter users inexplicably believe using Twitter = some level-up of Interbits geekery
3) "The News Media" are mesmerize. Ooh look! A rating! Hey its got a "trending" button right here!
4) It beats interviewing people. Or considering things.
5) Every year's disgorgement of PR majors Journalism majors believe Twitter is A Real Thing that's How It's Done. And it's like, super easy?
posted by petebest at 5:59 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Someone on one of my boards argued that they detected a pattern to his tweets, suggesting that he wrote most of them out on the toilet in the morning. Now I can't forget it.

It's a movement like America has never seen.
posted by bifter at 6:15 AM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


The British woman who is actually the @Ivanka Twitter account Donny mistakenly tweeted when he meant his daughter has responded.

@ivanka
@realDonaldTrump @drgoodspine And you're a man with great responsibilities. May I suggest more care on Twitter and more time learning about #climatechange. [image]
posted by chris24 at 6:21 AM on January 17, 2017 [52 favorites]


(and congrats to McGonagall on his new position of second worst poet in history!)

Oh, "the bridge over the silvery Tay" is sublime next to the work of J. Gordon Coogler, my state's favorite poetic son. Actually, Coogler's best known couplet is just the thing for the Age of Trump:
Alas! for the South, her books have grown fewer—
She never was much given to literature.
Coogler is much a better poet than that McKenzie bampot.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:25 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


It's a movement like America has never seen.

Oh my god! I've cracked it! Trump is a DeepMind neural network that has learnt to turn excreta into words!
posted by Talez at 6:27 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


1) Reporters, even good reporters, are lazy.

See also: news articles based on "government sources", articles that simple repeat what the government says, and every Kellyanne Conway appearance on CNN.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:33 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I saw the best of MacLeod destroyed by swordplay,
hungering paranoid in trenchcoats,
Dragging themselves through the back lots and blue screens,
mining their exhausted kitcsh
B-list brethren burning for an evanescent connection
to a revenue stream that won't die.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:37 AM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Quite a wakeup call coming for some.

@williamjordann
Quite a stat from Pew:

52% of low-income Republicans now say federal govt should make sure people have healthcare.

9 months ago: 31%
[chart]
posted by chris24 at 6:39 AM on January 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


Alternatively....

LOWBROWER: we can be white with guns
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:39 AM on January 17, 2017


From @deray:
The Resistance Manual (it might take a few refreshes for it to load)
posted by melissasaurus at 6:41 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


52% of low-income Republicans now say federal govt should make sure people have healthcare.

9 months ago: 31%



Translation: "Oh shit, we thought they were just going to take it away from those people. They meant us, too. Fuck."
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:42 AM on January 17, 2017 [64 favorites]


ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Banned from my state senator's (this knob) Facebook page after pointing out that the straw-man Dennis Prager video about "The difference between liberals and conservatives" he linked to was insulting to 47 percent of his constituents.
posted by Etrigan at 6:43 AM on January 17, 2017 [27 favorites]


Translation: "Oh shit, we thought they were just going to take it away from those people. They meant us, too. Fuck.

You mean the Face-eating Tiger Party actually eats faces?
posted by chris24 at 6:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


HuffPo's list of Democrats avoiding inauguration has risen to 43.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


You mean the Face-eating Tiger Party actually eats faces?

turns out
posted by entropicamericana at 6:47 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]



Warning: major beanplating ahead.

I need to revisit this. I can't let this go and out of everything that I've read about Donald saying or doing this one bothers me the most and scares me the most. It bothered me all day yesterday and still is this morning. It's just unsettling.

This is the quote:

"I looked at something uh, I'm not allowed to show because it's classified - but I just looked at Afghanistan and you look at the Taliban - and you take a look at every, every year and it's more, more, more, you know they have the different colors - an you say, you know - what's going on?


Sure it's Trumpspeak and figuring out Trumpspeak is a challenge and he talks bullshit most of the time. This little snippet looks like him BSing about how bad the situation in Afghanistan is which is fair enough. The unsettling part is the level of competency being displayed (or in this case not) behind the BS.

On the face of it, looks almost like utter nonsense until as someone pointed out elsewhere it makes more sense in the context that what he is talking about are maps or some sort of chart with colors. This is fits with him saying that he can't actually show it because it's classified.

So assuming it looks like he was shown some sort of maps or graphs which show the increase of Taliban *something* likely influence over several years time. And it looks like the map was color coded to represent something about the Taliban. (Different factions or perhaps level of control would make sense. )

All this is a perfectly sensible, reasonable and necessary for the President, the Commander in Chief to understand about the current political situation in Afghanistan. Kinda vital I would say.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt that his words are just a clumsy way of him 'talking around' info that came from something classified is one way of looking at it. Which of course is troubling that he's babbling about classified material but at least in this case the idea of Taliban expansion as something that's occurring isn't classified so it's probably not a huge faux pas.

I don't think that's the case though. I think this response is an indication of the level of competency that he has being able to process this sorts of information and recount it at a later time and in other contexts. He's at the level of 'look, lots more colors, colors are getting bigger, look this color is getting smaller' type analysis. Ooo, that color on the map is expanding over the years and getting 'more, more, more'. That's bad.
And what else does he take from the briefing? Taliban has lots of 'colors'. Not factions, not types, not any other concept but lots of colors, likely based on the color coding of some maps or graphs.
I guess it's okay that at least the basics are there right?: Taliban expanding. Taliban bad. Therefore bad expanding. Different Taliban something, something.

I dunno maybe I'm just sensitive because I've spent a lot of my work life briefing people and using visuals to help convey complex information. I can imagine sitting at a table either with paper or a screen and how it plays out. It's not a pretty scene and I can imagine the briefers being horrified at what is occurring.
posted by Jalliah at 6:48 AM on January 17, 2017 [45 favorites]


A New Project on Partisan Gerrymandering from Sam Wang/Princeton

He's looking to hire a couple people full time to assist (only need an undergrad degree) - 1 year assignment possibly renewable for a second year. He expects the research to be used in upcoming SCOTUS gerrymandering cases.
posted by melissasaurus at 6:48 AM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


He's at it again:

@DJT:

With all of the jobs I am bringing back into the U.S. (even before taking office), with all of the new auto plants coming back into our.....country and with the massive cost reductions I have negotiated on military purchases and more, I believe the people are seeing "big stuff."


John Lewis said about my inauguration, "It will be the first one that I've missed." WRONG (or lie)! He boycotted Bush 43 also because he...
[trails off]

Not enough fiber last night, apparently.
Or maybe they've installed a flashbang dispenser in the Trumpian commode.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:48 AM on January 17, 2017


Face-eating Tiger Party . . /eyeroll. Please!

We're The Leopards Eating-People's-Faces Party!
posted by petebest at 6:49 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


52% of low-income Republicans now say federal govt should make sure people have healthcare.

9 months ago: 31%


It would almost be funny if not for the millions of poor people who didn't vote for this clusterfuck and are going to be in a far more precarious situation because of it.
posted by Talez at 6:50 AM on January 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


You mean the Face-eating Tiger Party actually eats faces?

Most importantly, it eats white people's faces too. This was apparently not clear until recently.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:51 AM on January 17, 2017 [36 favorites]


I can't get over these poets:

I offer you poetry that is:
Beautiful 100%
Meaningful 100%
True 100%


And it rhymes!

Reject the crippling dogmas of modernism and remain faithful to traditional principles of lyric verse.
Also get that "Chinese music" bebop noise out of jazz!

And tell me this sentence isn't immortal:
It was a priest who assigned the Sonnets for Christ the King as a penance to atone for my first, youthful collection of sonnets which, although conceived in sin, nevertheless won First Place at the Scottish International Poetry Competition.
posted by thelonius at 6:54 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


This was apparently not clear until recently.

"Some say that face-eating tigers will eat everybody's faces. Some others say that they'll just give us baths with their rough tongues. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. Back to Ted with weather."
posted by uncleozzy at 6:55 AM on January 17, 2017 [31 favorites]


Someone on one of my boards argued that they detected a pattern to his tweets, suggesting that he wrote most of them out on the toilet in the morning. Now I can't forget it.

I wondered why he always puts quotes around "movement".
posted by klarck at 6:56 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


FYI, just got off the phone with Schumer's DC office. The staffer said that they are getting a TON of calls already this morning re boycotting the inauguration and that he's tracking the responses by zip code and that I should keep an eye out for his upcoming public statements. Not sure what that will all mean, but the staffer was way more interested in my call about this today than they have about any other issue I've called about in the past few months. So, if you live in NY - PLEASE CALL SCHUMER TODAY! 202-224-6542.

Calling Gillibrand next: 202-224-4451
posted by melissasaurus at 6:58 AM on January 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


"I looked at something uh, I'm not allowed to show because it's classified - but I just looked at Afghanistan and you look at the Taliban - and you take a look at every, every year and it's more, more, more, you know they have the different colors - an you say, you know - what's going on?

Jalliah, fwiw, what I learned from watching and transcribing his campaign "speeches" was that he is a visual person (makes sense/can't read well), and his words don't transcribe very well. So a hyphen may not convey the pause, or facial expression, accurately enough for the level of analysis you want.

Also, he does "show" for the press as opposed to grossing out the Billy Bush Bus, say, and I think you can add that intentional layer of distraction on that quote. My take is that he's trying to communicate the biglyness of his task in Afghanistan by whirling up to a big "who knows", which can also be read as he has no idea.

I think he's tetched, but probably not AS lost on Afghanistan as he makes out. OMMV of course.
posted by petebest at 7:01 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


key parts of their base....
it can tank his popularity among all but the most die-hard segments

-jason_steakums

I'm having trouble understanding who exactly ARE these "key, die-hard" republican supporters? Aren't they just survival maneuverers with no definitive long term meaningful labels/affiliations anymore?
posted by yoga at 7:05 AM on January 17, 2017


Just called my House rep and asked if he'll stand with Al Green as Texan Dems boycotting the inauguration. The nice young man on the phone said he wasn't authorized to speak for anyone but said he'd pass my request and message of support along, which is all I really wanted.
posted by sciatrix at 7:07 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's sort of disenheartening that apparently Sen. Schumer is more interested in constituent input on this fairly meaningless gesture than any actual policy work.
posted by R a c h e l at 7:08 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


"although conceived in sin, nevertheless won First Place at the Scottish International Poetry Competition"

Nevertheless?
posted by GrammarMoses at 7:10 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


FYI, just got off the phone with Schumer's DC office

Just got off the phone with my congressman to make points about Pompeo and Price and I also let the staffer know I'd be happy if Rep Crist looked to Rep Lewis' example and boycotted the inauguration. Unfortunately, and not unsurprisingly, he's decided to attend.

I'm going to keep calling and I intend to attend my local Women's March but I'm resigned to the fact that Friday at 12:01 Trump will occupy the white house and unfortunately it's going to be every man and woman for themselves. It's so depressing but I'm hoping life goes on.
posted by photoslob at 7:11 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Policy work to do what, exactly? I'm not in favor of coming up with ways for the Democrats to help Trump and the GOP to dismantle the ACA by selling their souls for a few cosmetic adjustments, and then getting to share the blame. Similarly, other policy areas.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:11 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


So, if you live in NY - PLEASE CALL SCHUMER TODAY! 202-224-6542.

Calling Gillibrand next: 202-224-4451


Done for Gillibrand at her NY number which was picked up right away. 212-224-4451. DC number rang and rang. Schumer's NY number doesn't answer and his DC number is answered by a machine that tries to route you to a person but eventually hangs up, probably from no one available due to too many calls. But will keep trying. His NY number is 212-486-4430.

We really need a Senator to boycott. And Senate Minority Leader would be amazing. (though I have little confidence that he will. But hey, sending McConnell his own letter back was badass so who knows.)
posted by chris24 at 7:15 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's so depressing but I'm hoping life goes on.

A lot of us are able to say that. Millions of people can't.

God I hope they don't repeal the minimum wage.
posted by Talez at 7:16 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


(I find the degree to which calling my reps inevitably sends me into automatic Nice Southern Lady mode endlessly amusing, especially since I keep seeing the same reaction from other Texan and Southern liberals in my feeds. It's Pavlovian, apparently.)
posted by sciatrix at 7:20 AM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


> God I hope they don't repeal the minimum wage.

Unless they also take away the voting rights of millions of minimum wage earners (which, you know, I wouldn't put it past them to try) this would be a catastrophically stupid idea for even our monumentally greedy and idiotic congress/White House combo.

In other words: if min wage is repealed, that will be one of our smaller problems because other shit will be so much worse.
posted by Tevin at 7:21 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]




Trump is now claiming on twitter that John Lewis is lying, saying that Lewis said this will be the first inauguration that he's missed, when he didn't go to George W. Bush's inauguration. I'm not, of course, finding any statement that Lewis ever said that, and finding instead an article where Business Insider erroneously reported that the 2017 inauguration will be “the first time he [Lewis] will miss an inauguration since 1986,” the year he was elected to Congress.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:22 AM on January 17, 2017


[Apparently John Lewis did say that, but maybe he forgot.]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:23 AM on January 17, 2017


Unless they also take away the voting rights of millions of minimum wage earners (which, you know, I wouldn't put it past them to try) this would be a catastrophically stupid idea for even our monumentally greedy and idiotic congress/White House combo.

I imagine it would go hand-in-hand with state-level expansion of debtors' prisons. Reduce wages + criminalize debt = more people in prison whose labor you can exploit and who cannot vote.
posted by melissasaurus at 7:25 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Unless they also take away the voting rights of millions of minimum wage earners (which, you know, I wouldn't put it past them to try)

FYI this is exactly the reason why they're putting Sessions and Kobach in high positions. They know they'll take the voter suppression shenanigans of places like NC nationwide.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:33 AM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


Dear Jesus God, please let us jump to the Alternate reality timeline where President Obama announces at his press conference Wednesday that PEOTUS Trump is under arrest for A) shady, illegal business deals B) actively aiding and abetting the Russians in election interference C) being totally unfit for public office and possibly mentally unstable. In your name I pray, AMEN.
posted by nolabasashi at 7:39 AM on January 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


The thing about repealing the minimum wage and some of the most extreme stuff is that it will render this country a lot less governable. I think that if the ACA, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the minimum wage go, there will be simple governability problems pretty quickly, because a lot of people will be hungry, homeless and angry who used to be housed and fed. That doesn't mean there will be, like, effective opposition and insurrections, but even just a big uptick in crime and rioting present problems.

Can a truly evil, violent government use force of arms to keep order? Sure, but again, that presents its own problems of administration - you need a lot of cops, a lot of soldiers, a lot of prisons, a lot of spies. Building up that infrastructure and making sure that it never rebels against you is work and it's expensive - if you start paying your cops and prison guards really shitty wages, they don't exactly have a lot of incentive to stay on your side. And it renders society unpleasant - anyone who wants to live a pleasant life has to live a gated life, and that means further polarization of society and loss of support from anyone who normally likes conservatism but isn't rich enough for a gated community.

Again, I'm not saying that it's impossible, but even if Tin-pot Hitler thinks he can just say "minimum wage is repealed and TrumpCo gets the contracts for the debtors' prisons", it's a lot more difficult than that. Plus, that does raise the question of what happens to, eg, Walmart's profits when there's a gazillion tariffs and everyone's wages also fall. Again, riots, crime, places that were relatively placid becoming much less livable.

It's possible, yes, but I'm not sure that - terrible, monstrous and stupid as these people are - they are truly looking to rule over that kind of country.
posted by Frowner at 7:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


It's like they watched "It's A Wonderful Life" and their takeaway was "Pottersville: Yes we can!"
posted by thelonius at 7:47 AM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]




Very gross. Very unsurprising.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:56 AM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


Maine Gov. LePage, asshole: "John Lewis ought to look at history. It was Abraham Lincoln that freed the slaves ... A simple thank you would suffice.”

I love how they pretend that the Southern Strategy never happened.

Love? I mean it infuriates me.
posted by Talez at 7:58 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


What is LePage even trying to say? That a Republican freed the slaves (back when Republicans were Democrats)?

And because of that (historically confused) fact, John Lewis can't ever complain about anything?
posted by diogenes at 7:59 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


a lot of people will be hungry, homeless and angry who used to be housed and fed.

Tell people that they have nothing to lose and they'll take your word for it.
posted by holgate at 8:00 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


A lot of us are able to say that. Millions of people can't.

And that's what depresses the shit out of me.
posted by photoslob at 8:01 AM on January 17, 2017



Maine Gov. LePage, asshole: "John Lewis ought to look at history. It was Abraham Lincoln that freed the slaves ... A simple thank you would suffice.”


Aye, and it was white men who paid to keep them enslaved, too. What's your point, asshole?

brb going to go tweet that at him directly
posted by sciatrix at 8:01 AM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


All this talk of poetry makes me wish that Ogden Nash were still with us. What he could do with "Trump" in his rhymes, I can only imagine. He was good with stupid names:

Invocation
( " Smoot Plans Tariff Ban on Improper Books " NEWS ITEM )

Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)
Is planning a ban on smut.
Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.
And his reverent occiput.

Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,
Grit your molars and do your dut.,
Gird up your l — ns,
Smite h p and th gh,
We'll all be Kansas
By and by.

posted by emjaybee at 8:02 AM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Dear Jesus God, please let us jump to the Alternate reality timeline where President Obama announces at his press conference Wednesday that PEOTUS Trump is under arrest

And how exactly do you think that would turn out? I'm going to tell you right now that if that were to happen there would be riots and bloodshed here in the south.
posted by photoslob at 8:03 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Even worse, Page says Rutherford B Hayes fought against Jim Crow and should be thanked as well. Umm, as part of the Corrupt Bargain to be chosen by the Electoral College, Hayes agreed to remove troops from the South which directly led to Jim Crow.
posted by chris24 at 8:04 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


There's no deus ex machina coming. Only the hard work of rebuilding the Democratic party from scratch.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:08 AM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


Dear Jesus God, please let us jump to the Alternate reality timeline where President Obama announces at his press conference Wednesday that PEOTUS Trump is under arrest

And how exactly do you think that would turn out?


It would be a constitutional crises. It would be a time of great danger and upheaval. It would put the future of the nation at risk.

And it might very well be better than the alternative.
posted by diogenes at 8:08 AM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


What a vile piece of shit, to tell off an actual civil rights leader like this. The fact that these people - Trump, LePage, or any other person who lacks all forms of tact, respect, self-awareness, critical thinking - attain such insanely high positions of power is so gross and shocking sometimes when you step back and think about it. Like I shouldn't be surprised by now that someone this small-minded is literally the Governor, or President for that matter (and that enough people actually cheer them on), but they keep exceeding my expectations somehow. It's like nothing is off-limits anymore.
posted by windbox at 8:09 AM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


Actually, tweaked my snide comment to the Governor to point out that it was Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson who championed civil rights and purged his party of the racists who fled to the GOP banner. Slightly more targeted.

Good point also on Hayes, who fucked over Reconstruction to serve northern Republican party power interests.
posted by sciatrix at 8:09 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


You know, I kind of understand Congresspeople attending the inauguration. Trump is mean-spirited and vengeful and when Trump takes it out on specific districts it will hurt the constituents these Congresspeople represent.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:12 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Maybe if he wasn't so busy choosing place settings and napkins for the inaugural dinner he might have retained the brain space to remember First Daughter's Twit name.

Or the First Twit's daughter's name.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:13 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


The swamp next door
The Tweets and Sad!s
Lincoln beds and nearly-deads
Have you ever been had in Trumpland?
posted by kirkaracha at 8:13 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


You know, I kind of understand Congresspeople attending the inauguration. Trump is mean-spirited and vengeful and when Trump takes it out on specific districts it will hurt the constituents these Congresspeople represent.

Maybe, but if enough stay away it removes his ability to target. Plus, he's going to hurt those districts anyways, because they're represented by the opposition.
posted by tocts at 8:15 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Page says Rutherford B Hayes fought against Jim Crow and should be thanked as well.

Yeah-mm. I'm gonna have to hold you back a year, Page.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:16 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]




Oh good Lord, that poem.

I wouldn't be surprised if his official inauguration poem begins with "There once was a man from Nantucket..."
posted by SisterHavana at 8:21 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Lots of people that I know who voted for Trump, have buyer's remorse. I'm pretty sure the Vice-President Elect could still be sworn in, as per the constitution. This is really an extraordinary case where the man who has been elected is in fact under the influence of a foreign power.

photoslob, I am also a southerner. I don't know what to tell you. Obviously, we have lots of guns down here and I know people that HAVE stockpiled ammo for when "Obama tries to take away our guns " but are they going to go full on and start taking potshots at state troopers and cops and any other local manifestations of authority? Institute purity tests for conservatism and line up people who fail their test? No idea. Many crazies would end up committing suicide by cop if that were the case.

I don't advocate violence or bloodshed, but I literally can't imagine this guy actually doing the job of POTUS, and it's clear to me that he is unqualified and fundamentally unsuited for this job, and will play fiddle while America burns to the ground or is sold off to his cronies.
posted by nolabasashi at 8:30 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I think that as long as there's an R after the name of whomever gets sworn in, there will not be serious civil unrest from Trump voters. An overturning of the entire election result in order to make way for a Democrat? Yeah, that would not end well. Installing Pence in there? I really don't think anyone would care all that much.

I mean, Pence is terrifying. But a different sort of terrifying. I'm not even sure how I feel about it. Him being President would be safe from a "no nuclear armageddon" standpoint, but domestically it would be a 1000% unmitigated disaster. He's a True Believer about Christofascism in a way that Trump isn't. And he'd roll right over for Ryan in a way that I think Trump probably is disinclined to. But on the other hand: mushroom clouds.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:37 AM on January 17, 2017 [24 favorites]


There once was a man in a tower
Who lusted for gold and for power.
With ambitions emboldened
His fortunes turned golden
But not so much gold as his shower.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:38 AM on January 17, 2017 [48 favorites]


Healthcare without Planned Parenthood: Wisconsin and Texas point to dark future
In the remote western plains of Texas, the Midland-Odessa region is separated from the nearest major city by hours of open road. So when the Planned Parenthood clinic in Midland closed down in late 2013 – a casualty of legislative cuts that targeted Planned Parenthood directly – it served as an isolated experiment in what happens when the government defunds the largest women’s healthcare provider around.

“I hate to say it, but I think an awful lot of women just opted to go without care,” said Mike Austin.
...
“Texas’s experience illuminates what may happen on a larger scale,” said Joe Potter, a UT Austin researcher. “Each person involved in the program had to go find a new provider. And whether or not the new providers have the training, experience, and bureaucratic set up so women can get care promptly is a big question mark.”
Sorry (but not sorry) to keep posting things along these lines. This is the region I've been living in, and to me, Trumpism and the current incredibly destructive direction Republicans are taking nationally is not a major plot twist. It's the logical end of where things have been going for years. It is because this stuff isn't new that I've gotten scared; because Republicans have been winning these battles in my part of the world for years. With no real opposition, I don't see that changing. "Republicans always attack women/minorities/social services" is not even remotely comforting to me, the way it seems to be for some; I am in a region already sunk by these policies, and it looks set to just get worse from here. Trumpism and the Republican majority have normalized these attacks on a national scale. So many regions are set to follow where we've been for the past 3 or 4 years, and contrary to popular MeFi lore, people do not actually wake up en masse to the consequences of socially destructive policies after being subjected to them. They largely just become more desperate and willing to try even worse ideas as the situation deteriorates. As horrible as Trump himself is, a lot of this systemic rot goes much deeper.
posted by byanyothername at 8:39 AM on January 17, 2017 [52 favorites]


Oh, and Pittsburghers: It just came across my FB feed that people calling Mike Doyle's office are being told that he will not be attending the inauguration.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:41 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Just seen via Facebook, this tweet from Chase Mitchell: The guy who ran for president on his ability to make and lose deals could not successfully book a Bruce Springsteen cover band.
posted by Gelatin at 8:43 AM on January 17, 2017 [75 favorites]


> It would almost be funny if not for the millions of poor people who didn't vote for this clusterfuck and are going to be in a far more precarious situation because of it.

It makes it worse that same Democrats who spent the past year and half telling me over and over again I should get out of the Party and should be ashamed of every vote I've every cast for a Democrat are the same ones who are now gloating about how poor people are going lose health care. (According to them, it's a disgrace to the Party when "trash" like me vote for Dems. David Brock's volunteers made sure we understood how they felt about that and repeated it often.) From what I've seen about Democratic turnout in this past election, it looks like way too many people listened to them.
posted by nangar at 8:47 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Also I see absolutely no reason to believe at this stage Republicans can't just repeal minimum wage, gut social services or burn social safety nets. They've got this whole "enact socially destructive policies then reap the benefits" game down. Hoping they'll maybe just...not or that the fallout won't be that bad is foolish and blinkered.
posted by byanyothername at 8:49 AM on January 17, 2017


Holy shit, nangar, what the hell is wrong with people?
posted by sciatrix at 8:49 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Mississippi Governor: Some Gay People Become Straight, and Lots of Them Bully Christians: Bryant’s lawyers declare that “homosexuals have enormous political clout,” while “devout Christian mom-and-pop-shop owners … are being bullied by ideologues.” Thus, gay people deserve no legal protection while business owners deserve a right to discriminate.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:51 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Obamacare in Trump country.

Nice little Vox video.
posted by Talez at 8:53 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


> (According to them, it's a disgrace to the Party when "trash" like me vote for Dems. David Brock's volunteers made sure we understood how they felt about that and repeated it often.) From what I've seen about Democratic turnout in this past election, it looks like way too many people listened to them.

Can you please expand on that? I'm not familiar with what you're referring to.
posted by Tevin at 8:54 AM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Mississippi Governor: Some Gay People Become Straight, and Lots of Them Bully Christians

*head tilt* Aroo?
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:55 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


The guy who ran for president on his ability to make and lose deals could not successfully book a Bruce Springsteen cover band.

I get the lulz, but the B Street band was booked to play at the Garden State Presidential Inaugural Gala and that's what they backed out of. They didn't have anything to do with the any of the three official balls being put on by Trump's presidential inaugural committee. It does show how toxic the Trump brand is to the entertainment industry, but I don't think Trump is personally booking acts for New Jersey's inaugural party.
posted by peeedro at 9:01 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


(Just to drop in something from a parallel universe, with no real relevance to the conversation: Here in the UK, John Lewis is a department store, Scott Walker is a 60s heartthrob pop star turned scary avant-garde artist, and Dave Brock is the leader of hippy rockers Hawkwind. Adds an extra frisson to these threads.)
posted by Grangousier at 9:01 AM on January 17, 2017 [42 favorites]


contrary to popular MeFi lore, people do not actually wake up en masse to the consequences of socially destructive policies after being subjected to them. They largely just become more desperate and willing to try even worse ideas as the situation deteriorates. As horrible as Trump himself is, a lot of this systemic rot goes much deeper.

QFT, unfortunately. We're really fond of the idea that people will come around when they've just suffered enough, but it's wishful thinking. They keep voting for these dumb fucks because they're blaming the wrong people and causes for their problems right *now*, and making their problems bigger mostly can't fix that. I'm not sure what will, but I am sure it won't get better on its own.
posted by mordax at 9:04 AM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Also I see absolutely no reason to believe at this stage Republicans can't just repeal minimum wage, gut social services or burn social safety nets.

That whole pesky "needs 60 votes" thing. Remember how frustrated you have been, as Democrats, for 8 years of Republican obstruction? Remember how upset that Obama couldn't get any more signature legislation through? Well now it's about to be on the other foot. Trump won't be able to get legislation like that through. It will be filibustered. You really have to worry about executive orders and appointments more than that.
posted by corb at 9:07 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Human nature is to resist at all costs thinking that you have made a mistake. On an individual and systemic level, counting on large masses of people to wake up one day, cold and hungry and sick, and say, "Oh, my bad. I guess I shouldn't have done that. Let me get right on rectifying this." is not going to work out for you or your movement.

How many people do you know personally who are able to gracefully and honestly admit to being wrong, misinformed, or mean? Like, for real, be honest. Can you do it? Consistently? It's tough.

And social media makes it worse to admit ever having been wrong. All of a sudden your shitty opinion isn't just something known to the three dudes you drink and jam with every other Saturday night, it's your old high school friends, your entire extended family, your co-workers, your pool guy. It's even harder to admit you were wrong on that scale. So good luck counting on that happening in this instance. It is not going to. I take no pleasure in these people losing what limited grip on middle class prosperity they currently have. It will not make anyone more capable of admitting to their 300 Facebook "friends" that what they said a year ago about Libtards and Obummer was actually because they were gullible and got duped by a bunch of venal con-artists.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:11 AM on January 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


Obamacare in Trump country

So one of the takehomes here -- aside from people simply hating the ACA because people call it Obamacare (maybe we can rename it AmericaGloryWhitePowerCare or something) -- is that people who have never been insured, or have always been underinsured, are realizing how expensive healthcare is in the US.

That entrenched interests have been able to keep these people from clamoring for single-payer for so long is just mind-blowing.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:12 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Also, Schumer and Gillibrand are completely impossible to get through to, as perhaps happens when 1% of a state of 20 million people all decide to call them at once.
posted by corb at 9:14 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


We're really fond of the idea that people will come around when they've just suffered enough, but it's wishful thinking. They keep voting for these dumb fucks because they're blaming the wrong people and causes for their problems right *now*, and making their problems bigger mostly can't fix that. I'm not sure what will, but I am sure it won't get better on its own.

Here's the thing I suspect will help: going out and talking to people. Being loud and proud about our politics, and not tucking them politely away at family gatherings. Pushing national discourse. Normalizing protest. Getting lots of people to pick up a stake, even a little one, in liberal attempts to solve these glaring problems. Making folks feel like they can be a part of resistance to the mighty, even a little piece, and getting folks to feel good about their part in resisting. Sit with folks who are imperfect under a big tent, and encourage them to think about what's going on and what we need out of them. Talk about stuff that doesn't get talked about enough in mixed venues, to coworkers and extended family, not just to your other liberal friends. Make some new friends, if you can.

Be the angry liberal Thanksgiving grandpa you want to see in the world, and if someone says something reprehensible to you at a family gathering, damn well stand up and say so. Fight back. Be proud of your opinions. Don't worry about fucking up or being imperfect; worry about being loud and open and principled and open.

That's what's going to help. Not people magically realizing who is to blame here, because if they don't know where to look for an education, well, right now the only folks being loud and open and shameless are the liars and the traitors. It's time for liberals to get off their asses and talk to folks who aren't already in agreement.
posted by sciatrix at 9:17 AM on January 17, 2017 [47 favorites]


That whole pesky "needs 60 votes" thing. Remember how frustrated you have been, as Democrats, for 8 years of Republican obstruction? Remember how upset that Obama couldn't get any more signature legislation through? Well now it's about to be on the other foot. Trump won't be able to get legislation like that through. It will be filibustered.

Stop relying on the filibuster like Republicans aren't going to nuke it the first time Democrats actually use it to block something they want.

The filibuster is dead, we're just waiting on the pronouncement.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:18 AM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


The filibuster is dead

I tend to agree with this, and in any case it's a mighty thin straw to hold up a structure of opposition.
posted by spitbull at 9:21 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


NYT "Breaking News": 8 Million May Lose Insurance After Repeal, Study Finds

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday that repealing major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, while leaving other parts in place, would cost 18 million people their insurance in the first year and could increase the number of uninsured Americans by 32 million in 10 years, while causing individual insurance premiums to double over that time.

Why is this "Breaking News"? Isn't this exactly the point that everyone has been making over and OVER AND &*^^&*!@#% OVER AGAIN?

(Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it's the top headline. People should hear it again. But this should not be news, let alone "breaking news".)
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:21 AM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


Good morning. Damage report. Here's more random stupidity:

Hair stylist to Marla Maples: No free services in exchange for Inauguration Day ‘exposure’. The stylist was asked by Maples' assistant to work for free in exchange for "exposure." She declined, decided to go to the press, and now bought herself exposure that way, so nice work all around.

Finally, someone who would know: Putin Says Doesn’t Believe Trump Met Prostitutes in Russia (emphasis added):
Trump is “a grown man, and secondly he’s someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world,” Putin said. “I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world.
Video: David Fahrenthold on The Daily Show, extended interview
posted by zachlipton at 9:22 AM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


Probably breaking because it's the Congressional Budget Office analysis as opposed to another source.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:24 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Putin said. “I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world.”

Borat is so talented.
posted by spitbull at 9:26 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


> which would leave 18 million people uninsured -- you dropped the 1 in your pullquote

Oh derp! My bad, and well beyond the Edit window. It's 18 million, of course.

(The rest of it, though - want to take bets that it's dismissed as "fake news"?)
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:34 AM on January 17, 2017


Cogent read of the Trump Dossier on LRB
posted by aeshnid at 9:35 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Stop relying on the filibuster like Republicans aren't going to nuke it the first time Democrats actually use it to block something they want.

As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong) you only get opportunities to kill the filibuster at the start of every legislative two-year period? So since they opted not to do it this time, they would have to wait until 2018 if they wanted to try, at which point there would be a possibility of a senate shift?
posted by corb at 9:36 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


This will, of course, just serve as fodder for Gingrich and co's effort to get rid of the CBO, because he believes in magical thinking rather than budgeting.
posted by zachlipton at 9:36 AM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


"fake news"

That's the thing, we now have to come to terms with the fact that a large chunk of voters now only believe what they get inside their bubble, and dismiss everything else.

I can't even discuss politics with my dad because he only watches Fox News. We don't live in the same reality.
posted by Fleebnork at 9:38 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]



Trump is “a grown man, and secondly he’s someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world,” Putin said. “I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world.”


This is Putin throwing shade at Donald and the US right? It sure as hell feels like he knows exactly how gullible Donald, his supporters and others are.
posted by Jalliah at 9:38 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Here's one of the most clear-eyed and sober views of Trump's coming from ... Michael Moore (he's as polarizing a figure on the Blue as he is elsewhere, but since he predicted Trump's win back in July...):
Q: Journalist Salena Zito said the press took Trump “literally, but not seriously,” while his supporters took him “seriously, but not literally.” Do you take him literally or seriously?
MM: I’ve taken him literally and seriously since day one. {...} You do have to take Trump at his word. I still hear people say, “Oh, he’s not really going to build the wall.” Oh, he is going to build it. He knows that he’s got to deliver at least a version of the wall.

Q: Will he ban Muslims from entering the U.S.?
MM: Absolutely. What you’re going to see is, on day one, he’s going to rescind a dozen or more of Obama’s executive-branch regulations. On day two, Republicans will start printing laws the way you print fliers for a homecoming dance. Before the liberals and the Democrats can get their heads screwed on straight, they’ll have 20 laws passed. Building a wall. Creating a Muslim ban. He’s shown how he’s going to do it. He’s going to get away with it by making it a ban on Muslims who come from the following countries. He needs just enough cover for his crowd to say, “Oh, he’s being reasonable there. He’s not banning all Muslims.”
Just because Trump's going to be in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause from Day One doesn't mean he hasn't made plans of his own. The good news, such as it is, is that he's taking the weekend off to start fresh on the 23rd ("I mean my day one is gonna be Monday because I don’t want to be signing and get it mixed up with lots of celebration.")
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:40 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Trump is “a grown man, and secondly he’s someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world,” Putin said. “I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world.”

Lisa: Dad, I think he's an ivory dealer! His boots are ivory, his hat is ivory, and I'm pretty sure that check is ivory.
Homer: Lisa, a guy who's got lots of ivory is less likely to hurt Stampy than a guy whose ivory supplies are low.
posted by FJT at 9:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [47 favorites]


Raw Story: Gloria Allred: Woman to sue Donald Trump for sexual harassment
Allred says that both she and the accuser will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET (11:30 a.m. PT) on Tuesday in Los Angeles.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong) you only get opportunities to kill the filibuster at the start of every legislative two-year period? So since they opted not to do it this time, they would have to wait until 2018 if they wanted to try, at which point there would be a possibility of a senate shift?

No. That's the case for reconciliation instructions, the filibuster can be killed at any time by a simple majority vote to change the Senate rules of order.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:56 AM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


This may be akin to pizzagate from the left, but the implications are certainly shocking. Basically, Roy Cohn and DJT were close friends. In case you don't know, Roy Cohn was gay.
Kendzior: Has Trump had a friend since Roy Cohn? In 1970s/1980s until Cohn died, they were incredibly close. Some interesting Cohn anecdotes here. [images]

Kendzior: Not just drawn to him -- mentored and, most notably, very close friends. Unusually close friends. And really -- has he had a friend since?

John Brownlow: What @sarahkendzior is subtly implying here is what I've suspected for months. If so, any Kompropmat may be not what most people expected /1

Brownlow: and would certainly explain an awful awful lot of things /2
posted by AFABulous at 10:01 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


So you're saying my Putin/Trump fanfic could be canon?
posted by asteria at 10:03 AM on January 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong) you only get opportunities to kill the filibuster at the start of every legislative two-year period? So since they opted not to do it this time, they would have to wait until 2018 if they wanted to try, at which point there would be a possibility of a senate shift?

"Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. "How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?"
"The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. 'Did we do anything wrong?' they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. 'Then why are you chasing us out?' the girls said. 'Catch 22,' the men said. All they kept saying was 'Catch-22, Catch-22. What does it mean, Catch 22? What is Catch-22?"
"Didn't they show it to you?" Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. "Didn't you even make them read it?"
"They don't have to show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't have to."
"What law says they don't have to?"
"Catch-22."

At some point I will assign a macro key to this passage.
posted by delfin at 10:06 AM on January 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


> Alternate reality timeline where President Obama announces at his press conference Wednesday that PEOTUS Trump is under arrest

And how exactly do you think that would turn out? I'm going to tell you right now that if that were to happen there would be riots and bloodshed here in the south.


That might be a better result than an impeachment a couple of months in, after Trump has had time to use his command of the military and the DOJ to arrange a defense.
posted by Coventry at 10:09 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


*squints* I'm sorry, what is the speculation that Trump is bi or gay supposed to imply again? Is there a point, other than hurr hurr he's the queers' problem? Or any evidence aside from the fact that the man maintained a friendship with a gay man?

I'm.... incredibly uncomfortable with this line of speculation, given the evidence linked here.
posted by sciatrix at 10:10 AM on January 17, 2017 [43 favorites]


I'm really not fond of the implication that a straight person can't be close friends with someone who is gay without the suggestion that there had to be something going on.
posted by zachlipton at 10:11 AM on January 17, 2017 [43 favorites]


AFABulous, can we maybe avoid going down that path without substantial evidence and a darn good reason? It's uh, nauseauting.
posted by polyhedron at 10:11 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Because the way that Twitter exchange is framed here, it seriously feels like making the man's sexuality a punchline. And to this queer chick, that feels more than a little gross.
posted by sciatrix at 10:11 AM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


> Be the angry liberal Thanksgiving grandpa you want to see in the world

Sciatrix that was legit one of the most inspiring things I've read in weeks. Thank you!
posted by Tevin at 10:12 AM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Friendly note: due to the nature of the incoming administration, it is likely that we will be hearing a lot about sex work/workers in the coming years, often in defamatory terms from misogynistic men. While there is certainly disagreement within feminist orgs and from person to person over terminology, the preferred terms for many sex-workers-rights orgs are "sex work" and "sex workers" over terms like hooker or prostitute, which have moral and/or legal and/or misogynistic connotations.
posted by melissasaurus at 10:12 AM on January 17, 2017 [33 favorites]



Raw Story: Gloria Allred: Woman to sue Donald Trump for sexual harassment
Allred says that both she and the accuser will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET (11:30 a.m. PT) on Tuesday in Los Angeles.


This is one brave woman.
posted by Jalliah at 10:14 AM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


Guardian: Being a black man in white America: a burden even Obama couldn't escape
If you want to know what white male privilege looks like, look at the podium on inauguration day. No black man could be elected with Trump’s life story
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:18 AM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


(It's actually ganked from The Whelk via Twitter, not my own phrasing--but I admit I've stolen it with great delight, because the image makes me laugh every time.)
posted by sciatrix at 10:19 AM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]




Be the angry liberal Thanksgiving grandpa you want to see in the world

My father-in-law already has this covered. I'm learning from the best.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:28 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Trump Now Buying Facebook Ads Begging People To Come Watch Him Be President

My high school government teacher talked about how one of the original ideas for the president was that they could just be, like, the guy who brings donuts in the morning. The person who helps facilitate discussion and move things along. Nothing terribly special.

Maybe we'll end up with that after all.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 10:30 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


The approval ratings tweet is kind of scary. The tweet, for context:
The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.
What he's doing is pushing a maliciously false narrative to counter any polling or criticism, on anything, even before he's sworn in. As Nate Silver explained, the polls were damn accurate this year. The national poll was off by 1.8 points. The big inaccuracy came not in the polls, but in the predictions, because swing state polling errors were correlated and not random (which the PEC model didn't account for at all, hence Sam Wang's misplaced confidence).

In short, the polls (most of them, all of them) weren't wrong, certainly not the big national polls that are most akin to approval rating polls. But Trump is now conditioning his supporters to understand anything a poll says can't be trusted, to use as ammo every time someone brings up a poll suggesting he is unpopular or doing something unpopular. And that takes away another tool to fight him.
posted by zachlipton at 10:30 AM on January 17, 2017 [29 favorites]


Trump Now Buying Facebook Ads Begging People To Come Watch Him Be President

I'm predicting that the he will tweet that the crowd is 2.8 - 3 million people and that the press is lying. I'm 50/50 on whether he make an Obama crowd comparison.
posted by Jalliah at 10:33 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Putin gets the polls to say he's awesome. Guess Trump can't reach those levers of power.
posted by avalonian at 10:35 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


In short, the polls (most of them, all of them) weren't wrong, certainly not the big national polls that are most akin to approval rating polls. But Trump is now conditioning his supporters to understand anything a poll says can't be trusted, to use as ammo every time someone brings up a poll suggesting he is unpopular or doing something unpopular. And that takes away another tool to fight him.

They're already conditioned. Approval polls have been out for a while and his response is pretty much their response. This is just re-enforcing what he's already done. He's still in campaign mode and doesn't show any sign of changing.
It will get old and it's also being made much more the butt of a joke. Just like the SNL tweets are.
posted by Jalliah at 10:38 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm 50/50 on whether he make an Obama crowd comparison.

Oh, I am all in on this. It's guaranteed.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:40 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


soren_lorensen: "Be the angry liberal Thanksgiving grandpa you want to see in the world

My father-in-law already has this covered. I'm learning from the best.
"

There aren't any conservatives in my family but we have some male Sanders supporters who didn't like Hillary. My wife warned me before Thanksgiving that she was going to get stabby if my 75y.o. brother-in-law started in on how Democrats brought this on themselves by forcing Clinton on the voters. Fortunately for all he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
posted by octothorpe at 10:40 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


New Monmouth poll: 34% favorable.

He's entering office with a popularity comparable to that of George W Bush at the end of his presidency.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:41 AM on January 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


That same poll shows Congress with a 23% approval rating. 23%!!!
posted by prefpara at 10:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Democrats brought this on themselves by forcing Clinton on the voters

Part of fixing this mess is going to be acknowledging our own mistakes. Or we can stay up on our high horse with the delusion that logic and experience have fuck-all to do with American politics.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 10:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


If it hasn't been obvious, Trump needs to be loved. He is terrified of who he is: a pathetic husk of a man. That's why he had rallies even after the elections. That's why he maniacally fights those who criticize him. It is that voice the creeps into his head that tells him he wasted his life.
That's why he surrounds himself with Yes men. The thrum of acceptance has to be constant. And when people nearby see him for who he is, he always reaches out further and lower to find those who would be dazzled by a reality show star.
He imagined the election as a beauty pageant/popularity contest. And when he didn't win the popular vote, he imagined that he did. He picked the absolute worst job in the world to find love. Even if you do it well, people hate you.
It must be the saddest of all possible worlds to live in a bubble where the only people who say they love you are sycophants and liars.
That bubble will never pop for him, but he will retreat from reality more and more. He is Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Even then, she had a pet baboon for a friend.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [30 favorites]


My bet: if there ever is a scandal that seriously threatens him, he'll do what he did with all his other failures, quit and have someone else bail him out.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:46 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


He's still in campaign mode and doesn't show any sign of changing.

I'm kicking myself recently that it took me so long to see this: the campaign Trump was the real Trump. It was in no way a calculated persona. That's all there is.
posted by thelonius at 10:46 AM on January 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


Regarding the increase in the number of Republicans supporting Healthcare all of a sudden, is it too unkind of me to suggest that this is a function of "I want Healthcare just not from a black man?"

Also, I predict SNL will be cancelled or will severely reduce its Trump content as soon as Trump's FCC person gets involved, much like how all satirical representations of Putin were quashed in his first years.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:46 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Sorry if this isn't appropriate for this thread but from time to time I feel like I need to share something positive to lighten the mood...

Tonight I am holding a meeting for a group of local progressives in our very red county in Ohio. I have been meaning to look up the election results in our county for the purposes of sharing with the group but haven't really felt like I could bear to rip off the Band Aid quite yet.

I just looked. It's pretty gnarly.

However, also encouraging! One of the goals for our little org is to grow. And even though only 27% of our county voted for Secretary Clinton, that still shakes out to 4,800 potential volunteers who will canvass, phone bank, barnstorm, call MoCs, show up for visits, and generally be a pain in the ass to our White House, congress, and GOP-dominated capitol.

Of course we're not going to get 4,800 volunteers overnight or ever, probably. But that's at least 4800 people who we can reach and say "you're not alone - come work with us!"

There's so much hard work ahead of us, but I think the work will be good work.
posted by Tevin at 10:46 AM on January 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


That same poll shows Congress with a 23% approval rating. 23%!!!

Keep in mind that a good portion of that disapproval is from people who think that congress isn't destroying the country fast enough.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:47 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


The day I stopped trusting polls was November 8, 2016.
posted by vibrotronica at 10:51 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


AmericaGloryWhitePowerCare

AmericaFuckYeah!Care
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:55 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


WhateverCare
posted by spitbull at 10:57 AM on January 17, 2017


It's TrumpCare or go home to Mexico, you know it.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:57 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


R.F.Simpson: "Part of fixing this mess is going to be acknowledging our own mistakes. Or we can stay up on our high horse with the delusion that logic and experience have fuck-all to do with American politics."

Possibly but there's a time and place for that and Thanksgiving two painful weeks after the election was neither of those.
posted by octothorpe at 10:58 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


The day I stopped trusting polls was November 8, 2016.

Not to be a broken record but, please, do NOT decide to stop trusting polls, or the mainstream news media, or scientific studies, or intelligence agencies, just because they screw stuff up from time to time. Nothing in this world is perfect, and it's good to read all of the above with some caution and skepticism. But to disregard any of the above, including polls, entirely is to give up in the notion that there's any such thing as "truth" or "reality" that we can know even approximately, and that's what got us into this mess.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:00 AM on January 17, 2017 [41 favorites]


That same poll shows Congress with a 23% approval rating. 23%!!!

Except this means nothing. Congressional approval has been as low at 9% during the 2013 shutdown, and people keep voting in the same obstructionist Republicans who make everything worse with explict promises for more beatings (and tax cuts) until moral improves. Trump had 45% favorability the week before the election and won anyway. We're about to live through the end of approval ratings as a useful tool just as we witnessed the death of election polling.

Trump and Paul Ryan don't care about approval ratings, and it won't be the slightest hindrance to their agenda of destroying and looting the entire country. They see their job as breaking government and imposing their will on a subjugated populace with approval by the only people that matter, their rich paymasters and Russia.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:06 AM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Today in #NeverTrump was never a thing: McCain Says He's Leaning Toward Backing Rex Tillerson
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:09 AM on January 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


The day I stopped trusting polls was November 8, 2016.

Not to be a broken record but, please, do NOT decide to stop trusting polls


Sadly this is the direction a lot of discourse is going to move in, whether you like it or not. Someone will share polling data or survey data, and someone else will scoff "As if polls ever meant anything! We all saw the election polls and how accurate *those* were! Polls are fake news, you see! Pollsters are know-nothings who live in a liberal bubble!" This is how your new enemy talks and what we're up against.
posted by windbox at 11:09 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


I don't like it, so fortunately I can do something about that by pushing back against the sentiment of "don't trust the mainstream media" or "don't trust the polls" wherever I see it. Hold to the side of sanity and truth, please; I'm with OnceUponATime on this one.
posted by sciatrix at 11:11 AM on January 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


Yeah. The national polling average was off by 1.8 points. The swing state polls off by an average of 2.7 points (some states were, of course, off more than others). That's not a breakdown in all logic and rationality; it's a pretty small shift. The predictions and punditry were wrong, largely because people didn't realize that such a small correlated shift would change everything, but that doesn't mean polls are meaningless now. It should, rationally, improve our confidence in polls, because, hey, we can conduct a bunch of big national polls and be within 2 percentage points of the election result, even with all the inaccuracies of likely voter screens, barriers and discrimination that keep people from getting to the polls, non-response bias, etc...

In other words, the election polls should make us more confident that when polls tell us that Trump has the lowest approval rating at inauguration of any President going back at least to Carter, they're right.
posted by zachlipton at 11:12 AM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]




I suspect his human rights record will also be "anchored in Jacksonian approach"
posted by Rust Moranis at 11:15 AM on January 17, 2017 [40 favorites]


That same poll shows Congress with a 23% approval rating. 23%!!!

Congressional approval ratings are always terrible. Which should not be surprising, since (very roughly) half of it is always made up of the political opposition, and we don't vote for Congress as a whole. What we do vote for are individual representatives and senators, and they tend to have reasonably high approval ratings, which, again shouldn't be shocking, since a majority of voters elected them.*

The president, however, is a single person voted on nationally (although subject to Electoral College bullshit). Their approval rating is somewhat more meaningful.

* Which raises a question: does voter suppression in a district or state correlate with a higher disparity between electoral margins and approval ratings? I would assume so, but I would be interested in an empirical study.
posted by jedicus at 11:16 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


anchored in Jacksonian approach

Breaking news: the big block of cheese has declined to attend the inauguration.
posted by peeedro at 11:18 AM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


People disapprove of "Congress". They largely love their own representative. This is why most incumbents are reelected, especially outside of specially gerrymandered 'swing' districts. They never connect the cause and effect, and mostly have no incentive to look beyond their own tribally designated member as being the cause of Congressional dysfunction.

The jury is still out on the continued viability of election polling in the Trump era and era of near-zero response rates. Congressional approval ratings have been useless for forever.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:19 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Jedicus, that is a very interesting question. There are several researchers who have more or less objective (numerical) measures of gerrymandering, and voter suppression efforts could theoretically be quantified as well. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to compare those kinds of rankings state by state against approval ratings (maybe averaged over time).
posted by prefpara at 11:19 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's funny how all the equivocating goes out the window when it's you who's being attacked.
posted by Tevin at 11:24 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Something to remember in re Putin: It will be harder for Trump to govern like Putin than for Putin to govern like Putin. Not impossible, but more complex. "SNL had better not make fun of me or I'll take the broadcaster's license by fiat" is....big. You really have to be ready to go violent-authoritarian if you're going to try to control the media at that level - it's considerably in excess of "I will be super secretive". Putin had eighty years (or several hundred, really) of well-developed oppressive state apparatus at his disposal - lots of spies, lots of political police, a population that is used to spies and political police. A population that's used to the idea that the authorities can just kill or imprison journalists who get in the way. The Putinist state is not delegitimated by doing this, nor does Putin have to build new political police from scratch the way Trump would.

Again, I'm not saying that this is impossible, but for it to actually happen will require a real, serious, bureaucracy-building commitment on the part of the Trump administration, while they are trying to do everything else. And they'll have to go to the mat for that kind of government when people fight back - there will be pushback at the state level and city level in many places, and pushback from a lot of tech bro types, and pushback from everyone whose paycheck comes from the media. This is a big country with a lot of government - it's only partly run from the center.

If they're dumb - and I'm betting on them being dumb, actually, after the events of the last couple of weeks - I think they simply won't be well-organized enough to create the type of Putin-esque enforcement structures they'd need. Consider that people like Peter Thiel are basically the brains of the operation, and Thiel is, at best, the poor man's Kissinger.

That's not to say that they aren't terrible - they'd all be Stalin if they had the chance, except without, like, the socialized housing, education and medicine - but they weren't forged in the crucible of the Soviet Union and they don't have the brains or the guts.
posted by Frowner at 11:25 AM on January 17, 2017 [39 favorites]


I think we need to keep up the pressure on all fronts. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. His business dealings are not normal. His attacks on fellow Americans are not normal. His attacks on foreign leaders are not normal. His ties with Russia are not normal.

As Margaret Atwood wrote in The Handmaid's Tale: "Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it."

Make his supporters work at it. Make Congress work at it. Make his Cabinet work at it. Make the world work at it.
posted by lydhre at 11:26 AM on January 17, 2017 [29 favorites]


I watched The Running Man the other day. It's set in 2017, so maybe Trump will just replace Saturday Night Live with that.
posted by dng at 11:28 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


You know we've one-upped the English. They only had a Russian plant head their intelligence service.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:28 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Having an inaugural address at a 5th grade reading level isn't "Jacksonian approach"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:28 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Donald Trump care - Dontcare?
posted by Devonian at 11:29 AM on January 17, 2017 [16 favorites]




people like Peter Thiel are basically the brains of the operation, and Thiel is, at best, the poor man's Kissinger

Thiel is the founder of Palantir, a major tool for intelligence analysis. He might be a poor man's Kissinger at Kissinger's job, but I think he'd be a great J. Edgar Hoover.
posted by Coventry at 11:32 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


"Trump's inaugural address is expected to be less than 20 minutes ..."

I'm actually kind of hoping for a several-hour long cry of rage and grievance which enumerates every enemy, describes in painful detail every wound, savors every fantasy of revenge, and concludes with a manic roar of triumph from atop the steps. History deserves nothing less.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:33 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


You know, I've been tempted to joke that electing Annoying Orange is like electing Mason Verger to be President, except that Mason Verger actually has a brain in his head.

Reading that, I think that Mason Verger might well have been *based* on Annoying Orange.
posted by tel3path at 11:33 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't think of polls as tools for convincing Trump voters of anything. I think they're tools for annoying Trump (who has always cared about ratings no matter what he says, and his tweeting shows it) and empowering us (to tell us we're not alone).

I don't expect people who voted for Trump to pay attention to reality--the first cancels out the second.
posted by emjaybee at 11:38 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


is it too unkind of me to suggest that this is a function of "I want Healthcare just not from a black man?"

Perhaps to some degree, but it's also the "secret welfare system" mentality, whereby people assume that the crappiness of their social safety net is because T-bones and Obamaphones. It' may also be the "racist welfare state" mentality, where they assume that any GOP plan will by definition ignore minorities and punish young women for having sex and embrace "well, I've never had mental health problems so why should that be covered when I can't afford my COPD supplies?"
posted by holgate at 11:39 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Jesus. It's a race to the bottom at the news networks. CNN has brought on Rick Santorum as a political commentator.
posted by C'est la D.C. at 11:40 AM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


And how exactly do you think that would turn out? I'm going to tell you right now that if that were to happen there would be riots and bloodshed here in the south.

As opposed tooooooo . . . ?
posted by petebest at 11:42 AM on January 17, 2017


In other words, you can be a raging homophobic asshole and collect a paycheck from CNN.
posted by zachlipton at 11:42 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


So CNN's paying to have Santorum all over their network?
posted by octobersurprise at 11:44 AM on January 17, 2017 [21 favorites]


Trump vows "insurance for everybody' in Obamacare replacement plan

President-elect Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of “insurance for everybody,” while also vowing to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump declined to reveal specifics in the telephone interview late Saturday with The Washington Post, but any proposals from the incoming president would almost certainly dominate the Republican effort to overhaul federal health policy as he prepares to work with his party’s congressional majorities.

Trump’s plan is likely to face questions from the right, after years of GOP opposition to further expansion of government involvement in the health-care system, and from those on the left, who see his ideas as disruptive to changes brought by the Affordable Care Act that have extended coverage to tens of millions of Americans.

In addition to his replacement plan for the ACA, also known as Obamacare, Trump said he will target pharmaceutical companies over drug prices.

“They’re politically protected, but not anymore,” he said of pharmaceutical companies.

posted by gucci mane at 11:48 AM on January 17, 2017


This is infuriating.

Republicans Plan to Roll Back Parts of the Landmark Endangered Species Act

In control of Congress and soon the White House, Republicans are readying plans to roll back the influence of the Endangered Species Act, one of the government’s most powerful conservation tools, after decades of complaints that it hinders drilling, logging and other activities.

Over the past eight years, GOP lawmakers sponsored dozens of measures aimed at curtailing the landmark law or putting species such as gray wolves and sage grouse out of its reach. Almost all were blocked by Democrats and the White House or lawsuits from environmentalists.

Now, with the ascension of President-elect Donald Trump, Republicans see an opportunity to advance broad changes to a law they contend has been exploited by wildlife advocates to block economic development.


Fuckers.
posted by futz at 11:48 AM on January 17, 2017 [38 favorites]


Jacksonian approach

He's gonna moonwalk?
posted by spitbull at 11:48 AM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


What is "Jacksonian approach" intended to invoke, actually? I know next to nothing about Andrew Jackson.
posted by Coventry at 11:51 AM on January 17, 2017


So, apparently the Girl Scouts are participating in the inauguration march. Jessica Luther (@scATX) objected to this, and they had a boilerplate response stating "Since 1917, Girl Scouts have engaged in Presidential inaugural events to learn about the US democratic process & civic engagement."

This is, unsurprisingly, not going over well for the Girl Scouts on Twitter. If you or your kid are involved in Girl Scouts and have an opinion on this, you might want to share it with them! 800-478-7248.
posted by melissasaurus at 11:54 AM on January 17, 2017 [29 favorites]


Well Andrew Jackson's administration was notorious for being the gold standard for awarding government jobs to supporters, but I doubt they are honest enough to admit that is what they meant.
posted by winna at 11:54 AM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


I assumed it was just shorthand for "old-school racist" but now that you mention it there might be another answer.

According to Wikipedia there was a drunken brawl at the reception following the speech, so probably it's that.

Choice quote:

"The crowd continued to descend into a drunken mob, only dispersed when bowls of liquor and punch were placed on the front lawn of the White House."

Make America Great Again. Indeed.
posted by Tevin at 11:54 AM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


What is "Jacksonian approach" intended to invoke, actually?

Jackson wore the mantle of politics of the common man, the Jacksonian democracy entry on wikipedia is helpful:
Broadly speaking, the era was characterized by a democratic spirit, and built upon Jackson's equal political policy (subsequent to ending what he termed a "monopoly" of government by elites). Even before the Jacksonian era began, suffrage had been extended to a majority of white male adult citizens, a result the Jacksonians celebrated. Jacksonian democracy also promoted the strength of the presidency and executive branch at the expense of Congress, while also seeking to broaden the public's participation in government. The Jacksonians demanded elected (not appointed) judges and rewrote many state constitutions to reflect the new values. In national terms they favored geographical expansion, justifying it in terms of Manifest Destiny.
posted by peeedro at 11:59 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]




Yay, my congressman Mike Doyle has announced that he's boycotting the festivities. I doubt that my one phone message to his Washington office had any effect but I'm glad that I actually called.
posted by octothorpe at 11:59 AM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


bowls of liquor and punch were placed on the front lawn of the White House

I understand that this is meant to be something like punch bowls, but I'm picturing rows of dog dishes with a nattily-dressed mob down on all fours, lapping from them.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:59 AM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


What if Trump's confused, flailing attempt to expand healthcare is what gets him impeached by angry Republicans?

That would be the perfect little twist to this stupid historical era.
posted by emjaybee at 12:00 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


when polls tell us that Trump has the lowest approval rating at inauguration of any President going back at least to Carter

So, all respect, but this is a wrong way to put that. The right ways are any of

"...going back to Truman"

or

"...since they invented polling"

or just

"...in American history," which is deceptive because there just weren't polls for Andrew Johnson, but still the best kind of correct
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:04 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Yay, my congressman Mike Doyle has announced that he's boycotting the festivities. I doubt that my one phone message to his Washington office had any effect but I'm glad that I actually called.

So has my congressman Lloyd Doggett! I commented to that effect on his Facebook page this morning. I also thanked him for his efforts fighting gerrymandering inasmuch as he can do that at the federal level, and got a couple of dweebs who clearly knew each other going "well the Democrats invented gerrymandering first so haaaaa." Which, bullshit on at least three levels, but the irritation and the urge to go well actually you are SO WRONG spurred a pretty decent Facebook rant both directly to them and in my own personal spaces about the history of the American party system, so hey.

anyway the point here is that I really like my congressman and I'm enjoying hanging all up in his social media space lately.
posted by sciatrix at 12:11 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Gloria Allred is live on national TV basically saying she's going to give Trump all the rope he needs to hang himself. If he wants to tie the noose, put it around his neck and then jump off the chair it's up to him.
posted by Talez at 12:12 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Roger Stone tells Alex Jones he was poisoned, likely with Polonium.

Explains a lot.
posted by spitbull at 12:12 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Raw Story: Gloria Allred: Woman to sue Donald Trump for sexual harassment

The accuser is Summer Zervos, an Apprentice contestant, suing for defamation. She's taken a polygraph.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:13 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Regarding the increase in the number of Republicans supporting Healthcare all of a sudden, is it too unkind of me to suggest that this is a function of "I want Healthcare just not from a black man?"

I think a lot of it is that Democrats fundamentally either don't understand how to get their ideas across to Republicans, or simply don't care to. I remember the debates about the ACA, and so much of Democrat messaging seemed to focus around "needy, uninsured people" who would now be able to access insurance just as good as employer insurance.

But Republicans don't want charity provided by the government, and they especially don't care for implications that people who aren't working are going to be lifted up to the level of people who are working. They are, however, generally except for the ideologues, in favor of "citizenship benefits". They want dignity. Which is how Trump is talking about it. He's not saying, "You need this". He's saying, "Because America is So Fucking Great, I'm going to give this to you."

And that's why Trump is doing so well on a bunch of scores. It's really quite painful, because literally anyone besides Trump could have come along and done this, but he's the one who's done it so fuck.
posted by corb at 12:16 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


That's complete horse shit.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:17 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


uhhhhhhhhh... Roger Stone tells Alex Jones he was poisoned, likely with Polonium.

And he survived it? Amazing!
posted by Jalliah at 12:17 PM on January 17, 2017


He seems really healthy for someone with polonium poisoning.

He got better!
posted by octobersurprise at 12:18 PM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Speaking of backing out, the B Street Band backs out of the Inaugural Gala citing "respect and gratitude" for Springsteen.
posted by DynamiteToast at 2:13 PM on January 16 [46 favorites +] [!]

So who IS going to perform? 3 Doors Down and...?
posted by ian1977 at 2:15 PM on January 16 [1 favorite +] [!]


The way things are going, if Trump wants any live musical entertainment at his inauguration, he's going to have to perform it himself. I'd say playing "We Are the Champions" on a gold kazoo was about his speed, but he'd probably get a few bars in and then realize he didn't know how the rest of the tune went.
posted by orange swan at 12:18 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


They want dignity. Which is how Trump is talking about it. He's not saying, "You need this". He's saying, "Because America is So Fucking Great, I'm going to give this to you."

What? This is just the old ideological lens of handouts or whatever that Republicans see everything through.
posted by zutalors! at 12:19 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


if Trump wants any live musical entertainment at his inauguration, he's going to have to perform it himself.

Pretty sure the Marine Corps Band is contractually obligated to play. What else does he need, really?
posted by anastasiav at 12:20 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]



I can't stop laughing about Roger Stone. It utterly broke me. There are tears! And good lord how many people are going to believe him? Prepare for Poloniumgate.
posted by Jalliah at 12:20 PM on January 17, 2017


And he survived it? Amazing!

Well he takes InfoWars supplements. So for the low-low-price of $1001, you too can be immune to radiation poisoning.

I wonder if he's an investor, and aren't there FDA policies about these sort of claims?

1Not the actual price, I can't be arsed to actual go check.
posted by papercrane at 12:21 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I suspect we will hear a lot of John Philip Sousa over the next 4 years.
posted by peeedro at 12:21 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


He realizes that polonium isn't something you get from watching polo, right?
posted by Etrigan at 12:22 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


And he survived it? Amazing!

Well he takes InfoWars supplements. So for the low-low-price of $1001, you too can be immune to radiation poisoning.

I wonder if he's an investor, and aren't there FDA policies about these sort of claims?

1Not the actual price, I can't be arsed to actual go check.


Wot?!! Did he actually say he survived because of supplements?
posted by Jalliah at 12:23 PM on January 17, 2017


Gentle reminder to please include a [serious] or [joke] tag next to things no matter how ridiculous they look on the face of things. As our reality slides deeper into the Onionverse, it gets harder to tell.
posted by byanyothername at 12:25 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


Sounds like it's implied but not directly stated. The tweet says:

Roger Stone tells Alex Jones that he's typically very healthy, takes "InfoWars supplements," hasn't been to the doctor since he was a child.

I haven't heard the audio, but I imagine he just implied he survived because he's very healthy, and that part of his regimen is taking the supplements. Sorry for not being a bit more clear.
posted by papercrane at 12:26 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Maybe he means baloneyum, a radioactive isotope of bullshit.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:26 PM on January 17, 2017 [41 favorites]


I suspect we will hear a lot of John Philip Sousa over the next 4 years.

Fun fact: Sousa's great-grandson wrote a book about Ben Carson. Regression to the mean.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:27 PM on January 17, 2017


Dan Nainan, the media's favorite millennial, to perform at inaugural ball.
posted by Donald Trump Sex Nightmare at 12:28 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


InfoWars Supplements is people!
posted by diogenes at 12:35 PM on January 17, 2017


Yep. Poloniumgate. The Trumpers have their new scandal. It's true because he said it was confirmed by the CDC.
posted by Jalliah at 12:36 PM on January 17, 2017


Alex Jones interviewing Roger Stone might be the nadir of human history.
posted by diogenes at 12:36 PM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


They want dignity. Which is how Trump is talking about it. He's not saying, "You need this". He's saying, "Because America is So Fucking Great, I'm going to give this to you."

There's a small amount of truth in your concept of Republicans wanting dignity, but mostly Trump is where he is because he was nasty and vicious verbally to just about everyone and a strong portion of the Republican base is delighted by that and most of the rest will go along with almost anyone in the name of party unity.

It's not about dignity, it's about false superiority and jingoism, be it for race, religion, or American exceptionalism.
posted by Candleman at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


Jackson wore the mantle of politics of the common man

The common white man, who abhorred Federal government unless that Federal government was "opening" up western lands for settlement

Jackson was also a thin-skinned asshole, but by all accounts not a draft-dodging wimp
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


But Republicans don't want charity provided by the government, and they especially don't care for implications that people who aren't working are going to be lifted up to the level of people who are working

Christ, that's stomach-turning.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:39 PM on January 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


But Republicans don't want charity provided by the government, and they especially don't care for implications that people who aren't working are going to be lifted up to the level of people who are working. They are, however, generally except for the ideologues, in favor of "citizenship benefits". They want dignity.

c.f. Trump supporters' "Deep Story" of how (they feel) Obama's policies unfairly help American society's "line-cutters" that Arlie Russell Hochschild put together in her study Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. It's the same worldview as the British Poor Laws' categorization of "deserving" and "undeserving" for poverty relief. It's not really about policy, but it's not going to go away, either. Liberals and progressives will just have to take it into account when making their cases.

Trump is, of course, just out for his own aggrandizement and will tell his supporters whatever they want to hear to get their approval. This amounts to nothing less than government policy by narcissism.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:43 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]




Republicans don't want the government in charge of social welfare because generally it's frowned upon for government to only provide help for "certain" "types" "of" "people" if you know what I mean and I think you do. They can't stand the idea of a safety net that catches everyone, regardless of their other traits or qualities.

My mom drives me around the bend with this. She's a very mistrustful person (she worked in the fraud division of a bank for years so she's seen some shit), she's got a very very strong sense of black/white right/wrong and she cannot stand the idea that someone somewhere might be getting something they don't "deserve." I think this shit literally keeps her up at night. I don't understand it at all because who gives a fuuuuuck if .003% of TANF recipients are somehow pulling some kind of benefits fraud. That is filed all the way at the front of my "things I cannot get it up about" file.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [25 favorites]


The thing is, ObamaCare and other market-based solutions are the Republican plan. The Democratic plan is single payer. It's expanded, universal coverage. Generous Social Security retirements for everyone.

They passed Obamacare and other neutered rube goldberg solutions because Republicans have opposed their actual universal coverage plans for 70 years.

It has nothing to do with "dignity", except to the extent Republicans have created the situation of the Good White Americans vs. Those Undeserving Lazy Blacks and Mexicans. Republicans do not want the government to fix any problems, period.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [47 favorites]


One down, two to go.

@Philip_Elliott
Susan Collins tells colleagues she cannot support repeal without a replace ready to go, says exchanges would go into death spiral
posted by chris24 at 12:49 PM on January 17, 2017 [37 favorites]


He's saying, "Because America is So Fucking Great, I'm going to give this to you."

I think you miss the subtext of that proposition, that is: "Those People over there aren't going to get it, because they haven't earned it." Because it's there, and it has always been there in the history of Great American Handouts. The knowledge that somebody else isn't getting what you're getting is an essential part of the transaction.
posted by holgate at 12:49 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Something to remember in re Putin: It will be harder for Trump to govern like Putin than for Putin to govern like Putin. Not impossible, but more complex.

He can try, but the US isn't Russia, and Trump is definitely no Putin.
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:50 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I cannot believe no one is talking about the Summer Zervos lawsuit.
posted by all about eevee at 12:52 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Pretty sure the Marine Corps Band is contractually obligated to play. What else does he need, really?

True story... I knew someone growing up who made a career in the air force as a classical violinist (there's an orchestra and a chamber music offering) and there is an all-service classic rock band. You could probably do worse, they're all crack players. Got them out of jumping out of planes too.

Speaking of which Jimi Hendrix was 82d Airborne, I believe.
posted by spitbull at 12:55 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


I cannot believe no one is talking about the Summer Zervos lawsuit.

I was just looking -- WaPo, NYTimes, Google News: nothing.

Outrage fatigue, I guess.
posted by Dashy at 12:56 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


It's looks like a pretty interesting suit and follows the strategy that some suggested Allred was using during the election. She basically set Trump up for defamation and now she and others are suing.

A Cosby like strategy.
posted by Jalliah at 12:56 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


so, lots of people voted for Trump because they're in economically depressed areas, they're out of work, and somehow this is Obama's fault (or Dems in general). If they're not working, why then are they deserving of any benefits? Aren't they "lazy moochers" too? I know you can't reason with unreasonable people but this seems so obvious.
posted by AFABulous at 12:58 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was just looking -- WaPo, NYTimes, Google News: nothing.

Outrage fatigue, I guess.


Maybe it's taking them some time to figure out how she trapped Trump.

Oh wait! *snap* Daaayum.
posted by Jalliah at 12:58 PM on January 17, 2017


I cannot believe no one is talking about the Summer Zervos lawsuit.

It's almost as if the "fake news" offensive strategy is working...
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


But Republicans don't want charity provided by the government, and they especially don't care for implications that people who aren't working are going to be lifted up to the level of people who are working. They are, however, generally except for the ideologues, in favor of "citizenship benefits". They want dignity. Which is how Trump is talking about it. He's not saying, "You need this". He's saying, "Because America is So Fucking Great, I'm going to give this to you."

And that's why Trump is doing so well on a bunch of scores. It's really quite painful, because literally anyone besides Trump could have come along and done this, but he's the one who's done it so fuck.


The problem I run into, corb, is that this assumption is so factually wrong, in so many ways, and meshes so well into a racist narrative, that the argument becomes much more exhausting.

1. Singlepayer includes working people--IT IS a citizenship benefit. Absolutely every citizen pays in what they can, and gets guaranteed to get care. Just because they have citizenship.
2. Most people who wouldn't be working can't: too young, too old, too sick/disabled.
3. The laziest person on earth still doesn't deserve to die being eaten alive by cancer. If we want to punish laziness (a goal I don't agree with/think is worth doing but know drives other people) that is a monstrous and unChristian way to do it. In addition, for every "undeserving" lazy person who got punished, thousands of other, hardworking but unlucky poor people, would receive the same punishment/be unable to overcome the barriers to care.
4. Private charities are completely unable to handle the cost--even one member with cancer, if uninsured, would bankrupt most churches that tried to support them.
5. Clinton (and others) have specifically said "Let's do this because we're America and we're awesome!" I mean that was the message of the entire convention, and if you didn't hear that message, I have to assume that's because you/other conservatives had a filter in place to block it.

TL:DR: I don't think Trump won on the merits or even on the messaging of his approach to healthcare (about which he said not much). He won on ginning up hate against Those People, which turns off the brain and makes arguments irrelevant. There were no magic words Democrats could have used to turn that off.

There WAS a lot the media could have done to expose the lying going on, that they did not, and here we are.
posted by emjaybee at 12:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [59 favorites]


If they're not working, why then are they deserving of any benefits?

They're white.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:00 PM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Post from a family friend: Linda's Jan 20 Inauguration To Do List
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:00 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Here, you can see the performance schedule of the various US Military music ensembles for the inauguration events.
posted by spitbull at 1:02 PM on January 17, 2017


Guys, if you're able to, please call your senators and encourage them to skip the inauguration. I've sent emails and left messages with Senators Merkley and Wyden here in Oregon, and I'd be super proud to see one of them step up to be the first (as far as I know), but there's still time and maybe I'm being naive but I think once one senator announces it others will follow, especially given Chuck Schumer's recent statement.

I can share the script I used if it helps but you guys know the drill, mostly you want to stress that this is not normal and it's not acceptable, and we have a moral obligation to ourselves and our country to push back against Trump and everything he stands for at every opportunity. (And also encourage them to support and participate the women's march on Jan. 21 obviously.)
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 1:02 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Corb does have a good point on how phrasing things differently does impact voters. My mother use the concept that work equates to dignity in her justifications of her politics with the implication that those that "choose" not to work lack dignity and shouldn't receive benefits. She and my father (who is from a long line of farmers) will push back on welfare but are perfectly fine with farm subsidies, because those are presented as something that's earned through work.
posted by Candleman at 1:04 PM on January 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


My own observations and studies about their attitudes suggest that

But Republicans don't want charity provided by the government, and they especially don't care for implications that people who aren't working are going to be lifted up to the level of people who are working

can be shortened to

But Republicans don't want charity provided by the government for people who aren't working

And that's being, ahem, charitable.

Really, it's more like they don't want charity provided by the government for people who can't work, for people who don't share their values, and for people who are poor but also dare to have electronics and dare to eat something other than thorns, dusts, and locusts.

An example of this comes from a story you shared with us of an encounter you had at the RNC where you were pushing a person in a wheelchair to a better vantage point for a speaker through a crowd and a person who was blocking your way turned to you and said, "What makes him so special?" when you asked her to make way.

Even if we want to let this slide, the idea that other groups do want charity and lack dignity that is implied in that assertion above is distasteful. I spent most of my childhood at or below the poverty line. We had to rely on welfare for some stretches, as did numerous people around us. If Republicans have this thought that we were all sitting around throwing food stamps* up in the air like we were making it rain and laughing about how we sure were putting one over on the white people, they're very much mistaken.

Black culture (everything from movies, to comedy routines, to songs in just about every genre) is replete with negative references to people who are overly reliant on government help.

That said, were there some people who were gaming the system? Yes, of course. If there is a system that involves humans, some humans somewhere will game it. But, again, this idea that only Republicans have a culture where there is a belief in making it without help is repulsive.

* Dating myself with that reference: this was in the late 70s and early 80s, before widespread use of EBT.
posted by lord_wolf at 1:05 PM on January 17, 2017 [22 favorites]


My mom drives me around the bend with this. She's a very mistrustful person (she worked in the fraud division of a bank for years so she's seen some shit), she's got a very very strong sense of black/white right/wrong and she cannot stand the idea that someone somewhere might be getting something they don't "deserve." I think this shit literally keeps her up at night. I don't understand it at all because who gives a fuuuuuck if .003% of TANF recipients are somehow pulling some kind of benefits fraud. That is filed all the way at the front of my "things I cannot get it up about" file.

Solidarity, sister. My mom is the same way, if not even more ridiculous (she's really on the warpath about the California plastic bag tax and the fact that SNAP recipients are exempt from it - WHO CARES?!) and it drives me completely bonkers. She is a cashier at a supermarket, so I think it's just something that is in her face a lot. She also rants about how profits should flow to workers - I don't know if she thinks that will never actually happen or just doesn't think it's the job of government to make it happen, but either way, it is her ridiculous resentment over the bag tax, rather than her really rather worker-friendly beliefs, that drives her vote. *headdesk*

Anyway, this morning I called to thank the five Republican senators who have expressed doubt about the "repeal and delay" plan. Got through to voicemail for Portman and Collins, will try the rest again tomorrow morning. (By the way, two of those five have also expressed a reluctance to defund Planned Parenthood. Which two? It's easy to remember - it's the two women, Murkowski and Collins.)
posted by sunset in snow country at 1:07 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


I cannot believe no one is talking about the Summer Zervos lawsuit.

I was just looking -- WaPo, NYTimes, Google News: nothing.


WaPo: Former ‘Apprentice’ contestant sues Trump for defamation for denying alleged groping
posted by everybody had matching towels at 1:07 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Anecdata, but my bro was telling me how pissed off he was at some highschool friends, all Trump voters, who were comparing notes on how to get on disability. It has nothing to do with dignity. Having a public option to deal with a serious health problem--instead of starting a lemonade stand in hopes of raising enough money to defray part of the cost of an organ transplant (true story, happened to one of my coworkers)--is dignity. There are plenty of Trump voters out there with their hands out for government assistance. They know all that bootstraps moralizing is just veiled racism.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 1:09 PM on January 17, 2017 [20 favorites]




On Health Care, We'll Have What Congress Is Having

...But, before the end, talk of another approach kept bubbling up: to allow those Americans who couldn’t get insurance elsewhere to buy a policy that was just as good, and inexpensive, as what members of Congress got. When Senator Edward M. Kennedy, of Massachusetts, said that Americans should get “exactly what we have,” he meant the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

The F.E.H.B.P., as it’s known, was started in 1959, a few years before Medicare, and was meant to cover some nine million government employees—civil-service workers, the courts, the Post Office, members of Congress, and more. It wasn’t a single plan but, rather, as a Times story put it, “a supermarket offering 300 private health plans.” (Even the right-learning Heritage Foundation called it “a showcase of consumer choice and free-market competition.”) One may get a sense of its scope and inclusiveness—its supermarket-ness—in the way that the Office of Personnel Management, which administers the program, explains it to federal employees. Much of the program—for instance, the idea that no one can be refused, or charged more, for a preëxisting condition, or that dependents under twenty-six are covered—will sound familiar to anyone conversant with the most attractive parts of the Affordable Care Act.

...If it’s sometimes hard to understand what makes Republican legislators so angry, here is a theory: their fury may not stem from some ungraspable principle, or hatred of President Obama’s historic victory (or of Obama himself), but, rather, from something personal, and selfish. Under the A.C.A., members of Congress, and congressional staff, among other Capitol Hill employees, were no longer eligible for the F.E.H.B.P.


F.E.H.B.P. sounds awesome. Sign me up!
posted by futz at 1:11 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


As to Trump's musical accompaniment (clearly my main focus), I heard a while back about a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way. I have it on good authority that they made him blow a bugle for his Uncle Sam (which apparently really brought him down because then he couldn't jam). Maybe he could be dragooned into service?
posted by comealongpole at 1:14 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Tying benefits to working is just... putting the cart so far ahead of the horse, the horse is still in the stall while the cart rolls all the way down the hill.

A short list of people who can't work:

1. The very young
2. The very old
3. The very sick

A short list of people who will not survive without a safety net:

1. The very young
2. The very old
3. The very sick

How are 2 year olds supposed to work for their WIC benefits? How are 70 year olds supposed to work for their food stamps? How are cancer patients supposed to work for their chemo?

I do not care one jot whether these people are nice, or good, or friendly, or shifty, or lazy, or bananas (2 year olds are the worst!). They're people. The alternative is literally letting people die in the street.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:15 PM on January 17, 2017 [66 favorites]


If there is a system that involves humans, some humans somewhere will game it.

like the banking and tax systems... but working class whites don't care about that gaming, I guess
posted by AFABulous at 1:15 PM on January 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


>
I was just looking -- WaPo, NYTimes, Google News: nothing.

WaPo: Former ‘Apprentice’ contestant sues Trump for defamation for denying alleged groping


Global (a Canadian tv network) has a brief write-up as well.

If you're an RSS person, it would be a really, really good idea to have at least a few well-respected international English-language news feeds in your rotation. I'm afraid that US mainstream sources are going to be become more and more compromised by the desire to be proximate to the (fascist) powers that be, and while good-quality partisan sources (e.g. TPM) are a healthy part of a complete media breakfast, I think it's also important to have a steady part of that diet also be mainstream, established sources which are going to be less breathless and more comprehensive in coverage.

I recommend BBC, al-Jazeera and either the Toronto Star or the CBC.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:17 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]




But Republicans don't want charity provided by the government, and they especially don't care for implications that people who aren't working are going to be lifted up to the level of people who are working

This attitude is, interestingly enough, popular among the rich pieces of shit who are doing their damnedest to eliminate as many jobs as possible. "Fuck people who aren't working" + "I'm a genius for maximizing how many people I can personally put out of work!" = "I am entirely too comfortable carrying out the Black Mass these days."
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:19 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


thanks obama!
posted by entropicamericana at 1:20 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Is there a reason it doesn't take effect until May?
posted by zachlipton at 1:22 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thank Goodness, I was worried that wouldn't happen after all.
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:23 PM on January 17, 2017


Is there a reason it doesn't take effect until May?

Can Trump undo the commutation?
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:24 PM on January 17, 2017


Argh! May for Chelsea Manning isn't good enough. That's ample time for Trump and manufactured consent to deny her release. An absolute cynic mght suspect that Chelsea and her release were being primed as political pawns when that reversal happens.
posted by comealongpole at 1:24 PM on January 17, 2017


Chase Strangio is Chelsea's attorney, who worked his ASS off.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:25 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump cannot undo a commutation.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:26 PM on January 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


Just FYI on Schumer, no problem getting through to his Syracuse office.
posted by waitingtoderail at 1:27 PM on January 17, 2017


Trump cannot undo a commutation.

Oh, thank god.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:27 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]




Trump cannot undo a commutation.

Indeed, Trump would be hard pressed to undo his own shoelaces.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:28 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


I cannot believe no one is talking about the Summer Zervos lawsuit.

How big a deal is this? (My ability to recognize a big deal is completely broken by the Russia connections.)
posted by diogenes at 1:29 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Calexit is not a thing. Calexit is a stupid, whiny, cowardly Facebook meme made by privileged crybabies, and has about as much political viability as the Six Californias campaign.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:29 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]




I guess that means Assange will agree to be extradited now? He'll probably get a free suite at Trump Tower.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 1:31 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


We're really sure Trump can't just....keep Chelsea Manning in jail? I've been so worried about this - disproportionately worried, in many ways, given how many people are unfairly in prison who won't be freed. But I've still been worried that if she's in jail under a Trump administration she'll just have an "accident" and die. I wish she'd get out before Trump gets in.
posted by Frowner at 1:31 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Word is Leonard Peltier isn't getting a commutation or pardon. So yay about Manning but goddamn.
posted by spitbull at 1:32 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


President Obama has also pardoned Oscar López Rivera
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:32 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


He is Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

I am bigly! It's the presidency that got small!
posted by kirkaracha at 1:33 PM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


How big a deal is this?

Not a big deal in terms of "will anyone in power care and do something about it." But definitely will be a persistent thorn in his side and will generate ongoing headlines throughout his term.

Allred, Zervos, and other (as yet undisclosed) women that Trump assaulted will be at the womens march on Saturday.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:33 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


I guess that means Assange will agree to be extradited now? He'll probably get a free suite at Trump Tower.

I'm lost. Is he serious or just didn't think Obama would do it and was being snarky?
posted by Jalliah at 1:34 PM on January 17, 2017


I guess that means Assange will agree to be extradited now? He'll probably get a free suite at Trump Tower.

Technically not an extradition, since there are no official charges against him, but he did agree to turn himself into US authorities. I'm assuming he'll find a way to weasel out of it, because he's a weasel. Like he'll wait until May to do it, when Trump is in power and instead showers him with praise.
posted by bluecore at 1:35 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Even if we want to let this slide, the idea that other groups do want charity and lack dignity that is implied in that assertion above is distasteful.

I'm sorry if I seemed to imply that - that was very, very much not what I meant to say at all. I don't think in any way that other groups "want charity and lack dignity", so much as that other groups have different cultural focuses that can be spoken to. And that's true really with all groups.

For example - I have come to learn that my family and our values place a much greater emphasis on providing charity than other Republicans do. For example: I feel I have a moral obligation to give charity personally in some way. So I would be totally susceptible to and probably agree with, say, "New law! You are required to donate 20% of your income to charity!" But I still bristle at every new tax, and a large part of that is because of the phrasing.

Similarly, my husband and his WASP family have a strong value against accepting charity that manifests itself in really weird ways that actually have nothing to do with what is happening so much as how things are phrased. For example: I'm applying for schools for my kid right now, and trying to find money. He's 100% okay with something I tell him is a scholarship, but I made the mistake of saying something was financial aid and his eyes glazed over, even though functionally they are the same thing.

But not all cultures have that immediate visceral reaction. A lot of perfectly fine people feel it is not against their dignity to accept things that they don't even think of as charity because they don't really focus on the charity/not charity dynamic. Their dignity doesn't come from whether or not they accept visible government money in the same way. Does that make more sense?
posted by corb at 1:38 PM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


(I find the degree to which calling my reps inevitably sends me into automatic Nice Southern Lady mode endlessly amusing, especially since I keep seeing the same reaction from other Texan and Southern liberals in my feeds. It's Pavlovian, apparently.)

This is why I'm preferring to call my reps after hours. If I call during the day I start off assertive and quickly end up being all polite and accommodating. When I talk to VM I am SCATHING and it's really cathartic. (Especially when calling about the ACA because I get really emotional talking about how my husband would have possibly died without it in the last few years.)
posted by threeturtles at 1:38 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yeah, isn't Assange in "exile" at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London because he's wanted on rape charges in Sweden?
posted by monospace at 1:38 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


So CNN's paying to have Santorum all over their network?

Hedy Lamarr, "Kinky."
It's not Hedy, it's Hedley.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:40 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oscar López Rivera is a big deal for a lot of people I know.
posted by spitbull at 1:41 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


the Summer Zervos lawsuit

This is wonderful news. I think there's zero likelihood of settlement, since the annoyance factor is so high. Unlike the NY Child Rape lawsuit, there's no way he's going to get of a deposition here. And you know, the video of him saying "they're all lying, and I'm going to sue them... " is you know, on youtube.
posted by mikelieman at 1:43 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]




Hah. Assange is definitely going to go back on his word.

Why? He'll be tried under a regime which regards him favorably, so it seems like a sensible time to patch things up.
posted by Coventry at 1:44 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


We're really sure Trump can't just....keep Chelsea Manning in jail? I've been so worried about this - disproportionately worried, in many ways, given how many people are unfairly in prison who won't be freed. But I've still been worried that if she's in jail under a Trump administration she'll just have an "accident" and die.

So, good news/bad news time.

Good news: the people guarding Manning are soldiers on American soil. I think they would be vanishingly, vanishingly unlikely to force an "accident" on Manning.

Bad news: I'm not sure if legally, Manning is a soldier right now or not - I remember a dishonorable discharge was ordered, but not whether it was to be executed before or after prison. But only enlisted soldiers are held at the jail Manning is currently held in.

If still a soldier, Manning is still eligible to be prosecuted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which includes, as I said somewhere in these threads about Mattis, things like "disobeying a lawful order" and "making disloyal statements". If a Trump administration made it their first priority, I am 100% sure they could nail Manning to the wall on these trivially easily and add on more time.

I think they're incompetent enough that we won't see that? But it's certainly possible.
posted by corb at 1:45 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


The hero we need.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:45 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


You can weaponize your Southern accent ya'll. Just get as hokey and twangy as you like while saying things like "I DON'T want to have the rest of the world think we're a bunch of ignoramuses because we don't believe in education! It's embarrassin! And it's going to make our state into a backwater nobody wants to move to and THAT will cost us jobs!" or "Jesus would be very up-set with ya'll letting people just up and die because they don't have healthcare! It's just not Christian, ma'am! Not Christian at ALL!"

I try to channel my mom at her most indignant.
posted by emjaybee at 1:45 PM on January 17, 2017 [46 favorites]


Was Tiffany the secret weapon this whole time?
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:46 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Tiffany Trump to Sing "I'm Like a Bird" at Pres. Donald Trump's Inauguration

I thought we had a thread for teenagers knowing '90s and '00s music?
posted by Talez at 1:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Tiffany "The People's" Trump's "Like A Bird" is an original song and is quite dreadful. I can't help but think this is a comic bit and not a real story.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:51 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]




Please, please, remember your [real] or [fake] tags. My heart can't take all the figuring it out ;)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:52 PM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


You can weaponize your Southern accent ya'll.

Trae Crowder, Liberal Redneck
posted by kirkaracha at 1:54 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Tiffany "The People's" Trump's "Like A Bird" is an original song and is quite dreadful.

Wowzers, that's a lot of autotune.
posted by peeedro at 1:55 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Zervos Complaint via NYT
posted by mikelieman at 1:58 PM on January 17, 2017


Indeed, they autotuned the autotune on that one.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:58 PM on January 17, 2017


But Republicans don't want charity provided by the government, and they especially don't care for implications that people who aren't working are going to be lifted up to the level of people who are working.

Precisely. It's disgusting to apply Prosperity Gospel nonsense to something as fundamental as healthcare and, by extension, survival but that's what is being done.

I recall this article by the praiseworthy Charles Pierce, containing a Real Argument made on the floor of the Real House of Representatives regarding health care and the government's role:

Smucker talked about the case of two of his constituents, Tim and Phyllis Hollinger. Tim's on Medicare. (Good luck, Tim! Paul Ryan's got just the scam for you!) Meanwhile, Phyllis got her insurance through one of the exchanges. She makes, according to Smucker, $53,000 a year. Her policy costs more than $1000 a month and her deductible is $2700. Luckily, though, through the provisions of the ACA, Phyllis gets a subsidy that covers 35 percent of the cost. Good for you, Phyllis. That's the way the law is supposed to work. That's the Affordable part of the Affordable Care Act at work.

However, according to Congressman Smucker, the subsidy is the problem.

Phyllis receives a federal subsidy that covers 35% of that monthly cost. She takes pride in the fact that she's never taken a government handout in her life. Now that she's on Obamacare, the American taxpayers have to subsidize her healthcare. (Ed. Note: also yours, Congressman.) To Phyllis, that's not right. To Phyllis, this is about her pride and she's not asking for a lot. She's simply asking that she have access to affordable healthcare that doesn't require the American taxpayers to help her pay for it.


My pride is more important than your healthcare. My belief that the government must not provide assistance is more important than your inability to function without it. And my doing without is fine as long as THOSE PEOPLE also do without. That's the 48% of America that put Trump into office.

And the sad thing is, I agree with Phyllis on one point: I, too, want to have access to affordable healthcare that doesn't require the American taxpayers to help me pay for it. I also want a pony, an Eagles Super Bowl victory and a duck that shits out gold doubloons. None of the above is happening in my lifetime. But not getting that Magic Healthcare Package doesn't make me want to strip the best-available-for-now option away from those who need it to survive.
posted by delfin at 1:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [23 favorites]


Human nature is to resist at all costs thinking that you have made a mistake. On an individual and systemic level, counting on large masses of people to wake up one day, cold and hungry and sick, and say, "Oh, my bad. I guess I shouldn't have done that. Let me get right on rectifying this." is not going to work out for you or your movement.

True. Which is why it's going to work better not to point and say "Ha, Ha you were idiots" (no matter how good it feels in the moment). Instead we should focus on "you voted for jobs and better economic opportunity and He Betrayed You." Betrayal is a powerful emotional motivator.
posted by threeturtles at 2:01 PM on January 17, 2017 [22 favorites]


I disagree with Phyllis. I want access to affordable healthcare that specifically requires the American taxpayer (especially me) to pay for it through our taxes.
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:02 PM on January 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


Real line from the Zervos complaint:
10. Donald Trump lied again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
Could use more agains, but I guess they traded accuracy for brevity.
posted by peeedro at 2:05 PM on January 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


I disagree with Phyllis. I want access to affordable healthcare that specifically requires the American taxpayer (especially me) to pay for it through our taxes.

I'll take "affordable, period" but yes, I would sign onto this in a heartbeat as well.

Yet another reason I hope Joe Lieberman grows many painful boils on his ass.
posted by delfin at 2:11 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

Complaint written by Rachel Maddow.
posted by spitbull at 2:12 PM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


As a last ditch close Gitmo play?
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:15 PM on January 17, 2017


Cuba should rename it Camp Castro. And build a casino.
posted by spitbull at 2:16 PM on January 17, 2017




I'm sort of ripping this off from a guy who was sitting near me at lunch. You know how the White House Correspondents Dinner has become a stupid game of inviting non-press celebrity guests for no good reason, thus turning it into an increasingly ridiculous Hollywood event? You know how Trump was invited in 2011 and President Obama destroyed him as the bin Laden raid was happening, thus, in the minds of pundits anyway, setting off some kind of Chekhov's gun that could only be resolved with a successful run for President?

So this year, if somehow there still is a White House Correspondents Association and if they still have a dinner, someone should absolutely invite a special guest to come and sit at their table: President Obama.
posted by zachlipton at 2:20 PM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Just been having an online chat with a few friends and ex-neighbours from the Hebrides, including a MacLeod (the house we bought there was built by a MacLeod who lived two doors down and across, and when we moved we sold it to his nephew; good people).

Yeah, about that poem. I can't repeat exactly their comments. Not because of privacy so much but because of language which the mods would quickly delete if they translated. Several words and phrases from this very NSFW list were used to describe the poem, its author, and/or Donald himself. Let's just say the reaction was negative and leave it at that.
posted by Wordshore at 2:23 PM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


I was thinking about the White House Correspondents' dinner the other day - God only knows why - and it was fairly clear that Li'l Donny is unlikely to turn up anyway, so they should just invite Alec Baldwin to play him instead.
posted by Grangousier at 2:31 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Obama Gives $500 Million To Climate Fund Over GOP Objections

With just three days left in office, the Obama administration has doubled an initial $500 million commitment to a fund that helps developing nations fight climate change and adapt to its consequences.
posted by futz at 2:34 PM on January 17, 2017 [34 favorites]



But Republicans don't want charity provided by the government, and they especially don't care for implications that people who aren't working are going to be lifted up to the level of people who are working. They are, however, generally except for the ideologues, in favor of "citizenship benefits". They want dignity. Which is how Trump is talking about it. He's not saying, "You need this". He's saying, "Because America is So Fucking Great, I'm going to give this to you."


I am gonna dissent and say I actually think corb has a hell of a point here. The only thing I'd change is that everywhere she writes "Republican" I'd sub out "working to middle class folks." Poor folks too, if you can find any who don't mind being so called. Because here's the thing: we all have something in our hearts when we think Republican, and right now I for one default to Republicans like my representatives, the slick amoral rich boys selling the nation to the highest bidder and the mad-eyed religious zealots. For them, corb's comment makes no sense at all.

Now, though, I want you to think about folks who are not well off and who aren't necessarily possessed of a ton of free time to do a lot of research. Don't focus yourself on their race, focus on the time time they have and their perception of themselves.

My roommate is a grocery clerk at our neighborhood grocer, which also happens to be one of the poorer stores in town. I think she's said that something like 40% of the orders that come through her till involve food stamps of some kind; folks are struggling. (Our part of town, also, is largely Hispanic and black; the things coming out of my mouth right now don't only apply to working class white folks, so keep that in mind as I talk.)

Now, the store she works at is part of a chain that is quietly but emphatically socially conscious in Texas. I like them; as corporations go, the more I see the more I feel comfortable thinking of them as good people. And right now, they are doing a food drive to benefit the local food banks, which makes sense for a grocery store. They've got little paper sacks of things the local food banks say the could use stacked out front. You can grab one and buy it along with your groceries.

Did you know that food stamps will totally count for a bag of donation staples clearly labeled as going to a food bank? I didn't, and my roomie didn't before this food drive started, but it makes sense. Food's not hot, after all, so it counts. This is important info for her to know now, because she currently checks out quite a few people who clearly don't have much, are paying with food stamps, and... who are still adding a little sack of food bank goods to their cart so they can feel good about helping someone less fortunate.

Roomie and I were having a chat about this on our way home from the bus stop the other day, because both of our automatic gut reactions was to think "oh no! You don't need to give help away, you need help yourself!" But really that's the wrong way to look at it.

See, most people needs to feel like they're not the worst off, especially if they're working hard. It's a dignity thing. And that manifests for some broke folk as deciding that things aren't that bad for me right now, so I want to spend some of my budget on helping other people who might be doing worse, and for some people it manifests as a deep belief that they themselves have only gotten where they are by looking out for number one.

But here's the thing: either way, people are assuming that they're not the beneficiaries of progressive health care! Either way, you're relying on arguing with struggling folk about whether they think it's important to help people who are worse off, not about whether they think it's important to help themselves or their neighbors! So it's important to check your framing about things like health care, because if you are trying to get broke people to take control of the system by appealing to their self interests, you need to make sure you are communicating that in a way that lets them keep their fundamental sense of self respect AND is loud and easy and accessible to find. Which has not, in my experience, necessarily been the case for the ACA.
posted by sciatrix at 2:35 PM on January 17, 2017 [37 favorites]


Obama Gives $500 Million To Climate Fund Over GOP Objections

With just three days left in office, the Obama administration has doubled an initial $500 million commitment to a fund that helps developing nations fight climate change and adapt to its consequences.


???

How? I thought Congress controls the budget.
posted by indubitable at 2:36 PM on January 17, 2017


Starting to wonder if DJT is going to walk into NSA HQ to find that the building is nothing but a hollow shell on the inside.
posted by schmod at 2:36 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


She's simply asking that she have access to affordable healthcare that doesn't require the American taxpayers to help her pay for it.

So what she wants is tighter insurance regulations and cost controls.

Fine with me!
posted by AFABulous at 2:41 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Assuming Phyllis drives, wait til she finds out about gas subsidies
posted by AFABulous at 2:43 PM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


Maybe Obamas last act will be slowmo walking away from Twitter as it explodes behind him.

I mean, I'll miss Twitter, but it kind of needs doing.
posted by Artw at 2:43 PM on January 17, 2017 [24 favorites]


Starting to wonder if DJT is going to walk into NSA HQ to find that the building is nothing but a hollow shell on the inside.

Person of Interest S02E22 God Mode part 4.
posted by mikelieman at 2:47 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Several words and phrases from this very NSFW list were used to describe the poem,

That list could change whisky branding overnight...
posted by Devonian at 2:49 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've spent the past several years ranting about Twitter's outsized cultural cachet, and the NYT has finally noticed that the press talks an awful lot about Twitter, despite the fact that it's not really used by the public at large.
All of this works because one group is as intoxicated by Twitter as Mr. Trump is: journalists. It’s hard to explain to a normal person — one of the 79 percent of American adults who don’t use Twitter — why the platform mesmerizes the news media. Its all-powerful search function means you can conjure material on any kind of news topic — or just spend your time searching for your own name. Reporters still crave the ego rush of a published byline, but that pales in comparison to the animated feedback loop that Twitter offers. The more time you spend, and the more tweets you send, the bigger your following becomes. But Twitter provides little actual reach — compared with Facebook or Google, it hardly drives any traffic to articles. It’s like a video game for professional validation.
posted by schmod at 2:49 PM on January 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


Their dignity doesn't come from whether or not they accept visible government money in the same way.

It manifests itself in weird ways. The Obama administration was very quiet about the cut to the payroll tax, to get that money circulating round the economy, while W Bush sent out lump sum "HERE'S YOUR MONEY BACK" tax refund checks. There was a hostile reaction to the signs indicating stimulus projects ("porkulus") and yet one of the reasons why Dems had problems getting traction on social and economic stuff was because there weren't many small-scale, drop-in-the-ocean stunts for people to latch onto.

People on the social democratic end of the spectrum recognise that it's a sociological problem -- give people room for their selflessness and generosity, but find ways to avoid the capriciousness and narrow focus that tends to come with charity. As Xeni Jardin noted, you shouldn't need to spend years building up a social media profile in case you need to rely on it for a cancer GoFundMe.

Assuming Phyllis drives, wait til she finds out about gas subsidies

Assuming Phyllis owns a home, wait till she finds out about the mortgage interest tax deduction. And mortgages.
posted by holgate at 2:50 PM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


So it's important to check your framing about things like health care, because if you are trying to get broke people to take control of the system by appealing to their self interests, you need to make sure you are communicating that in a way that lets them keep their fundamental sense of self respect AND is loud and easy and accessible to find. Which has not, in my experience, necessarily been the case for the ACA.

Again, the only reason the ACA was structured how it was is because of Republican opposition to the real, proven, easy, workable solution that exists in every other developed country on Earth - universal coverage.

Democrats didn't make these arguments about mandates, cost controls, subsidies, exchanges, and all the rest because they were the first-best, Democratic preferred solutions. They made them because that was the only way to pass anything that worked after Republicans and their ConservaDem allies refused to pass single payer for 70 years.

When the ACA is dead and gone, I guess the next framing battle will have to return to single payer so that working white people feel they're getting something too. And those arguments will probably have to come from a white president, they've already rejected everything else. But it'll be 70 more years before we get another chance, because Republicans are categorically opposed to fixing the problem in the first place, no matter who's dignity didn't get enough rhetorical massaging.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:51 PM on January 17, 2017 [24 favorites]


She's simply asking that she have access to affordable healthcare that doesn't require the American taxpayers to help her pay for it.

Does she have children? Do/did they go to public school? Educating a child for 12-13 years is ridiculously expensive, and the American taxpayers help pay for it. They do this because an educated populace has an enormous public benefit. You wouldn't want to live in a place that didn't have it. We're all better off for it.
The same applies to a healthy populace.
posted by rocket88 at 2:51 PM on January 17, 2017 [42 favorites]


Artw: "Maybe Obamas last act will be slowmo walking away from Twitter as it explodes behind him."

I was just thinking about how there's a small but noticeable chance that Twitter goes belly-up sometime in the next four years, just out of its own incompetence and/or an economic downturn. Can you even imagine the shit show that would ensue?
posted by mhum at 2:54 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I was just thinking about how there's a small but noticeable chance that Twitter goes belly-up sometime in the next four years, just out of its own incompetence and/or an economic downturn. Can you even imagine the shit show that would ensue?

Putin would just buy it.
posted by Jalliah at 2:56 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I was just thinking about how there's a small but noticeable chance that Twitter goes belly-up sometime in the next four years

It will be bailed out or socialized before that happens.
posted by contraption at 2:56 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


It is completely absurd, though, to claim that people who place any value on dignity voted for Donald J. Trump, who is by a huge margin the least dignified person to ever run for the office of the President. Vermin Supreme's headboot is more dignified than Trump.

"I hold dignity in such high regard that I thought it would be best if I and my country were represented by a barely literate reality show clown" is a sentence that doesn't even pass the laugh test.
posted by IAmUnaware at 2:58 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


emjaybee : You can weaponize your Southern accent ya'll.

Oh hell yes you can. Like I said up thread, my accent and word choice and my code switching has gone right back to my very earliest childhood now, elocution be dammed. Especially when I am speaking to folks who so clearly want to write me off as liberal elite. Works nice.

This is why I keep banging that damn drum about not writing off folks from the South and Midwest, MeFi. Where the hell else are you gonna find an army of allies who will march up to these snakes and read them the riot act in a tone that they haven't heard since they were small children with shoes smelling of wee?
posted by sciatrix at 2:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [32 favorites]


Also, guys, I'm talking about spin and PR. Come on, you know and I know that this policy checks out because you and I have the time to sit around on the Internet all day and read. This not the case for my roomie, who relies on me for her political information, or my partner, or any of my friends in retail or service work.

You gotta get this message OUT in a way that resonates.
posted by sciatrix at 3:02 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


dream: Obama hooks up with Barber for the next few years of justice activism. An ex President liberated from the demands of the "possible" writing the legal resistance for the current, multi ethnic, multi faith civil rights movement.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:05 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


She's simply asking that she have access to affordable healthcare that doesn't require the American taxpayers to help her pay for it.

But she's okay with her husband's Medicare? So the issue is just that she *knows* that she's being subsidized.
posted by dilettante at 3:06 PM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


the only reason the ACA was structured how it was is because of Republican opposition to the real, proven, easy, workable solution that exists in every other developed country on Earth

That's a bit too easy. It lets off the hook people who bought into "I want to keep my doctor" and "I want to keep my plan". It lets off the hook those who liked being able to pay low premiums because they never got sick, the insurance equivalent of tiger-repelling rocks. It lets off the hook everyone who got health benefits with jobs and never bothered asking what they cost. It lets off people who sincerely think that if you're sick and not wealthy, then you deserve your fate. You can argue that the GOP sowed the seeds for this, but the US is fertile ground.
posted by holgate at 3:07 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


This is something. Walter Shaub, Director of the Office of Government Ethics, was summoned by Rep. Chaffetz to be bashed for his advocacy of, well, government ethics. Shaub requested that the meeting be open to the public in the name of transparency, Chaffetz's office refused, and Shaub has now made public a letter asking Chaffetz to reconsider. He makes the case that the public clearly cares about government ethics a great deal, as evidenced by all the public attention, phone calls, etc..., and so the meeting should be public.

This guy is increasingly a damn hero.
posted by zachlipton at 3:11 PM on January 17, 2017 [93 favorites]


That Phyllis and Tim Hollinger thing makes my blood boil. So many ignorant and possibly stupid people screwing up everything for the rest of us.
posted by Justinian at 3:12 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


It is completely absurd, though, to claim that people who place any value on dignity voted for Donald J. Trump, who is by a huge margin the least dignified person to ever run for the office of the President.

Oh, but it does. It's sad - it's fucking tragic actually - but it absolutely does, and this has been building for a long time, and I really don't know how to stop it, but it makes absolute fucking sense.

Because it's not about whether they place value on the dignity of the office. It's about the value they place on their own dignity, and the dream of America being a place where anyone can attain the highest office in the land, no matter what their background.

Trump is a millionaire, true. But he talks like an idiot - or rather, he talks like a man without formal education, a man that everyone can dream of being, because his words and his dreams and mannerisms are so small. He has no class, no respectability - and the people goddamned love him for it. Because it increases their own dignity, because it means that they are as educated or more educated than the man sitting in the highest office in the land.
posted by corb at 3:16 PM on January 17, 2017 [24 favorites]


Speaking of screwing up everything, DeVos just refused to commit to not privatizing public education.
posted by zachlipton at 3:17 PM on January 17, 2017 [23 favorites]


Speaking of screwing up everything, DeVos just refused to commit to not privatizing public education.

Of course she did, that's basically been the ultimate goal of her political life.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:21 PM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Tom Brady refuses to commit to not winning the Superbowl
posted by theodolite at 3:24 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


You can weaponize your Southern accent ya'll.

Back in 2005, blogger-showrunner John Rogers tried to pass along to the Democrats that one of his most important lessons as a struggling standup comedian in reaching an audience was how to learn to say "ain't". The basic rhetorical skills in comedy, he argues, are the same as in politics: convincing people to connect with you. In his metaphor, "every club audience is a swing state", but he frames his argument with a colorful personal anecdote, as a good rhetorician does. He concludes:
There are two lessons to be taken from "Learn to say 'ain't'." First, the fundamental dynamic in all crowd interaction is us vs. them. Period. It's sad. Oh well. Get over it and win.{...} connection is a half-way game -- just extend out a little, and the audience will come the rest of the way. They will extend the boundary of "us" if you advance toward it.{...}

The second lesson coincides with an interesting study mentioned in Freakonomics. Levitt discovered that in political races where the same opponents ran against each other multiple times, but spent vastly different sums of money from race to race -- the money didn't matter. The races shifted, on average, maybe a percentage point in each direction. Once the electorate has determined your identity, and whether you're "us" or "them", that's it.

This leads to an even more interesting idea. As a comic, these people have never seen you before, and you can control their perception of you in the first five minutes of them meeting you -- which will be the sum total of their perception. But this means that in politics, there are people out there who have already been in the spotlight so long, or who have so well-determined their cultural identities, that no matter how qualified, no matter how sincere, no matter how goddam perfect for the job they are ... they just won't be President in the current cultural atmosphere. It doesn't matter how wildly unfair that is. They can never, ever slide into "us." Kerry was so, so far outside of "us" that, frankly it was a testimony to how badly Bush has screwed up that he even got THAT close. Oh, and sorry, Hilary, I'm talking to you.
And here we are, twelve years later, facing potentially four to eight years of a country led by a traffic cone–orange reality show–hosting huckster because he had mastered the dark arts of reaching an audience sufficiently (barely) enough to appeal to a receptive electorate in a few key swing states, despite his obvious odiousness and his hardly concealed contempt for them.

The only good news for the current generation of progressives and liberals is that these skills aren't impossible to pick up...
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:24 PM on January 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


I just finished the Summer Zervos complaint, and man, it's a thing of beauty.
posted by mikelieman at 3:24 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


the press talks an awful lot about Twitter, despite the fact that it's not really used by the public at large

That doesn't really matter though. Twitter is important (in part) because it and Instagram are the two dominant platforms celebrities use to communicate with their fans. The partisan newspapers of the 1800s may have had limited distribution to the general public, but they were still important because they were how information flowed to activist political supporters. 21% of adult internet users in the United States is still a very large number of people.

The problem is not so much the medium of Twitter as that the press has been too easily distracted from the big stories by manufactured outrage from tweets. But he could be getting the same effect from pushing out press releases too, Twitter just happens to make it faster, easier, and more public.
posted by Candleman at 3:25 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Because it increases their own dignity, because it means that they are as educated or more educated than the man sitting in the highest office in the land.

I wish these people would take a moment to consider whether they would want a cardiothoracic surgeon who had less education than they did, and if not whether the job of President is more or less important than that of surgeon.
posted by Justinian at 3:25 PM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


I wish these people would take a moment to consider whether they would want a cardiothoracic surgeon who had less education than they did,

Well, it might be nice to shake things up and get a working man's perspective on this sort of thing, and even if it doesn't work out, it'll sure be interesting! Also, maybe we should introduce term limits for surgeons....
posted by entropicamericana at 3:30 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I wish these people would take a moment to consider whether they would want a cardiothoracic surgeon who had less education than they did, and if not whether the job of President is more or less important than that of surgeon.

You and me both, brother, but we go to nuclear armageddon with the electorate we have, not the electorate we want.
posted by corb at 3:32 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Putin: Trump is “a grown man, and secondly he’s someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world,” Putin said. “I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world.”

There is now video (Russian, English subtitles from Channel 4).
posted by zachlipton at 3:33 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump is a millionaire, true.

Haha, I see what you did there.

He has no class, no respectability - and the people goddamned love him for it. Because it increases their own dignity, because it means that they are as educated or more educated than the man sitting in the highest office in the land.

This point is very interesting. I suspect the vast majority of adults in this country have far more useful skills than that man. I mean, can he drive a car? Fix a toilet or plunge a sink? Cook his own food? Apply for a job? Write a resumé and cover letter? Interact with people graciously when he isn't in a position of disproportionate power?

When put through this particular lens, it rather makes support of GWB and that guy make more sense, even though I can't agree with that reasoning.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 3:33 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


A local AZ TV news program is doing some ridiculous trolling right via their "Your voice" segment where viewers can vote on a topical question. Right now it's "Will Trump be a champion for women's rights?" The last time I saw the numbers it was 75% "No". Have to wonder about that 25% group. The evidence of things not seen, indeed.
posted by fuse theorem at 3:36 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Further DeVos hearing shenanigans: they're only allowing one round of questions, five minutes each.

I'd also recommend reading Mother Jones new piece Betsy DeVos Wants to Use America's Schools to Build "God's Kingdom." It traces out where she comes from and what she wants to do and it's pretty frightening.
posted by zachlipton at 3:38 PM on January 17, 2017 [12 favorites]




I'd also recommend reading Mother Jones new piece Betsy DeVos Wants to Use America's Schools to Build "God's Kingdom."

I should read that, but I just don't have the heart right now.
posted by diogenes at 3:54 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


DeVos did not provide her tax returns.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:55 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


But doesn't this conflict with the Administration goal to build "Trump's Kingdom"?
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:57 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


New audio tape from 2015:

“Have you ever met Vladimir Putin?” Savage asks.

“Yes,” Trump answers, emphatically.

“You have?” Savage follows up.

“Yes, a long time ago. We got along great, by the way.”

posted by diogenes at 3:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [12 favorites]




Back in 2005, blogger-showrunner John Rogers tried to pass along to the Democrats that one of his most important lessons as a struggling standup comedian in reaching an audience was how to learn to say "ain't".

This is goddamn genius and neatly sums up about 40% of what I have been shouting here for the past two months. You don't gotta abandon your principles to reach these people and build a base of support for common decency and sanity. As the man says, doing that is a damn stupid idea! But you do have to be confident, relaxed, and friendly. Bit of self deprecation doesn't hurt. Relax, smile big, and be honest. Act like what you're saying is the simplest thing in the world, and take the time to make sure that your explanations really are simple and easy to understand by checking your work against a relevant focus group. And for god's sake listen and develop your sense of empathy even if you then go on to nod firmly and say "You are out to fuckin' lunch, sir, but thanks for playing."

It's not hard!
posted by sciatrix at 4:05 PM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


I don't know how different the message could've been when a large part of the country apparently experiences "dignity" solely in reference to their self superiority over the next lowest socioeconomic rung. Appealing to their "dignity" when they define such as "if poor people get it too then its stealing our dignity and we hate it" wouldn't have changed anything, and isn't a strategy for future legislative battles.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:06 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


It's not hard!

People go to a comedy club because they want to laugh. It's a totally different atmosphere from politics, and comparing them and wrapping it up with "It's not hard!" is telling the thousands of people who worked to elect Clinton (or to not-elect Trump) that they're just too dumb to have done something that wasn't hard.

I disagree. Politics is tribal, and getting people to leave their tribe is hard. It took three generations to turn the South from yellow-dog DINOs to straight-up Republicans, and a lot of that work was done by Democrats in the rest of the country, and it's still not done. Remember Kim Davis, that jackwagon who refused to let people marry who they wanted? She was a Democrat until after that happened.

It's hard. It's one of the hardest fucking things imaginable.
posted by Etrigan at 4:19 PM on January 17, 2017 [32 favorites]


The only good news for the current generation of progressives and liberals is that these skills aren't impossible to pick up...


Or maybe it's that the makeup of "us" is changing. I see your Kerry and raise you an Obama.
posted by spitbull at 4:24 PM on January 17, 2017


It took three generations to turn the South from yellow-dog DINOs to straight-up Republicans

Politics changes one funeral at a time?
posted by Justinian at 4:25 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Still gotta ask: with 100+ million warchest, a crack web team and the best analytics money could theorteically buy, a GOTV anyone would envy, and an opponent worse than Dubz - by a lot - wtf.

I'm not necessarily asking about the candidate; I was slow to be convinced but very convinced I was that she'd be a great President on the wave of a very progressive DNC platform. Yay:100% Go.

My reasoning is media (/press) coverage, and I'm comfortable with that as a main reason (Comey), but - what; without $100M it wouldn't have been close? I think it would have, but where did all that money/people/time go? Down a hole? All we need is a corrupt FBI fuckbungler and some rumormills?
posted by petebest at 4:31 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I was just thinking about my grandmother. She was a die-hard Democrat for (literally) life. But if you were to actually examine her beliefs and words, you would expect her to identify Republican. She was deeply racist and anti-immigrant (despite coming from a family of Irish immigrants.) She was anti-sex. She was a devout Catholic. She watched televangelists as her primary form of TV.

But she was a Democrat, and would always vote Democrat, because of FDR. Because she remembered the Great Depression and saw the New Deal as her savior. She was a poor, uneducated woman who worked in a state hospital cafeteria and cleaned houses. But the Democrats claimed her loyalty for life by creating the social safety net.

The problem is that her generation is mostly gone now. Democrats have another group of loyal supporters in Black voters who remember the Civil Rights Act. But the real question is what have Dems done LATELY to win tribal loyalty.

I do wonder if Trump is going to be a defining moment for many. Because if loyalty can be assured due to something good, surely something bad can also create lasting antipathy. The election of Obama may have been that for many white racists on the right.

The problem with loyalty based on hating the other Team is that it's just as easy for those people to not vote as to show up to vote for your guys.
posted by threeturtles at 4:35 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Chris Murphy (D- Conn, was the Congressman for Newtown in 2012) DRILLING DeVos on gun in schools. She has no real answer.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:37 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]




But the real question is what have Dems done LATELY to win tribal loyalty.

Obamacare, preventing the 2nd Great Depression, saving the auto industry and 1.5m jobs.
posted by chris24 at 4:39 PM on January 17, 2017 [25 favorites]


That's the problem with preventing problems. No one remembers problems that didn't happen.
posted by ian1977 at 4:41 PM on January 17, 2017 [34 favorites]


The problem is that her generation is mostly gone now. Democrats have another group of loyal supporters in Black voters who remember the Civil Rights Act. But the real question is what have Dems done LATELY to win tribal loyalty.

This is exactly why Republicans broke government over Obamacare, and why they've been opposed to any actual solutions since at least 1980. Or really, since 1929. They cannot have government solving problems, much less Democrats getting the credit.

Republicans can win on racism, on hate, on demonizing the poor, demonizing immigrants, liberals, the gays. It doesn't matter that they have no policies except tax cuts for the rich and strip mining the world. They won on hate, and they always have, the policies don't even matter.

Democrats need actual achievements that voters can feel and overcome their prejudices.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:42 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


That's the problem with preventing problems. No one remembers problems that didn't happen.

Pulling us out of the Great Recession then.
posted by chris24 at 4:42 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's not hard!

It's not hard in theory (and in theory I agree with everything Rogers says). In practice, converting that theory to actual votes, county by county, state by state, is damned hard and subject to all kinds of unknown variables, many of which won't even be obvious until after the votes are counted. Think of everything Obama had to have going for him in 08: a disgraced opposition, a national emergency, an incredible ground game, money, brilliance, charisma; and even with all that it wasn't a sure thing.

So, yes yes yes to Rogers; a somewhat more subdued no to any suggestion that this makes it easy.
posted by octobersurprise at 4:43 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Warren is bringing heat re the restricted opportunity to question DeVos. Bless her. (livestream)
posted by prefpara at 4:43 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


I mean, I'm on board the Dem train and always have been, but while all those things are good, they weren't really FLASHY and attention-getting. With the exception of Obamacare and that had a really strong negative campaign against it, so much so that even on liberal groups when I mention the ACA at least three people show up to complain about it automatically.
posted by threeturtles at 4:44 PM on January 17, 2017


Warren's disdain for DeVos is palpable.
posted by diogenes at 4:47 PM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


Based on my viewing of the committee questioning, very few Senators know how to ask a good question. Warren and Franken know how. I could hug them.
posted by prefpara at 4:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


Politics changes one funeral at a time?

Let's hope so - I always keep in the back of my mind that there are plenty of people still alive in this country who participated in lynchings and they're still exerting their influence on their families and communities. Some things take time and a few generations to change and we haven't had much of either between us and some extremely dark times.

As far as the "learn to say ain't" game, I've gone on at (probably way too much) length before about how the game is about effectively signaling authenticity, whether you have it (which is what catapulted Bernie so far from behind) or you don't but you can fake it for the audience (Trump), and an opponent who doesn't have it or who you can successfully (and unfairly) paint as not having it is at a huge disadvantage (see 30 years of Hillary smears and unfounded "idk I just don't trust her" reactions). You don't have to play the faux-folksy ain't game, but you do have to stand for something and stand up for yourself and have it read as authentic.

I would love a super folksy irascible Dem in the Senate, though. We need like one pugnacious LBJ type who can just cut through the bullshit by calling it bullshit. Biden had a little of that in him and it's one of the things people loved him for, but "malarkey" is the dignified man's way of doing it, I want swearing like a sailor on CNN. (I probably don't really want said cranky foulmouthed Dem to be President, but in the Senate it would be a blast)

That's the problem with preventing problems. No one remembers problems that didn't happen.

pff Y2K, what a bunch of hype amirite (I am not rite it was an immense and successful effort that goes largely unappreciated)
posted by jason_steakums at 4:50 PM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


I have to admit, it's kind of impressive that choosing the CEO of Exxon for Secretary of State is currently in the running for the least infuriating of Trump's cabinet choices.
posted by diogenes at 4:57 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I just learned she's related to Erik Prince.

Does evil flow through their bloodlines?
posted by Yowser at 4:58 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't know, diogenes, I think his Secretary of Agriculture is pretty non-offensive.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [12 favorites]


... did they get around to nominating someone? Or is that the joke?
posted by Justinian at 5:01 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


DeVos won't say guns shouldn't be in schools. Because sometimes kids need to be defended against grizzly bears

There's video (h/t: mathowie).
posted by zachlipton at 5:04 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


That's the joke.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:05 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Excuse me, having continued to watch, I must amend my list. Tim Kaine knows how to ask a question. He is excellent.
posted by prefpara at 5:11 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


DeVos won't say guns shouldn't be in schools. Because sometimes kids need to be defended against grizzly bears

There's video


Senator Murphy's rage practically takes physical form. I think DeVos could feel it rolling over her.
posted by diogenes at 5:13 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Yeah, sorry, by "it's not hard!" I actually didn't specifically mean politicians. I meant citizens talking to fellow citizens to build bridges. I was typing rather quickly as I ran errands, and I confess I didn't elaborate as much as I might have done. I was thinking more about the points corb was making about how these people think of themselves, and how irritated I was at the very well reasoned, accurate, and totally irrelevant arguments that immediately popped up as to why those people were completely wrong.

Of course they're wrong. That's not the point when we're talking strategy and messaging, though, and as a whole this space is one I associate with exactly the kind of framing and rhetoric guaranteed to shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to building allies in unexpected places. And we are going need unexpected allies. We all need to practice those skills, not just politicians.
posted by sciatrix at 5:15 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


How do other places where guns are banned, such as airports and many college campuses, cope with what must surely be massive numbers of dangerous grizzly bears that are allowed to wander around unchallenged?
posted by zachlipton at 5:18 PM on January 17, 2017 [33 favorites]


Jeff Sessions MUST be confirmed as Attorney General after this. He is the one man who can protect us from black bears subverting democracy by voting illegally. Rogue bears. With maxed Bluff and Disguise skills.
posted by delfin at 5:21 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't understand why the Democratic senators doing this don't just ask, "What is Trump's position on X?" And the topic could be really broad, like "Russia" or "education." Inevitably the nominee will say either "I don't know, we haven't discussed that" or they will say some conservative but middle of the line thing like "Mr. Trump believes education is very important but should be locally controlled."

At that point the senator questioning should say, "let me read to you what Mr. Trump has said about X" and then read back one of Trump's word salads that were related to that topic, in a very droll voice. It should last up to two minutes maybe, long enough to make everyone kind of nervous and embarrassed. After finishing, the senator should ask, "could you provide a synopsis of what Mr. Trump said?" and either they will say "I don't know" or try to spin it into something coherent.

If they claim ignorance, the senator should react with alarm: "After hearing your prospective boss's words about X, you still don't know what he believes!? Why would you want to work for him then?" If the nominee attempts to spin it back into something safe and normal, the senator should go to the part of the word salad that was neither safe nor normal and say, "But didn't Mr. Trump say here that [ridiculous position read word-for-word]? As secretary, would you just refuse to go along with the president if he did what he said he would do?" This shouldn't be too hard, as from what I recall of his word salads many of them contain their own contradictions: we'll have a Muslim registry and we won't, etc.

If the nominee said something to the effect of "Mr. Trump clearly wouldn't do what he said he would do!" then the senator should ask why the nominee is so eager to work for a liar.

Trump's outrageous tweets, which contain positions that would kill re-election for most politicians, should also be used for this purpose. These cabinet nominees all seem horrible and so they should get good, hostile questions about their own flaws. But to me the most interesting, revelatory question is, "Trump said [glowingly shitty awful stupid thing], why do you want to work for him?"
posted by Luminiferous Ether at 5:22 PM on January 17, 2017 [48 favorites]


I happen to have a magic rock which keeps away tigers. Perhaps DeVos and Trump would like to purchase this rock...
posted by Justinian at 5:23 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


It's a totally different atmosphere from politics, and comparing them and wrapping it up with "It's not hard!" is telling the thousands of people who worked to elect Clinton (or to not-elect Trump) that they're just too dumb to have done something that wasn't hard.

Well, the problem is less "is it hard to reach out a cultural olive branch" than that your side is a tribe too. If Clinton changed her messaging such that she appealed to the other tribe, then she suffered attacks from the left from her side. I remember the complaints this summer when she tried appealing to moderate Republicans.
posted by corb at 5:24 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


#notallbears
posted by Brak at 5:26 PM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


I can't wait until America's first All-Porn First Family restores dignity to the Oval Office.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:29 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I can't wait until America's first All-Porn First Family restores dignity to the Oval Office.

Could you explain why Melania Trump should be shamed for posing nude?
posted by indubitable at 5:32 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Nobody made a big deal over Barbara Bush's photo shoots.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 5:35 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


#notallbears

#allursinesmatter
posted by Talez at 5:36 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I think kirkaracha was likely pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans and Republican voters. Remember when Michelle Obama was attacked because she wore a sleeveless dress like a hussy?
posted by Justinian at 5:36 PM on January 17, 2017 [21 favorites]


Porn and dignity are orthogonal. Trump is undignified, but it has nothing to do with porn (aside from his "check out this sex tape" tweet stuff...)
posted by thefoxgod at 5:37 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]



Trump Now Buying Facebook Ads Begging People To Come Watch Him Be President
posted by futz at 1:26 PM on January 17


I just saw an ad on twitter. I really thought when I saw the Facebook ad this morning that it must be a hoax-- maybe some left wing propaganda trolling-- but I guess it is real. The comments on Facebook are hilarious, my favorite being "I would rather eat partially chewed food from an Ebola patient's mouth than attend your inauguration."
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:38 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


I don't think we have to pretend like an appearance in "Playboy Video Centerfold 2000" is dignified to avoid slut-shaming.
posted by EarBucket at 5:40 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Well, the problem is less "is it hard to reach out a cultural olive branch" than that your side is a tribe too.

Ah, yes. Instead of "The Right is tribal, and getting Republicans to leave their tribe is hard", I should have said something like "Politics is tribal, and getting people to leave their tribe is hard."
posted by Etrigan at 5:40 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


What Justinian said. And Trump said Alicia Machado's (nonexistant!) sex tape was "disgusting" when both he and his wife have both been in porn.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:42 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Could you explain why Melania Trump should be shamed for posing nude?

Could you explain why you think Melania is being shamed? I read that comment as "Hot grits! There's going to be porn in the White House!" (And if we're lucky there may be more than one kind of porn in the White House.)
posted by octobersurprise at 5:43 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


When I think of the dignity of the Office of President, I can't wait until the First Lady's centerfold is in a Smithsonian exhibit alongside the hall of dresses.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:46 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


The problem with "meet them where they are"/"learn to say ain't" is that all-too-frequently the place where they are is a racist, misogynist, homophobic place, and the word they would have you learn to say isn't "ain't". It's another, quite different word. It's a little disheartening how quickly various pundits are falling for this.
posted by um at 5:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]


While I continue to feel that Trump's friendship with Roy Cohn should not be overloaded with evidenceless accusations dripping with homophobia, I hope we can all come together to appreciate how weird this picture is of "Trump's mentor and very close friend, Roy Cohn, aide of Joe McCarthy and defender of mobsters, with his collection of frogs and pic of Trump."

Because it's weird, right?
posted by zachlipton at 5:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


I can't tell what's weird anymore. Everything is weird.
posted by zachlipton at 5:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [32 favorites]


The comments on Facebook are hilarious

They truly, truly are gold, Jerry! Gold! I very much enjoyed my quick perusal of some of the like 800 squillion that have wound up on that thing. High recommended if you're feeling petty and vindictive. Which I am.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:48 PM on January 17, 2017


I would literally think it was far more dignified if our next President stripped in the middle of the White House lawn, but was otherwise sane, than for our next President to wear all his clothes and be Trump. The problem with Trump is not that Melania did nudes once. The problem with Trump is that he is a GODDAMNED MONSTER.

ahem.

sorry, its been a long week.
posted by corb at 5:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [45 favorites]


I can't tell what's weird anymore. Everything is weird.

when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
posted by entropicamericana at 5:50 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Von Teese 2020!
posted by um at 5:51 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


What Justinian said. And Trump said Alicia Machado's (nonexistant!) sex tape was "disgusting" when both he and his wife have both been in porn.

That's not what you said, though. You said that, based on a nude photo shoot that took place 20 years ago, Melania Trump is beneath the dignity of inhabiting the White House. And what I'd like to know is, why is that? Why that and not some of the actually awful things she or her husband have said and done?
posted by indubitable at 5:51 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Erik Prince, America’s most notorious mercenary, is lurking in the shadows of the incoming Trump administration. A former senior U.S. official who has advised the Trump transition told The Intercept that Prince has been advising the team on matters related to intelligence and defense, including weighing in on candidates for the defense and state departments.

Ultimately, Prince sold Blackwater and now heads up a Hong Kong-based company known as Frontier Services Group. The Intercept has previously reported on Prince’s efforts to build a private air force for hire and his close ties to Chinese intelligence. One of his latest schemes is a proposal to deploy private contractors to work with Libyan security forces to stop the flow of refugees to Europe.

...Blaming leftists and some congressional Democrats for destroying his Blackwater empire, Prince clearly views Trump’s vow to bring back torture, CIA-sponsored kidnapping, and enhanced interrogations, as well as his commitment to fill Guantanamo with prisoners, as a golden opportunity to ascend to his rightful place as a covert private warrior for the U.S. national security state. As we reported last year, “Prince — who portrays himself as a mix between Indiana Jones, Rambo, Captain America, and Pope Benedict — is now working with the Chinese government through his latest ‘private security’ firm.” The Trump presidency could result in Prince working for both Beijing and the White House.


More:

Blackwater’s Founder Is Under Investigation for Money Laundering, Ties to Chinese Intel, and Brokering Mercenary Services

Blackwater Founder Remains Free and Rich While His Former Employees Go Down on Murder Charges
posted by futz at 5:53 PM on January 17, 2017 [21 favorites]


I really, really dislike Melania and Ivanka Trump based on the things they've said and the kind of people they seem to be and probably are.
posted by zutalors! at 5:54 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


I forget Melania even exists most of the time. I really could care less about her nudez. Based on limited data I think she's probably a crappy human being, but she seems like she has zero interest in politics or being First Lady so meh.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:56 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


CNN Trump Commerce pick Wilbur Ross keeping some of his empire

Why should he bother selling off his assets? His boss sure isn't going to.

I was watching an art documentary that featured the National Art gallery which led me to Andrew Mellon's biography. Some interesting parallels to today. When he was chosen by Harding to be the Secretary of Treasury he was the third richest man in America. He went on to serve under Coolidge and Hoover and then the depression hit and he resigned during impeachment hearings. Later he was brought up on tax evasion charges under FDR and at his trial he revealed his secret plan to establish a National Art Museum in Washington DC and that's why he was storing all those priceless works of art in his basement that he spent millions buying while poor people were starving to death in the streets. He died before his trial was over.

So what's the moral of that? Don't know except the third richest man in America was treasurer during the age of the robber barons before the whole thing turned to shit and the poor suffered misery and deprivation. But -hey- we did get a really good museum out of it.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:56 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Why that and not some of the actually awful things she or her husband have said and done?

Must we choose?
posted by octobersurprise at 5:57 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I dislike Melania for claiming that she would fight assholes online.
posted by Dashy at 5:57 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


While I continue to feel that Trump's friendship with Roy Cohn should not be overloaded with evidenceless accusations dripping with homophobia, I hope we can all come together to appreciate how weird this picture is of "Trump's mentor and very close friend, Roy Cohn, aide of Joe McCarthy and defender of mobsters, with his collection of frogs and pic of Trump."

Because it's weird, right?


It's like something from cursed images.
posted by jason_steakums at 5:58 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


I dislike Melania for plagiarizing.
posted by Dashy at 5:58 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Melania and Ivanka are assholes. This has nothing to do with their appearance, previous nudes, or shiny shiny hair. People bringing up Melania's nudes to me are the same type of people who out of one side of their mouths present their lefty credentials, and out of the other side refer to right-wing women they don't like using the c-word. Please stop shitting on women qua women, especially when it's entirely appropriate to shit on them for being shitty human beings.
posted by supercrayon at 5:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [33 favorites]


I mean, ymmv, but if we're going to put a porn star in the White House, I'd much prefer Stoya or Sasha Grey, myself.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:00 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Could you explain why Melania Trump should be shamed for posing nude?

I'm thinking it's the hypocrisy? It's not Melania being shamed, it's Trump supporters.
posted by bongo_x at 6:02 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Now Donnie might be a porn star himself, but the number of male porn stars I'd rather see in the White House are nearly innumerable.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:07 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


After finishing, the senator should ask, "could you provide a synopsis of what Mr. Trump said?" and either they will say "I don't know" or try to spin it into something coherent

With respect, this sounds like the hopeful fantasy of someone who has never listened to a few hundred congressional hearings from start to finish. A senator may ask a question like that, and many do, for the benefit of the evening shows and their twitter followers, and in response the nominee testifying will say absolutely anything they please on any topic they like. I am totally in favor of showboating and grandstanding on the part of Democratic politicians in the interest of getting fun video clips to play for myself to make myself feel better, but there is no such thing as a question that forces the respondent to answer it, in this context. especially no such thing as question that boxes them into some kind of logic puzzle EITHER x OR y deal. you can ask anything you like and they can just reread what's on the sheet in front of them for twelve hours until everybody gets sleepy and adjourns.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:10 PM on January 17, 2017 [17 favorites]


@TerryMoran DISTURBING: @GenFlynn's son tweets story (for which he is clearly a source) about dad's plans--on a Kremlin-backed, 9/11 truther website.

It's bad enough we have to put up with all of Trump's scandals and weird shit but he surrounds himself with crazy, immoral people and they are bringing their own scandals and weird shit. It can't be said enough, the next four years are going to be exhausting.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:11 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


Michelle Obama was excoriated for wearing a sleeveless dress so yes, the fucking hypocrisy of both trumps doing softish porn things and that being ok with the Repubs makes me pretty fucking angry.
posted by futz at 6:15 PM on January 17, 2017 [49 favorites]


Melania and Ivanka are assholes.

i think of them as Melanoma and Ipana.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 6:16 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


The next four years haven't even started and I'm already exhausted. I should be catatonic by March at this rate.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 6:16 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


I'm fucking exhausted already, and going by the PEEOTUS approval ratings, so are many of his voters, let alone Hillary voters. And yet the thumb suckers keep coming - "I voted for change, not to defund Planned Parenthood"...
posted by RedOrGreen at 6:17 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Betsy DeVos will protect America's children from grizzly bears by ensuring that the bears receive better overall education.
posted by delfin at 6:19 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Trump decides to keep going after John Lewis. I'm becoming pretty convinced this is not reality.

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/821498088741306368
posted by bongo_x at 6:20 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]




Erik Prince, America’s most notorious mercenary, is lurking in the shadows of the incoming Trump administration.

His sister will probably be hiring armed mercs to protect schools from grizzly bears.
posted by holgate at 6:20 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Now who I'd really like to see as First Lady is Yekaterina Petrovna Zamolodchikova. Style, beauty, a winning personality, and an ability to handle the Russians. That's who we need.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:20 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


@TerryMoran DISTURBING: @GenFlynn's son tweets story (for which he is clearly a source) about dad's plans--on a Kremlin-backed, 9/11 truther website.

That story boils down to, "every agency should defer to Flynn now, not the DNI". Flynn is probably the point man for Russian contacts with the Trump administration, so they're planning a wholesale takeover of our security state. Neat.

And apparently family package deals are just a thing now in United Russia the Republican Party. We have Trump and all his kids/spouses running a multiheaded, unelected and unethical presidency; and Flynns Sr. and Jr. acting as Russian go-betweens beholden to every little bit of propaganda put out by the Kremlin.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:21 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


Michelle Obama was excoriated for wearing a sleeveless dress

Yes, but you're selectively leaving out important information; Michelle is a Black woman. In the White House.
posted by bongo_x at 6:22 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yes, but you're selectively leaving out important information; Michelle is a Black woman. In the White House.

oh boy! that never occurred to me ;)
posted by futz at 6:25 PM on January 17, 2017


"Why that and not some of the actually awful things she or her husband have said and done?"

Must we choose?


Only if you want to be coherent. Why shame her for politically supporting a misogynist if you don't have a problem with misogyny? me, I do have a problem with it, so I despise her for every word and gesture of support she has ever given to the president-elect, but I do not despise her because she let somebody photograph her dirty pillows. or whatever the kind of tittering adolescents who are scandalized by naked women call them, these days. My considerable respect for Michelle Obama is likewise not conditioned on her never having done so.

what is shameful is treating Man's Wife as either an honorary position or a real job title that must be lived up to by demonstrating some appropriate level of dignity, as if there were any dignity to be found in the practice. Many people who tolerate the institution of the First Ladyship would find it more offensive if it were more correctly titled First Wife, but for no reason whatsoever.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:26 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


What kind of dumb do you have to be to think that Planned Parenthood wouldn't be on the chopping block if you voted for Trump, or any Republican?

None. None more dumb.
posted by Yowser at 6:28 PM on January 17, 2017 [31 favorites]




A real estate magnate from Queens
Was living far out of his means.
He blew us a kiss,
Gave the nation a piss.
They say that it runs in his jeans.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:33 PM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


The thing keeping me going today: all of these miserable CEO vampires are about to become subordinates in the ne plus ultra of toxic workplaces
posted by theodolite at 6:35 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


They say that it runs in his jeans.

So many....
So much...
Ewwwwwwwww. *Does the dance that one does after walking through a spider web*
posted by futz at 6:35 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


@MerrillMarkoe Trump finally reveals his strategy: By making us all lose the will to live, we'll all stop worrying about the details of his health plan.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:37 PM on January 17, 2017 [28 favorites]


Yes, but you're selectively leaving out important information; Michelle is a Black woman. In the White House.

oh boy! that never occurred to me ;)


And that's why they had to keep pointing it out. Because we just don't get it.
posted by bongo_x at 6:38 PM on January 17, 2017


Does the dance that one does after walking through a spider web

They call that the dances with sneetches.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:38 PM on January 17, 2017 [10 favorites]


"I voted for change, not to defund Planned Parenthood."

Fuck this writer. "I voted for the face-eating tiger party, but I didn't think they really meant it ...".
posted by tocts at 6:40 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


On the bikers: "That's like additional security with those guys, and they're rough... Between the military, the police, law enforcement, the bikers, we had an incredible election."
posted by holgate at 6:47 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


I've long felt that Obama was not taking the threat of the Republicans seriously enough, and now I know why. In an interview excerpted here:
Obama: It’s interesting, the stuff I read just to escape ends up being a mix of things — some science fiction. For a while, there was a three-volume science-fiction novel, the “Three-Body Problem” series —
Q: Oh, Liu Cixin, who won the Hugo Award.
Obama: — which was just wildly imaginative, really interesting. It wasn’t so much sort of character studies as it was just this sweeping —
Q: It’s really about the fate of the universe.
Obama: Exactly. The scope of it was immense. So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with Congress seem fairly petty — not something to worry about. Aliens are about to invade. [Laughter]
Damnit, man, Congress is WORSE than invading aliens!!!
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:49 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]




The woman in your link should seriously rethink her obviously subpar life choices, futz.

I mean she's described as a vocal Trump supporter.
posted by Justinian at 7:00 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Videos of Betsy DeVos demonstrating she is horribly unqualified for the position:

Doesn't know the difference between proficiency and growth

Sanders asks, "do you think if you were not a multi-billionaire, if your family had not made hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions to the Republican Party, that you would be sitting here today?" And when asked about free college her response is "there’s nothing in life that’s truly free" (she got more or less everything in her life for free).

Maggie Hassan as she realizes DeVos doesn't know the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is a thing

DeVos was listed as a VP and member of the board of the family foundation for 14 years, says it was a clerical error.

Grizzly bears
posted by zachlipton at 7:00 PM on January 17, 2017 [33 favorites]


Oh, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who does not suffer fools gladly.
posted by zachlipton at 7:02 PM on January 17, 2017 [29 favorites]


I just need to share this somehwere and it seems like the best place -

One of my friends often gets into debates with his Trump-supporting cousin. My friend tries very hard to stay civil - because they're family, and also just because that's how he is. He would NOT be the kind of guy to tell his cousin off and burn bridges and unfriend him in a huff. One thing that he's done more than a few times, though, is chide his cousin about fake news outlets.

Today he posted an open letter to his cousin announcing that "Starting this Sunday, you will now have a six-month subscription to the New York times, on me. Congratulations. And you are also free to get me a subscription to a more conservative publication if you really want to, but it must be in print. Thanks!" His cousin posted back a confused, ".....why?" And my friend said "oh, I think you know."

I want to be this guy when I grow up.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:04 PM on January 17, 2017 [30 favorites]


Trump transition team asks CNN to retract story about Tom Price

Price still owns the disputed stock. I determine that the trump team is FOFS (full of fucking shit) until proven otherwise.
posted by futz at 7:23 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Speaking to Oregon Public Broadcasting on Jan. 13, Kurt Schrader (D-Ore) minced no words in explaining why he won't be attending the inauguration: "I'm just not a big Trump fan. I've met the guy and never been impressed with him. He's the president of the United States now, so I'll do my best to work with him when I think he's doing the right thing for the country. But he hasn't proved himself to me at all yet, so I respectfully decline to freeze my ass out there in the cold for this particular ceremony."
posted by sciatrix at 7:38 PM on January 17, 2017 [30 favorites]


As they work on their own replacement plans for Obamacare, Senate Republicans say they are working under the assumption that Trump actually meant to promise access to health insurance for everyone, which aligns with what they’ve been promising.

Trump made his promise of universal healthcare coverage, a goal that Obamacare has fallen short of, in an interview with The Washington Post this weekend. “We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

The vow clashes with all of the major Obamacare replacement plans put forward by Republicans, which prioritize choice over universality. But some Republicans in the Senate say they are working on repealing and replacing Obamacare under the belief that Trump misspoke.


“I think that syncs up with what our members have been saying, that we think everybody ought to have access to affordable healthcare insurance. I assume that’s what he means by that statement and that’s how we’re proceeding,” said Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Senate Republican.

The weasels always try finesse the terminology don't they? "Access" leaves a lot of people out in the cold.
posted by futz at 7:39 PM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


adequate health care
access to adequate health care
affordable insurance that may provide access to adequate health care
access to affordable insurance that may provide access to adequate health care
Free children's book entitled "Curious George goes to the Doctor" mailed to every American home
posted by tivalasvegas at 7:46 PM on January 17, 2017 [35 favorites]


affordable insurance = HSA + $100,000 deductible and $99,999 lifetime cap on benefits.
posted by localhuman at 7:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


Speaking to Oregon Public Broadcasting on Jan. 13, Kurt Schrader (D-Ore) minced no words in explaining why he won't be attending the inauguration: "I'm just not a big Trump fan. I've met the guy and never been impressed with him. He's the president of the United States now, so I'll do my best to work with him when I think he's doing the right thing for the country. But he hasn't proved himself to me at all yet, so I respectfully decline to freeze my ass out there in the cold for this particular ceremony."

"Let's get this guy in front of a crowd!"
posted by jason_steakums at 7:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


yeah, fuckin' access, how does it even work!?
posted by futz at 7:49 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Not to ruin a good line, but isn't it set to be unseasonably warm on Friday?
posted by zachlipton at 7:52 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


(But it's going to be unseasonably warm and wet on Friday, right? Though I guess that if people stand around and get rained on during October temperatures, hypothermia is a possibility.)
posted by maudlin at 7:52 PM on January 17, 2017


That's not what you said, though. You said that, based on a nude photo shoot that took place 20 years ago, Melania Trump is beneath the dignity of inhabiting the White House.

I didn't say anything about her I didn't say about him.

The Republicans have been saying they would restore dignity to the Oval Office since they impeached Bill Clinton for lying about a consensual affair. They've said horrible things about Michelle Obama. Melania Trump dismissed his self-admitted sexual assaults as "boy talk" that was "all organized from the opposition," lied that "he didn't say he did it," and blamed the victims and called them liars ("did they ever check the background of these women?"). Donald Trump defined (even imaginary) soft porn as disgusting, but he and his wife have been in soft porn. They're hypocrites.

Why that and not some of the actually awful things she or her husband have said and done?

Because I am petty and vindictive.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:52 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


Trump made his promise of universal healthcare coverage, a goal that Obamacare has fallen short of, in an interview with The Washington Post this weekend. “We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

WHAT IS GOING ON? By the way, if Trump actually got single payer universal healthcare through Congress, I'd let him be a Russian puppet, and ignore a swath of corruption. Although it wouldn't make up for fascist policies towards immigrants and muslims.
posted by dis_integration at 7:53 PM on January 17, 2017


My friend related to me that during his family's Christmas dinner, his sister-in-law owned up to having voted for Trump. His father looked at her and said "I've been wanting to say this for a long time now. I'm 85. I've always thought you were a moron and now I know it. "

The olds are alright.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:53 PM on January 17, 2017 [86 favorites]


It's going to be warm, but also quite rainy. Saturday looks lovely, though. Perfect weather for smashing the patriarchy.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:57 PM on January 17, 2017 [14 favorites]


Isn't promising that everyone will have access to health insurance semantically meaningless? It's just saying "anyone who can afford to buy health insurance will be allowed to buy health insurance"? Isn't that what we've always had?
posted by Justinian at 7:57 PM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


Guys I didn't think you were serious about the grizzly bears AND YET
posted by lydhre at 7:58 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


I guess it's "the same thing we had before where you can have it if you can afford but also people seem to be kind of het up over this pre-existiting condition stuff, so those people can also have it if they can afford it, we guess."
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:59 PM on January 17, 2017


Captain America, and Pope Benedict

I'll thank you to keep those names out of your mouth, Erik Fucking Prince.

Also, that video clip of Warren questioning DeVos was fantastic. I know I shouldn't be amazed at anything at this point, but the sight of someone sitting there wanting to RUN THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION without a goddamn clue as to what the current law actually is re: students with disabilities or predatory for-profit college...well, it breaks my heart.

Oh, and she'll "review" the law, but no promises about actually supporting it. And by "review", she means "turn over to a group of underlings who want to run public education into the ground".

I work in a public institution of higher education. This is my calling and my livelihood, and this breaks my heart. I don't know how Warren and Hassan haven't had an aneurysm having to listen to that tripe.
posted by Salieri at 8:01 PM on January 17, 2017 [22 favorites]


Isn't promising that everyone will have access to health insurance semantically meaningless? It's just saying "anyone who can afford to buy health insurance will be allowed to buy health insurance"? Isn't that what we've always had?

I thiiink so, based on my understanding of the common definitions of the words in question -- but given that the Republicans are suddenly making such a big deal about phrasing, I suspect they are meaning something nefariously different by this.

It's the birth of a dogwhistle (of some sort), witnessed in real time.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:03 PM on January 17, 2017


I guess it's "the same thing we had before where you can have it if you can afford but also people seem to be kind of het up over this pre-existiting condition stuff, so those people can also have it if they can afford it, we guess."

Yeaaaah that's no different than before, even the pre-existing condition stuff. You could get coverage even with pre-existing conditions before it's just that the cost was so astronomical that it was functionally equivalent to not being available.

Which is exactly what will happen again absent the mandate with penalties.
posted by Justinian at 8:03 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


So last week on the ABC evening news they mentioned Trump talking about Obamacare. They referred to it something like "the unpopular healthcare reform" and I wanted to throw something because it's not true and Trump's historic unpopularity is more notable but ignored. Anyway, the Affordable Care Act is now more popular than ever. Thanks, Donald.
posted by peeedro at 8:04 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


Isn't promising that everyone will have access to health insurance semantically meaningless?

Apparently the problem is literally people can't find insurance plans to buy, not that they can't afford them or they cover nothing.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:08 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yeaaaah that's no different than before, even the pre-existing condition stuff. You could get coverage even with pre-existing conditions before it's just that the cost was so astronomical that it was functionally equivalent to not being available.
I think that depended completely on whether your state had a high-risk pool which you qualified for. And high-risk pools were typically shitty insurance, as well as being prohibitively expensive. Not every state even had a high-risk pool, and some of them had limited numbers of spaces.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:13 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]




That seems to be the Rand Paul plan, shitty insurance for everyone as long as they can afford to buy it; and Paul Ryan was wanking off over high risk pools yesterday like that was an actual intelligent answer. So that's probably what they'll settle on and call it "universal coverage". Healthy people in the healthy people pool with lower premiums (so working white people can preserve their "dignity" by still paying and having skin in the game), while preexisting conditions get shuffled off into the national high risk pool, where they can pay the same prohibitive costs as the good ole days. And maybe block granting medicaid and phasing out medicare for everyone under 55 if they can pass it all at once.

A better way (to end the social safety net once and for all)!
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:19 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


They're just assuming that no one is going to remember what a total fucking nightmare the high risk pools were, I guess. For instance, they typically didn't cover pre-existing conditions for the first year. So you had to join the high risk pool because you had diabetes, but the high-risk-pool insurance wouldn't pay for anything to do with your diabetes for a year anyway. And after that, you still had 20% co-insurance, on top of tens of thousands of dollars a year in premiums. That is not a model for anything. It's a sick joke.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:25 PM on January 17, 2017 [16 favorites]


I think that depended completely on whether your state had a high-risk pool which you qualified for. And high-risk pools were typically shitty insurance, as well as being prohibitively expensive. Not every state even had a high-risk pool, and some of them had limited numbers of spaces.

Not necessarily. What do you think Blue Shield would have said if you went to them and went, look, I have diabetes and have not had continuous coverage but I will pay you ten million dollars a year for insurance which includes diabetes.

You absolutely could get coverage for pre-existing conditions. Throw enough money at a problem and anything is possible.
posted by Justinian at 8:28 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


Note that while that example is ridiculous it fully satisfies the Republican promise of "access to health insurance".
posted by Justinian at 8:29 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


There were many conditions that made people ineligible for insurance, Justinian. I think you're just making shit up, to be honest.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:33 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


which prioritize choice over universality. But some Republicans in the Senate say they are working on repealing and replacing Obamacare under the belief that Trump misspoke.

To be fair, I doubt anyone has ever lost money in Vegas betting that Trump's speech is bullshit.
posted by corb at 8:36 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


There were many conditions that made people ineligible for insurance, Justinian. I think you're just making shit up, to be honest.

Not at all. There were plenty of conditions that made people ineligible for insurance that was not exorbitantly expensive to the point it was functionally unavailable but that's not the same thing. I think you're drastically underestimating what enough money can do.

Virtually anything is available if you're rich enough.

The point being this is what the Republican plan is; if you are rich enough you'll be able to buy insurance.
posted by Justinian at 8:36 PM on January 17, 2017 [8 favorites]


I cannot wait for Gloria Allred to start dropping discovery demands for those pesky missing Apprentice tapes.
posted by gatorae at 8:37 PM on January 17, 2017 [31 favorites]


I suspect the case will settle before anything like that happens.
posted by Justinian at 8:43 PM on January 17, 2017


maybe they're just planning on rebranding Obamacare but adding a 'literacy test' to prevent 'fraud'
posted by localhuman at 8:48 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


That Betsy DeVos thing about, "I'll review" blahblahblah.

What's stopping a candidate from lying their ass off? Like Tillerson did.

What recourse do the people of the United States of America have when these appointees do stuff completely unhinged from their senate confirmation answers?

DeVos is a lightweight. She actually kind of sort of worries about reality kicking in and kicking her in the teeth.
posted by porpoise at 8:49 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump: 'I don’t like tweeting’ [real]

President-elect Donald Trump declared in an interview released late Tuesday that he dislikes tweeting and uses Twitter as a defense against media.

“Look, I don’t like tweeting,” Trump insisted during a Fox News interview scheduled to air Wednesday. "I have other things I could be doing.”

posted by Rust Moranis at 8:53 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


I suspect the case will settle before anything like that happens.

May take a while if she sticks to what they're after. I read it's either go to court or Trump needs to admit that he lied about her.
posted by Jalliah at 8:54 PM on January 17, 2017


Isn't promising that everyone will have access to health insurance semantically meaningless? It's just saying "anyone who can afford to buy health insurance will be allowed to buy health insurance"? Isn't that what we've always had?

YES.
posted by futz at 8:55 PM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


“Look, I don’t like tweeting,” Trump insisted during a Fox News interview scheduled to air Wednesday. "I have other things I could be doing.”

Not my fault the world is forcing me to tweet.


And now he's whining about being forced to whine.
posted by Jalliah at 8:57 PM on January 17, 2017 [19 favorites]


"I have other things I could be doing.”

THEN FUCKING DO THOSE THINGS.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:59 PM on January 17, 2017 [32 favorites]


if you don't like doing it, THEN STOP FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:00 PM on January 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


What recourse do the people of the United States of America have when these appointees do stuff completely unhinged from their senate confirmation answers?

Appeal to #neverTrump. That's pretty much it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:01 PM on January 17, 2017


“Look, I don’t like tweeting,” Trump insisted during a Fox News interview scheduled to air Wednesday. "I have other things I could be doing.”

He gives and he gives and he gives. I don't think I'll ever fully comprehend the sacrifices this man has made.
posted by contraption at 9:04 PM on January 17, 2017 [24 favorites]


Yeaaaah that's no different than before, even the pre-existing condition stuff. You could get coverage even with pre-existing conditions before it's just that the cost was so astronomical that it was functionally equivalent to not being available.

Not at all. There were plenty of conditions that made people ineligible for insurance that was not exorbitantly expensive to the point it was functionally unavailable but that's not the same thing. I think you're drastically underestimating what enough money can do.

Y'all keep saying this, but no, it's not true. I tried quite a lot to get insurance after my COBRA expired and before the ACA kicked in. I went to every major insurance provider that operated in Virginia, and applied seeking an assessment of what, if any, insurance plans I could get. Problem is, my BMI is way too high, I have hypertension, mental illness, and a lengthy family history of obesity, heart disease, mental illness, and cancer. My income never came into play - I was told unanimously that I qualified for zero plans. Without protection for people with pre-existing conditions, I am literally uninsurable at any price. I know this, because I tried to get any price at all offered to me, and nobody would.
posted by kafziel at 9:12 PM on January 17, 2017 [54 favorites]


"I have other things I could be doing.”

HE'S GETTING THE MESSAGES FROM THE PEOPLE'S TWITTER BOT!
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:18 PM on January 17, 2017 [37 favorites]


"I have other things I could be doing.”
Unfortunately, it's stuff like holding hate inciting rallies and humiliating perceived political opponents.
posted by porpoise at 9:21 PM on January 17, 2017 [9 favorites]


Isn't promising that everyone will have access to health insurance semantically meaningless? It's just saying "anyone who can afford to buy health insurance will be allowed to buy health insurance"?

Well it's like, everyone has access to a private plane

In fact, since anyone can get one, it's sort of amazing we all don't travel that way, y'know
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:23 PM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


Um, about the school that maybe kinda needed a gun to defend against bears:
DeVos was referring to an anecdote Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi told her in a private meeting earlier in the day about schools with wildlife fences. According to a 2005 Denver Post article, several schools in the vicinity of Cody, Wyoming — which has a rebounding bear population — relied on such fences to keep wildlife from wandering onto school grounds. But neither the Post nor another article in the Billings Gazette about the fences made any mention of firearms playing a role in the schools' anti-bear strategies.

Audra Morrow, a teacher at Wyoming's Valley Elementary School from 2004 to 2006, explained to Mic that no guns were necessary to ward off ursids, and that the fence and bear spray were "absolutely" sufficient measures on their own.

"No firearms in our schools!" Morrow wrote. "We do have bear spray but have never had a problem that would require using it."

Bear attacks are very rare; according to Backpacker, fatality rates from such attacks in the U.S. and Canada averaged under three a year in the 2000s — and more than half of those were in Canada. Such attacks are generally limited to hikers and others in wilderness areas where bears are known to range, not rampages at educational institutions. In Yellowstone National Park — perhaps the greatest hotbed of grizzly bear activity in the U.S. — the chances of being injured by a bear are approximately one in 2.1 million, according to the National Park Service.

On the other hand, according to gun control advocacy group Everytown For Gun Safety, between Jan. 1, 2013, and Oct. 31, 2016, there were 201 school shootings resulting in at least 63 gun homicides and 156 gunfire injuries. ...
posted by maudlin at 9:24 PM on January 17, 2017 [33 favorites]


The NYTimes has a look back and a look ahead with Joe Biden.
posted by peeedro at 9:26 PM on January 17, 2017


Yeaaaah that's no different than before, even the pre-existing condition stuff. You could get coverage even with pre-existing conditions before it's just that the cost was so astronomical that it was functionally equivalent to not being available.

I couldn't.
posted by krinklyfig at 9:26 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Not necessarily. What do you think Blue Shield would have said if you went to them and went, look, I have diabetes and have not had continuous coverage but I will pay you ten million dollars a year for insurance which includes diabetes.

"We can't cover you, but you can afford to pay full price for medical care without insurance."
posted by krinklyfig at 9:29 PM on January 17, 2017 [13 favorites]


Trump set to take office without most of his Cabinet
Trump made his Cabinet selections in rapid fire after the election, but has been hampered since by ethics complications for some of them, Democratic opposition and an unforgiving calendar. His Cabinet is now on track to take the longest to fill since George H.W. Bush’s in 1989, according to an analysis by POLITICO of the confirmation process of the last five presidents.
Trump's missing Cabinet secretary
A behind-the-scenes fight between agribusiness tycoons and members of Donald Trump’s camp who want more diversity in the Cabinet has turned the selection process for Agriculture secretary into a months-long battle.
...
Trump appeared ready to use the post to pick a Hispanic for his Cabinet in late December, but members of his agricultural advisory committee — a group of about 70 farm-industry leaders who supported the president-elect during the campaign — caught wind of the plan and publicly complained.
...
Lucas was “apoplectic,” after hearing this month that former Texas Rep. Henry Bonilla, a one-time television executive and former chair of the House Appropriations Committee's agriculture panel, was in the running, one source said, and called Pence to air his grievances. Others have also called Pence multiple times to shoot down various candidates who don’t come from a traditional Midwestern farming background, according to a source with direct knowledge of the conversations.
Funny how the "traditional Midwestern farming background" doesn't seem to include Native Americans farming the region for centuries before European colonists arrived. (And Spanish agriculture in Florida decades before the Pilgrims.)
posted by kirkaracha at 9:30 PM on January 17, 2017 [20 favorites]


The thing is, ObamaCare and other market-based solutions are the Republican plan.

Well, they were the Republican plan right until it seemed like a Democrat might take credit for them. Then they became vile, vicious tools of government overreach and oppression.

It wouldn't surprise me if they "rescind and replace" ObamaCare with ... ObamaCare TrumpCare. Or something substantially similar. They could even go through the theatrics of trying to only replace the parts everyone likes, and let those darn CBO killjoys say 'no', and eventually have no choice but to bring back the individual mandate punishment for irresponsible freeloaders and the subsidy citizenship benefit for American Citizens for being American Citizens. Or whatever.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:30 PM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]


What's stopping a candidate from lying their ass off? Like Tillerson did. What recourse do the people of the United States of America have when these appointees do stuff completely unhinged from their senate confirmation answers?

Clarence Thomas denied under oath at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing that he had even once discussed Roe v. Wade, one of the most contentious court decisions of the century, either in Yale Law School or in the 17 years before his confirmation. So, yeah, it is pretty clear you can commit perjury in your hearing and nothing comes of it.
posted by JackFlash at 9:32 PM on January 17, 2017 [26 favorites]


I suspect the case will settle before anything like that happens.

I'll defer to the professionals here, but given that a new norm is "don't settle and tweak cases in order to get a judgment and make a big fucking splash" (Thiel / Harder / Hogan / Gawker) perhaps Allred is minded otherwise? The showiness of the filing seems designed for the long haul, not a quick payoff.
posted by holgate at 9:46 PM on January 17, 2017


Funny how the "traditional Midwestern farming background" doesn't seem to include Native Americans farming the region for centuries before European colonists arrived. (And Spanish agriculture in Florida decades before the Pilgrims.)

Also notable how Asian-American families who've farmed the Central Valley of California for a century don't count as having traditional farming backgrounds, even though many of them still earn their living from the land after discrimination, internment and confiscation. "Traditional" means "has a hilarious story about nearly dying when tossed in a grain elevator as a kid."
posted by holgate at 9:55 PM on January 17, 2017 [18 favorites]


The showiness of the filing seems designed for the long haul, not a quick payoff.

Yeah. I get the sense that here that it's not about the money, and this one isn't going to be withdrawn. Period.

It's going to a jury, and we're going to have some *wonderful* depositions to read along the way.
posted by mikelieman at 10:32 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


“Look, I don’t like tweeting,” Trump insisted during a Fox News interview scheduled to air Wednesday. "I have other things I could be doing.”

Great way to spin "The lawyers took away my twitter account" after they read the complaint in Zervos v. Trump.
posted by mikelieman at 10:38 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]


“I am actually the incoming, ranking member of the rules committee, So I don’t have a choice. I have a job to do, and I have to be there.”
Worthy sentiments indeed from Klobuchar . If only the Republicans and Trump thought the same way. Oh, wait....
posted by vac2003 at 10:42 PM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Lucas was “apoplectic,” after hearing this month that former Texas Rep. Henry Bonilla, a one-time television executive and former chair of the House Appropriations Committee's agriculture panel, was in the running

Henry Bonilla, ladies and gentlemen (transcript).
posted by dirigibleman at 10:51 PM on January 17, 2017


>Not to ruin a good line, but isn't it set to be unseasonably warm on Friday?

First law of thermodynamics. Hell freezes over on Friday and all that heat has to go somewhere.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 11:51 PM on January 17, 2017 [15 favorites]


It wouldn't surprise me if they "rescind and replace" ObamaCare with ...

Make America Great with Access to Care Act. MAGACare.

One healthcare writer (Richard Mayhew at Balloon Juice) mentioned the strategy of replacing Obamacare with something nearly completely identical. He suggested this would be the plan because it would be revenue neutral, and therefore avoids the filibuster.

It would be a perfect plan of action. The GOP can tell the gullible that Obamacare is fully repealed, but they won't have to face the electoral fallout of kicking 20 million off insurance. All they'd have to do is a search / replace on the original bill to replace the title, and make some very minor changes in order to claim this is a completely new system.
posted by honestcoyote at 11:54 PM on January 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


Trump appeared ready to use the post to pick a Hispanic for his Cabinet in late December, but members of his agricultural advisory committee — a group of about 70 farm-industry leaders who supported the president-elect during the campaign — caught wind of the plan and publicly complained.

It's like that old saying "don't sow the racists unless ye wish to reap a harvest of dumb. "
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:58 PM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


Possibly linked already but very good post by Josh Marshall at TPM about Trump's intimidation & bullying tactics and the press.
[A]ccess isn't necessary to do their jobs. And bargaining over baubles of access which are of little consequence is not compatible with doing their job. Access can provide insight and understanding. But it's almost never where the good stuff comes from. Journalists unearth factual information and report it. If Trump wants to turn America into strong man state, journalists should cover that story rather than begging Trump not to be who he is. America isn't Russia. And I don't think he can change us into Russia. So unless and until we see publications shut down and journalists arrested or disappeared, let's have a little more confidence in our values and our history and our country.
[ . . .]
Trump wants to bully the press and profit off the presidency. He's told us this clearly in his own words. We need to accept the reality of both. The press should cover him on that basis, as a coward and a crook.
[ . . .]
The answer to attacks on journalism is always more journalism. And the truth is that Trump's threats are cheap stunts and bluffs, threatening to take away things journalists don't need.
See also I. F. Stone
posted by mark k at 12:06 AM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Clarence Thomas denied under oath at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing that

I believe Anita Hill

Anita Hill
posted by philip-random at 12:08 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]




ed: by https://soundcloud.com/michael-whalen-997591802 featuring Fiona Apple, rather.
posted by Buntix at 1:25 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]




What kind of dumb do you have to be to think that Planned Parenthood wouldn't be on the chopping block if you voted for Trump, or any Republican?

The kind that sees voting as a matter of personal expression and not as an actual act that has (somewhat) predictable consequences. Who thinks "what I believe" is the most important factor, not, what will this candidate do, in power?
posted by thelonius at 2:58 AM on January 18, 2017 [31 favorites]


It wouldn't surprise me if they "rescind and replace" ObamaCare with ... TrumpCare. Or something substantially similar.

Hell, I predicted that about two weeks after the election - Trump's entire business model consists of making other people do the hard work and then slapping his name on it and taking the credit, why shouldn't this be any different?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:48 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Honestly, if it were up to Trump, I think he would be happy to rebrand Obamacare as Trumpcare. (Actually, if it were up to Trump, I think he'd be fine with single payer. He has no policy commitments.) And most Republican governors and legislatures would jump at the opportunity to accept the Medicaid expansion without being tainted by the dread Obamacare word. The thing that's getting in the way is Congress, and I think they're probably intractable. Paul Ryan just fundamentally believes that if you can't get or pay for insurance, it's because you're unworthy of medical care. There's not much you can do with that.

But it's worth fighting like hell on this one, because I actually think there's a teeny, tiny chance that we could win. This is a disaster in the making for the Republican party, and they know it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:09 AM on January 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


The problem with "meet them where they are"/"learn to say ain't" is that all-too-frequently the place where they are is a racist, misogynist, homophobic place, and the word they would have you learn to say isn't "ain't". It's another, quite different word. It's a little disheartening how quickly various pundits are falling for this.

That confuses pandering with signalling authenticity. When Hilary tried to reach out to moderate Republicans during the campaign, it came off as the former - not least because she never mastered the latter. The issue is communicating ones ideals effectively, not compromising them (that, unfortunately, tends to come later in politics, after an election). If

Here's Rogers again to illustrate this principle - and he does it with a colorful anecdote, because constructing a narrative is another important communication tool that liberals and progressives need to learn:
When I first started out on the road, I was a skinny guy with a big nose, a Boston accent and a Physics degree telling jokes in bars out West. I was hitting a wall of resistance in a lot of rooms. One night in Rawlins, Wyoming, the headliner -- a sweet road comic named "Boats" Johnson -- took me aside.

"You're a good joke writer. I mean, damn, there's some smart stuff in there."
"Thanks. But, uh..."
"They don't like you much." Boats handed me a beer. "Second show. Longneck. Always a longneck. Bring it on stage. Sip from it every now and then."
"I don't really drink on stage --"
"Fine. Fill it with water. Don't bring attention to it, just sip from it."
I shrugged. "Anything else?"
"Yeah. Learn to say 'ain't'. Don't change the jokes. Just learn to say 'ain't' every now and then."

The shows went, much, much better after that. I told the same gun control jokes, the same pro-gay marriage bits, the same making-fun of the culture wars jokes. But now I was killing.
Rogers got a lot of similar pushback to his blog post - and in retrospect, it's dismaying how many parallels there are between Kerry's loss in 2004 and Clinton's in 2016 - and he followed it up with further ones. (Telling people what they don't want to hear is another communications challenge.) He condenses his idea as this: "My point is simply this -- learning effective message control and disseminaton, or what in the olden days we called "rhetoric" wasn't too low for Socrates, wasn't too low for Thomas Jefferson, and we should stop turning up our noses at it and calling it 'selling out.' My point is not in how to fool rubes into agreeing with you. My point is that often, when communicating our ideas to other people, we do not stop and think of the best way to make clear that we already share the same ideas."

There were so many issues this campaign where the electorate, when polled neutrally, supported the sides that tended to skew Democratically but then shied away from the Democrats' presentation of them, one would think that somebody at the DNC would have figured out there's a messaging problem. Instead, that's one of the lessons to be learned for 2018.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:16 AM on January 18, 2017 [31 favorites]


the press talks an awful lot about Twitter, despite the fact that it's not really used by the public at large

A guide to joining twitter now it's an unremittingly bleak document of how awful everything is.
posted by Wordshore at 5:20 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


the press talks an awful lot about Twitter, despite the fact that it's not really used by the public at large

But that IS how the incoming president communicates. He's gone off this morning on all sorts of things.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:24 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Apparently "prosperity preachers" dress up like Jews. This is fine.

How Evangelical Preachers at Trump Inauguration (Mis)-Use Jewish Rituals
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:34 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Trump's healthcare plan will mostly resemble Obamacare, but rather than use tax revenue for those who can least afford the coverage, those people will instead have an option to simply not pay their medical bills and threaten to sue the hospital and/or badmouth them on Twitter.
posted by p3t3 at 5:45 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


That confuses pandering with signalling authenticity. When Hilary tried to reach out to moderate Republicans during the campaign, it came off as the former - not least because she never mastered the latter. The issue is communicating ones ideals effectively, not compromising them (that, unfortunately, tends to come later in politics, after an election).

Thanks you've articulated what I've been trying to since I read this and the 'learn to say ain't' blog post. Saying ain't is not suggesting pandering and neither does it mean having to play along with the nastier bits and nastier talk.
I suppose another way of looking at is in terms of code switching or mirroring. In Rogers post he says Now, the fine line here is that, the audience also always knows when you're being dishonest. That's worth hitting again. When you are on stage, the audience's collective mind can tell when you're not being yourself. And even more importantly, they can tell when you're lying to be one of "us". (Like Kerry hunting, or Dukakis in the tank). Changing yourself to fit the audience would be the wrong lesson to take from "Learn to say 'ain't.'" No, the lesson Boats was teaching me was that there's no problem with relaxing a bit and showing that you're not one of "them."

This is the key to what he's speaking about I think. Pandering has a certain fakeness to it, you're playing a character. 'Saying ain't' is about having a sincerety and needs a genuine desire to communicate with a person at a particular level. It does not mean compromising, nor necessarily saying that what that person is saying or doing is right.

I find what Roger is suggesting matches with up with lessons I've learned from experience. For example the way I write and communicate here on Metafilter is different then I do in other digital places.
posted by Jalliah at 5:45 AM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]




@sazza_jay
Revealed: Preview of the Inaugural Ball Entertainment


Wow. That reference was woefully esoteric.
posted by Talez at 5:50 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Trump: 'I don't like to lie'

President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview published Wednesday that he doesn't like to lie.

"I don't like to lie, no," the president-elect told Axios. "It's not something that I would like to be doing."

When pressed about whether it is ever OK to lie, the president-elect declined to give a response.

"I don't want to answer the question," he said. "Because it gets to, you know, a different level than what we're talking about for this interview."

posted by Rust Moranis at 5:57 AM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


@sazza_jay
Revealed: Preview of the Inaugural Ball Entertainment

Wow. That reference was woefully esoteric.


Well that took a bit of googling.
posted by dis_integration at 5:59 AM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


@sazza_jay
Revealed: Preview of the Inaugural Ball Entertainment


So very, very appropriate.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:02 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


For example the way I write and communicate here on Metafilter is different then I do in other digital places.

Online venue (and venue modality) dependent code-switching, seems like it could be rather fascinating (and measurable!) rabbit hole to tumble down. I mean, it seems fairly certain people are going to switch to accommodate restrictions like the twitter character count; but does, for .e.g. Facebook actually make people more bigoted than they are in other communities? Does Metafilter make people more meta and tangential?

**must. resist. urge to research and get back to the work I actually get paid for...**
posted by Buntix at 6:05 AM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


So what I'm getting is that that interview was just one long gaslighty "I wouldn't beat you so much if you wouldn't make me! Why do you make me hit you? I don't want to do it, but you just leave me no choice!"

Jesus. If he's never struck one of his wives, I will eat my shoe.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:07 AM on January 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


Law Profs Who Signed Letter Opposing Sessions For Attorney General Get Open Records Act Requests For Their Emails
Along with 1,400 other law professors, I signed a letter opposing the nomination of Jeff Sessions for Attorney General of the United States. As a law professor, I signed this letter because of my concerns about maintaining the integrity of the legal system.

Shortly after the law professors’ letter was published, my university counsel’s office got an Open Records Act request seeking my emails.

The request, from a reporter working for a conservative political publication, sought: “a copy of each email (inbound, outbound, deleted, or double deleted) for the university email accounts of Andrea A. Curcio and [a colleague who also signed the letter] from the dates of December 15, 2016, to and including January 3, 2017, which includes any of the keywords “Sessions,” or “Jeff Sessions” or “Attorney General.””
posted by melissasaurus at 6:11 AM on January 18, 2017 [58 favorites]


Joe in Australia, is this your first exposure to American evangelicals playacting Judaism? Because it's a whole thing and it's creepy and annoying and weird.

They even run farms where they try to breed perfect animals for the Temple sacrifices they look forward to performing after Islam is destroyed, the Temple is rebuilt, and the evangelicals convert all the Jews in Israel.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:16 AM on January 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


Xi Jinping lays out a vision of Pax Sinica. No explicit mention of crazy Western politicians, but that seems like an obvious subtext.
posted by Coventry at 6:18 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wut. Eyebrows how is that a thing.
posted by hilaryjade at 6:18 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


WaPo: When Donald Trump gets sworn in, the White House is in line for a decorating update. Just like every other incoming president. Apparently, it takes time for some decorating changes to happen. But, like all other presidential transitions, there's a 5 hour window during the inaugural where a lot of moving happens.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:18 AM on January 18, 2017


They even run farms where they try to breed perfect animals for the Temple sacrifices

Wait, so Tim Kring's series Dig was a documentary?!
posted by Buntix at 6:19 AM on January 18, 2017


“Look, I don’t like tweeting,” Trump insisted during a Fox News interview scheduled to air Wednesday. "I have other things I could be doing.”

Have you gotten to the point where you clearly see he's unfit to serve yet? What about, “Look, I don’t like robots stealing my luggage,” Trump insisted during a Fox News interview scheduled to air Wednesday. "I have other things I want to do with body paint for squirrels.”
posted by petebest at 6:25 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Eyebrows how is that a thing.

It is such a thing. The surprise for me isn't that it's a thing but that it's penetrated to prosperity gospel assholes. I'm familiar with the Jewish cosplaying coming from the same strain of Evangelicalism that's also super into anti-vaxx and sovereign citizenry.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:26 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Beyond code-switching, I've been thinking a lot about how the most convincing lies are the ones that are near-100% truthful, with perhaps a small addition or omission. Because my senator and rep calling act is getting pretty on point, and ever GOPer on my list is getting to hear about how my cousin is a *Methodist Minister* in Washington DC who only has health insurance because of the ACA, and he'd be dead or bankrupt without it, and so it's very important to me and my ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY that we not get rid of anything without a clear plan that will ensure my cousin and people like him have just as good and affordable a plan so he can keep doing the good work that he does.

I leave out the fact that I and many of my family members are atheists, and that the good works I care most about are my cousin's extensive work with the homeless and advocacy to stop the Obamacare repeal.
posted by deludingmyself at 6:26 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]




Don't most-people just code-switch naturally in face-to-face or small-group discussions? Honestly the "authenticity" issue is baffling. I'm a person on your bus, in the line at the store, getting a bite to eat, or walking the park. I'm not on stage pitching an act. How is that not "authentic?"

The discussion is already framed around a lot of whopping stereotypes.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:29 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Moore said he initially planned to attend the event at the Lincoln Memorial because he wanted to see Holliday sing, but when she backed out last week, he asked if he could sing in her place.

"I am not going to let them, the left side, intimidate me from doing what I feel is the right thing to do for the country and that (presidential) seal," Moore said in a phone interview Tuesday.


*long sigh*
posted by petebest at 6:31 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


From President Xi's speech:

As the Chinese saying goes, people with petty shrewdness attend to trivial matters, while people with vision attend to governance of institutions.

Funny how he doesn't say "The old Chinese saying."
posted by Rykey at 6:31 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Authenticity" is performative, for everyone, period. Yes, even the people who have built their lives on being Certified Authentic (tm).
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:32 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Does Metafilter make people more meta and tangential?

I think part of it is that Metafilter makes it much harder to directly reply to someone in a meaningful traceable way. I can't, for example, get notifications of replies or click something in my profile that shows me quotes-replies to my posts.

This has positives and negatives, and makes the flow of the thread much different then nearly any other online community/social media platform.
posted by INFJ at 6:33 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


Honestly the "authenticity" issue is baffling. I'm a person on your bus, in the line at the store, getting a bite to eat, or walking the park. I'm not on stage pitching an act. How is that not "authentic?"

Given the responses to the "how to call your reps with social anxiety post," I assume many of us have a bit of a feedback loop where anxiety about these interactions leads to more stilted and less natural/authentic/convincing interactions. If all conversations with strangers feel like you're on stage, the whole thing makes more sense.
posted by deludingmyself at 6:36 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


This very old peecock from Queens
Would twitter whenever he preens.
"Drop your pants," said a tweet
And the nation got gleet.
He blamed it on faulty vaccines.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:36 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


As a southern women who had lived in the Midwest for a long time, I code switch so hard it startles me.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:44 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Xi Jinping lays out a vision of Pax Sinica. No explicit mention of crazy Western politicians, but that seems like an obvious subtext.

That's because, at least in the context of economics, Trump literally has no winning move. If Trump decides to maintain the status quo, China is still advancing. If Trump decides to isolate the US from the international market, China need only drop RMB full convertibility on the market and watch the fireworks across the Pacific.

The United States has a clear threat to its hegemony by the election of Trump. What the people were looking for was Trump to make that hegemony that the people thought they lost an explicit thing again. What the people didn't know is that the US never lost its hegemony, the 1% started to deny regular people access to the fruit of it. Once the US loses its hegemony, the 1% will simply pick up their capital and move it to wherever they like. The 99% will just be left holding the bag and worthless scraps of green paper.
posted by Talez at 6:47 AM on January 18, 2017 [30 favorites]






I think part of it is that Metafilter makes it much harder to directly reply to someone in a meaningful traceable way. I can't, for example, get notifications of replies or click something in my profile that shows me quotes-replies to my posts.

This has positives and negatives, and makes the flow of the thread much different then nearly any other online community/social media platform.


Any other recent platform. (Compare BBSes, USENET, Listservs, etc.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:56 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Given the responses to the "how to call your reps with social anxiety post," I assume many of us have a bit of a feedback loop where anxiety about these interactions leads to more stilted and less natural/authentic/convincing interactions. If all conversations with strangers feel like you're on stage, the whole thing makes more sense.

Well, everyone knows someone who's awkward in conversation. Being awkward in conversation doesn't really communicate that one is a stuck up, bubble-inhabiting, ivory-tower liberal, which is the stereotype this whole code-switching conversation is built around.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:58 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


They even run farms where they try to breed perfect animals for the Temple sacrifices


Their efforts to crowdfund the apocalypse have fallen short. Sad!
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:02 AM on January 18, 2017


WaPo This new species of moth has ‘yellowish-white scales’ on its head. It is named for Donald Trump.

With pictures-- I'm sure he will be so pleased.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:30 PM on January 17


How could they sully that poor moth with such an association?
posted by yoga at 7:05 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Regarding Article 25, I hope Elaine Chao relays whatever appalling things she witnesses as a member of Trump's cabinet--which will no doubt be worse than her experience in the GWB administration-- to Mitch McConnell. Speaking of that, Tiffany Trump may have some awkward moments as a 1L at Harvard next year during the class on Constitutional Law.
posted by carmicha at 7:07 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


I've heard there are moths that live by drinking tears.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:08 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


How Evangelical Preachers at Trump Inauguration (Mis)-Use Jewish Rituals

I keep thinking I'm at peak-rage, but here we are, exploring new heights.
posted by mikelieman at 7:14 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


This has positives and negatives, and makes the flow of the thread much different then nearly any other online community/social media platform.

It's all DIGG's fault.
posted by mikelieman at 7:15 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


> I keep thinking I'm at peak-rage, but here we are, exploring new heights.

You know that scene in Frozen? Where Ana, Kristof, and Olaf are all about to climb the mountain to get to Elsa? And Ana just tries to scale the mountain with her bare hands and does the "am I almost there?" joke where's actually only gone a few feet?

We are Ana. The mountain is our rage.

We've only just begun.
posted by Tevin at 7:17 AM on January 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


Their efforts to crowdfund the apocalypse have fallen short. Sad!

FWIW, those are actual Jews. The Temple Institute is less about bringing about the apocalypse than being ready for the coming of the Messiah (more peace on earth, swords into ploughshares, less hellfire and terrified conversion to Christianity). Evangelicals are a huge backer in terms of funding (they believe they need a rebuilt Temple in order for the apocalypse to take place, so these are the best shot of it happening). But that's home-grown Jewish fundamentalism you're looking at.
posted by Mchelly at 7:18 AM on January 18, 2017


Yeah, I'm aware. They 'they' there was referring the funders, not the fundamentalists willing to take their money. The incompatibility of the two's messianic expectations is part of the....irony.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:21 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Pizzagate news coverage on Atlanta CBS affiliate

Ben Swann's dipped his toe into conspiracy theories before but this is insane. He needs to get fired right now.
posted by Rust Moranis at 7:23 AM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Apocalypse makes strange bedfellows.
posted by notyou at 7:23 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Pizzagate news coverage on Atlanta CBS affiliate

I....I read the comments
posted by thelonius at 7:30 AM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Joe in Australia, is this your first exposure to American evangelicals playacting Judaism?

Well, yes. I've run into "Jews for Jesus" and so on that use it for proselytizing, and I'm aware that there are some Black Hebrew groups that are more or less Christian, but those things are very different. I don't like the appropriation or the injection into politics; and I especially don't like the way this is associating Judaism with wealth, privilege, and proximity to power. These guys can walk away when things get bad; real Jews can't.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:30 AM on January 18, 2017


People go to a comedy club because they want to laugh. It's a totally different atmosphere from politics,

Not since November it ain't. We picked Entertainingly Horrible Tire Fire as the head of our country. The next Democratic candidate (all of them really) need to still be wonky/understand what they're doing but also learn something about being loose and entertaining on the podium because that shit is apparently so important to us that we'll forgive all the burning tire smoke.

I mean if "you can't win just by being the most qualified" is not our takeaway from last year, I don't know what is. I am not HAPPY about this, mind you. But we don't live in a logical Utopia where competence is rewarded appropriately.

So yes, a little of the 'ol charm that Kennedy, Johnson, and others have had is not so much the icing on the cake as the cake itself when dealing with the electorate/media we currently have.

And while this can fill one with despair, there's also room for hope. If America and the media aren't so much filled with hate as inclined to overlook it when they're being entertained/charmed, well, that's easier to overcome. Making people laugh or like you is easier than making them do a thorough soul-searching of the racism embedded in their opinions and then vote based on that.
posted by emjaybee at 7:30 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


We are Ana. The mountain is our rage. We've only just begun.

That you, Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath ?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:31 AM on January 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


Apocalypse makes strange bedfellows.

Right-wing Jews--American, Israeli, and elsewhere--have spent decades kissing up to and teaming up with evangelicals against leftists, and leftist and/or secular Jews in particular. They're more than happy to let the Christian wingnuts have their fantasies of a new Kingdom of Jerusalem as long as they can have what they want here on Earth, up to and including creating a autocratic theocracy of their own. The fact that said fantasies include converting the world's Jews by the sword is of no concern to them at all.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:39 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Protip, budding activists: when you're at the action and the sign-up clipboard is passed around, PLEASE WRITE LEGIBLY.

Best,
The person who seems to have volunteered to do all the data entry

Tuesdays With Toomey is going really well in Pittsburgh though. If anyone is interested in starting similar initiatives with your own MoCs, memail me.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:39 AM on January 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


Shortly after the law professors’ letter was published, my university counsel’s office got an Open Records Act request seeking my emails.

A reminder that if you're going to stick your head above the parapet - as we damn well should be - and you have any exposure to legal harassment methods like that, do as much as you can through private, encrypted, low-persistence channels. Don't do anything that's illegal or against your employment conditions, of course, but don't leave stuff lying around that can be abused.The bastards will be doling out the thumbscrews with no niggardly hand: make them no gifts.

How Evangelical Preachers at Trump Inauguration (Mis)-Use Jewish Rituals


I was watching a lecture last night about recent archaeological work at Gobekli Tepe - a site in Turkey which is by some degree the earliest temple complex cum substantial settlement in the world - it's a massive collection of stone buildings with many representative carvings, but one that dates from around 11 thousand years ago. the very beginning of the Neolithic (and some 6ky before Stonehenge). Current thought is that it dates from either the start of or just before the domestication of animals and the change from hunter-gathering to agriculture, and as it was thought that such things needed to be well-established before large permanent settlements were possible, it's pretty revolutionary.

Anyway, the lecturer, who'd overseen digs at the stie, mentioned in tones of tired resignation that recently the place had become awash with evangelical Christian tours, because the thought had caught hold that since it was between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and since it seemed to mark the change from hunter-gatherer to farming man, it had to be the Garden of Eden. Which isn't even wrong, it's so out there, but nonetheless it is now Bible Truth, and many people were spending lots of money visiting it as a result.

Do not underestimate the ability of (a certain class of) evo to not only believe a very wrong thing for no good reason whatsoever, but to act on it with some fervour. They redefine credulity.
posted by Devonian at 7:43 AM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


I....I read the comments

Are you okay?
posted by Jalliah at 7:48 AM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Regarding anxiety calling your reps: don't sweat it. You're not actually going to get your rep on the line. You'll be speaking to an intern or low level staffer who is just going to respectfully listen to you and then take your zip code. They won't argue with you I promise. To make it fun pretend you're acting like others have suggested. I always use my best "quiet storm" radio voice. Keeps me calm and focused. I may start firing up some Kenny G in the background for effect.

And for the record, I just called my senator to urge he vote against DeVos and Pruitt.
posted by photoslob at 7:48 AM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


How Evangelical Preachers at Trump Inauguration (Mis)-Use Jewish Rituals

Rabbi Marvin Hier's participation in this is the subject of quite a lot of controversy in the Jewish Community, especially as he founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international human rights organization. He claims part of the reason he agreed to do this was because refusing would cause "ill will" toward American Jews, which is terrifying to me, as you should be able to accept or refuse an invitation without fear for retaliation against the Jewish community as a whole.

And now he'll be joined onstage by two preachers engaging in the crassest sort of cultural appropriation. Make no mistake -- despite their claims, this sort of Christianity does not have an interest in Judaism because of Christianity's Jewish roots, but rather because they see Christianity as being the logical successor to and supplantor of Judaism.

They do not do these rituals to try to understand modern Judaism more, but instead to Christianize Jewish practices, to claim them for Christianity. They are closely connected with so-called Messianic Judaism, which has a long history of bringing contemporary Jewish rituals into churches and radically reinterpret them as Christian rituals.

They are not going back to the time of Jesus, by the way. The practices they are absconding with post-date Jesus. The Torah scrolls they are using date from a tradition that wasn't codified until the 12th century. The Tallit that they wear, and draped Trump in, dates to about 1000 CE in the form that they use.

These are Jewish innovations that happened after the death of Jesus in a specifically Jewish matrix, often as a response to the destruction of the Temple and the experience of Judaism in exile. They are not practices that Jesus would have been familiar with, they do not bridge the gap between the experience of Christians and Jews because they have never been something that Christians did.

It's a way of taking another religion and erasing it, rather than creating a bridge to it, by taking things that are unique to that religion and claiming that not only is it not unique, but in fact has specific Christian symbolism. It's ahistoric and enormously disrespectful, and just another reason why Hier should not be participating in this.
posted by maxsparber at 7:50 AM on January 18, 2017 [29 favorites]


Re: FOIA for professors:

I would hope that the university is totally indifferent to any bogus charges that come up in e-mail trolling. I would also hope that the mainstream press cover any attempt to make hay of things they found from this not as "people are saying this so it's a story" but as harassment.

Record of both institutions, generally speaking, in the recent past is not so encouraging though.
posted by mark k at 7:50 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Well, apparently sometimes they will argue with you because i have heard some stories. (There's a women's sanitary product focused protest at my Senator's local office today because one of his staffers responded to a woman using the word "menstruation" by accusing her of using foul language and hanging up on her.) But they're tools. Call anyway.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:51 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Not since November it ain't. We picked Entertainingly Horrible Tire Fire as the head of our country. The next Democratic candidate (all of them really) need to still be wonky/understand what they're doing but also learn something about being loose and entertaining on the podium because that shit is apparently so important to us that we'll forgive all the burning tire smoke.

We don't have candidates. We won't until early next year. So who is this message about "authenticity" being directed to? Millions of Democratic voters of every ethnicity, every class, every profession, every religious persuasion who have jobs, children, schools, neighborhoods and congregations?

I'm fake as shit. It's called a closet. But I have the sense that's not true of people around me.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:51 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Open letter from the press corp to Trump:

"So, when you shout down or ignore a reporter at a press conference who has said something you don’t like, you’re going to face a unified front."

I hope so. Our democracy depends upon it.
posted by antinomia at 7:53 AM on January 18, 2017 [40 favorites]


"So, when you shout down or ignore a reporter at a press conference who has said something you don’t like, you’re going to face a unified front."

i'll believe it when i see it
posted by entropicamericana at 7:59 AM on January 18, 2017 [55 favorites]


Rabbi Marvin Hier's participation in this is the subject of quite a lot of controversy in the Jewish Community, especially as he founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international human rights organization.

There's also a lot of controversy around both Hier and the SWC based on their (in)action during the campaign.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:03 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Shout-out to the Twitter folks using the hashtag #PriceisWrong today.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:05 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


Interesting thread on how "The proposal to move the press briefing room is really about stacking the deck with an army of Jeff Gannon shills"

I'd completely forgotten about the "Jeff Gannon" saga -- a fake news reporter (before the phrase "fake news" became a thing, and then two weeks later became completely meaningless) in that he used a fake name and didn't work for an actual news organization, repeatedly getting one day press credentials (so he'd avoid the background check required for longer term press credentials) and was used by the Bush administration to push back on Iraq War reporting.
posted by bluecore at 8:08 AM on January 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


So Paul Ryan and his cut-n-gut Republican caucus want allow insurance companies to choose to shove anyone with less than stellar health off into a pool to die. Am I loosing my mind or does this sound like actual death panels and death pools?
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 8:08 AM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]




which is terrifying to me, as you should be able to accept or refuse an invitation without fear for retaliation against the Jewish community as a whole.

Me too. Personal reservations aside, the Israeli Right of Return Law right now is of greater comfort than I wish, given my beliefs heretofore that the United States was the best nation in the world for diaspora Jews.

With that in mind, I'll share something I've recently posted to my friends:
Stop telling me that
I am dividing the nation
by not falling in line.

This nation IS divided
for a very, very good reason.

Adolph Fucking Hitler
"Made Germany Great Again",
by unifying Germany
when Germans fell in line.

And while I draw breath,
I will **NEVER FORGET**.

And while I draw breath,
I will not let it happen again.

And while I draw breath,
I will stand up and say,
"NO!
I do NOT agree,
and
I will NOT help.
and
I will not fall in line."

Because
that's how you keep the Nazis from winning,
be they German or American.
posted by mikelieman at 8:15 AM on January 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Right-wing Jews--American, Israeli, and elsewhere--have spent decades kissing up to and teaming up with evangelicals against leftists, and leftist and/or secular Jews in particular.

Yeah, as a (secular, Reform-raised, liberal, not particularly Zionist) Jew, the evangelical-Zionist coalition creeps me the fuck out. The evangelical right are not our friends. They want us to take on a supporting role in their fucked-up eschatology and have utterly no interest in our issues aside from keeping a few of us around to play the part.
posted by jackbishop at 8:19 AM on January 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


Poetic response to yesterday's inaugural verse unveiling:

Drop trou for the Douchebag, ye white men and yobs,
Bend over for Trump, who promised ye jobs!
With bluster and lies he came down from his tower
To give this poor country a golden hot shower.

Now the cry has gone up with a cheer from the Klan:
“Hurrah for the Douchebag that walks like a man!”
When pussies run riot and none dare approach ‘em,
Snatch-grabber-in-chief will step forward and grope ‘em

We’ll don our white sheets and flash a bright smile,
At the man whom America will flash a “Sieg hell!
For, he’ll never forget us, we men of white pride,
Who think equal rights will bring white genocide.

When access to health care threatened our nation,
And Planned Parenthood gave free sex education,
As Muslims from Kenya crossed our fair waters,
While Mexican rapists assaulted our daughters

The flyover rednecks with expressions so sour
Entrusted a con man with ultimate power!
The Douchebag’s a rapist while others just leer,
Mere cucks who neglect their male rights out of fear.

A buyer of buildings, never paying his men,
He bankrupts his business and starts up again.
The racists rise up and cheer for his cause,
Laughing with glee while he scoffs still more laws.

No friend to the migrant from both far and near,
He slanders the worthy, and revels in fear,
No melanin darker than whitebread is welcome,
They’re Muslim or Arab — no need to help ‘em!

The Stormfront is ready with lots of fake news
To wrest our fair country from Kenyans and Jews!
No college for us, what need of book learnin’
With so many crosses out there that need burnin’?

We’ll get rid of tenure, shut down lefty classes,
Make history just for the blessed white masses
Now we closed of mind shall all pledge our belief,
In the might of the Douchebag, our Fuhrer in chief!

The black men, gunned down by cops year by year,
The poor men, the sick men, the trans and the queer,
Those people, the ones with the pussies and tits,
You know, they’re nasty, they pee when they sit?

What’s they’re name? I forget. What’re the odds?
Oh, right, it’s the babes, it’s the chicks, it’s the broads!
The Douchebag respects them, defends them with might!
If only they’d shut up and vote for Alt-Right!

In short, he will save us from all that we fear.
He’ll nuke ‘em and bomb ‘em right into next year!
So merry Trumpmas to all, and to all a good night!
When you’re done with America, please turn out the light…


— Eliot Borenstein
posted by thelonius at 8:28 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Does anybody know when the vote on Betsy DeVos takes place? Still time to call my Sen?
posted by birdheist at 8:31 AM on January 18, 2017


Does anybody know when the vote on Betsy DeVos takes place? Still time to call my Sen?

Plenty of time. This is just the committee -- full Senate votes are later.
posted by Etrigan at 8:33 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]



And here's another thing for the pile o' shyte that is Trump.

Trump Says He'll Show Off The US Military In Parades

Donald Trump plans on displaying the United States military's strength when he becomes president by having troops march in parades.

“Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country,” Trump told the Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday morning. “And we’re going to show the people as we build up our military, we’re going to display our military."

"That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military," he continued.

posted by Jalliah at 8:34 AM on January 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


Jumping back a bit. News organizations love twitter for two reasons:

First of all, unlike the paparazzi, you don't have to put on underwear or shoes in order to get a "story." All you have to do is follow a celebrity who tweets frequently. A journalist can research and fire off a twitter gossip piece during a good masturbation session, and I suspect some of them do.

Secondly, since twitter has all the coherence of a beautiful corpse exercise thrown into a paper shredder, digitized, and coerced into a timeline, the context-free tweet is the perfect length for playing gotcha with soundbites. It thus, is the perfect vehicle for the pile of shit that journalism has become with 24-hour "breaking news" competition.

I'm not saying that nobody should use twitter. Twitter should be used as breadcrumbs to a larger story, one involving actual interviews with the stakeholders in question.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:34 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


“Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country,” Trump told the Washington Post

That seems to be all he's ever done in his own company, so it's not surprising he thinks that's what will work for the U.S.
posted by Etrigan at 8:36 AM on January 18, 2017


Trump Says He'll Show Off The US Military In Parades

All hail President Scheisskopf!
posted by jackbishop at 8:37 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Donald Trump plans on displaying the United States military's strength when he becomes president by having troops march in parades... That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue....

nope, no fascism here! quick let's check out the universities, I hear those godless ivory tower intellectuals are imposing fascist 'safe spaces' all over the place
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:39 AM on January 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


That open letter from the press corps is fantastic. I hope somebody shows it to the media.
posted by Rykey at 8:40 AM on January 18, 2017 [43 favorites]


Will they be putting the nukes on trailers?
posted by Artw at 8:40 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Donald Trump plans on displaying the United States military's strength when he becomes president by having troops march in parades.

Is he aware the military is already marching in parades? Like literally every one?
posted by corb at 8:41 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Franken is bashing Price on his record on smoking, ownership of tobacco stocks, pro-tobacco votes. Asks how he can square that with his hippocratic oath.

Also, this:
Franken: Dr. Price it was nice meeting you. Did you enjoy meeting me?
Price: I did. I enjoyed our conversation about our gray hair.
In other news, Mike Allen asked Trump about what books he's reading. His answer basically consists of 'hey, there's some books physically over there. Look at the books.'
posted by zachlipton at 8:41 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]



I'm rather enjoying comments coming from the military rank and file about his 'parade' talk. Which pretty much mirrors what my personal contact with military folk and what they think about parading around for show. They hate it. It's annoying. It gets in the way of actual work. It's a waste of time and money. And omg please no.
posted by Jalliah at 8:41 AM on January 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


I'm not saying that nobody should use twitter.

I'm okay with saying nobody should use twitter, with the exception of David Fahrenholt (who has actually figured out how to use twitter to do crowdsourced journalism) and funny people who are good at being funny on twitter.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Poetic response to yesterday's inaugural verse unveiling:

The National had a good deliberately as McGonagall one today as well.


Cry down for the Domhnall, brave folk say this loud,
The outcast of Torquil, the man’s no MacLeod,
Bawbees in her pocket, his mam fled the Isles,
Embarked on a journey of 3,000 miles,
To the land of the free and the brave and the proud,
Where she spawned the young Domhnall, but he’s no’ a MacLeod!


Now freedom is threatened, he’s building a wall,
A racist misogynist, this man hates them all,
The Domhnall’s no leader, his word is post true,
Telling lies and sick tweeting is all he can do,
Once havoc he’s wreaked comes a cry from the crowd,
Who elected this Domhnall that’s no’ a Macleod!

Now fear, hate and anger’s corrupted this nation,
Created division in the mass population,
Along came the Domhnall, the man who’s to blame,
“That’s all just fake news,” he said to his shame.
Yet the protests are genuine, heard long and loud,
This man’s not my President, and he’s no’ a MacLeod.

(continued...)

posted by Buntix at 8:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


I almost guarantee you he means that he wants nukes rolling down the street and pointing at them excitedly a la Kim Jung-Un.
posted by Tevin at 8:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


Trump Says He'll Show Off the US Military in Parades
I think you spelled "USSR" wrong.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Is he aware the military is already marching in parades? Like literally every one?

From what I gather people are assuming that he's talking about more then what happens now.
posted by Jalliah at 8:43 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Which pretty much mirrors what my personal contact with military folk and what they think about parading around for show. They hate it. It's annoying. It gets in the way of actual work. It's a waste of time and money.

The "dog and pony show" that is a unit change of command basically closes down that unit for three to seven days, and that's only to impress some colonel. Serious Soviet-style parades will do more damage to readiness than the sequestration.
posted by Etrigan at 8:44 AM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


I'm fake as shit. It's called a closet. But I have the sense that's not true of people around me.

Look, that's not what he is talking about. It's not what I am talking about, either. In fact, I'm adopting these tactics as an alternative to closets, because I'm too scared of the results of closets to do otherwise. Actually, what this man is saying has a lot more resemblance to the theory behind coming out as a conscious political act than it does the idea of staying fake and closeted. He isn't saying to pretend to be anything you aren't, and that's the whole point of closets.

What he is saying is that you should be openly, authentically direct about what you believe, but that you should be careful to frame those beliefs in a way that actually appeals to most people. That was half the genius of coming out.

Coming out presents the idea "I have nothing to be ashamed of, this hurts no one, this is my true self" in an authentic way that invites straight cis loved ones to emphasize with you and see the sense of what you're saying. That does not happen if you just snow people with facts about policy or make abstract appeals to faceless queers or argue about ethical philosophy, and those are habits I watch a lot of folks falling into--if they don't fade into a closet and say nothing at all, that is.

That is what the man is advocating. It's not fake at all. I'd argue it's a lot more authentic than the alternatives, but we liberals often fade into closets because we are used to push back. That's what he's pushing against.
posted by sciatrix at 8:45 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Putin's piss boy truly is a tiny, tiny pathetic man.
posted by Artw at 8:46 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


According to the Ha'aretz article, Hier said:
Imagine the reaction of the American public if it became known that a presidential committee sent this kind of invitation, and the rabbi refused. That would create ill will. So for me, it wasn’t even a question.
I have to say I think he's right about that: at least it would provide Trump's antisemitic coterie with more justifications for their hatred. Trump has been elected; it's too late to do anything to stop him; all anyone can do is try to mitigate the awfulness. Hier's the child of European immigrants and his age and position probably give him a visceral understanding of how easily things can get bad.

That being said, there's a difference between official courtesy and sucking up, and with his comments about Lewis I'm not entirely sure that Rabbi Hier recognises it.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:46 AM on January 18, 2017


The "dog and pony show" that is a unit change of command basically closes down that unit for three to seven days, and that's only to impress some colonel. Serious Soviet-style parades will do more damage to readiness than the sequestration.

That's the exact reference I've been reading about in comments.
posted by Jalliah at 8:47 AM on January 18, 2017


>Donald Trump plans on displaying the United States military's strength when he becomes president by having troops march in parades.

Is he aware the military is already marching in parades? Like literally every one?


Point taken but I think what the P-E has in mind is less like this and more like this.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:47 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


From what I gather people are assuming that he's talking about more then what happens now.

I was hoping we could fool him. Like "yeeeeaaaaah, we put a WHOLE SQUAD in that parade, totally unlike what happened under Obama!"
posted by corb at 8:48 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]




What are the odds of goose stepping coming back into fashion?
posted by JackFlash at 8:49 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump Says He'll Show Off The US Military In Parades

oh thank god. if there's one problem in america it's that we don't fetishize the military enough
posted by entropicamericana at 8:51 AM on January 18, 2017 [52 favorites]


odds of goose stepping coming back

High. It'll be "ironic" goose stepping though.
posted by tivalasvegas at 8:51 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


What are the odds of goose stepping coming back into fashion?

Pretty slim. We're Post-Atwater. So it's "Confederate" Flags are the new white hood and robe. I'd play "Let's count the Treason-flags at the inauguration, but I'm stressed out enough as it is...
posted by mikelieman at 8:53 AM on January 18, 2017


A friend of mine had previously said that this will be creeping, insidious fascism, that it's not like we're going to wake up one day to find soldiers goose-stepping down the street.

She has just amended that statement.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:54 AM on January 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


Wait, what? From Haughty Palm Beach learns to love Trump, once a scorned outsider
Trump’s attention to detail at his properties is mythical. O’Donnell, the publicist, recounted hearing that, when it came to the Mar-a-Lago magazine, Trump objected to the use of contractions.

“He did not want a single one,” she said. “He’d make the editor go back and delete them."
Who goes on a war against contractions?
posted by zachlipton at 8:54 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


I was hoping we could fool him. Like "yeeeeaaaaah, we put a WHOLE SQUAD in that parade, totally unlike what happened under Obama!"

Maybe you could negotiate a deal 'okay Obama had one squad. We'll give you three plus a humvee"

Sound good?

K

Okay go ahead and tweet Mr. P.
posted by Jalliah at 8:54 AM on January 18, 2017


I think Trump is talking about giant Thanksgiving parade style balloon figures of military officers such as General Mathis and Colonel Kurtz.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:55 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Is he aware the military is already marching in parades? Like literally every one?

It's not a college football game in Texas unless there's a stealth bomber overhead.

The extent to which military display is already integrated in every fucking aspect of public life in the US is perhaps only obvious if you've spent time in democratic countries where it's not obvious you'd have cadets marching around before a school sporting fixture or a military salute at a sponsored 5K run.
posted by holgate at 8:55 AM on January 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Oh no! The General Flynn blimp has broken loose and is zooming off to the East!
posted by Artw at 8:56 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


odds of goose stepping coming back

They'll be issued regulation red parade hats instead.
posted by Jalliah at 8:57 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Who goes on a war against contractions?

Learn to say ain't are not.
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:57 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Does anybody know when the vote on Betsy DeVos takes place? Still time to call my Sen?

She has to get out of committee first. Here's a link to the full committee. Some interesting (R) names on there -- Collins, R. Paul, Hatch, Murkowski. I doubt she will fail to make it out of committee, but if she could, it would be a thing of beauty.

I bet the mods would frown on me posting a bit ol' list of phone numbers on here, but there is a full list of local contact numbers going around my local FB (Collins is my Senator). If you would like it, feel free to Memail me.

But if you see your Senator on this list, please do make a call.
posted by anastasiav at 8:58 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]




The extent to which military display is already integrated in every fucking aspect of public life in the US is perhaps only obvious if you've spent time in democratic countries where it's not obvious you'd have cadets marching around before a school sporting fixture or a military salute at a sponsored 5K run.

Yeah, I was pretty weirded out when I attended a scientific conference in the USA and they started it with a marching out of a military colour guard and prayers for overseas military.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:59 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


Will they be putting the nukes on trailers?

I'm sure they'll have the eight working F-35s flying overhead in long ellipses, to give the impression there are hundreds of the things.
posted by Devonian at 9:00 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I probably shouldn't joke so much. It's serious. My humor as a coping strategy is in overdrive right now.
My apologies.
posted by Jalliah at 9:00 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I was pretty weirded out when I attended a scientific conference in the USA and they started it with a marching out of a military colour guard and prayers for overseas military.

Just to note that having been to a gazillion conferences in the US this was an unusual and deeply weird and creepy thing to do.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:01 AM on January 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


Who goes on a war against contractions?

Hit'ler?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:02 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Companies are adapting to strategies to avoid Trump tweeting about them. They involve fudging the truth.

I've said this before, but corporate personhood adapting to the corporate equivalent of being in an abusive personal relationship is going to be really unsettling. Alongside all the other really unsettling things.
posted by holgate at 9:03 AM on January 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


You know, there was goose-stepping during the Obama administration. Of course, back then it was performed by geese.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:03 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was wondering how long it would take Assange's external mucous glands to secrete enough for him to squirm and wriggle out of his old extradition promise. Answer: less than 24 hours.

Assange lawyer: Manning commutation doesn't meet extradition offer's conditions
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:08 AM on January 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Companies are adapting to strategies to avoid Trump tweeting about them. They involve fudging the truth

At here's the subsequent Donnie Twitfit about this report. He's really mad. All #Fakenews of course.

Trump rips NBC News on jobs report: It's 'fake news'

Donald Trump blasted NBC News on Wednesday, accusing the news outlet of “going out of its way” to report that the president-elect is not responsible for some companies' decisions to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

"FAKE NEWS,” he tweeted. Trump also specifically ripped NBC’s “Today” show.

posted by Jalliah at 9:08 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'd say we need to find another term for viral stories that turn out to be utterly fictional, but I think officially there is no word that they will not adopt, redefine, and deploy until we're all sick of hearing it.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:13 AM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


That is what the man is advocating. It's not fake at all. I'd argue it's a lot more authentic than the alternatives, but we liberals often fade into closets because we are used to push back. That's what he's pushing against.

Missing my point entirely by pulling a "gotcha" quote that was tangental to my main point. Do you not understand how patronizing it is to tell voters to use our own native language and idioms? Who exactly has a problem with that?

This problem only exists if you buy into absurd stereotypes of who Democratic voters are.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:14 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'd say we need to find another term for viral stories that turn out to be utterly fictional, but I think officially there is no word that they will not adopt, redefine, and deploy until we're all sick of hearing it.

See also the history of "colored", "Negro", "black", etc. The new-term-to-epithet time is contracting.
posted by Etrigan at 9:18 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Trump has already declared the slogan for his next campaign: Keep America Great.

It's literally the slogan for the last Purge movie.
posted by maxsparber at 9:20 AM on January 18, 2017 [34 favorites]


Donald Trump blasted NBC News on Wednesday, accusing the news outlet of “going out of its way” to report that the president-elect is not responsible for some companies' decisions to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Isn't "going out of its way" to report kind of their job description?
posted by thelonius at 9:20 AM on January 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


Just to point out, tivalasvegas, that the linked goose-stepping image was posted by someone who presumably means it unironically. Given, y'know, that he identifies himself as "Mr.GrandWizard."
posted by adamgreenfield at 9:21 AM on January 18, 2017


Trump's proposed 2020 slogan is familiar because it's the exact tagline from 'The Purge: Election

In the middle of his interview with The Post, Trump decided his new slogan should be "Keep America Great" and yelled out "Get me my lawyer!" to get a trademark registered. Turns out The Purge already used it.

In a weird way, maybe it's reassuring that Trump hasn't watched The Purge: Election?
posted by zachlipton at 9:25 AM on January 18, 2017 [16 favorites]




Trump's campaign slogan: "Make America Great Again" -- implying America is not great, but once was.

Trump's inaugural slogan: "Keep America Great" -- implying that America is in fact great already.

So I guess just by electing him, America has already been transformed from "not great" to "great" without a single Trump policy being implemented. Which seems to imply that the only way America can be "great" is for him to continue to be President -- it's not about what he does, but who he is.

If we only had a word for an ideology based on fanatical devotion to a cult of personality instead of to a set of beliefs and a record of accomplishments.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:27 AM on January 18, 2017 [40 favorites]


Serious Soviet-style parades will do more damage to readiness than the sequestration.

I can't help but think that's the whole point. Make a more visibly militarized society, and at the same time render us less able to interfere with Russian actions. While the Baltics are being invaded, we'll be busy putting on parades.
posted by happyroach at 9:29 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


In a weird way, maybe it's reassuring that Trump hasn't watched The Purge: Election?

Somebody in his Butcher's Cabinet has and that is plenty of nightmare fuel for me tbh
posted by Ashen at 9:29 AM on January 18, 2017


*probably
posted by Ashen at 9:30 AM on January 18, 2017


Okay, I apologize for missing your point. I'm working from a cell phone mid transit on about four hours of sleep somewhere in Maryland, and this damn mega thread has my phone moving slower than molasses in January. This is not me at my best reading comprehension.

That said, I don't actually agree that this problem only exists if you assume a bunch of hurtful stereotypes about Democratic voters. I actually think it exists because Democratic voters understand how reviled liberal politics are by many people, even if those people don't understand what those politics are or where they come from. I think Democrats come into these conversations on the defensive, and that's what creates either the stilted, details heavy campaigns I see from politicians or the behavior I actually associate with liberal voters, which is to go quiet about politics unless in the presence of friends.

Arguing politics is scary especially if you, like many progressives, are contending with some axis of marginalization and have been socialized into silence in response to micro aggressions because calling them out had consequences. It's still necessary, though. That's what I actually view as the problem, not so much the out of touch stereotypes. It's fear and exhaustion, not arrogance, that are the roots of the problems as I see it.
posted by sciatrix at 9:31 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Open letter from the press corp to Trump:

HA! Open dreaming by the CJR editor. The press will fold in seconds with nary a whimper to be heard. daily fussing and nought more about that mean ol' Trump.

Just like Dubz. Welcome back Transcription Corps! Check your souls at the door!

*shows bare ass to MSM*
*raspberries*
posted by petebest at 9:31 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Make a more visibly militarized society, and at the same time render us less able to interfere with Russian actions.

Why worry about ability when the commander-in-chief won't have the desire to do so?
posted by Etrigan at 9:32 AM on January 18, 2017


The Trump team has also not yet announced any appointments below the Cabinet level for the departments of State or Defense.

“Unlike State, which can rely on its bureaucracy, the NSC has to be ready on Day One as most of its old team leaves,” said Philip Gordon, who held senior NSC jobs in the Obama and Clinton White Houses. “In a normal world, even before a single presidential phone call or meeting or decision the NSC team would prepare background, points, facts, etc. They will not have a team ready to do that.”

“But it’s not clear Trump operates that way or would use any of the stuff anyway,” Gordon added.

posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:32 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


It's literally the slogan for the last Purge movie.

I think this might be the one that gets me spitting mad. No one could type this into Google?

I'm working on launching a small non-profit based around an idea a friend of mine started years ago with a name he coined at the time. Before we actually announce anything, I've been doing due diligence on the name.

It's a catchy name, and other people have been using it (after coming up with the name independently, I suppose) for other causes and businesses as well. It also turns out that a minor national cult uses it to describe part of their proselytizing.

You'd better believe we're having conversations about that, and we're probably going to end up changing the name just because it's been in use by other people. If we don't, I'll have prepared answers if the cult question ever comes up. But really, it's not gonna come up, because we don't want anything to even think for a second we're related.

Sigh. My name-checking services are available if the country needs me, I guess.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:34 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


In the middle of his interview with The Post, Trump decided his new slogan should be "Keep America Great" and yelled out "Get me my lawyer!" to get a trademark registered. Turns out The Purge already used it.

Actually, I think "Get Me My Lawyer!" is a perfect slogan for Trump 2020.
posted by holborne at 9:35 AM on January 18, 2017 [42 favorites]


No one could type this into Google?

No, because he literally just blurted it out when it came into his head and decided that would be his new slogan. Like, not figuratively or speculatively, literally in the middle of an interview.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:36 AM on January 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


We need some sort of Magic Quadrant graphing for these nominees, with Actually Jaw-Droppingly Evil and Staggeringly Incompetent as the axes.
posted by delfin at 9:37 AM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


No, because he literally just blurted it out when it came into his head and decided that would be his new slogan.

Exactly!
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 9:40 AM on January 18, 2017


delfin, that was basically what my last (hand delivered) letter to my Senator boiled down to. I used bullet points of all the nominees with bolding of phrases such as "unqualified" and "fox guarding the henhouse" and "ludicrously incompetent." At least some intern somewhere got a chuckle while entering my "vote no" sentiments into whatever database they put these things into and then promptly forget about.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:40 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I just happened across an article from last September in a Finnish daily tabloid, interviewing the former CEO of a Finnish shipyard about the time Trump visited them in 1992. (Donald told them he was considering bying a casino cruiser.) Anyway, no huge revelations in it, Trump was on a charm offensive (except for a rude remark about Marla Maples needing to go to the bathroom too often). But then there was this:
    Trump was also interested in hearing how it was to work with Russians. Wiskari [the CEO] told him that Finnish shipping companies also operated between Finland and Russia and the former Soviet Union. "He said: so you go to the other side of the Iron Curtain. I told him that there are a hell of a lot of holes in that curtain here between Finland and Russia. He asked if it was dangerous to go there. I told him that Communism over there was not contagious. If you reach an agreement with the Russians, even if it is a damn bad one, they'll always stick to it." Wiskari thinks that Trump really got interested in the matter and maybe even got the idea to do business with the Russians.
Uh, we Finns may owe you guys an apology.
posted by sively at 9:41 AM on January 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Thanks, anastasiav. Called both CT senators about the relevant confirmation hearings.
posted by birdheist at 9:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


@realDonaldTrump
Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago. Looking forward to Friday. #Inauguration [+ presidential seal emoji]


Look at the accompanying photo. Look at it. What emotion is that? Why does he look like a cross between a wax museum Trump and a Victorian postmortem portrait? Why is he holding the corner of his pad up so awkwardly? The obvious guess for the pad thing is that he has nothing actually written down and is bullshitting as poorly as he ever has. Come to think of it, his expression looks like him right after his first post-election meeting with Obama.
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


> Trump 2020

Wait, so is this really happening? I'd like him to at least get to a full set of cabinet appointments before the re-election campaign - is that too much to ask for?

Trump 2020 - Once more, with perfect hindsight.

Trump 2020 - Can you see me now?

Trump 2020 - The World Hasn't Ended Yet?
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:42 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Here's What Americans Really Believe
There is a clear conclusion to be drawn from this deep dive into the polling data regarding what Americans truly believe about an enormous range of issues: despite the right wing having cleverly and dishonestly sold the public on the idea that this is a “conservative” country, the clear majority is most definitely progressive. The most eager purchasers of this skewed view of our polity have been Democratic politicians and the Democratic Party itself.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:43 AM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


I voted for Donald Trump, and I already regret it

I just... how could you not know the man was a blowhard liar before the election. How?
posted by Fleebnork at 9:43 AM on January 18, 2017 [24 favorites]


What emotion is that?

Constipation.
posted by chris24 at 9:44 AM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Here's What Americans Really Believe

If only there'd been some sort of official national poll so the majority of Americans could make their opinion known and choose a leader accordingly.
posted by Devonian at 9:46 AM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Trust me, the Democrats in my family, including my motor-mouth mom who talks about everything from politics to motorcycles to anyone who makes eye contact, don't need instruction on how to authentically speak their regional idioms.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:47 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think this might be the one that gets me spitting mad. No one could type this into Google?

I think it was something he came up with off the cuff in the middle of an interview. This is the new normal; the President making shit up on the fly and turning around and yelling at his aides to make it happen. Governance by the seat of his pants. It's going to be a fun* ride.

*for varying values of fun; the scale goes from "grim rictus" to "oh shit we're all gonna die".
posted by nubs at 9:47 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


No, because he literally just blurted it out when it came into his head and decided that would be his new slogan. Like, not figuratively or speculatively, literally in the middle of an interview.

Article 25 yet, or should we wait for the "just blurted out key domestic policy when it came into his head in the middle of an interview"? screamingly incompetent self-penned Inauguration speech?
posted by petebest at 9:47 AM on January 18, 2017


@realDonaldTrump
Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago. Looking forward to Friday. #Inauguration [+ presidential seal emoji]


I wish that eagle was real. (Reference)
posted by AFABulous at 9:50 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Jewish Centers Across U.S. Evacuated Amid New Wave of Bomb Threats: "New threats in 9 states come just over a week after similar calls sparked the evacuated of over 16 Jewish locations across the eastern U.S."
posted by zachlipton at 9:50 AM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


What emotion is that?

"Give us a really Presidential look! More! More Presidential!"
*click*
"Perfect!"
posted by petebest at 9:51 AM on January 18, 2017


Rust Moranis: Why is he holding the corner of his pad up so awkwardly? The obvious guess for the pad thing is that he has nothing actually written down and is bullshitting as poorly as he ever has.

And that's not a pen he's holding. It's a Sharpie. It's bullshit all the way down.
posted by Too-Ticky at 9:58 AM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]




how could you not know the man was a blowhard liar before the election.

- "I’m a former law enforcement officer in my 50s"
- middle-aged, disability, spends a lot of time "reading news and watching C-SPAN"
- household income enough not to qualify for any ACA subsidies (> 400% of FPL, c. $64,000)
- bingo

But: "I feel humiliated already, and I know that going public with my story will open me to ridicule."

I think I've said it here before, but public embarrassment is a difficult emotion to negotiate, especially in an era of social media grooming, and in political terms, it's going to be important for the Dems to provide a gentle escape route for those who don't double-down when disappointed. To quote soren_lorenson from upthread:
social media makes it worse to admit ever having been wrong. All of a sudden your shitty opinion isn't just something known to the three dudes you drink and jam with every other Saturday night, it's your old high school friends, your entire extended family, your co-workers, your pool guy. It's even harder to admit you were wrong on that scale.
Cult deprogramming techniques are going to come in handy.
posted by holgate at 9:58 AM on January 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


Why does he look like a cross between a wax museum Trump and a Victorian postmortem portrait?

Beauty may only be skin deep, but there are some kinds of ugly that go all the way to the bone.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:58 AM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


middle-aged, disability, spends a lot of time "reading news and watching C-SPAN"

If she's anything like my retired dad, this probably translates as "watches lots of Fox News"
posted by Fleebnork at 10:01 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]



What emotion is that?


That's his look at me I'm a very serious person authority face and body position. He's been doing it for years. It's gotten more pronounced as he's gotten older because he does it to hide his double chin. It's one of the things he's super vain about and hates pictures that show it, to the point where he's demanded outlets not use ones where he thinks it's the photo shows it too much.

Everytime I see pic with a with this pose I think of Zoolander.
posted by Jalliah at 10:02 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Why is he holding the corner of his pad up so awkwardly? The obvious guess for the pad thing is that he has nothing actually written down and is bullshitting as poorly as he ever has.

He writes with a soft sensuality...
posted by Etrigan at 10:02 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


That is a brand new pad of paper with not even one sheet turned over or torn off.
posted by HotToddy at 10:03 AM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Jewish Centers Across U.S. Evacuated Amid New Wave of Bomb Threats

The Sabes JCC in Minneapolis among them.

I went to summer camp and high school there. There's still a day school there, so children had to be evacuated.

I'm reporting on it now. Which is hard, because I am so furious that I can hardly speak.
posted by maxsparber at 10:04 AM on January 18, 2017 [23 favorites]


For pop culture reference's sake: The Purge: Election Year (2016)
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:04 AM on January 18, 2017


Wait, and wtf? The Winter White House?
posted by HotToddy at 10:04 AM on January 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Elle: Congresswoman Maxine Waters Will Read You Now
The Representative from California's 43rd District has been on a grand reading tour of D.C. and I am living for it. She doesn't care who you are—member of the press, president-elect, young pope, Alexander Hamilton—she's going to let you have it. She is going to take you down a peg. There are no pegs left in Washington. The town is peg deficient.

I'm tempted to elect Congresswoman Waters as this week's Shade Bae, but shade is subtle. Waters doesn't have time for subtlety. Waters knows that desperate times call for shadier measures. She is reading this town for filth.
Be sure to watch the 21 second press conference video. It literally starts with her saying "Yes?... Can I help you? What do you want?" Everything about this is amazing.
posted by zachlipton at 10:05 AM on January 18, 2017 [35 favorites]


It seems increasingly likely there'll be a grandiose statue of Trump we can ceremoniously pull down when he finally gets ousted, so there's that to look forward to at least
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:07 AM on January 18, 2017 [49 favorites]


I don't want her to get ridiculed, but I do hope all those policies that her votes helped to enact will come back to crush her.

I don't want her crushed; I want her, now that she has acknowledged this mistake, to get into the fight against the policies that would crush her and so many others.
posted by nubs at 10:08 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


Yeah, CBrachyrhynchos, I hear that. You may notice that I myself have been saying that this is a strategy I have used for some time throughout this thread. He has not discovered some heretofore unknown magical secret for communicating with conservatives, never before encountered by red state liberals.

But I've had to yell at people on Metafilter who hear "this is how these folks think" and go "but the way they think is totally wrong, here's why" (which by and large we all agree on!) instead of going "ah, here's how to frame political arguments most effectively then" so many times. That tells me this is either not as obvious for many liberals as it is for you and me, or else too many people don't believe it's important. Either way, it's worth talking about.
posted by sciatrix at 10:09 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


What emotion is that?

That's his look at me I'm a very serious person authority face and body position. He's been doing it for years.


Yep. I haven't shot him but know a couple photographers who have and they both said he basically refuses to do anything other than his Eastwood/Zoolander look. And the orange skin and white around eyes - which he used to and maybe still does himself because he hates to let makeup artists touch him - makes getting good skin tone a nightmare in post. And yes, the white eyes are intentional since he thinks it makes his eyes pop and makes him look more powerful.
posted by chris24 at 10:09 AM on January 18, 2017 [40 favorites]


That is a brand new pad of paper with not even one sheet turned over or torn off.

Reminds me of when an actor takes fake sips from an obviously empty coffee cup.

posted by Atom Eyes at 10:10 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Wait, and wtf? The Winter White House?

He's thinking beyond 2020 and re-election; he's rebranding the property. ABG (Always Be Grifting).
posted by nubs at 10:10 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wait, and wtf? The Winter White House?

Marjorie Merriweather Post willed the estate to the US government in hopes it would be the "Winter White House", but nobody wanted it. Neither Nixon nor Carter were interested, so the US govt gave it back to the Post's foundation and it was put up for private sale. Eventually the Donald bought it and is now making good on Marjorie's wishes for his own ego and financial gain.
posted by peeedro at 10:10 AM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Wow, thank you for sharing that Elle article. It is beautiful.
posted by Tevin at 10:10 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I just saw a report on Facebook that they had to fish children out of the pool at the JCC and take them outside soaking wet. In Minnesota in January.

So this is the great America, huh. Can't say I like it.
posted by maxsparber at 10:11 AM on January 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


Wait, and wtf? The Winter White House?

You can thank the NYT for that one.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:11 AM on January 18, 2017






I don't want her crushed; I want her, now that she has acknowledged this mistake, to get into the fight against the policies that would crush her and so many others.

You're a better person than I am. I'm glad she's acknowledged the mistake, but it's far too late. She reminds me a lot of the idiots who didn't realize what Brexit meant, and made others suffer because of it.

Everything that those who voted against will have to suffer because of her stubborn idiocy, I want visited upon her just as much, if not more.


If this doesn't come back to bite her personally, how will she learn? She clearly voted for Trump just because it might have some personal benefit for her.
posted by zutalors! at 10:16 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Wait, and wtf? The Winter White House?

Literally the only other people who have a winter palace:

The Tsars
Orlais

So that's okay.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 10:17 AM on January 18, 2017 [15 favorites]




So uh, Tom Price appears to have just admitted to insider trading during his confirmation

Drain the Swamp (into the cesspool)!
posted by nubs at 10:20 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


You know, the way they've learned from decades of voting against their own interests. Most people just find new scapegoats, or new scapegoats are found for them.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:20 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Do you suppose HW ever looks at the modern Republican Party and just exhales a low "Whoops."?
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:27 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Literally the only other people who have a winter palace:

The Winter White House is a sort of a thing. Best trivia, Nixon's Winter White House on Key Biscane was later used as the location for a scene in Scarface.
posted by peeedro at 10:27 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


At the end of the regrets article linked a few posts up, there's a link to a FB group for those who have similar regrets.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:29 AM on January 18, 2017


Obama, too, had a kind of Winter White House in Hawaii. It's definitely a thing. But also Trump definitely is not writing anything on that pad. Steve Bannon is writing his inaugural address, this time in less flammable pants?
posted by dis_integration at 10:32 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I work for a Jewish non-profit and got in to work today to find out our JCC received a bomb threat about an hour earlier.
posted by EarBucket at 10:34 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


I voted for Donald Trump, and I already regret it

Her biggest complaint is Obamacare. But, as with most of these complaints, you have to take them with a grain of salt because they rarely are accurate.

She says that she is ineligible for an Obamacare subsidy. If that is the case, it means that their adjusted gross income is more than four times the federal poverty rate, in her case more than $65,000 per year. She also says that her monthly premiums are $895 per year. This is way off the charts for a 50-year-old so she must have purchased the most expensive platinum plan with zero deductibles and zero co-pays. A typical silver plan would be about $360 a month.

But here's the thing. She doesn't realize that with a chronic condition, fibromyalgia in her case, before Obamacare she wouldn't be able to buy insurance at all or if lucky from a state high risk pool at a cost of $20,000 or more.

She claims she is not being subsidized, but she actually is although she doesn't realize it. By being allowed to buy insurance from pools with healthier people and at the same price as healthy people, those healthy people are paying for and reducing the cost of her insurance. It may not be as low as she likes but far better than before Obamacare.

Most people who opine about Obamacare have no idea how terrible the individual insurance market was before because only about 10% of families are in the individual ACA market. Obamacare could be improved by providing subsidies to higher income individuals like her, but that would mean increasing taxes on the rich to pay for it, something Republicans are vehemently opposed to.
posted by JackFlash at 10:35 AM on January 18, 2017 [72 favorites]


Wikileaks retweeted CBS Atlanta's Pizzagate coverage.

I think there's a greater than 25% chance his inaugural speech mentions Pizzagate.
posted by Rust Moranis at 10:36 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Hey I'll take regrets. Doesn't mean I don't have choice feelings for people who only started paying attention after they voted or people who thought surely he doesn't mean what he's saying, but people paying attention now and speaking out publicly on things they're not ok with is still a good thing, no matter how much responsibility they hold for creating the situation in the first place.

At the end of the day, Trump is a con man. He conned a lot of people by offering them easy solutions, and some of them are starting to realize the extent of the con. Do I wish people didn't fall for it? Of course. Do I wish they didn't put a lot of us in peril in the process? You bet. But the ones who are just starting to realize the extent they were lied to now, they're the first ones to come out of it, and I think they only deserve so much scorn and ridicule if they're actually sincere now.
posted by zachlipton at 10:39 AM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Did anyone watch the Frontline documentary Divided States of America last night (full episode)? It was very clear on where the descent into madness began. Palin got the lion's share of the blame as an unqualified candidate who appealed to "real American" voters who despised the elite. That sentiment snowballed when Obama won and (along with racism) was a key reason they opposed everything he put forth. His healthcare plan was the flashpoint that led to the Tea Party. Part 1 left off in 2010, after the ACA had just been passed. Part 2 is tonight.

Obama really, sincerely wanted to bring the country together and seemed stymied on how to do it. It seemed self-evident to him that if reasonable people just sat down at a table, they could compromise and put forth a united front. Maybe if he weren't black, or seen as "elite," it might have worked? We'll never know. What I do know is that we're long past having any hope of that happening. I can't think of one person who could arrest this slide into polarization.
posted by AFABulous at 10:40 AM on January 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


Madeline Ostrander, New Yorker: SCOTT PRUITT DOESN’T KNOW THE POWER OF THE E.P.A.

The President-elect’s pick to head the E.P.A., the Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has argued before Congress that the agency “was never intended to be our nation’s frontline environmental regulator,” and that the states should have primary authority. That argument is now a favorite among conservatives. But according to Philip Angell, who became an E.P.A. special assistant in 1970 and has worked with [Former EPA Administrator William] Ruckelshaus on and off for the past four and a half decades, Pruitt’s interpretation ignores the history and intent of the laws that define the agency’s mission. The statutes give the E.P.A. “the primary authority to set standards and enforce them if the states won’t do it,” he told me. “The whole point was to set a federal baseline.” One of those statutes, the Clean Air Act, is also “famously capacious,” as Ruckelshaus and Reilly wrote in a legal brief they filed last year in support of the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. The act, they point out, obliges the E.P.A. to tackle even those environmental problems that no one knew about or understood in 1970, including climate change.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:40 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Of course, since people have zero memories, I'm sure most of the regret camp will still vote for their Tea Party rep next time around because *something something taxes*, so fat lot of good it's likely to do.
posted by zachlipton at 10:40 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


They will still vote Tea Party because people LOVE their local Reps. It's the OTHER guys who are shit.

That's why it is so friggin fraggin important to get out, organize, right fucking now so that you can build an infrastructure that will compete against these chucklefucks in 2018.
posted by Tevin at 10:43 AM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


@toddzwillich: Tim Kaine questioning Tom Price about his defense of Southern battle flag in Ga. "What's laudatory about Southern independence?"

There's something just the tiniest bit satisfying about the former governor of the state that served as the seat of the Confederacy asking a white supremacist this question.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:44 AM on January 18, 2017 [59 favorites]


It may not be as low as she likes but far better than before Obamacare.

I mean, she says right there in the article that before Obamacare, she had no health insurance and was paying for all her healthcare costs out of pocket. So Obamacare did help her, obviously.

She's just a sad, selfish, greedy woman who didn't get helped as much as she wanted, who didn't get to cut to the front of the line, who didn't get a subsidy because HER FAMILY IS ACTUALLY REALLY WELL OFF, and so she's angry and decided to burn it all down.

She could have voted for Hillary who actually had a plan and a platform for improving Obamacare, but instead she voted for the guy with no plan at all and no intention to help her whatsoever. How incredibly stupid.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 10:45 AM on January 18, 2017 [47 favorites]


My sister's excited about going to the inauguration and says she's ready for the rodeo. Which is perfect! There will be a clown and lots of horseshit.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:51 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Hey I'll take regrets.

Keep in mind that her first complaint was that Trump didn't keep his promise to lock up Hillary. What kind of mean, vindictive person thinks like that? She is not a nice person.
posted by JackFlash at 10:53 AM on January 18, 2017 [40 favorites]


just heard that the senate is surprised they aren't getting more calls about jeff sessions. NOT GOOD. CALL YOUR SENATORS.

This is actually something my conservative friends are asking, and I just plain don't have an answer for them. "It's clear that Sessions is the most against progressive goals. Why aren't they fighting him harder? Why do they keep switching to other things/symbolic things when he is right there?"

...honestly it's been kind of weird for me watching media coverage from Slate, etc, on it. It seems like the day hearings are held, there's a ton of articles about the person on the hot seat, but then not after that, and it moves on. Like, Betsy De Vos. I get why people don't like Betsy De Vos, but she's no Sessions. But it seems like people have forgotten about him and moved on to her, and to weird facets of her, like the Franken 'growth or proficiency' thing. I'm not saying this to criticize, I just sincerely don't get it.
posted by corb at 10:56 AM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Five Ways to Measure Trump’s Illegitimacy
Not since The Wizard of Oz has anyone proclaimed himself to be so great and powerful as Donald Trump.
...
Before Trump, only four men became president without winning a plurality or majority of the popular vote. Only one lost a greater percentage of the vote than Trump. Three of them served only one term. Three assumed office under clouds of illegitimacy.

Each of these presidents, raised to the office against the popular will, was marked by the defect of their election. None evaded the debility of their unpopular elections. Either they were so politically hampered they lacked credibility and could do little, or else they tried to defy their original sin by governing as though they had solid mandates and disintegrated.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:57 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


She claims she is not being subsidized, but she actually is although she doesn't realize it.

Not just by being part of a risk pool for her age, but also because she's getting "negotiated rates" (yeah, I know) for medical stuff instead of having to negotiate personally to get every bill down to somewhere near that rate, probably by paying a lump sum.

His healthcare plan was the flashpoint that led to the Tea Party.

Multiple flashpoints: birtherism, the stimulus, healthcare, and homeowner relief. Remember that Santelli's CNBC rant was against any kind of foreclosure relief, blaming minorities for being sold bullshit loans. (Obama actually muffed the HAMP implementation, though that hasn't stopped a million fucking banner ads.)
posted by holgate at 11:00 AM on January 18, 2017


It's because we are adrift in a huge river of shit. All the nominations are shit.
posted by lydhre at 11:00 AM on January 18, 2017 [25 favorites]


When you're struggling to stay afloat along a river of bullshit its hard to stay focused on previous obstacles.

On preview: I see lydre and I shop at the same analogy store.
posted by Green With You at 11:02 AM on January 18, 2017 [33 favorites]


the senate is surprised they aren't getting more calls about jeff sessions.

I dunno, maybe people wearily think that Senate "comity & shit" will counts more in the final vote than their calls, and also maybe senators have agency to do what they think is right?
posted by holgate at 11:03 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


That Maxine Waters article was supasweet but the gold is right here:

Prince predicts 2017 (in gif format)
posted by petebest at 11:04 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


also I love that his Twitter bio says "@RepDebDingell's husband."

I used to think that his social media intern was pretty good, but I'm leaning a lot more toward him doing it all himself these days. His feed is just too consistently good at all damn hours.
posted by Etrigan at 11:06 AM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


How many things do you people think I can be this outraged about at once? I was outraged at at least six horrible things before breakfast.
posted by zachlipton at 11:06 AM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


max is eleven, zachlipton.
posted by INFJ at 11:08 AM on January 18, 2017


That reply to John Dingell's tweet by Eric Geller (Politico, annoying person on Twitter) so does not get the concept of the analogy.
posted by zachlipton at 11:08 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Trump's D.C. hotel bans press during inauguration week: “Media is not allowed in this week in respect of the privacy of our guests,” Patricia Tang, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing wrote in an email.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:11 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Rocket 88 said: Educating a child for 12-13 years is ridiculously expensive, and the American taxpayers help pay for it. They do this because an educated populace has an enormous public benefit. You wouldn't want to live in a place that didn't have it. We're all better off for it.
The same applies to a healthy populace.

*

This comment made me realize:

Far from making healthcare more like education (paid for by everyone because it's a public good), Republicans are determined to make education more like healthcare (If you can afford, great! If not, hey, too bad.).
posted by staggering termagant at 11:15 AM on January 18, 2017 [38 favorites]


civiliansplaining
posted by entropicamericana at 11:16 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was just thinking about that thing where Trump is going to take the weekend off and get to work on Presidenting on Monday morning.

I give this idea to the universe: somebody needs to make a web-comic with a title like "Steve Cashman - Weekend President." Steve's is hired by the White House to serve as president on the weekends (and during vacations) so Trump can golf and harass women. He was hired because of his first name. He has virtually no interest or knowledge in anything political. Slowly, over the course of the series, Weekend President Steve ends up making (and taking the blame for) all major decisions of the Trump administration.

Every strip begins with Trump telling him something like "...and this time, don't sign anything while I'm out..." but inevitably, in best Get Me Hennimore style, Steve screws up and approves something that the sneaky Democrats want.

I require not royalties. Just its existence is reward enough. Make it so, Internet.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:18 AM on January 18, 2017 [38 favorites]


Trump's D.C. hotel bans press during inauguration week: “Media is not allowed in this week in respect of the privacy of our guests,” Patricia Tang, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing wrote in an email.

That story was just updated with a paragraph about the federal lease provision this appears to violate shortly after, er, someone I know closely sent certain people at Politico an email. Why these reporters didn't google "trump post office filetype:pdf" themselves and look at the section marked "public access" before publishing the story is a question, er, someone I know closely is asking now.
posted by zachlipton at 11:23 AM on January 18, 2017 [22 favorites]


Far from making healthcare more like education (paid for by everyone because it's a public good), Republicans are determined to make education more like healthcare (If you can afford, great! If not, hey, too bad.).

Yes. Obamacare is basically the equivalent of a class-segregated education system where middle-class people get access to special "districts" (subsidized by their employer), while working-class and unemployed people get vouchers to go to one of the "districts" that are open to everyone. Except there's no public option, so they have to figure out which private system (that they can afford) is the least shitty option for them.

So yes, basically the Republicans want to do to education what they lambaste the Democrats for having done to health care.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:24 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


(Except the Democrats were moving health care from a relatively worse place, while Republicans are trying to move public education from a relatively better place.)
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:25 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Somewhat off topic, but in regards to Donnie's word salad; how has it been translated in non-English language media?

Do non-English speakers have any clue how disordered his off-the-cuff verbal communication is?
posted by porpoise at 11:25 AM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


President Obama's final press conference happening now.
posted by numaner at 11:27 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'd recommend Yuval Levin's The Republican Health-Care Debate: A guide for the perplexed for an analysis of what's going on.
posted by zachlipton at 11:29 AM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Somewhat off topic, but in regards to Donnie's word salad; how has it been translated in non-English language media?

Do non-English speakers have any clue how disordered his off-the-cuff verbal communication is?


I expect this is one of the few circumstances in which our rudimentary AI translation services are pretty much up to the task, given that their grasp of complex sentence structure is roughly at the same level as that of the President-Elect.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:29 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Do non-English speakers have any clue how disordered his off-the-cuff verbal communication is?

Yes.

How to Translate Trump
posted by Jalliah at 11:30 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


De Vos is just as terrifying as Sessions. She is actively seeking to ruin the lives of children--most especially poor children and children of color. She wants public schools destroyed and if they can't be destroyed she'd very much like them to become Fundamentalist Christian indoctrination centers. She wants children with disabilities to fuck off and die.

I have great ire for Sessions, who is a racist and terrifying a-hole, and have already registered this ire with my Senator. This week's action was against all the rest of the nominees, since they are cramming these hearings in fast and furious.

But, like, they're all a clown car of morons, idiots and assholes with a couple notable exceptions of people who are just way more conservative than me but at least not literal comic book villains.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:32 AM on January 18, 2017 [53 favorites]


It was very clear on where the descent into madness began. Palin got the lion's share of the blame as an unqualified candidate who appealed to "real American" voters who despised the elite.

Yet another thing we can thank John McCain for. "Country First," my ass.
posted by holborne at 11:34 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


WaPo: Betsy DeVos’s 13-year ‘clerical error’: A paper trail documenting DeVos’s involvement in the foundation has existed for years, but just last week the organization filed a certificate of correction with the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs to have her name removed as a director. The Prince Foundation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:34 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Obama just said he doesn't pay attention to Assange's tweets and that was not a consideration here.
posted by zachlipton at 11:34 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


just heard that the senate is surprised they aren't getting more calls about jeff sessions. NOT GOOD. CALL YOUR SENATORS.

Wait, so the Senate knows that this guy is horrifying and unqualified and that they should be inundated with calls about how horrifying and unqualified he is, and the problem is that we're not sufficiently horrified? What the fuck do we elect them for?
posted by Etrigan at 11:37 AM on January 18, 2017 [73 favorites]



But, like, they're all a clown car of morons, idiots and assholes with a couple notable exceptions of people who are just way more conservative than me but at least not literal comic book villains
.

I favorited this already and regret I cannot favorite it some more.
posted by zutalors! at 11:39 AM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm more worried about Sessions than about DeVos because the Department of Education isn't nearly as crucial to the project of public education in the US as the Department of Justice is to the project of establishing justice.

Not that DeVos won't do some shitty things if she's confirmed, but education is much more locally-controlled (mostly because racism, but still).

Whereas we rely on the federal Department of Justice to root out just those kinds of abuses of power which occur at the local and state level. If Sessions is confirmed? It will be open season on civil rights across the South and Midwest. And if the federal judiciary resists, it will be attacked, demonized, ignored and finally replaced by the Trump Administration.
posted by tivalasvegas at 11:47 AM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


"I want to be quiet a little bit and not hear myself talk so darn much" - Obama on his retirement plans

Literally the opposite of our incoming president, who would be thrilled to hear himself talk all day long.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:49 AM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


De Vos is just as terrifying as Sessions.

I would add to this that Sessions feels like a lost cause. He is a sitting Senator -- a coworker with these people for years and years. DeVos is truly an outsider, and clearly incompetent to boot.

It feels like an easier sell (so to speak) to ask Senators to vote against a woman who thinks bears regularly attack schools.

Also, frankly, as the parent of a gifted child with ASD/ADHD, continued access to a high quality safe public education is the key to ensuring that my child becomes a great adult. (If we all live that long and don't die in a nuclear firestorm.)
posted by anastasiav at 11:50 AM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Each of these presidents, raised to the office against the popular will, was marked by the defect of their election. None evaded the debility of their unpopular elections. Either they were so politically hampered they lacked credibility and could do little, or else they tried to defy their original sin by governing as though they had solid mandates and disintegrated.
I was toying with this idea while trying to sleep last night, and came to a—not new, but newly-into-focus—conclusion, that I swear is not some sort of fever dream of wishful thinking, so bear with me.

What are the odds that Donald Trump, somewhere down the line, is simply going to quit, and hand over the reins to Pence? Here's my reasoning.
  1. Though the President is bestowed with a great deal of power—some would argue that, currently, too much power is focused in the Executive—it's not like being King. It's not absolute power. You don't have an entire throng of all others under you, catering to your every whim.
  2. Donald Trump has always been King, and it's that angle of power that appeals to him. He likes to call the shots, make the deals, own the decisions, run the show. Because he's a narcissist. But he's also demonstrably lazy. He doesn't want to build bridges of support. He doesn't want to compromise. He shows no interest in engaging in activities that are prerequisites to negotiating the business of government. He doesn't actually like the work of government.
  3. There has been a lot of speculation to what degree the Republican congress will enable the President-elect, prop him up, give him cover, or run away from him, impeach him, etc. But I'd propose the most straightforward expectation: the congressional status quo. Namely, Congress is going to make decisions based on which way the wind blows, their "immediate" goal always being to get re-elected. And in that sense, Republicans in congress are only beholden to Trump as much as a) his policy goals dovetail nicely with theirs, or b) his force of popular opinion gives him commensurate negotiating power over them.
So the way I could see it playing out is this: if the electorate, and our elected officials, can continue to put pressure on Trump and his surrogates for any and all legitimate reasons—and let's face it: the unqualified, mediocre buffoon and his incompetent cronies are never going to stop providing legitimate reasons—his approval numbers are likely to continue to lag indefinitely. And with those low approval numbers, a) he's not liked, which irks him, and b) it diminishes his "King" status, meaning that he has to work that much harder to build consensus to get his agenda through. And, you know, work. That's not something Donald Trump seems to enjoy.

Under those circumstances, Donald Trump seems likely to simply hang it up at some point, and go back to being King of his own empire. He doesn't possess the ethic to actually continue with the job, if it doesn't suit his personal interests. He's just a more extreme version of Sarah Palin in that respect, and we all know how that ended. He'll make up some excuse or set of excuses about how he was wronged, and/or how management of his business interests is too important to continue the job, or some other nonsense to make himself the Big Man in the whole exercise. But then he'll just wander off back to his old life.

Donald Trump is the consummate lazy, self-serving asshole. And that's not an easy itch to scratch as POTUS, particularly when no one likes you.
posted by Brak at 11:54 AM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


It feels like an easier sell (so to speak) to ask Senators to vote against a woman who thinks bears regularly attack schools.

Fixed that - though your point about Sessions being a colleague stands, they're going to perfectly happy to approve other equally unqualified men to positions. Make no mistake, DeVos is awful. But they'll find a male with the same beliefs and he'll be voted in.

Doesn't mean they shouldn't vote against her just that they should vote against all unqualified candidates. But they won't vote against the one with penises.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:55 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Politico: Trump's team weighs retooling State to focus on terror

A serving State official said making the department more focused on counterterrorism may be a fruitful exercise because there are many who feel State is “stretched too thin.” But he also noted that much of what the department engages in is “soft power,” such as promoting inter-religious dialogue through the Countering Violent Extremism program. Furthermore, initiatives that at first may seem like Democratic priorities could in the long run contribute to the anti-terrorism effort. Reducing the impact of climate change could, for instance, prevent economic and social upheaval that can lead to radicalization.
posted by photo guy at 11:57 AM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't think Trump will quit because he wants his horrible children to play White House.
posted by zutalors! at 11:57 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


What are the odds that Donald Trump, somewhere down the line, is simply going to quit, and hand over the reins to Pence?

Medium-to-high. But expect it to come in the form of a "health emergency."
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:58 AM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Republicans are determined to make education more like healthcare (If you can afford, great! If not, hey, too bad.).

I don't think this is it. I mean, I get that it feels like that, but I really don't think that is it. Let me see if I can explain this from a sincere place - though caveat, I'm only really talking for my own huddled corner of Republicans, and none of us have monocles.

I think that most - I won't say all in case there is a reasonable view I'm forgetting - reasonable people can see that there are two portions to school success: the education that happens in the school, and what happens outside of it. How we define 'what happens outside it' can probably be hotly debated, but I view it as a whole heap of things like "class background" and "parental involvement" and "disability status" and "did you eat today" and "how many words do you hear in the home" and "is your family situation stressful" and "what are you wearing" and "how do you feel about yourself" and "how much screen time are you getting".

I think that most compassionate people - Republicans and Democrats alike - can agree that the answers to these things can be problems. But the question remains - who is responsible for solving these problems?

For a lot of complex reasons (increasing poverty, the way school funding works, ideology of the people involved, insert your idea here, etc), we've been seeing a lot of schools taking on these battles. Schools trying to solve the problems of what-are-the-kids-wearing, or food insecurity issues, or using heavy therapy-type counselors in the schools to mitigate the effect of a stressful home environment.

And it's not that those programs aren't noble, so much as that many people - honestly, often including me - think those things aren't the jobs of the schools, and we want schools to focus only on the educational aspects of things and for the agencies officially tasked with support to take that on.

But I want to be clear - I understand why this is a hard view to understand. Firstly, because even though people like me do think those things should be addressed in some way, I readily believe that there are other people who don't think those things should be addressed at all, and it's kind of mentally easy to lump everyone in together. And second, because those guys with monocles twirling their moustaches and tying people to railroad tracks do exist.

And thirdly, because in many cases right now the schools are the only ones doing anything, and if you eliminate the schools doing it, then no one is.

I don't have a good solution for all that. If we come out alive on the other side of all this, I'd like to figure one out, along with a lot of other areas where I think reasonable, kind people can disagree. But right now, why it matters - why I bothered saying this at all - is because if you assume all of your neighbors who are frustrated with how schools work now are your enemies, they can't help you. They can't join the fight on stuff that you might actually agree on, like family support. Or so much of opposing Trump's agenda, which is neither natural nor moral.

Good hearted people have to be able to band together to resist evil, or we may as well just give up now. If we can't bridge these gaps for our very survival, then I don't know what will happen to us, but I know it's not good.
posted by corb at 11:58 AM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


This press conference is great. I love listening to Obama patiently and reasonably answer all the questions that have been raised in these threads. I wish Obama would join Metafilter, now that he's going to be a private citizen.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:59 AM on January 18, 2017 [26 favorites]


And it's not that those programs aren't noble, so much as that many people - honestly, often including me - think those things aren't the jobs of the schools, and we want schools to focus only on the educational aspects of things and for the agencies officially tasked with support to take that on.

Y'all do realize that schools are replacing all those other agencies because your people defunded them, right?
posted by Etrigan at 12:01 PM on January 18, 2017 [70 favorites]


De Vos is just as terrifying as Sessions. She is actively seeking to ruin the lives of children--most especially poor children and children of color.

The problem there is that "school reform" grifters have had the ear of both main parties for a while, so you have rich ostensibly-liberal types (especially techies) talking about disruption and choice and flexibility when the root problem is district-based funding and "we moved for the schools". It's not unlike the crunchy Waldorf School strain of anti-vaxxing.
posted by holgate at 12:01 PM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


I love listening to Obama patiently and reasonably answer all the questions that have been raised in these threads

Honestly, I'm listening to the presser, and I do not care one whit what he's saying. I'm just listening to hear a president form coherent sentences one last time.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:01 PM on January 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


Y'all do realize that schools are replacing all those other agencies because your people defunded them, right?

This is also a huge issue in libraries.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:03 PM on January 18, 2017 [49 favorites]


President-elect says the intelligence briefings made him aware of the importance of making the right decisions because a mistake could be 'very costly'

...But now the billionaire property magnate has taken time out of his busy schedule to hear some intelligence briefings on global threats, he has said he is deeply concerned about what he has learnt. Mr Trump said America had some “very big” and “strong enemies”.

“I've had a lot of briefings that are very … I don't want to say 'scary,' because I'll solve the problems,” he said in an interview with Axios on Tuesday.

“But … we have some big enemies out there in this country and we have some very big enemies - very big and, in some cases, strong enemies.”


...The 70-year-old explained that he preferred his briefings to be short and to ideally be one-page if they are in written format.

“I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don't need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you".

posted by futz at 12:06 PM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Obama to the White House press corps: "You're not supposed to be sycophants. You're supposed to be skeptics."
posted by Coventry at 12:07 PM on January 18, 2017 [57 favorites]


I voted for Donald Trump, and I already regret it

"I was, like everyone else, shocked that he had won."


I've said it before, a significant number of people voted for Trump because they were so sure Clinton was going to win and they just wanted to be contrary. If we did the election over next week it would be completely different.
posted by bongo_x at 12:07 PM on January 18, 2017 [25 favorites]


And thirdly, because in many cases right now the schools are the only ones doing anything, and if you eliminate the schools doing it, then no one is.

Believe me, as a trained educator I can tell you that no one in schools wants to be doing these things either. But heaps and mountains of research has proven that children cannot learn when they are hungry, abused, have unaddressed trauma, or an unstable homelife. This is just a fact. And absent a society which has seriously committed to helping children with these challenges outside of the school, it is going to fall to schools to do it. It just has to. You cannot march into a room full of 25 third graders where three quarters of them are unable to do schoolwork because of issues caused by their life outside of school and just wish your way out of it. You have to feed the kids who are hungry, find shelter for the kids who are homeless, get medical care for the kids who can't see the board because they have never had an eye exam, or can't breathe because they have untreated asthma.

I was brought up in a libertarian household, so I know these arguments, but my conclusion at the end of the day is this: coulda shoulda woulda. We work with the world we have now, not the one that would exist in a perfect rational Utopia. If you take those services out of schools, children will suffer, unless you move them to equally accessible locations in those same communities on a 1-to-1 basis. And I do not see any Republicans stepping up to introduce that legislation.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:08 PM on January 18, 2017 [99 favorites]


I'm just listening to hear a president form coherent sentences one last time.

And pausing to think about what he'll say!

And talking about actions that have consequences, so do your thing, but act with intentionality!
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:09 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


If we did the election over next week it would be completely different.

Agree. My own mom said she wouldn't have voted third party if she knew that it was that close. At least she feels bad?
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:10 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Obama just called voter fraud "fake news" and is railing against voter suppression.
posted by zachlipton at 12:12 PM on January 18, 2017 [42 favorites]




That's why it is so friggin fraggin important to get out, organize, right fucking now so that you can build an infrastructure that will compete against these chucklefucks in 2018.

I don't know if they're still on track but the Brand New Congress group, founded by some former members of the Sanders campaign, was originally shooting for this March to have a slate of candidates lined up IIRC, one for every single seat in Congress that will have an election in 2018.
posted by XMLicious at 12:17 PM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


If the election had been held a week earlier or later it would've likely been different.

But one day, one letter, and a whole bunch of foreign interference combined with a shitload of people not caring or throwing away their vote in protest is going to do irreparable damage to the country that existed prior to November 8 and never will again.

Regrets are fine and all, but not nearly sufficient to atone.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:17 PM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


But no one -- not Betsy DeVos, not Trump, not of the primary candidates -- was running, that I recall (and I did not, admittedly, dig deeply of, say, Jeb!'s education proposals) on 'refocus schools on education.' Right? I mean, 'focus on education, not social services' isn't something I heard any candidates say.

That's a really interesting perspective and I need to think on it longer - the meta aspects of it, I mean. Because I believe you that you didn't hear that, but at the same time, I feel absolutely that I did, that schools needed to go back to "reading, writing, 'rithmetic" and that the problems with failing schools was that they weren't spending their money on education. So what I'm trying to figure out now - and will report back if I do, but also welcome other thoughts - is whether (a) I was hearing these things in private meetings or televised addresses with grassroot activists, or from staffers, which wasn't publicly facing (b) They were using words that I interpreted one way but that didn't ping on anyone else's consciousness (c) This came from news stories and had nothing to do with actual positions.
posted by corb at 12:20 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


While I'll take any support we can get to oppose Trump, I'm not particularly sympathetic to those who voted Trump and only now realize how awful a person he was. His awfulness was on full display his whole campaign (his whole life!), and it took a lot some combination of selfishness, racism, and sexism for anyone to not see it. Those who voted for him didn't just make a mistake, they helped propagate a fuckup of unimaginable proportions that is going to have negative impacts on millions of lives for so long a time period that it's hard to even quantify it yet.

They should regret that vote, and they should continue to regret it for the rest of their lives.
posted by tocts at 12:20 PM on January 18, 2017 [41 favorites]


But expect it to come in the form of a "health emergency."

Considering Trump's "healthiest presidential candidate" talk, I'm not sure he'd ever admit if he had an actual health emergency.
posted by drezdn at 12:20 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Listening to Obama speak about his daughters, I'm reminded that as much as I respect Obama as president, I respect him even more as a dad.
posted by vverse23 at 12:22 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


That Sanders thing sounds like a divisive nightmare most likely to benefit Reps, TBH.
posted by Artw at 12:22 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yeah, if he ever stepped down it would have to be for something noble and voluntary, like a "family emergency" that would make his sacrifice look suuuuuper good.
posted by lydhre at 12:22 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Believe me, as a trained educator I can tell you that no one in schools wants to be doing these things either. But heaps and mountains of research has proven that children cannot learn when they are hungry, abused, have unaddressed trauma, or an unstable homelife. This is just a fact.

Completely true - and then they connect adequate funding of a school to standardized test grades, which ignores all of the other reasons why a group of student might be struggling. Your classroom has a bunch of English Language Learners instead of native speakers? Fuck you, get their test grades up. Low income students whose parents are working multiple jobs and never see the kids? Fuck you, get their test grades up. Starving students? Fuck you, get their test grades up.

What I heard was that public schools are failing and should be replaced, with a privatized system, and that people should be able to keep their kids out of public schools but continue to receive government-subsidized educations in the private education market.

Which is a massive fucking pipe-dream. You get a voucher for education? Congratulations, that's going to pay for maybe a third of the price of tuition of a decent private school (and maybe half the tuition at a shitty one). Where is the money going to come from if you don't have it? I imagine DeVos and crew will encourage education loans so even students who don't go to college can start their lives in massive debt to a corporation.

This is why there is talk about changing child labor laws. They're going to have to do something with all of those children whose parents can't afford to send them to school. Might as well send them down into the strontium mine with a tiny little pick axe and a tooth brush and send them home with $1.50 an hour in Stronti-bucks that they can spend only at the company store.

Everything in our society is tied together. You can't fuck with the school system without fucking with everything else, too. We should be prepared for a ton of ill-considered, wreckless and often fecklessly evil fucking.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:23 PM on January 18, 2017 [44 favorites]


Yeah, if he ever stepped down it would have to be for something noble and voluntary, like a "family emergency" that would make his sacrifice look suuuuuper good.

I called it a few weeks ago -- Melania gets a cancer diagnosis within the first year. Something survivable, but barely, that isn't visible. He steps away and allows Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, and then just never comes back.
posted by Etrigan at 12:24 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


"The world gets a little better each time. That's what this Presidency has tried to be about....At my core, I think we're going to be ok. I think we have to fight for it and work for it not take it for granted."

Obama out.

I'm really going to miss having a President capable of speaking coherently, and willing to do so, on topics not of his choosing for any length of time.
posted by zachlipton at 12:24 PM on January 18, 2017 [25 favorites]


For a lot of complex reasons (increasing poverty, the way school funding works, ideology of the people involved, insert your idea here, etc), we've been seeing a lot of schools taking on these battles. Schools trying to solve the problems of what-are-the-kids-wearing, or food insecurity issues, or using heavy therapy-type counselors in the schools to mitigate the effect of a stressful home environment.

And it's not that those programs aren't noble, so much as that many people - honestly, often including me - think those things aren't the jobs of the schools, and we want schools to focus only on the educational aspects of things and for the agencies officially tasked with support to take that on.


I can respect that view but the problem is they're treating it just like "repeal and delay", as in, sure, eventually we'll replace those services, some day, maybe (not really)... and if they were actually concerned about these issues, the responsible and morally right way to proceed would be to transition those things away from the schools by increasing funding and support of agencies outside of the schools to replace them, and to do it gradually so that there's a smooth transition. A careful and considered, well-managed transition of services from schools to other agencies that actually keeps those services isn't objectionable, but that's not at all what's being proposed.
posted by jason_steakums at 12:25 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I mean, really, at the base of it, with so many of these privatize education people, there is no actual ideology there. They have financial interests in for-profit K-12 schools. That's it. That's the solution to this mystery. They want the market for these schools to be expanded (for for whole populations of people to have no other choice than to use them) so they can make a buck. All the dog-whistling about the 3-Rs and school choice is window-dressing.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:27 PM on January 18, 2017 [40 favorites]


His awfulness was on full display his whole campaign (his whole life!), and it took a lot some combination of selfishness, racism, and sexism for anyone to not see it.

My wife does not follow politics at all (she is fascinatingly uninformed about who's in which party), and was completely confused about why the Billy Bush tape was such a shock, because "doesn't everyone already know that's the kind of person he is?"

So yeah, not much excuse for people caught off guard by any of this.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:27 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


and if they were actually concerned about these issues, the responsible and morally right way to proceed would be to transition those things away from the schools by increasing funding and support of agencies outside of the schools to replace them, and to do it gradually so that there's a smooth transition.

And the fact that they're not doing it this way is evidence to me that this is all about saving money for the very wealthy. The important thing isn't about helping the sick or educating children. The important thing is making sure the fucking Kochs can't have another extra billion in their bank accounts via tax savings.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:27 PM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


I don't know why anyone thinks Trump will ever step down for any reason. Term limits be damned, he's only leaving the white house in shackles or in a pine box.
posted by dis_integration at 12:27 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Obama press conference call list as statement on press freedom and access
-WHCA president
-Fox News
-Univision
-Al-Arabiya
-LGBT newspaper
--@jeneps

Also Black media.

Of course, this is way too subtle for anyone in the Trump Administration to pick up on, not that they'd care if they did.
posted by zachlipton at 12:29 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Even if we were to agree to disagree on social services in schools, we're still left with a party that:

1. Has successfully managed to gut modern biology education outside of colleges and actively pushes for specific Evangelical doctrine as part of the curriculum.

2. Has made school systems into a front on the cultural war on LGBTQ people. They've outlawed basic instruction on HIV, sexuality, even for historic figures and literary characters. We have bills on the table mandating reporting of at-risk LGBTQ students to parents.

3. Similarly has attacked multicultural education demanding a starkly revisionist history in the process.

4. Has floated trial balloons undermining academic freedom in higher education, even to the point of McCarthist purges.

I might have to put my spoons into DeVos this week because harassment and violence against LGBTQ people likely costs us years in life expectancy.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:29 PM on January 18, 2017 [46 favorites]


I don't know why anyone thinks Trump will ever step down for any reason. Term limits be damned, he's only leaving the white house in shackles or in a pine box.

Trump has a history of folding and letting someone else bail out his failures.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:31 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


I don't know why anyone thinks Trump will ever step down for any reason.

Think of it as bankruptcy -- he gets to walk away, not pay any of the debts he accrued, and if he can find a way to do it while preserving the Trump brand, he'll do it in a hot second once he's had a month to realize how much that job can suck.
posted by Etrigan at 12:32 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Also tbh replacing a bunch of programs under the Department of Education with a mishmash of stuff that's like a little nonprofit here, for-profit there, Health and Human Services here, USDA there... that's exactly the kind of bureaucratic red tape that Republicans rail against. You could streamline the hell out of the whole thing by properly equipping the schools to do it.
posted by jason_steakums at 12:32 PM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


I can't do that with Trump; I honestly don't even think he loves his kids in the way you and I understand love.

I suspect German has a word for that feeling you have towards your eventual organ donors.
posted by Etrigan at 12:36 PM on January 18, 2017 [27 favorites]


Ha. I just thought of one way some of his conflicts of interest could be mitigated: some of those Russia sanctions target individuals, not the country as a whole. There's a decent chance anybody he wants to play trade war with could just sanction the Trump family selectively.
posted by jason_steakums at 12:37 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Things are going to be interesting.

Donald Trump trusts no one, and he shouldn't, because there is literally no one in the world loyal to Trump and he has just made himself the biggest target in the world. Republicans cannot wait to throw him under the bus and claim he was never a true Republican. And he's not.

So...at any point he may realize they are out to get him and go on the attack. He's completely unpredictable and unreliable. How long do Republicans hope their luck holds?

How many Republicans believe the Russia connections and want to keep their reputations in the end?
posted by bongo_x at 12:37 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't really know why it's so hard to understand. Basically every discussion about school funding is really a proxy war for "how can rich white people get what they want, while not spending money on those minorities and poor whites". That's it, fundamentally. Local control of school funding (via property taxes) is simply a way to legally segregate money so it can be spent on white people moreso than non-white people. We don't explicitly have a policy that white kids get a better education, it just happens to be that way because of tax laws that we won't dwell on too much.

Privatization is simply the ultimate version of "local control".
posted by tocts at 12:38 PM on January 18, 2017 [54 favorites]




Of course, this is way too subtle for anyone in the Trump Administration to pick up on, not that they'd care if they did.

It's not too subtle for them to pervert. The Media Matters article that bluecore linked above is all about how Trump's plans for the briefing room will end up stocking it with propagandists who can get him out of difficult questions. That open letter from the CJR won't mean a thing if the mainstream press corps can't ask a question.
Trump is warning that there will be repercussions for the press if they fight back against the move, suggesting that his administration will use the limited space in the current briefing room as an excuse to deny access to credible news outlets and grant it to more supportive ones. “There’s too many people for this small room,” he said this morning during an interview on Fox & Friends. “We have so many people that want to go, so we'll have to just pick the people that go into the room.” He added that if that happens, the press will “be begging for a much larger room very soon. You watch.”
posted by gladly at 12:39 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


he's only leaving the white house in shackles or in a pine box.

The finest, classiest 14 karat gold shackles! And the most luxurious European pine box, with the softest, most sensuous velvet lining!
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:39 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


But the lining is crunchy with gold paint, and it's only on the top part of the box, because that's what shows up in pictures.
posted by mochapickle at 12:42 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


The Community School model (which is what you get when you on-purpose make neighborhood schools into full service community centers with access to many forms of supportive services) is a legitimate approach to improving student achievement, that has been studied and researched. Why would you make kids and families tromp around to 10 different buildings in 10 different parts of town instead of delivering necessary services in the same location that kid should be that whole day anyway?

The benefit of doing it on purpose such as with Community Schools rather than ad hoc such as every other school out there with an at-risk population, is that when you do it on purpose you can do it in such a way that the social workers and medical professionals that are placed in the school can do their jobs and the teachers can do their jobs and you aren't asking teachers to also be nutritionists, family therapists, nurses, and housing advocates. Because all those folks are also right there in the building.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:42 PM on January 18, 2017 [52 favorites]


Obama patted the podium on the way out the way you do an old house you're moving out of.
posted by maxsparber at 12:43 PM on January 18, 2017 [50 favorites]


Having watched that last Press Conference,


of your Commander in Chief.....



I weep for you, America....
posted by Wilder at 12:45 PM on January 18, 2017 [27 favorites]


Think of it as bankruptcy -- he gets to walk away, not pay any of the debts he accrued, and if he can find a way to do it while preserving the Trump brand, he'll do it in a hot second once he's had a month to realize how much that job can suck.

We kept hearing this about him during the campaign. Oh, once he finds out how much campaigning sucks and how hard it is, he'll bow out. He loves this shit. It's the ultimate peak of narcissistic gratification. He'd only leave if we stopped talking about him constantly. And we can't stop talking about the man who can nuke the world. Anyway, I won't push it. I just don't see where "oh this is hard, I guess I'll go back to being a normal person and not the most important human being alive" fits into the megalomaniac narcissist's way of thinking.
posted by dis_integration at 12:45 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


And absent a society which has seriously committed to helping children with these challenges outside of the school, it is going to fall to schools to do it. It just has to.

Consider the "Nice White Lady Teacher Leads The Way" trope, which is enough of a cliché to be parodied but also has sufficient cultural traction to manifest itself in very different cultural ways. (It can be feel-good Lifetime fodder for white conservatives, and it can be Hollywood chow for liberals. Sandra Bullock can star in both.)

Someone like DeVos clearly considers schools to be a social project, not simply an educational one. That's because schools in developed nations are a social project, have been a social project since the first days of public schooling, and cannot be anything but.
posted by holgate at 12:47 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


We kept hearing this about him during the campaign. Oh, once he finds out how much campaigning sucks and how hard it is, he'll bow out. He loves this shit. It's the ultimate peak of narcissistic gratification.

You may be right, but I'll counter with this: There are things that the President legally has to do. Things that not even the President himself can absolve the President from doing. Things he can't just bully your way out of, or ignore because fuck it, he doesn't deep down really want the job, he just wanted to say he could have done it except the Establishment cheated. And he's going to get tired of the commute and the workload that he cannot shove off onto someone else, and he's going to say something that really pisses people off, and he's just not going to be able to convince himself that the single-digit approval rating is "rigged".

Maybe it'll just be for a moment, but it'll happen, and it will break him, because he's never really had failure happen to him (and of course, that will still be how he thinks of it -- he didn't fail, it happened to him), and he'll find some excuse, any excuse, even no excuse, and enough people will go along with it because they know what he's capable of when he skims up against the border of failure.

But, as I say, you may be right. He may mever get to that point. There might not be an Up for him to fail to anymore. But I wouldn't put money on him being the president in four years and three days, and I would put money on the end coming sooner than that.
posted by Etrigan at 12:54 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


of your Commander in Chief

Forgive the pedantry, but the US president is only Commander in Chief of the military—not of civilians. It's a minor quibble, but good to remember whenever you start seeing Trumpists touting the line that we should never criticize our Commander in Chief.
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:00 PM on January 18, 2017 [33 favorites]


We kept hearing this about him during the campaign. Oh, once he finds out how much campaigning sucks and how hard it is, he'll bow out. He loves this shit. It's the ultimate peak of narcissistic gratification.

I agree, but he'll never be in "shackles" either. If that's seriously on the table he'll golden-parachute out with a blanket pardon from Pence.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:00 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


if they were actually concerned about these issues, the responsible and morally right way to proceed would be to transition those things away from the schools by increasing funding and support of agencies outside of the schools to replace them, and to do it gradually so that there's a smooth transition. A careful and considered, well-managed transition of services from schools to other agencies that actually keeps those services isn't objectionable, but that's not at all what's being proposed.

I think the problem with that view - that if people were actually concerned, X would happen - really fails to take into account just how difficult it is to change things at all, and how difficult our entire political process is.

I would like to advocate for a bill that transitioned things in the smooth process you explain above. I really would! But I honestly don't know what coalition I could possibly cobble together to get that. I don't know which Democrats and Republicans would be able to work together to make that happen. I don't know if Democrats and Republicans will ever work together in a bipartisan way ever again. I don't know which agencies would get involved in cut throat fights over fiefdoms and funding.

And I have the difficult issue of only being one person with only so much political capital, that I took a huge hit on this summer, and feel I need to conserve the embers for things like Trump trying to abolish freedom.

So when people say "if they were really concerned," it feels like they're telling me that because I and others are not as effective as I wish we could be, our beliefs aren't sincere. And that kind of sucks, you know?
posted by corb at 1:00 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I don't know which agencies would get involved in cut throat fights over fiefdoms and funding.

Yeah, that's definitely an excuse not to try.

Your side has spent the last thirty-six years slicing the fat, skin, and meat off every agency they could find that didn't have an extra side on its building, and now you're worried about what the skeletons of those agencies might do to get a scrap?
posted by Etrigan at 1:04 PM on January 18, 2017 [23 favorites]


I don't really know why it's so hard to understand. Basically every discussion about school funding is really a proxy war for "how can rich white people get what they want, while not spending money on those minorities and poor whites". That's it, fundamentally.

The way I find most successful for trying to communicate this to conservative friends and relatives is to point out that the specific measures pushed for are usually undermining the "public" part of "public education", and trying to pull money out of any organization that actually has accountability for the public as a whole getting educated, to leave it as a matter of luck whether or not public education occurs.

(And then I point out that it's minority kids, poor kids, disabled kids, and other disadvantaged kids who "accidentally" don't get educated, disproportionately, because of the people playing jenga with the system to build up institutions that just so happen to put money in private hands.)
posted by XMLicious at 1:05 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Matthew Yglesias: The GOP is sabotaging itself by confirming weak Cabinet nominees like Betsy DeVos
Republicans should want someone conservative in that role, of course. But they should also want someone who looks smart, sharp, and competent discussing the issues in front of the cameras. Someone with a sympathetic story to tell about the role of education in their lives and with an unquestioned command of the subject matter. The kind of person you would say you respect even while disagreeing. Someone who can win over skeptics or smooth the edges off disagreement. DeVos is not like that at all, because she’s wholly unlike previous nominees who come from politics or public sector education policy work where they have to do this stuff all the time.
posted by monospace at 1:07 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


I voted for Donald Trump, and I already regret it

"I was, like everyone else, shocked that he had won."

I've said it before, a significant number of people voted for Trump because they were so sure Clinton was going to win and they just wanted to be contrary. If we did the election over next week it would be completely different.


I keep thinking of Hillary Clinton as the nation's “mom” in this election.

Like: in many families the mom does a ton of stuff nobody pays attention to or appreciates, and everybody wants to make a stand and rebel against her, and god knows you’re not going to actually support her because she’s just doing what moms are supposed to do anyway, and not really doing it entirely to your liking, tbh, and ugh she can be so embarrassing too — and then, you know, something bad happens and people realize the alternative is worse.

And part of this is just how people feel about government in general, and particularly the party that currently holds office.

But some of it is also very specific to being a woman in politics, because people are able to grapple with many different kinds of masculine authority, only one of which is fatherhood.

But we don’t really see a lot of women with actual authority in our lives, or in our media, so a woman in power to most people, on some level, is just the screen they project “mom” onto — because that's the only female authority figure they know.

(I also think this is one of the reasons why people love bored-Hillary-in-sunglasses-reading-her-blackberry. Hillary in a pantsuit behind a podium could still be “mom” — mom at a PTA meeting, mom presenting to her local realtor’s association. But her expression in that photo, plus the sunglasses, project a real IDGAF vibe — not something we’re used to seeing middle aged women project! since they’re supposed to be taking care of everybody all the time. Too bad a full-time IDGAF attitude is antithetical to being a politician).
posted by pocketfullofrye at 1:12 PM on January 18, 2017 [70 favorites]


We have had not one but two local scandals in the for-profit cyber charter schooling space just in my area alone. I cannot impress upon you enough how sleazy these people are. Put Waiting for Superman out of your mind. These are people who saw an opportunity to hoover up taxpayer money (taxpayer money that would otherwise be going to public schools) with a minimum of oversight and thought to themselves, "That sounds awesome!"
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:13 PM on January 18, 2017 [30 favorites]




Yes, Trump Is President. We Can’t Compromise in the Fight Against Criminalization.: Bresha allegedly killed her abusive father to defend herself and her family. As Trump is inaugurated on January 20, Bresha will stand before a judge as her lawyers make a motion for her release on her own recognizance. When this twice-postponed hearing finally occurs, Bresha will have spent 175 days in jail awaiting a trial. Few will be paying attention to Bresha’s plight as all eyes and ears turn to D.C. We hope that this is not a metaphor for what’s to come when Trump ascends to power.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:16 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I don't know if Democrats and Republicans will ever work together in a bipartisan way ever again.

Start with school boards and city councils and county commissions. Track what's going on in parallel, e.g. if a community centre is being underfunded and people are complaining about schools having to take over some of its functions. Yes, those tiers have been targeted by ideological loons on an upward path in recent years, but local government should be a place where those conversations can be calibrated to discuss priorities and budgets from some kind of baseline connected to reality.
posted by holgate at 1:19 PM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


I've said it before, a significant number of people voted for Trump because they were so sure Clinton was going to win and they just wanted to be contrary.

I've said it before too, but I hope the jerks enjoyed their hilarious disaffected prank. I like being a jaundiced smart-ass as much as the next humanoid, but people need to grow. the fuck. up. already.
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:22 PM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Obama's last words to the White House Press Corps: "Good luck"
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:23 PM on January 18, 2017 [25 favorites]


Hey, did everybody get their super-cool 2017 Democratic National Committee opinion survey in the mail today?! It has fun questions like: "Of the following 12 fucking outrageously horrific things about the upcoming Trump Presidency, which 4 concern you the most?"

"Other than just giving the hell up and sitting in a corner crying with a big-ass bottle of tequila for the next decade, which 3 of the priorities listed below do you think the DNC should focus on going forward?"
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:28 PM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


So when people say "if they were really concerned," it feels like they're telling me that because I and others are not as effective as I wish we could be, our beliefs aren't sincere. And that kind of sucks, you know?

When so many conservatives spent time cozying up to the wingnuts on stuff like voter suppression and gutting the safety net and throwing around state's rights arguments on basic humanity, you can't really complain when you're called out for it. If the choice was inaction or siding with horrible people doing horrible things, and you chose the latter over and over again, then getting upset about it now seems like far too little, far too late.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:29 PM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


FBI, 5 other agencies probe possible covert Kremlin aid to Trump

- FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ, FinCEN & ODNI
- Started months ago, before Steele dossier was known
- Focus is on who financed DNC & Podesta hacks
- Russian consulates in US used to funnel cash to operatives, payments disguised to look like made to Russian pensioners in US
posted by scalefree at 1:30 PM on January 18, 2017 [37 favorites]


So when people say "if they were really concerned," it feels like they're telling me that because I and others are not as effective as I wish we could be, our beliefs aren't sincere. And that kind of sucks, you know?

I believe that you are sincere, but I also believe that you vastly over-estimate how many other sincere believers in this kind of transition there are. And look, I've been there -- I've been the one who believed deeply in the principle of something even though the reality didn't match up, and wanted desperately to fight for that reality to change. Eventually, though, I looked around and realized that nearly everyone else "on my side" didn't give a shit about the principle, and only claimed to do so because the current reality was actually what they wanted, but they couldn't say that out loud.
posted by tocts at 1:30 PM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


So when people say "if they were really concerned," it feels like they're telling me that because I and others are not as effective as I wish we could be, our beliefs aren't sincere. And that kind of sucks, you know?

I'm not saying that, I believe your beliefs are sincere. But yeah, you aren't as effective as you wish you could be - and there's nothing wrong with that, neither am I. None of us are. And maybe taking those support roles away from the schools feels like something at least, some forward motion on at least part of what you'd like to see, but cutting kids loose from that support without a fallback hurts kids in ways that living with a frustratingly imperfect system until you can at least incrementally improve it doesn't. It sucks to not have the power to effectively make the changes you want, but that's reality for almost everybody, and it's not right for any of us to try to take shortcuts that hurt people or lend support to false friends like DeVos just because they tempt us with the false hope that they'll help us if we give them power.
posted by jason_steakums at 1:33 PM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


In my long comment in the "Aren't we better than this?" MeTa thread, I stated that "I do not discuss politics with anyone IRL because it would be so easy to lose what little respect I have for those people I deal with frequently." My transportation is dependent on the local bus company's Disabled Ride service, and because of my odd home location, I'm the only passenger as often as not, so chatting with the driver frequently happens. And all the regular drivers are sweet people except for one older-than-me "grouchypants" who frequently brings up news items that annoy him... not usually politics, but enough to suggest he's no bleeding-heart liberal. But yesterday, I had him driving and after a short rant about the closing of the Barnum & Bailey Circus (with zero sympathy for the elephants), he said, noticably sarcastically, "well, Trump will make America great again." Which led into "he'll make things great for himself and his billionaire friends; mostly he'll make America sick again and make America poor again." And we reached my destination before he could elaborate further. But my area is considered 'politically mixed' where Hillary beat Donald by only 9 points, a lot less than California as a whole, and if Trump is getting a failing grade from the Curmudgeon Bus Driver, well, that Approval Rating survey may be erring on the "too high" side.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:37 PM on January 18, 2017 [42 favorites]


Been hunting around for a full version of the "You've Been Trumped" documentary about Trump trying to dispossess the smallholders round his golf course development -- there was a note on the site about it being publically released in the run up to the election. Found this one, though it doesn't seem to be a sanctioned copy.

It is viscerally chilling watching him in the sociopathically cold blooded day to day of his business ...then the unabashed and obvious lying about it (does he really think people don't know he's lying?). Admittedly it may in part be that it really hits home for me as that's the sort of (soft-spoken and pleasingly odd) community and ("disgusting"*, "virtual slum", "pig-sty") environment I grew up in. [who the fuck doesn't love rusty old tractors?]

To put things in a cultural context for left-pondians: I am a cynical, news junkie, anti-capitalist, but I wouldn't have considered what he did something that could happen here these days. That he not only got away with it, but was supported, excused, justified, and fucking honoured by people who should have known better and been better is a fairly terrifying indication of how bad things could be about to get.

* He really does like the word 'disgusting', doesn't he. Contempt is the most dangerous of emotions and the reddest of flags.
posted by Buntix at 1:38 PM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


See also nasty woman
posted by angrycat at 1:40 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm just really over the conservative rending of garments in general right now. Spending years spreading malicious lies from hucksters like Hans von Spakovsky and opposing poor people getting healthcarr, and then all of a sudden acting concerned about "freedom" and millions of people being stripped of that healthcare doesn't mean they're absolved of making deals with devils.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:42 PM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


FBI, 5 other agencies probe possible covert Kremlin aid to Trump

...an investigation into Russian attempts to influence the November election, including whether money from the Kremlin covertly aided President-elect Donald Trump...

One thing which ought to be investigated is whether advertising dollars were funneled to right-wing "fake news" sites as a cryptic way to fund electioneering propaganda. It's kind of hard to believe that liberal "fake news" attempts did so much worse than the right-wing versions.
posted by Coventry at 1:46 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


As a reminder, because we can't stop remember this one, Comey made a whole public announcement of the fact that there were emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop, emails that turned out to be utterly irrelevant and had already been reviewed previously, but did not in any way mention that his agency was investigating whether a foreign power provided covert aid to the other candidate's campaign.
posted by zachlipton at 1:53 PM on January 18, 2017 [61 favorites]


One thing which ought to be investigated is whether advertising dollars were funneled to right-wing "fake news" sites as a cryptic way to fund electioneering propaganda. It's kind of hard to believe that liberal "fake news" attempts did so much worse than the right-wing versions.

Cambridge Analytica specifically needs to have its books cracked wide open.
posted by jason_steakums at 1:56 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]




I'm listening to Obama on NPR singing "Amazing Grace" post the Charleston shootings o my heart, my heart.
posted by angrycat at 1:58 PM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Republicans should want someone conservative in that role, of course. But they should also want someone who looks smart, sharp, and competent discussing the issues in front of the cameras.

Why? They've been steadily pivoting to the the party supported by low information and religiously conservative voters that want small word soundbites that sound good and/or blame the gays and non-christians and it's worked out great with them. If they can combine gerrymandering, voter suppression, and apathy/infighting to keep the left from regaining significant power, they have it made.

It may indeed cost the party power twenty or thirty years down the line, just like global warming may fuck up their grandchildren's lives, but part of the problem is that I don't think some of the Republican leadership thinks in that long of a timeline rather than how they can benefit themselves or push through their pet projects in the next five to ten years. As long as they enrich themselves, they'll spend their final days in luxury, even if there's mass starvation and flooding elsewhere while the left tries to pick up the pieces.
posted by Candleman at 1:59 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Neko Case is performing at the Women's March. I know this is all very srs political bsns but omgsquee!!!
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:59 PM on January 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


Comey's behavior is really ... uh ... well, either he acted to actively influence the election, in which case he should be fired and sanctioned and spoken poorly of at great length, or he has some wicked deep game going on.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:00 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


For a lot of complex reasons (increasing poverty, the way school funding works, ideology of the people involved, insert your idea here, etc), we've been seeing a lot of schools taking on these battles. Schools trying to solve the problems of what-are-the-kids-wearing, or food insecurity issues, or using heavy therapy-type counselors in the schools to mitigate the effect of a stressful home environment.

And it's not that those programs aren't noble, so much as that many people - honestly, often including me - think those things aren't the jobs of the schools, and we want schools to focus only on the educational aspects of things and for the agencies officially tasked with support to take that on.


corb, I have honestly gained so much respect for you watching your fight against Trump over the last year that while this would have just infuriated me in 2015, now it hurts to watch you twist yourself in knots like this to find a way to make conservative educational policy make sense.

Delivering social services to children and families in schools is ENORMOUSLY EFFICIENT. If the kids need food, uniform clothes, warm jackets, and someone to teach them how to work through a panic attack so they can keep paying attention in class, the single best place to deliver those things is at their school. It's the one place you can be reasonably assured they'll show up at every day. If we broke those services out into different departments tomorrow and told them to come up with the cheapest and most efficient way to feed and clothe poor children while keeping them out of jail or psychiatric hospitals, they would do exactly what we're doing now. Centralizing those services in an easily accessible location is the best practice both for delivering actual social services and for improving educational outcomes. Hungry kids do worse in schools than full ones.

Further, as someone who worked in special education policy, what we found was that policy-makers who said things like "Schools need to get back to basics" implemented policies that violated the civil rights of disabled students EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. "Back to basics" was always code for "it's too expensive to educate disabled students." Literally ALWAYS. Part of the reason charter schools are so popular with those policy-makers is that charter schools don't have to accept disabled students. The rhetoric sounded very common sense and pro-education, but the actual outcome was to push an entire population of educable students and citizens out of school, and consequently out of employment and higher education, permanently. (Which is more costly in the long run, in terms of lost productivity, but those policymakers don't actually believe disabled people can be productive, so the cost would come in cash aid or the social safety net, which those policymakers also universally support reducing. Which is an efficient if inhumane way to square that circle.) This consequence is so predictable and well-documented that at this point, when I hear "back to basics" type rhetoric, I assume the goal of whatever proposed policy is to push the most expensive-to-educate students out of public education.

So...when I hear people say we should provide social services out of school and focus schools on instruction, it doesn't make any sense to me, because it won't provide the outcome we supposedly want, which is equality of opportunity and access. It will, really predictably, force poor and disabled students out of school and into permanent poverty. It's so predictable that when I hear someone say it, I assume that's what they want, but are just too polite to say. That's the only way the proposed policies and implementation make sense, and it's the only way to get most people to buy into it, because most people think saying "We're not building any more ramps for kids in wheelchairs, it's cheaper if they stay home and don't learn anything" is contrary to equality of opportunity, which they value. I understand that you mean "Focus on quality instruction" but that's not the outcome that ever happens.

I hate arguing on the Internet and this is supposed to be an election thread, so this will be my only comment on this, but my Memail is on, although I have other stuff going on right now so I can't promise a timely response.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 2:01 PM on January 18, 2017 [137 favorites]


It's kind of hard to believe that liberal "fake news" attempts did so much worse than the right-wing versions.

That is what the one "fake news" creator did say. Of course, the only thing we know for certain about him is he lies for a living... And that explanation flatters the very people who would be most angry about it being propaganda... Hmm...
posted by RobotHero at 2:04 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's kind of hard to believe that liberal "fake news" attempts did so much worse than the right-wing versions.

I can only speak for my Facebook feed, but a ton of fake news about Clinton was shared by my far left friends during the primaries and beyond. Granted, the source of the news was usually far right, but there were plenty of people willing to share some pretty crazy right wing shit in the service of discrediting Clinton.

To whit, the left is not immune to this shit.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:08 PM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


pocketfullofrye: we don’t really see a lot of women with actual authority in our lives, or in our media, so a woman in power to most people, on some level, is just the screen they project “mom” onto — because that's the only female authority figure they know.

Not the only one... there's also the teacher. The younger we are, the bigger the chance that our teacher is a woman. So the first female authority figures we get to see are mothers and teachers.
And what do they do? They are sensible and boring and tell us what we can and can't do. They use big words. They're no fun and they frequently stand in the way between us and things that we want. So we rebel against them.

And that's how many US Americans saw Clinton. Even if they did not see her as a lying liar who lies, they saw her as boring and no fun and someone to rebel against.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:08 PM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Further, as someone who worked in special education policy, what we found was that policy-makers who said things like "Schools need to get back to basics" implemented policies that violated the civil rights of disabled students EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. "Back to basics" was always code for "it's too expensive to educate disabled students." Literally ALWAYS. Part of the reason charter schools are so popular with those policy-makers is that charter schools don't have to accept disabled students.

DeVos, the ultimate privatizer, literally didn't even know the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act existed.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:10 PM on January 18, 2017 [54 favorites]


The solution to at-risk children succeeding is to provide the social services they need, fund them and staff them adequately (i.e., teachers should not be nutritionists, social workers, family therapists and nurses), and make it easy as hell for those children and their parents to access these services at times and locations that are convenient. You don't want those things actually in a school building? Okay, what about right next door? Because we want kids in school all day every day, it makes no damn sense to make parents (who are often working multiple jobs) schlep their children hither and yon, taking them out of school for an entire day, to receive the services they need to succeed.

Teachers are not trained to provide heavy social services. We're trained to teach. But you find a few rooms in a school building and staff them full time with people who do have specialized training and access to the right resources and that saves everyone money (that school building is already being lighted and heated), time, and it can save children's lives.

That sounds like a "common-sense solution" no?
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:11 PM on January 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


One thing I haven't seen a lot on is what's the deal with all the inagural ticket ads all over the web this week? I mean, they're all over the place and clearly aren't targeted at all. If your actual goal is to get people to attend the inauguration, you don't do it by paying money to push a web signup form offering an unnecessary ticket to people located 2,500 miles away with two day's notice. Nobody, certainly nobody in California, is seeing those ads and going "oh that sounds like a good idea. I'll sign up here and go buy a plane ticket."

So they're spending what has to be millions of dollars, these ads are everywhere, on some kind of leadgen scheme for the Inaugural Committee to collect email addresses for people who get suckered into signing up for an unnecessary ticket for an event they're not going to attend. Who gets those emails and what do they plan to do with them? And since when is an expensive ad campaign for the inauguration ok?
posted by zachlipton at 2:12 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's kind of hard to believe that liberal "fake news" attempts did so much worse than the right-wing versions.

The GOP has been priming it's membership for years now with an unending spew of bullshit and outright scams. When they started punting dodgy stories from even dodgier sites there was little to no thinking required, it was just click and believe.
posted by PenDevil at 2:13 PM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


The inaugural ticket ads exist because nobody wants to go. In comparison, the tickets for Obama's inaugurations were highly prized and fought over.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:19 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


the Brand New Congress group, founded by some former members of the Sanders campaign, was originally shooting for this March to have a slate of candidates lined up IIRC, one for every single seat in Congress that will have an election in 2018.

Well bless their hearts.
posted by happyroach at 2:21 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]




The Empty Trump Administration
There's no Trump appointee for any of the top State Department jobs below secretary nominee Rex Tillerson. No Trump appointee for any of the top Department of Defense jobs below retired general James Mattis. Treasury? Same story. Justice? It is one of two departments (along with, bizarrely, Commerce) where Trump has selected a deputy secretary. But no solicitor general, no one at civil rights, no one in the civil division, no one for the national security division.

And the same is true in department after department. Not to mention agencies without anyone at all nominated by the president-elect.

Overall, out of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation tracked by the Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service, Trump has come up with only 28 people so far.
I can't tell whether it could be a tiny bit of a good thing (fewer Trump tentacles into departments means he can screw them up less) or just the biggest sign he's in way over his head.
posted by zachlipton at 2:23 PM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


The empty Trump administration: only 28 nominations out of 690 requiring Senate confirmation.

Some good news for once, Trump is so incompetent there's not going to be much of a "Trump administration" for months, if ever. And most of the real work of a Presidential term is done early. We're rooting for incompetence at this point, because the alternative is effective evil.
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:24 PM on January 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


We kept hearing this about him during the campaign. Oh, once he finds out how much campaigning sucks and how hard it is, he'll bow out. He loves this shit. It's the ultimate peak of narcissistic gratification.

Count me in the "you may be right" crowd as well. At the end of the day, I find it as impossible to specifically predict, as anything Trump says or does. But I agree with a lot of the reasons Etrigan cites, as possibilities to him moving on. Though I don't imagine it in the form of any particular kind of despair or considered failure on his part. I think the space it would more likely come out of would be, "Whatevs, this is boring. These people are losers. This job is lame." I don't believe he'll ever formulate the concept that he's failed at anything. Rather, he'll just get bored, irritated, or will otherwise exhaust that thread of attention span, and go find the next shiny, ego-massaging thing to chase.

In the currency of ego trip material, I'd argue that being fawned over as the POTUS—exclusively in the isolated context of ego-massaging, mind you, which is all he really cares about—holds, at best, marginally more impact than the fawning sycophancy he can get as the head of Trump, Inc. And I honestly believe that DJT cares less about power for its own sake, than he does about people acknowledging that he's powerful. It's really just all about him.
posted by Brak at 2:25 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


I teach community college, so I see all sorts, including a guy who was writing extensively about his love of Tolstoy and Joyce what he was doing in my class I dunno. I've had a student who was placed into foster care after her father beat her brother into a coma and then raped in foster care. I've had a student who had half his ear bitten off after the student, a vet struggling with PTSD, got into a fight after being called a racial epithet. I have students who have immigrated from all over West Africa. Last semester, I had one student whose family had sent him here after the Ebola epidemic closed schools in his country. I also had one student whose mother kicked her out of the house for some crazy reasons and the student was spending her nights in the park. I'm forever asking students to copy x from y person because the student's money from financial aid hasn't come in. Our institution's attitude towards copyright laws is a big shrug and I just wonder why legal hasn't been all up in it, but one reason we happily chirp "Fair Use" whether it really is is because our students don't have money for books.

I mean I would also like to punch Sessions in the face, but DeVos I just loathe. Like, I know what I'm going to see from an ideological sack of shit such as she. More students telling me they can't submit the essay because they're missing half an ear or had to sleep in the park.
posted by angrycat at 2:30 PM on January 18, 2017 [32 favorites]


It's almost like we're privatizing K-12 education so costs can go down slightly for educating the majority of children (with a generous profit for the operators) while putting the most costly-to-educate children in publicly-funded, segregated... what could we call it? High-risk pools, maybe?
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:31 PM on January 18, 2017 [23 favorites]


In the currency of ego trip material, I'd argue that being fawned over as the POTUS...

That's going to be the issue. I don't think he's going to get it. His public stature is going to keep plummeting, everyone is going to turn on him. What was that song he kept playing at his rallies again?
posted by bongo_x at 2:33 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


On second thought, maybe it's a good thing he's not appointing people if this is who he comes up with. Trump’s Army Secretary Pick Was Once Accused of Punching Auction Worker:
Vincent Viola, the billionaire Wall Street trader Donald J. Trump has nominated to be the secretary of the Army, was accused in August of punching a concessions worker at a high-end racehorse auction in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., according to a police report and local law enforcement officials.
To be clear, this occurred in August 2016, not some youthful incident 40 years ago or whatever. Viola is a billionaire hockey team owner from the financial industry who goes around buying expensive racehorses.
posted by zachlipton at 2:35 PM on January 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


His public stature is going to keep plummeting

plummet from where to where?
posted by zutalors! at 2:35 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's almost like we're privatizing K-12 education so costs can go down slightly for educating the majority of children (with a generous profit for the operators) while putting the most costly-to-educate children in publicly-funded, segregated... what could we call it? High-risk pools, maybe?

The return of insane asylums.
posted by Talez at 2:35 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


plummet from where to where?

Cognitive dissonance, like all emotional processes, is subject to fatigue. As the energy to fight against reality wears out, more and more of his followers are seeing the swamp being rebuilt by his partrons rather than for their benefit.
posted by Talez at 2:37 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump’s Army Secretary Pick Was Once Accused of Punching Auction Worker

"Was Once Accused". It was extremely recent (6 months ago), and the man himself doesn't deny that he did it. That's some serious softballing in the headline.
posted by jedicus at 2:38 PM on January 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


"Laugh or cry?"-watch:

* Slow and Rocky Transition for Trump National Security Team
The Obama administration has written 275 briefing papers for the incoming Trump administration, but doesn’t know whether the Trump team has read them.

* Trump Budget Nominee Did Not Pay Taxes for Employee

* Hearing Briefing: Price Says Millions Won’t Lose Coverage
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:41 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Oh, and as a companion piece to Nero's fiddling, here is the world burning:

Earth Sets Temperature Record for 3rd Straight Year
The data show that temperatures are heading toward levels that many believe will pose a profound threat to civilization.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:43 PM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Regarding Trump's tweet about writing his inauguration speech at Mar-a-Lago, it would seem he was "writing" at the concierge's desk.
posted by vac2003 at 2:43 PM on January 18, 2017 [30 favorites]


With no one on the national security team and a president taking the weekend off, there's no way we get caught with our pants down this weekend.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:44 PM on January 18, 2017 [24 favorites]


Price Says Millions Won’t Lose Coverage

Ooh, linguistic analysis time. Is that "It is not true that millions will lose coverage" or "There are millions who will not lose coverage"? Because the latter is true but irrelevant; employer-provided healthcare plans aren't going anywhere and there are indeed millions who will not be losing that.
posted by jackbishop at 2:45 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Comey's behavior is really ... uh ... well, either he acted to actively influence the election, in which case he should be fired and sanctioned and spoken poorly of at great length, or he has some wicked deep game going on.

I wonder if maybe the reason he was willing to comment so much on Clinton's case was because he knew it would probably come to nothing. I mean, if he had a certain amount of respect for her as a professional and knew she hadn't done anything really bad, maybe he kind of took for granted that everyone else knew that too. (After all, he told us already that she hadn't broken any laws, and that there was no ill intent!)

Maybe he somehow convinced himself that The Letter wouldn't be a big deal, because everyone would understand that he was just dotting his i's and crossing his t's, and that nothing was likely to come of it, since that seemed so obvious to him...

After all, Comey once stood against massive surveillance and sleezy moves to bypass procedure, and did so when it required a backbone and might have cost him his job.

And maybe the reason he's been more tight lipped about the case against Trump is that it really is an "ongoing investigation" and one that he thinks might actually come to something. It maybe seems more significant to him.

Just pure speculation, but 1) Obama hasn't fired Comey 2) He risked his job to oppose what he saw as illegal surveillance under Bush and 3) He actually and very publicly cleared Clinton, even while chastising her. I don't think he's a total villain.

I also think it would look pretty weird for Trump to fire him, so if it turns out he is a responsible professional, maybe he'll get to stay in office long enough to actually complete the investigation of Trump.

Maybe Obama's relative calm is because he, like Comey, knows something we don't know.

I hope. This is all just hope.
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:45 PM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Yeah it's not as if anyone from, say, North Korea can read the same articles I read and conclude that this weekend is a good time for some light saber rattling to produce strategic uncertainty and show up the United States on the world stage.
posted by zachlipton at 2:47 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


And of course the next step after normalizing private schools is for the Walmart of private schools to go a-courting district-to-district with turnkey ALEC-provided model bills that allow them to set up local monopolies. And then you go from local, state and federal taxes being invested in your community to local dollars being siphoned off to EduCorp and leaving your community, further diminishing your tax base and really ramping up the speed on that death spiral that has so many towns and cities already circling the drain.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:48 PM on January 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


The inaugural ticket ads exist because nobody wants to go.

They aren't really tickets, at least, not for the screened and ticketed areas, which are distributed by members of Congress and are all gone. They're things that say "ticket" on them in exchange for your email, phone number and inside-leg measurement.

accused in August of punching a concessions worker at a high-end racehorse auction

Pshaw. The only way this would be an issue is if he punched a horse.
posted by holgate at 2:54 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


And, oh god, I hadn't considered the intersection of privatized schools and the conservative effort to allow companies to refuse service based on the owners' religious beliefs. That might be the most terrifying prospect of all.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:54 PM on January 18, 2017 [27 favorites]


Speaking of normalization, there's a FOX TV show about a billionaire who purchases a bankrupt city's police force and makes it all cool again with wacky gadgets.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:54 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm not caught up on the thread, but I have just had a thought and feel like sharing it. It may be an obvious thought but it's something I've never thought of and never read spelled out.

Y'all probably know Texas is gerrymandered to hell. Austin doesn't have it's own district. All it's districts are stretched out to cover wide swathes of rural territory. I'm in one of these districts and I'm about an hour's drive from Austin. It would take probably 2 hours to drive across the whole district. Three major population centers are included. One of Austin's districts stretches all the way to the suburbs of Houston, about a 3 hour drive.

So not only is this obviously an attempt to weaken the voting influence of Democratic voters, it also is real barrier to effective grassroots organization. I've recently found and joined an Indivisible group for my district (search for local groups here.) and it's definitely a barrier that we have people in multiple cities trying to coordinate and the actual dedicated people may not be located convenient to each other, etc.

Just something to keep in mind as the anti-gerrymandering campaigns get going.
posted by threeturtles at 2:59 PM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Following on the question raised earlier about translating Trump: Lost in Trumpslation: And Interview with Bérengère Viennot from the LA Review of Books.
Trump is not easy to translate, first of all, because, most of the time, when he speaks he seems not to know quite where he’s going. In my essay, I took the example of the interview he gave to The New York Times. He seems to hang onto a word in the question, or to a word that pops into his mind, repeating it over and over again. He shapes his thought around it and, sometimes, succeeds in giving part of an answer — often the same answer: namely, that he won the election. Trump seems to go from point A (the question) to point B (himself, most of the time) with no real logic. It’s as if he had thematic clouds in his head that he would pick from with no need of a logical thread to link them.

But here’s the other problem with Trump: even once you’ve understood his point (or lack thereof), you must still express it in your own language. You realize, at that moment, that you have written something very unpleasant to read. Trump’s vocabulary is limited, his syntax is broken; he repeats the same phrases over and over, forcing the translator to follow suit. If she does not, she betrays the spirit of the original piece. The translator has to translate the content and the style. So that is what I do, and reading Trump in French, which is a very structured and logical language, reveals the poor quality of his language and, consequently, of his thought.
posted by jokeefe at 3:01 PM on January 18, 2017 [20 favorites]


Um, light sabers don't rattle, they make cool wooshy space noises.
posted by valkane at 3:01 PM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


Regarding Trump's tweet about writing his inauguration speech at Mar-a-Lago, it would seem he was "writing" at the concierge's desk.

Well, if you owned a hotel and needed an inauguration speech, where else would you go?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:01 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Of 690 key positions requiring Senate confirmation…

Awaiting announcement: 662
Nominee announced: 28
Confirmed: 0
posted by kirkaracha at 3:10 PM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


That Inauguration Lineup in full:
  • Ted Nugent opens the proceedings with a medley of The Star Spangled Banner, Hail To the Chief and Wang Dang Sweet Poontang
  • Otis Webber plays popular tunes on his accordion, while his wife Sandra accompanies on the spoons
  • Lester Benson, 1958's hottest young impressionist, dazzles with his Tony Curtis, his Phil Silvers and his unique take on President Eisenhower
  • Several Rockettes
  • Some kind of plate-spinning act
  • The Aristocrats
posted by Grangousier at 3:12 PM on January 18, 2017 [23 favorites]


Did the dog and pony cancel?
posted by bongo_x at 3:14 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I believe Jackie Evancho is still performing.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:15 PM on January 18, 2017


The pony died. Very sad.
posted by Grangousier at 3:15 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


The new Secretary of the Army punched a worker in the face at the pony auction and the police made him leave before he could buy the pony. [fake]
posted by zachlipton at 3:17 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]






[If you couldn't tell all of that was fake, we're in even worse trouble than we thought]
posted by Grangousier at 3:19 PM on January 18, 2017


Whatever's happening in McPherson Square looks like a parody protest that needs reminding that you don't dress up as the fucking Klan even to make a point against them.
posted by holgate at 3:24 PM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Regarding Trump's tweet about writing his inauguration speech at Mar-a-Lago, it would seem he was "writing" at the concierge's desk.

Now just imagine where he's sitting when he types out most of those 3 AM tweets.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:25 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


In the 90s, when I was a kid I was very sick with asthma. I required at least one nebulizer treatment per school day, constant access to an inhaler, and lunchtime medications. I had fine motor control issues due to side effects of albutorol, and attentional issues due to being on prednizone constantly. I missed between 20 and 30 days of school a year.

Before I enrolled in in kindergarten, my school requested a trial without in school medications which resulted in a hospitalization.

My recess was spent taking medicine , and my PE was limited. I had no cognitive problems what so ever, but I needed attention. No school wanted to take me. I was a fairly behaved kid, had hit all of my developmental milestones was potty trained, verbal and female. But still, the school didn't want to put forth the effort. And in terms of disabilities Asthma is easy to manage.


They suggested segregated special ed because somebody just needed to listen when I raised my hand or said I can't breathe give me my medicine.

My parents got a scholarship into a private school because of. all the loopholes, testing and lack of commidations plus concerns of me keeling over.
I believe this would have been true now as well, and privatizing schools would just make it worse.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:26 PM on January 18, 2017 [17 favorites]




Awaiting announcement: 662
Nominee announced: 28
Confirmed: 0


You don't need to adequately staff a department in order to destroy it. This the "Burn it down" administration, all they need the appointmentd for is to do massive firings.
posted by happyroach at 3:29 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I have been thinking about the Russian "Troll army," discussed in the declassified intelligence report. It hasn't gotten as much attention as the "fake news" claims, but it's really interesting.

Not to re-open old wounds, but I remember during the primaries, Sanders folks were complaining that Clinton had her own astroturf army of internet supporters, in the form of the "Correct the Record" PAC. (Clinton said the point was to stop the spread of misinformation online). And then Clinton supporters pointed out that Sanders had hired Revolution Messaging, which sometimes does similar work, but according to Sanders he did not pay for anyone to post comments on message boards about his campaign. (I hope that's a fair summary of the debate back then, but my point is really not to re--litigate this question, I just want to remind us of the context in which we have discussed "troll armies" previously...)

I dug up a comment I made at the time:
Little bit playing Devil's Advocate here, but I'm not so sure that spending money to pay shills to argue on Reddit isn't a good use of campaign spending these days. I mean yeah, you could use that to buy TV ads instead. But 1) who watches ads on TV anymore? I'm unusual among my friends in that I watch most of my TV on a TV via satellite dish rather than a computer screen via internet, and even I DVR everything and fast forward the commercials. And 2) even if you do see the TV ads, if the message they are selling contradicts what you read on social media / discussion sites that morning, are you going to be open to that message, or are you going to write it off as a bunch of lies?

Social media / internet discussion is where it's at for forming and changing opinions these days. But it does make me uncomfortable that there's no distinction between "advertising" and "editorial content" such as it is, in comments sections. I wonder if there's a way around that, a way for sites to allow campaign staffers to comment and argue, but designate the account as being associated with the campaign, so people can take that into account. Like "You're just a paid shill!" "Uh, yeah? That's why my username has this asterisk next to it? But that doesn't change the fact that Ted Cruz is not a lizard person, and in fact has been medically documented to be a mammal."

Though enforcement would be really hard. And campaigns have volunteers as well as paid staffers. Do we have a problem with this is if it's done, even without being marked as "from the campaign," by volunteers?
Later we talked a little about the fact that some of us were volunteers for the Clinton campaign, stating our own real opinions on an internet message board, and how that would be different from being asked by the campaign to go onto internet message boards and state those same opinions... as volunteers. Would that be wrong, fake, astroturf? Why? (Something about being a long term member of the community rather than a drive-by?)

So anyway... part of me is thinking that Vladimir Putin just proved that this is indeed the way to win a modern presidential campaign.

I'm still thinking about "low information voters" and how the poorly educated are the people who voted for Trump, and how it's SO HARD to get information to them. But maybe a drip-drip-drip of the same (true) information repeated everywhere they go online could work.

And I've been thinking about how there are no publishing "gate keepers" these days on the internet, and that made it so much easier for Putin to get misinformation to receptive American audiences, who don't know what to believe, and so just believe whatever confirms their pre-existing prejudices... And how we've all been telling ourselves "don't feed the trolls" and "don't read the comments," but the low-information voters are the ones who DO read the comments and interact with the trolls, with no counter-messaging...

Maybe the thing that happened in 2016 is that this was the first election in the internet era.... Like we talk about how Kennedy won in part because he was more telegenic, and for the first time, the debates were televised? Maybe Putin won because he, former KGB guy that he is, was the first one to figure out what it took to win elections in the internet era. That TV ads are irrelevant now. That what you need is an army of people leaving comments on every message board and Facebook post and in every newspaper comments section...

That has some disturbing implications about the usefulness of the internet as a tool for debate and deliberation in a democracy, for sure.

But if "troll armies" are going to exist like it or not... I wonder if we might not be able to turn ourselves into such a volunteer army after all. I mean, not a "troll" army really, because we wouldn't be in it for the LULZ, but maybe... elves? "Look to the east"?
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:30 PM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


plummet from where to where?

Polling aggregate was around 40 pre-transition & it's fallen about 5 points from there since he got elected. So he's around -15 compared to +20 to +30 for other recent presidents.
posted by scalefree at 3:31 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


One thing I haven't seen a lot on is what's the deal with all the inagural ticket ads all over the web this week?

I linked this above.

trumpski is about to be humiliated at his inauguration and facebook helped him get elected so here we are again. 900,000 people are expected vs Obama's 1.8 million. It looks like donnie is about to be YUGEmiliated

Donald Trump inauguration line-up vs Barack Obama's: How the two celebrity filled concerts measure up (auto play)

Whatever your political allegiance, it’s fair to say Obama’s inauguration concert line-up tramples all over Trump’s, which includes YouTube sensation The Piano Guys.
posted by futz at 3:32 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's funny to see Big & Rich not even listed in most reports about the inauguration while 3 Doors Down and a runner up from some TV show years ago are. John Rich is not known to be a nice person.
posted by bongo_x at 3:32 PM on January 18, 2017


Yes, the power of code-switching. I only use my Texas drawl when talking to deep country people. I developed it doing mental health interventions.

ever GOPer on my list is getting to hear about how my cousin is a *Methodist Minister* in Washington DC who only has health insurance because of the ACA, and he'd be dead or bankrupt without it, and so it's very important to me and my ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY that we not get rid of anything without a clear plan that will ensure my cousin and people like him have just as good and affordable a plan so he can keep doing the good work that he does.

Yes, this is like me talking to my reps about how when my husband's plant closed and he had to go to work washing dishes but we had insurance because of the ACA. Of course I don't mention he worked in the OFFICE part of the company, and also worked part time in a university library while washing dishes.
posted by threeturtles at 3:35 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


this weekend is a good time for some light saber rattling

Light sabers whoosh. They don't rattle.
posted by Coventry at 3:37 PM on January 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


One thing I haven't seen a lot on is what's the deal with all the inagural ticket ads all over the web this week?

It's better aim than he used during the campaign when he emailed thousands of donation requests to foreign governments around the world in blatant contravention of campaign finance laws. So there's that.
posted by scalefree at 3:40 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


I wish people would stop comparing Trump to Nero. There's no evidence that Trump knows how to play the fiddle.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:40 PM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Light sabers whoosh. They don't rattle.

Shit. Need to get mine checked.
posted by bongo_x at 3:40 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Um, light sabers don't rattle, they make cool wooshy space noises.

Light sabers whoosh. They don't rattle.


So these light sabers? They vibrate woosh?
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:42 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Pshaw. The only way this would be an issue is if he punched a horse.

mongo_punches_horse.gif

My standard mental image of Trump at work as president is essentially Gov William J Le Petomane from Blazing Saddles. kirkaracha already made a Hedley Lamarr joke in this thread so I can't be the only one thinking that.
posted by peeedro at 3:44 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


plummet from where to where?

Right now his net approval is only at around -10 to -15. There's plenty of room to fall. The lowest net approval I can recall was around -90. (US approval or favorability for Saddam Hussein sometime in the mid-90s)
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:50 PM on January 18, 2017




Regarding Trump's tweet about writing his inauguration speech at Mar-a-Lago, it would seem he was 'writing' at the concierge's desk.

"I'm not wearing any pants. Film at 11."

kirkaracha already made a Hedley Lamarr joke in this thread so I can't be the only one thinking that.
You are correct, sir! In fact, I almost made that exact same joke.

posted by kirkaracha at 3:54 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Jeremy Scahill: Did Education Nominee Betsy DeVos Lie to Senate About Ties to Anti-LGBT Foundation?

> Erik Prince, America’s most notorious mercenary, is lurking in the shadows of the incoming Trump administration.

Blackwater Founder Erik Prince, the Brother of Betsy DeVos, Is Secretly Advising Trump
posted by homunculus at 4:02 PM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


Trump bragged about incredible photos of bikers coming to his inauguration. The photos are fake.

“I saw the Bikers for Trump — boy they had a scene today,” Trump said. “And they had a scene today where they had helicopters flying over a highway some place in this country. And they had thousands of those guys coming into town.”

“People are pouring into Washington in record numbers,” Trump also said in a tweet. “Bikers for Trump are on their way. It will be a great Thursday, Friday, and Saturday!”


...The photo from the Twitter handle @YoungDems4Trump showing sleeveless men in the foreground dates from at least 2013, likely from a 9/11 Commemoration Day event. It was also made into a meme labeled “100,00 bikers at Trump Rally. Not one arrest” in May 2016.

...The photo from Twitter handle @WikiFleekMemes claiming that 200,000 bikers were on their way to D.C. is also fake. The origin of the photo comes from a 2013 blog post on bikers on the Spanish website Hoy.


lol.
posted by futz at 4:04 PM on January 18, 2017 [33 favorites]


Trump bragged about incredible photos of bikers coming to his inauguration. The photos are fake.

I saw those and my first thought was I don't see how those could be real. It's winter.
posted by Jalliah at 4:08 PM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Nooooo not Tony Orlando!

Oh and seriously Mr. Moore, wtf.
“As an American, I am honored to perform for President-elect Donald Trump," Moore said in a statement. "I was a participant in the civil rights movement and have seen many positive changes and advancement in my 81 years of living in this wonderful country, but I know we must all join hands and work together with our new president."

Where to begin . . .
posted by petebest at 4:15 PM on January 18, 2017


Regarding Trump's tweet about writing his inauguration speech at Mar-a-Lago, it would seem he was "writing" at the concierge's desk.

Note the angle of the writing pad, held up in the air. Not so good for writing but excellent for blocking us from seeing the top sheet is blank.
posted by scalefree at 4:28 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


This Guy Tricked Infowars Into Publishing A Completely Fake Report On Trump

Markus Muir, a 27-year-old marketing professional from Glasgow, sent a direct message on Twitter to Infowars’ editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson claiming BuzzFeed News and CNN were due to release harmful footage of Trump.

The report, which has now been shared over 15,000 times on Facebook, directly quoted the messages which claimed the footage of Trump showed him using the N-word in a previously-unseen outtake of The Apprentice.

posted by futz at 4:37 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Fake motorcycle numbers. Heh. My husband called it. He told me it would turn out to be fake because "There is no way they are that organized."

This is going to be the fake Presidency and there will be a LOT of smoke and mirrors going on so we will all need to stay alert. Already I am seeing tweets about how "All the polls are fake. Obama is not that popular and everyone hates the ACA." So getting people to distrust the polls is key to the Trump administration because how else can he continue to rule unchecked.

It's going to be hard when millions lose their insurance and his approval ratings tank even with his base, but I'm sure the truth will be obscured somehow.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:47 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


The origin of the photo comes from a 2013 blog post on bikers on the Spanish website Hoy.

For those that don't know, the Spanish word "Hoy" (today), is pronounced "Oy."
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:47 PM on January 18, 2017


They vibrate woosh?

I don't think I've seen a depiction of one since Jar Jar Binks was invented, so my memory could be faulty.
posted by Coventry at 4:49 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Comey 'enthusiastic' about Bill Clinton probe in 2001, FBI memo says

Hillary Clinton campaign aides cried foul in early November after a smaller set of 129 pages of records related to the FBI’s investigation of the pardons were posted on the law enforcement agency’s website just days before the election. FBI officials said the records were part of a routine response to Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the Clinton Foundation.

The Justice Department inspector general’s office announced last week that it is examining that FOIA release as part of a broader inquiry into how the FBI handled various election-related matters, including public disclosures about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

posted by futz at 4:50 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Markus Muir, a 27-year-old marketing professional from Glasgow, sent a direct message on Twitter to Infowars’ editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson claiming BuzzFeed News and CNN were due to release harmful footage of Trump.

Yes, and it was disheartening to see how many fellow members of the so-called "Reality-Based Community" shared that fucking InfoWars link on FB and twitter just because it promised some dirt on you-know-who.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:50 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


FBI, 5 other agencies probe possible covert Kremlin aid to Trump

- FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ, FinCEN & ODNI
- Started months ago, before Steele dossier was known
- Focus is on who financed DNC & Podesta hacks


So when trump called for Russia to hack Clinton's email, during a debate, he wasn't speaking figuratively or speculatively at all - he was, as per the toddler razor, just revealing the straight-up plain truth?

It's so simple. And yet it still astounds me.
posted by Dashy at 4:50 PM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


This article from Politico goes into staffing concerns throughout the federal government prior to the inauguration. I learned a few new things, one of which is that DJT tends to create chaos when he bothers to involve himself, but much of it we know already. Which is frightening, considering the number of appointments remaining and the time left to make them before the offices empty out on inauguration day.

One little bit that was interesting is that people have thought about the notion that this weekend would be a good time to try an action of some sort against the US. Apparently, some departments will be staffed from 12:00 noon, so no lapsed coverage. I say apparently because there is no proof this is true and I can see the transition making such a statements on the hope others will believe it to be true, so not a good idea to try such actions.
posted by Silverstone at 4:53 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


As to Betsy DeVos what really frosts me is not only did she get the job because she was a big donor to Trump, she will be confirmed because she has given $818 million to Republican Senators. Tell me they are going to say "No" after that. It's too bad the poor children of America can't afford to donate millions because maybe then they would get some consideration in the Senate.

Yes, and it was disheartening to see how many fellow members of the so-called "Reality-Based Community" shared that fucking InfoWars link on FB and twitter just because it promised some dirt on you-know-who.

Meh. I didn't share a link with anyone but I certainly thought it was plausible just like I think it is plausible that there is a sex tape out there with underage sex workers. Am I dabbling in fake news or am I simply cognizant of the type of things Trump may have done.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:55 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's going to literally rain on his parade on Friday too. I say he'll be lucky to get half of the predicted 900,000.
posted by argonauta at 4:55 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]




kirkaracha already made a Hedley Lamarr joke in this thread so I can't be the only one thinking that..

[DeVos] will be confirmed because she has given $818 million to Republican Senators.

And she had the good sense to not be chewing gum on line when she met with Trump in the first place.

I really wanted to make a Hedley Lamarr joke too.
posted by Brak at 5:12 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


‘Learning Curve’ as Rick Perry Pursues a Job He Initially Misunderstood. Turns out Rick Perry had no idea what the Secretary of Energy does and thought he'd get to run around the world shilling for the oil industry, not manage a massive nuclear stockpile. He has gone from wanting to eliminate the department to forgetting it existed to being named to lead it to learning what it does. And so much shade from the Times:
For Mr. Moniz, the future of nuclear science has been a lifelong obsession; he spent his early years working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Mr. Perry studied animal husbandry and led cheers at Texas A&M University.
posted by zachlipton at 5:26 PM on January 18, 2017 [42 favorites]


As if government employees didnt have enough to worry about - the campaign to repeal Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness is ramping up, ahead of anyone actually receiving it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:28 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]




In these "unpresidented" times, NPR will live fact check _rump's inauguration.

While some conservatives try to be "post-factual" and play to emotions over, well you know, reality, it's heartening (and saddening) to see news turn to "hyper-factual" coverage.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:32 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump to name ex-Georgia Gov. Perdue as agriculture secretary: Fox News

God damn, the amount of chicken jokes this poor man must have to hear. . . .
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:32 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


That would be the Gov. Perdue whose drought plan was praying for rain outside the state capitol.
posted by holgate at 5:33 PM on January 18, 2017 [38 favorites]


From the new secretary of agriculture's wiki:

In November 2007, while Georgia suffered from one of the worst droughts in several decades, Perdue, along with lawmakers and local ministers, prayed for rain on the steps of the state Capitol. This came shortly after Alabama Governor Bob Riley issued a proclamation declaring a week in July as "Days of Prayer for Rain" to "humbly ask for His blessings and to hold us steady in times of difficulty."

I've long been in favor of a return to shamanism in american farming but always pictured it coming in the form of a Ag Secretary who would eat psychedelic mushrooms and transform into a bear under the waxing moon.
posted by Rust Moranis at 5:35 PM on January 18, 2017 [32 favorites]


That would be the Gov. Perdue whose drought plan was praying for rain outside the state capitol.

*flips a table*
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:36 PM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


I've long been in favor of a return to shamanism in american farming but always pictured it coming in the form of a Ag Secretary who would eat psychedelic mushrooms and transform into a bear under the waxing moon.

And fall to the ground under a withering hailfire of bullets from the Secretary of Education.
posted by scalefree at 5:38 PM on January 18, 2017 [38 favorites]


Ag Secretary who would eat psychedelic mushrooms and transform into a bear under the waxing moon.

And then be shot by Betsy DeVos on a bible-thumping charter school parking lot.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:40 PM on January 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


...and transform into a bear under the waxing moon.

...Governor Bob Riley issued a proclamation declaring a week in July as "Days of Prayer for Rain"

In this instance he should do it under a waning moon.
posted by futz at 5:41 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Damn you, scalefree. *shakes fist*
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:41 PM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


He he he! 2 minutes 2 slow.
posted by scalefree at 5:43 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


MetaFilter: So many great minds with the same dumb joke.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:43 PM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


To be fair, his other drought plan was to claim water rights over the Tennessee River by disputing the state line.

I bet they think he's a "chicken guy" because he looks like a chicken guy when in fact he is not a chicken guy.
posted by holgate at 5:45 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Rick Perry learns what the Secretary of Energy actually does, discovers he had no fucking clue.

You know, give Perry credit, he's at least trying to learn what the fuck his new agency even does instead of coming in with the intent to destroy it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:45 PM on January 18, 2017 [23 favorites]


Pretty much every place I went on my Michigan univ. campus today, the only thing people were small-talking about was The Bear and the Matron Fair.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:45 PM on January 18, 2017


You know, give Perry credit, he's at least trying to learn what the fuck his new agency even does instead of coming in with the intent to destroy it.

It is a mathematical certainty that he gets asked whether he still believes DOE should be dismantled during confirmation.
posted by scalefree at 5:47 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


Speaking of normalization, there's a FOX TV show about a billionaire who purchases a bankrupt city's police force and makes it all cool again with wacky gadgets.

Isn't that the plot of Robocop?
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:49 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


From that NYTimes article on Perry:
Mr. Perry is attuned to that vulnerability. The Energy Department was on the list of agencies he said he wanted to eliminate when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 — though he famously forgot its name during a debate. Despite what he called his “oops” moment, he stood by his call to dismantle the department, saying, “They’ve never created one bit of energy, the best I can tell.”

If confirmed, Mr. Perry would be at the table for one of the first big debates of the Trump presidency: what to do with the Iran nuclear deal that Mr. Moniz played such a critical role in shaping. Mr. Trump has called the deal a “disaster,” and Vice President-elect Mike Pence talked during the campaign about scrapping it.
Oh my fucking god. "We are so screwed" does not even begin to describe the situation. They've put a moron in charge of a very important and highly challenging department and I don't think he will ever be "up to speed." I hate Trump.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:50 PM on January 18, 2017 [33 favorites]


I suspect German has a word for that feeling you have towards your eventual organ donors.

Zukunftorganspenderzuneigung.
posted by spitbull at 5:52 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Dollars to donuts that Trump thinks Sonny Perdue IS Perdue chicken.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:52 PM on January 18, 2017 [17 favorites]


"I knew your dad. Tough guy."
posted by spitbull at 5:53 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


I think it'll probably be a "silent revolt of the paper-pushers", where civil servants quietly continue what they were doing previously, en masse, humoring the ignorant figureheads who are in charge. Whether they'll do the right thing, without leadership or oversight, is up in the air.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:54 PM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Despite what he called his “oops” moment, he stood by his call to dismantle the department, saying, “They’ve never created one bit of energy, the best I can tell.”

Yeah, that's how the departments work Rick. They literally manufacture whatever is in the title. You stupid fuck.
posted by diogenes at 5:57 PM on January 18, 2017 [45 favorites]


You know, give Perry credit, he's at least trying to learn what the fuck his new agency even does instead of coming in with the intent to destroy it.

I think he wanted to destroy it before he knew what it did and now that he knows what it does, he's probably like "Oh, yeah, this is something somebody really needs to do." Its easy to want to eliminate something when you don't understand it.

*rips out own spleen because I don't know what it does*
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:00 PM on January 18, 2017 [15 favorites]


Fake Donald Trump Is Maybe Not Your Best Marketing Plan
(After John Lewis' writings got a massive sales boost from Trump attacking him, author Isaac Marion came up with fake "Trump Tweets" attacking his new book, and half the internet thought they were real... equally funny and 'Sad!')
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:00 PM on January 18, 2017




The Department of Veterans Affairs only manufactures veterans' affairs when a pair of vets start to get frisky in the waiting room.

Next he probably thinks Treasury literally manufactures money. Oh wait. That's actually what they do.
posted by zachlipton at 6:02 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


FOX: 'Bikers for Trump' to Form 'Wall of Meat' If Inauguration Protests Get Out of Hand

I hope it's not as bad as the Bikers for Nader rally. Remember their slogan? "Unsafe At Any Speed"
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:03 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Re: Sam 'Sam & Dave' Moore: remember when Lee 'Southern Strategy' Atwater arranged an R&B inaugural show, and Moore presented George H.W. Bush with a 'Mr. Prez' guitar? Hold on, I'm comin'. It happened.
posted by box at 6:03 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


That's why they renamed the Department of War into Defense... it just wasn't manufacturing enough War...
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:05 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


To be fair to Sam Moore, the late Ralph Stanley cut an ad for Obama.
posted by spitbull at 6:05 PM on January 18, 2017




Coincidentally, "Wall of Meat" is also the name of the post-apocalyptic game show that will be popular two years from now in which families compete for a prize of seldom-seen food.
posted by mmoncur at 6:06 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


CTV just showed an ad for inauguration coverage and it freaked me out. The pic they used was Trump standing there and smiling, like really honestly smiling. I don't think I've seen that before.
posted by Jalliah at 6:07 PM on January 18, 2017


I think he wanted to destroy it before he knew what it did and now that he knows what it does, he's probably like "Oh, yeah, this is something somebody really needs to do." Its easy to want to eliminate something when you don't understand it.

Probably exactly this. It's easy to be all, "Big government bad! Cut it all! Eliminate Energy and Commerce!" when you don't know that Energy is in charge of our nuclear weapons, and Commerce includes things like NASA, NOAA and the Patent office. Government is hard and does a lot of hard and important things that can't be readily replaced with a meat cleaver. But try telling a Republican that until they have actual ownership of the outcome. If Perry is approaching the job seriously after learning what the fuck it actually is, good for him. He's not the most qualified for it certainly, but giving a good faith effort to do the job (and this is still giving him the benefit of the doubt, the NYT piece is long on tone and short on current Perry quotes) puts him miles ahead of Pruitt or Sessions or DeVos. "Not the worst nominee imaginable" is our bar here, and learning what the job actually is is the first step to clearing that low, low bar.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:10 PM on January 18, 2017 [13 favorites]


Whether or not Trump would quit: I don't think he ever will because quitting is for losers. I think we've not only got him for 8 years (thanks, gerrymandering and other crooked voting laws), we may end up with him being president for life and going after the Constitution to make sure he can. Whether or not he likes the job, he ain't leaving voluntarily--like he said, he can just make Pence do the work.

"I honestly don't even think he loves his kids in the way you and I understand love."


He loves his kids in the way he'd love a body part--at least the first three (and we all know which body part in one case).
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:11 PM on January 18, 2017


I found it! Smiling Donald. It's on the ad, right side, down the page. It's like sighting a rare bird.
posted by Jalliah at 6:11 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Keith Ellison just wrote an article about women and poverty for Glamour magazine and I really couldn't be more proud of my representative than I am right now.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:14 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


Smiling Donald is the creepiest non-photoshopped Donald.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:14 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think Smiling Donald IS photoshopped. I think someone was frustrated at all of the bizarre grimaces and decided to fix one of them. I don't think his face can actually do that.
posted by mmoncur at 6:16 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


and learning what the job actually is is the first step to clearing that low, low bar.

Great. Now you have me conjuring up the lowest bar in the world which is-- I imagine-- a line drawn on the ground so about .01 mm high. Think Perry can step over that without blowing up the world?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:17 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Smiling Donald is the creepiest non-photoshopped Donald.

He's scaring me.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:19 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Probably exactly this. It's easy to be all, "Big government bad! Cut it all! Eliminate Energy and Commerce!" when you don't know that Energy is in charge of our nuclear weapons, and Commerce includes things like NASA, NOAA and the Patent office. Government is hard and does a lot of hard and important things that can't be readily replaced with a meat cleaver. But try telling a Republican that until they have actual ownership of the outcome. If Perry is approaching the job seriously after learning what the fuck it actually is, good for him. He's not the most qualified for it certainly, but giving a good faith effort to do the job (and this is still giving him the benefit of the doubt, the NYT piece is long on tone and short on current Perry quotes) puts him miles ahead of Pruitt or Sessions or DeVos. "Not the worst nominee imaginable" is our bar here, and learning what the job actually is is the first step to clearing that low, low bar.

This is one of the small, very small hopes I have with some of his picks. That once they're in the job and talking to people, the civil servants, who know whats up that they will gain some understanding about why and how things happened.

This happened a lot when I was at University with our student union. I spent 4 years in office and working mostly with internal affairs and at least once a year we'd have people running on some sort of anti-I'm gonna fix things! These people don't know jack campaign.( Mostly dudes from business admin) They'd get in all raring to go. Then after learning about what actually goes on, the work that goes into it, they'd change their tune. It's a small hope I know. :(
posted by Jalliah at 6:20 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Smiling Trump looks like he's about to unhinge his jaw to swallow me whole.
posted by diogenes at 6:22 PM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Just want to add that the DOE also funds a lot of Biological and Environmental Research. I don't know if i want someone to bring this up to Rick Perry or not.

(can you just IMAGINE thinking that you're going to fly around the world making really cool oil deals with barons and russians and shit and then OH NO REAL SCIENCE and NERDS and OH GOD)
posted by armacy at 6:23 PM on January 18, 2017 [15 favorites]



I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds smiling Donald so weird. Also it's pretty bad when there has to be debate about whether the almost President is actually smiling or photoshopped.
posted by Jalliah at 6:23 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Meanwhile, in the world of a-list performances, The real Bruce Springsteen played a secret gig at the White House last week to thank Obama's staffers.
posted by TwoStride at 6:26 PM on January 18, 2017 [47 favorites]


Smiling

I prefer to call it "rictus Trump."
posted by spitbull at 6:28 PM on January 18, 2017 [3 favorites]




Also, I'd like to report that I snapped and joined a gym today so I can work on my cardio and strength in anticipation of the Fury Road lifestyle coming to us very soon...
posted by TwoStride at 6:29 PM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


The real Bruce Springsteen played a secret gig at the White House last week to thank Obama's staffers.

Chris Christie's tears could fill oceans
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:30 PM on January 18, 2017 [33 favorites]


I think we've not only got him for 8 years (thanks, gerrymandering and other crooked voting laws), we may end up with him being president for life

I disagree. Not only will he not be President by 2020, I would bet he may not even be alive by then.
posted by bongo_x at 6:33 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


That's why they renamed the Department of War into Defense... it just wasn't manufacturing enough War...

Ironically (or...?) we've been significantly more aggressive and belligerent since the name change.
And then George Orwell stole our idea: "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war."
posted by kirkaracha at 6:34 PM on January 18, 2017


Also, I'd like to report that I snapped and joined a gym today so I can work on my cardio and strength in anticipation of the Fury Road lifestyle coming to us very soon...

Fury Road if we're lucky. Maybe just The Road.
posted by diogenes at 6:35 PM on January 18, 2017 [16 favorites]


"President for Life" is the worst kind of defeatism. It's basically "do nothing, all is lost."
posted by zutalors! at 6:36 PM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


I'm calling my senators, but in can tell you that it is naught but screaming into the void. I have cruz and Cornyn. I feel like showering every time I dial. I'm pretty sure Cruz might have the ability to disincorporate, travel through the phone lines, come out through the receiver in his native worm form, and devour my soul. Those are some dark empty eyes in that human suit, is my point. And Cornyn is your garden variety Texas fundy moron, who hasn't listened to a woman since he was in diapers, but at least I'm pretty sure he was spawned in this dimension. Unlike Ted Cruz.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:36 PM on January 18, 2017 [34 favorites]


Fury Road if we're lucky. Maybe just The Road.
Yes, but Trump's resemblance to Immortan Joe (and similar attitude toward women) gave me hope that at least some badass motorcycling grannies will save us.
posted by TwoStride at 6:38 PM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Ooh remember when Ted Cruz ate a booger on stage
posted by zutalors! at 6:39 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


zutalors!: I think it's been established that it was a larva since Cruz is a mouthbrooder. If you zoom in far enough you can see the rudimentary eyespots
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:42 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]




FOX: 'Bikers for Trump' to Form 'Wall of Meat' If Inauguration Protests Get Out of Hand

By the way, only 20 bikers have their permits for the inauguration. There are 2 other groups of 5,000 each still waiting. So "Wall of Meat" is pretty much "A Slice Prosciutto Crudo" at this point.

FTA I linked earlier.

Many Trump supporters will show up, but it probably will not be on the scale that Trump purports. “Bikers for Trump” founder Chris Cox requested a permit for 5,000 bikers to help form a “wall of meat” against Trump protesters. According to Buzzfeed News, the permit was “still being processed and had not yet been issued.” The publication pointed out that only one other pro-Trump biker group has thus far received a permit for 20 people. The Travis Thompson Biker, another pro-Trump group, has requested a permit for 5,000 people, which is still being processed.
posted by futz at 6:52 PM on January 18, 2017


SecretAgentSockpuppet - thank you for calling even though you're putting your soul in danger of being devoured by the void.
posted by photoslob at 6:53 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


If you want to see a genuine the Donald smile look to the famous Trump-Clinton wedding photo. Donald and Melania are both smiling (she has her own perpetual Zoolander pouty model face).
posted by peeedro at 6:54 PM on January 18, 2017


the famous Trump-Clinton wedding photo

there are two Presidents in that picture.

:(
posted by zutalors! at 6:56 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


Donald Trump plans to bring back military parades

"Being a great president has to do with a lot of things, but one of them is being a great cheerleader for the country," Trump said. "And we're going to show the people as we build up our military, we're going to display our military.

"That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military,"
posted by scalefree at 7:10 PM on January 18, 2017


(can you just IMAGINE thinking that you're going to fly around the world making really cool oil deals with barons and russians and shit. . . .

Perry obviously should have known better. That's the Secretary of State's job!
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:15 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


"That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades."

Because nothing reassures and relaxes people like planes flying around Manhattan and the Pentagon.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:17 PM on January 18, 2017 [37 favorites]


SecretAgentSockpuppet, I have the "honor" of having those two gentlemen as Senators as well, and I called them both today, despite having similar fears w/r/t Cruz as you. Called Cornyn's DC office and left a message, but a friend advised me to call Cruz's Austin office to have a better shot at speaking to a real person.

Turns out it was the right move to call the local office. I spoke to a woman who was super -- and genuinely -- nice, and she took down my message to the Senator expressing my opposition to cabinet picks under consideration by hand and promised to pass it up the line.

Looking at the cloud of stank and flies surrounding Trump's picks and his latest outbursts and the increasingly hard to ignore odor of Russia connections or leverage over him, I wonder if we've already reached the stage where most of the people who voted for him will not willingly admit to having done so in public.
posted by lord_wolf at 7:21 PM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


Just want to add that the DOE also funds a lot of Biological and Environmental Research. I don't know if i want someone to bring this up to Rick Perry or not.

I really hope no one does. I suspect that those of us who have been/are/may be funded by DOE grants and fellowships (or who use DOE-funded general resources like the JGI/IMG stuff, or who do any work at or with any of the national labs) are better off if a Cabinet full of climate change deniers, idiots, and privatization zealots forgets that the DOE funds a lot of basic science research. Biofuels & bioremediation and so on are probably at the highest risk, I tend to assume, but it's not like I trust Rick Perry to understand what uses, say, SSRL and Brookhaven and Argonne have...

"That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington, D.C., for parades. I mean, we're going to be showing our military [...]"

President Scheisskopf indeed. Wow. Um.
posted by ubersturm at 7:23 PM on January 18, 2017 [9 favorites]


maudlin: Smiling Donald looks awfully familiar to Torontonians. (No, not Rob.)

The trick is to smile without using your eyes, like this.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:25 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


all I'm saying is that if we can just find his mouth larva and flush his wretched spawn children back unto the void whence they came, we can probably send him screaming back into the night--

Or hey, let's fucking unseat that son of a bitch. Cruz is up for re-election in two years. I have resentment and rage fomenting nicely against that wax-plugged asshole son of a bitch Cornyn across my own networks, but that means I've been neglecting Cruz at his own damn town halls. So who wants to hang out with me and think about ways to increase public resentment of that slimewallowing weasel of a theocrat?

Here's a strategy I'm working with, after some chats with my partner last night on the drive up to Houston. Half our problem is that pigheaded voters who don't have good access to information don't trust Dems to come out and help them, right? And god knows the national party don't give a shit about Texas, especially outside Austin. So it's our job to harry local Dems--state reps and house reps where we've got 'em--to go help pick up the slack in the rural and the small towns where folks feel abandoned by politics. Find out what little local places care about, and use our organizing momentum to demand that our blue reps raise a stink and make sure those things get fixed. Potholes, for example; I've been talking to a lady out in Crowell who says the state of her municipal roads is just shameful and she has to navigate around enormous potholes all the damn time, and her Republican rep certainly isn't doing anything to direct funds her way or see that her community is taken care of.

Spouse was pointing out last night that Rob Ford got elected in part because the man went out to roads and publicly filled in potholes that were pissing folks off and made sure that people associated his name with efforts to fix ongoing problems. We were talking about Flint, too, and thinking about the fact that they still don't have potable water there and for all the way Dems are calling attention to the issue it's not fixed, and the party as a whole hasn't thrown itself behind Flint to get the water turned back on. Bottled water is great and all, but it doesn't help you shower. Focus on the little folks with the problems, and they'll remember you for it and try to support you back--and what's more, they tell their friends. But it's not enough to say you have someone's backs, especially when they are dealing with a lifetime of pervasive messaging directed at them saying that the Democratic Party does not care about them radiated at them from all sides. You have to actually get in there and make tangible changes to people's lives.

Well, Texas has got to have some potholes to fix or some drinking water sources to mend. We need to start kicking up efforts to fix our small-town local stuff--not necessarily in the cities, either, but out in the smaller towns--and associate those fixes with local-level Dem organizers. We have Annie's List here in Texas working to field more candidates; if we can get out there associating those candidates with our grassroots efforts to bring change to rural communities' infrastructure and help them promote local change in their home communities, we can get their name recognition up and make them more electable. That will help build momentum.

Worst case scenario, we go out and help people and nothing happens. I am... more or less okay with that; means the kids will still have cleaner water or the roads will be fixed or the schools will have heat and cooling for those nasty hot summer days. And I don't think that folks showing up wearing Texas Democrats shirts or whatever and asking "what can I do to help you?" would go down too badly, as long as it was sustained and not condescending--not a single publicity stunt. I'd expect it to take a while to get moving, but I think something like this could have real change.

Anyway, that's a thing we are working on over here in Texas. Few folks and I--really more my spouse and a couple of folks I seriously respect trying to make change here, but I'm watching and trying to spin rhetoric to help--anyway, we're working on trying to get a grassroots group rolling up to do that, to harry our good hardworking Dems into making the local changes they can actually get enacted as well as fighting the bad changes they can't. We have to do what you can, when you can, and if local stuff is all we can manage now--well, let's roll up our sleeves and tackle the problem of public image and messaging.
posted by sciatrix at 7:27 PM on January 18, 2017 [46 favorites]



‘He Has This Deep Fear That He Is Not a Legitimate President’

In the days immediately after the election that shocked the world, POLITICO Magazine convened the group of people who know Donald J. Trump better than anyone outside his family. We asked his biographers the questions that were on everyone’s mind: What happens next? Will the unabashedly self-promoting and self-obsessed businessman transform himself into a selfless and dignified president of the nation he was elected to lead?

Now, after more than two months of Trump’s norm-shattering transition, we gathered Gwenda Blair, Michael D’Antonio and Tim O’Brien by conference call (Wayne Barrett, the dean of Trump reporters, could not participate because of illness) to assess whether Trump has continued to surprise them. Their collective wisdom? In a word, no.

posted by Jalliah at 7:28 PM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


There's no Trump appointee for any of the top State Department jobs below secretary nominee Rex Tillerson. No Trump appointee for any of the top Department of Defense jobs below retired general James Mattis. Treasury? Same story. Justice? It is one of two departments (along with, bizarrely, Commerce) where Trump has selected a deputy secretary. But no solicitor general, no one at civil rights, no one in the civil division, no one for the national security division.

It's not bizarre that he has paid more attention to the Commerce Department. Commerce determines what can and cannot be imported or exported. This is definitely an area that Trump (or his cronies) are really concerned about.
posted by Quonab at 7:38 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


‘He Has This Deep Fear That He Is Not a Legitimate President’

Most self-awareness he's ever shown. He's not legitimate. I'm glad on some level he knows it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:40 PM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]




He Has This Deep Fear That He Is Not a Legitimate President

Deep-seated insecurity explains a lot. People who are comfortable with their power, intelligence, wealth, and other attributes know that assuming them quietly is more effective than flaunting them; it's only those who doubt their qualities who need to constantly reaffirm them. Thus we have ridiculous notions like the parades to project our "military might", the constant assertions of his own intelligence or popularity, etc.

And the whole charade is self-defeating. One of Donny's great sources of bitterness seems to be that "Old Money" America never accepted him because he was a vulgar nouveau riche. Old-money WASPs are actually pretty cool with new money these days and hang out with the likes of Bill Gates or Mark Cuban. What old money is not cool with is the constant "look at me, I'm so rich" flaunting that he seems compelled to engage in. If he had just calmed the fuck down he wouldn't have to be so miserable.
posted by jackbishop at 7:51 PM on January 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


Feinstein signals she’ll run for re-election in 2018

Great. Just what we need. Another term of Feinstein. There really are other people in the state capable of doing the job.
posted by zachlipton at 7:51 PM on January 18, 2017 [6 favorites]


‘He Has This Deep Fear That He Is Not a Legitimate President’

aka "Sometimes Impostor Syndrome Reflects Reality"
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:52 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


Almost all of Trump's staged promotional photos look like that genre of "accidental Renaissance painting."
posted by spitbull at 7:52 PM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


As if government employees didnt have enough to worry about - the campaign to repeal Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness is ramping up, ahead of anyone actually receiving it.

Well, that just made my evening about six figures worse.
posted by Leslie Knope at 7:57 PM on January 18, 2017 [25 favorites]


I was already thinking a lot about Xi Jinping's Davos speech today, and just now saw that he spoke to the UN in Geneva about nuclear disarmament today - Trump is going to get played so hard if China's positioning itself to swoop in to fill some of the leadership role Trump wants the US to walk away from. Anyone Trump tries to slap a big tariff on, an uncertain EU, a post-Brexit England - if China rolls up and says "hey guys, still a lot of money to be made if you jump in the pool with us, let the US have fun with their high priced imports" while speaking the peaceful language of the UN, a lot of countries would probably take them up on the deal. I mean, just look at this bit from the Davos speech:
The point I want to make is that many of the problems troubling the world are not caused by economic globalization. For instance, the refugee waves from the Middle East and North Africa in recent years have become a global concern. Several million people have been displaced, and some small children lost their lives while crossing the rough sea. This is indeed heartbreaking. It is war, conflict and regional turbulence that have created this problem, and its solution lies in making peace, promoting reconciliation and restoring stability.
The big players in Syria seem to be stuck on "who do we arm, who do we bomb?" and China comes out talking peace and reconciliation like some old-school UN stuff. And in a world where Russia and soon the US are abandoning the bare minimum of talking like peacemakers, it doesn't even really matter that much if China is going all in on committing to it, they're the only player on that level making overtures.

China-EU relationships are just really interesting right now. China is still really pushing the Belt and Road initiative and it seems like there's a lot of interest in the EU, Trump seems to want to shoot us all in the collective foot on trade and handicap us at a crucial time, there's an economically weak Russia scrambling to pull itself up again but still stuck in the petrostate business and not innovating, everybody everywhere seems to be looking for some kind of sanity on the global stage - and in walks China with perfect timing, saying just the right things.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:04 PM on January 18, 2017 [61 favorites]


Has anyone seen the Frontline episode "Divided States of America"? It just released for free on the PBS website and it's really good/depressing.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 8:05 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


‘Queer Dance Party’ shakes and shimmies to send a message to Mike Pence

About 200 protesters shimmied and sashayed their way through the Chevy Chase neighborhood Wednesday night toward the house temporarily rented by Vice President-elect Mike Pence to protest what they consider his anti-gay views.

The group, which gathered for a “Queer Dance Party,” convened at the Friendship Heights Metro station around 6 p.m. and, blasting Beyoncé and other up-tempo tunes, danced its way to the house Pence has been renting until he moves into the Naval Observatory after the inauguration.

...Residents from the normally quiet, leafy streets came out of their homes to watch the display.

“I love this,” said Mary Ann Carmody, 76, who lives in the neighborhood with her husband, John, 80. “I love the world. It’s wonderful to see people on the street like this. We’re lucky we can do this.”

...The party began to disband around 8:30 p.m., with protesters dancing their way back to the Metro station, as several homeowners stood outside and cheered them.


Fuck You Pence!
posted by futz at 8:08 PM on January 18, 2017 [32 favorites]


“I love this,” said Mary Ann Carmody, 76, who lives in the neighborhood with her husband, John, 80. “I love the world. It’s wonderful to see people on the street like this. We’re lucky we can do this.”


Squee.
posted by zutalors! at 8:29 PM on January 18, 2017 [18 favorites]


There was an earlier link to this video, but only accessible if you have BBC Iplayer and an IP address from the U.K. Here's a non-geo blocked link to the BBC video "BBC Panorama -Trump: The Kremlin Candidate"

"BBC Panorama - Trump: The Kremlin Candidate?
posted by nolabasashi at 8:33 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


‘Queer Dance Party’ shakes and shimmies to send a message to Mike Pence

Oh! My friend was at that action. The videos she posted looked awesome
posted by aka burlap at 8:33 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


... to protest what they !?!?!consider?!?!?! his anti-gay views.

Boo, WaPo. Boo.
posted by mahorn at 8:38 PM on January 18, 2017 [26 favorites]


China is still really pushing the Belt and Road initiative

Oh my god it's Mackinder all over again, for the 21st century.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:51 PM on January 18, 2017 [1 favorite]




Jesus, jason_steakums, your comment scares the shit out of me, because I think you're right. Trumpists may have just ceded world leadership to China. Fuck.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:11 PM on January 18, 2017 [4 favorites]


Congressional Republicans Move to Gut DC Laws

Please, when calling your Senators and Reps, remember the nearly 700,000 American citizens who don't have any, but remain subject to their whims.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:27 PM on January 18, 2017 [27 favorites]


Oh my god it's Mackinder all over again, for the 21st century.

Heh, I was just reading a blog post that connects the two when I noticed your comment. It was written last summer, but this bit's prescient:
This is China’s plan for global economic and political primacy in the 21st century. The US response has been to continue playing geopolitics with breathtaking ineptitude: When you are number one, you ally with number three (Russia), against number two (China). Or better yet, get them to fight each other.

But when the US tries to contain both simultaneously, it pushes them together.
Certainly looks like Trump picked allying with number three against number two. Problem is, it seems like Russia picked "let's you and him fight." And on top of that there are the complications of some of Trump's key cabinet members and Congress not seeming to agree with him on the saber-rattling with China part of his plan, Trump's possible Russian collusion on the minds of Americans and especially those Americans on the Senate Intelligence Committee and inside the intelligence services, and the nonzero chance that if Xi and Putin both talk to Trump and play to his ego you'll get the chaos of Donnie constantly flipping back and forth on the whole thing.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:29 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


Jesus, jason_steakums, your comment scares the shit out of me, because I think you're right. Trumpists may have just ceded world leadership to China. Fuck.<

China has already stated that part of their climate change strategy is taking the leadership role now that the US is forfeiting it. Canada is starting exploratory free trade talks next month.
posted by Jalliah at 9:36 PM on January 18, 2017 [11 favorites]


Marco Rubio, whose state had the deadliest mass shooting in US history what, seven months ago? Who advocates for more state/local control and less federal? Pushing at the federal level to roll back locally-enacted gun control.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:45 PM on January 18, 2017 [12 favorites]


Why Donald Trump Wants You to Ignore Russia and Worry About China: His emerging foreign policy would divide the planet along racial lines.
The splitting up of the world into three great super-states was an event which could be and indeed was foreseen before the middle of the twentieth century. With the absorption of Europe by Russia and of the British Empire by the United States, two of the three existing powers, Eurasia and Oceania, were already effectively in being. The third, Eastasia, only emerged as a distinct unit after another decade of confused fighting. The frontiers between the three super-states are in some places arbitrary, and in others they fluctuate according to the fortunes of war, but in general they follow geographical lines.
But don't worry, that's fiction.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:47 PM on January 18, 2017 [10 favorites]


China's Africa strategy is also part of the equation.

In utter fucking incompetent amateurs news:
The troubled transition has stunned career civil servants and former officials who say no previous administration in recent decades has proceeded in such an incoherent way...

At the State Department, senior diplomats said there is little clarity on whether several top career officials will be expected to stay in their positions beyond Friday
"Gold standard" transition, says Sean Spicer. Gold like the Russian showers.

don't worry, that's fiction.

A post-Brexit Airstrip One seems more and more plausible.
posted by holgate at 9:52 PM on January 18, 2017 [7 favorites]


Most of this story is behind a registration wall but the headline alone is depressing & frightening.

Trump Transition Preparing To Scrub Some Climate Data From EPA Website
The incoming Trump administration's EPA transition team intends to remove non-regulatory climate data from the agency's website, including references to President Barack Obama's June 2013 Climate Action Plan, the strategies for 2014 and 2015 to cut methane and other data, according to a source familiar with the transition team. Additionally, Obama's 2013 memo ordering EPA to establish its power sector carbon pollution standards “will not survive the first day,” the source says, a step that rule opponents say is integral...
posted by scalefree at 10:11 PM on January 18, 2017 [14 favorites]


User ZenPop at DU: My Poster for the Women's March On Washington. ZenPop is the artist Mavroudis, who made the typographic Trump portrait that appeared on the cover of The Nation back in October. That's included in the post, along with an interesting and detailed account of the development of the Women's March design, "Liberty's Alternate Inaugural".
I completed the background by adding the Constitution with its prominent We The People... We The People are going to be the ones to keep this country safe through this outhouse of an administration. There's also some hope added (on my part) with the emoluments clause of the Constitution which I added to the bottom of the stands... and a reminder in the Presidential seal about who the majority in this election was for. 2,864,974. I needed that to be in there.
Includes a key to the names of the women represented in the poster. An awesome piece of work.
posted by valetta at 10:34 PM on January 18, 2017 [19 favorites]


Trump Transition Preparing To Scrub Some Climate Data From EPA Website

Not that I think the Trump Administration won't destroy or hide data, but it seems like a misleading headline if policy documents and memos are what's being referred to as "data" in the rest of the article behind the paywall, as in the excerpt.
posted by XMLicious at 10:39 PM on January 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


My local NBC news station stays trolling now. For example, they've taken to calling their inauguration coverage "fair and balanced." Then today one their news anchors doing remotes from DC this week used this question for "man on the street" interviews at the Lincoln Memorial: "Could Trump become the next Abraham Lincoln?" The segment was couched as being in reference to the announcement that Lincoln's Bible would be used at the swearing-in. Still, I'm wondering if they fully thought that question through.

Meanwhile, R&B singer Chrisette Michele is daring to go where Jennifer Holliday decided she couldn't.
posted by fuse theorem at 10:47 PM on January 18, 2017


but it seems like a misleading headline if policy documents and memos are what's being referred to as "data"

I think that it is a huge deal. Why bother if it is just memos? Wisconsin just scrubbed their DNR pages for any mention that climate change was caused by humans. These baby steps towards erasing the truth are insidious and should be fought every step of the way.

Not trying to be dramatic but this is another sign of fascism.
posted by futz at 11:02 PM on January 18, 2017 [21 favorites]


Trump’s Cabinet Is Set to Be The First in 30 Years With No Latino Member
The selection confirms that that despite pressure to add more diversity to his team, Trump’s cabinet will be the first that does not have a Latino members since Ronald Reagan selected Lauro Cavazos to head the Education Department in 1988.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:09 PM on January 18, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think he wanted to destroy it before he knew what it did and now that he knows what it does, he's probably like "Oh, yeah, this is something somebody really needs to do."

Maybe the whole point of this administration is to teach the Republicans a valuable lesson
posted by Apocryphon at 12:17 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


We know he doesn't smile regularly. But has anyone caught him laughing? I'm trying to imagine what he sounds like and I can't. But I can't bear much exposure to the monster.
posted by stonepharisee at 1:31 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]




Chuck Todd: Trump has ‘daddy issues’ and never laughs, ever

"Todd also opened up to Politico about the one thing that bugs him most about Trump — he doesn’t laugh and it drives Todd “crazy.” He said, “Do you know what? I’ve never seen him laugh.”

“He’ll smile, but he smiles appropriately. Watch him at the Al Smith dinner [the roast in New York City in October] … He doesn’t really laugh. He looks for others to laugh. It is just weird.”
posted by chris24 at 1:50 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Reform Movement Objects to David Friedman Nomination as Israel Envoy

"Friedman, an attorney who represents Trump on bankruptcy issues, supports and has funded construction in settlements and rejects the two-state solution. He has labeled the Anti-Defamation League “morons” for raising questions about a Trump campaign ad that some felt trafficked in anti-Semitic imagery, and called the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group J Street “worse than kapos,” Jewish inmates who assisted Nazis in their persecution of fellow Jews."
posted by Buntix at 2:39 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Am I supposed to be upset at the possibility of China becoming a dominant world power?

Because in my view the sooner the US gets out of that business, the better.
posted by spitbull at 3:03 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


The CBS anchor in Atlanta who rehashed Pizzagate is an InfoWars peddling conspiracy theorist who was previously (somehow unsurprisingly) employed at Russia Today.
posted by PenDevil at 3:11 AM on January 19, 2017 [38 favorites]


"Trump’s National Security Team Is Missing in Action: The delays and dysfunction threaten to cripple the incoming administration from the outset and raise the risk the White House will present confused or contradictory policies to the outside world. Without his team in place, the new president will likely be unprepared should an early-term crisis erupt abroad, or an adversary test the new administration’s mettle, said former officials who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations…. The absence of a national security advisor for Pence is all the more significant given the prominent role he appears to be playing in the new administration, including receiving a highly classified daily presidential intelligence briefing. Trump has chosen to receive the briefing about once a week."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:24 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]




Senate’s Closer Look at Steven Mnuchin Reveals Much More:

"In his revised questionnaire, Mr. Mnuchin disclosed several additional financial assets, including $95 million worth of real estate — a co-op in New York City; a residence in Southampton, New York; a residence in Los Angeles, California; and $15 million in real estate holdings in Mexico. Mr. Mnuchin has claimed these omissions were due to a misunderstanding of the questionnaire — he does not consider these assets to be “investment assets” and thus did not disclose them, even though the Committee directs the nominee to list all real estate assets.

He also forgot to disclose the $906,556 worth of artwork held by his children."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:09 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


The Trump inauguration is shaping up to be Washington’s smallest party in years

The overall low wattage of the weekend may reflect the president-elect’s drooping approval ratings; it may not help that he drew a mere 4 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia — historically low even in a strongly Democrat-dominated city.

...Bars aren’t expecting a wild night, either. Only 108 of them registered for extended hours with D.C.’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, down from 160 in 2013, and 280 in 2009, the first year that extended hours were permitted for inauguration weekend.... Not only do Washingtonians seem uneager to celebrate the Trump administration, many want to pretend it’s not even happening. Legetic noted a striking lack of bars and restaurants opening early for viewing parties this year. Instead, people are getting out of town. People are sheltering in place. People are sitting shiva.

posted by argonauta at 4:31 AM on January 19, 2017 [44 favorites]


The Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday approved the selection of retired Gen. James Mattis to be Defense secretary, setting him up to be confirmed by the full Senate as soon as President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated and officially nominates him.
Some of you might care to know about his role in Fallujah in 2004
posted by adamvasco at 4:45 AM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


I'm pretty sure Cruz might have the ability to disincorporate, travel through the phone lines, come out through the receiver in his native worm form, and devour my soul.

Fellow Texans, has anyone else talked to Cruz's staffers and had them refer to him as "Ted"? Does it sound super creepy to anyone else? "Oh, yeah, Ted knows it's important for working families to have health insurance."

*shudder*
posted by threeturtles at 4:57 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump’s nuclear wake-up call: "Confronting the reality of nuclear war has left past presidents deeply moved, even shaken. In his 1999 memoir, Bill Clinton’s former spokesman George Stephanopoulos described seeing Clinton emerge from his nuclear briefing, held at 7 a.m. on the morning of his inauguration.

“The man who would soon command the most powerful military force in the world emerged… silent and more somber than I’d ever seen him,” Stephanopoulos wrote.

Clinton wasn’t the only one moved. Stephanopoulos recalled that George H.W. Bush’s outgoing national security adviser, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, “slipped out of Blair House and into the street with tears reddening the rims of his eyes.”"
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:02 AM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


‘He Has This Deep Fear That He Is Not a Legitimate President’

That Politico roundtable of Trump's biographers that Jalliah linked above makes it clear we're in for a profoundly psychologically damaged president who's going to take it out on everyone else:
D’Antonio: He’s always kind of gaming the system—not, in my view, winning on the merits. And even his election was with almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent. So he has this deep fear that he is himself not a legitimate president, and I think that’s why he goes to such great lengths to delegitimize even the intelligence community, which is the president’s key resource in security, and he’s going to do this demeaning and delegitimizing behavior rather than accept what they have to tell him. {emphasis added}

Blair: I wanted to go back to one of the words that Michael used, which was “gaming the system,” which is so much a part of his dad’s—what Fred Trump did, what Donald has done. Looking for the loophole, pushing it as wide as possible, going through it. Donald did it through his whole career. His dad did it through his whole career with his use of federal subsidies and tax abatements. And now we’re seeing that he’s gaming the White House. He’s gaming, looking for the loopholes. The president is exempt from these conflict of interest laws. There’s an awful lot, it turns out, that are matters of tradition, of habit, of what we expect. But they’re not actually legally required—the tax returns, all of that. He’s gaming all of that. All of the things that people thought had to be done, don’t have to be done.
Trump's shaping up to be worse than Nixon without any of Nixon's positive aspects (ha!).
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:08 AM on January 19, 2017 [28 favorites]


Am I supposed to be upset at the possibility of China becoming a dominant world power?

I'm upset we're backsliding into accepting the realpolitik notion the world needs dominating powers in it at all. There's been plenty of domination and competing powers in the world since the start and that hasn't solved anything long term so far.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:20 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


THE MIND OF DONALD TRUMP Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency is another interesting, albeit long, read on Trump's mental character and state.
In The Art of the Deal, Trump counsels executives, CEOs, and other deal makers to “think big,” “use your leverage,” and always “fight back.” When you go into a negotiation, you must begin from a position of unassailable strength. You must project bigness. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after,” he writes.

For Trump, the concept of “the deal” represents what psychologists call a personal schema—a way of knowing the world that permeates his thoughts. Cognitive-science research suggests that people rely on personal schemata to process new social information efficiently and effectively. By their very nature, however, schemata narrow a person’s focus to a few well-worn approaches that may have worked in the past, but may not necessarily bend to accommodate changing circumstances.
posted by Buntix at 5:21 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]




Atlanta CBS-anchor Ben Swann: (article linked above)

“Keep in mind again, there is no proof here that there is a child sex ring being operated out of a D.C. pizza parlor. Investigators have already proven there is nothing to this story, right?” Swann concludes. “Well, actually, no.”
. . .
The report was also posted to Swann’s website, Truth in Media, which he created in 2013 and where he posts his CBS 46-funded “Reality Check” segments, many of which echo talking points from websites like RT and InfoWars that are rarely seen in mainstream media.

Recent “Reality Check” topics, which all aired at the 11 p.m. hour in Atlanta, include “Why ‘Health Issues’ Prove Clinton Campaign ‘Untrustworthy’ on Many Levels” and “5 Problems with CIA Claim That Russia Hacked DNC/Podesta Emails.”

Swann is also “crowdfunding” an episode about how “U.S and partners intentionally created ISIS,” through his Facebook page, which has more than 419,000 followers. He’s raised over $12,000 of his $55,000 goal.
Repeated emails and calls to Swann also went unreturned.


Lovely.
posted by petebest at 5:37 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Yes, I as well blame... *checks notes*... Chuck Todd?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Ugh.
posted by INFJ at 5:58 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump team prepares dramatic cuts: The changes they propose are dramatic.
The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies.

The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 5:59 AM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.
posted by Frowner at 6:04 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Guys maybe we all died and we're in hell now
posted by angrycat at 6:05 AM on January 19, 2017 [55 favorites]


As a non-government DC resident, Trump seem deadset on making my sarcastic "At least if he crashes the local economy, I might be able to buy a house" comments come true.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:05 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I might be able to buy a house" comments come true.

The only problem being that by the time that happens it's almost certainly going to be on fire.
posted by Buntix at 6:08 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, eliminate the Office of Electricity, eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and scrap the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
combined with:

https://www.wired.com/2016/06/fastest-supercomputer-sunway-taihulight/

http://www.publicfinanceinternational.org/news/2016/03/china-worlds-largest-investor-renewable-energy

== New theory: it's actually China have kompromat on Trump, and they are blackmailing him into throwing the fight by destroying the U.S.'s long term economic prospects.
posted by Buntix at 6:19 AM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


> Trump team prepares dramatic cuts:

I'm sure our wannabe Trump O' The North is gleefully taking notes (and receiving help from Republican ratfuckers) as he prepares to run against Trudeau (who, let's be honest, kind of sucks and will probably have exhausted most of this "I'm not Harper!" goodwill by 2019) in a campaign that will most assuredly follow Trump's lead.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:21 AM on January 19, 2017


I know you all know this but...

THOSE ARE PEOPLE'S JOBS. I thought Trump was going to bring us more jobs, not eliminate the middle class jobs we already had?
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:22 AM on January 19, 2017 [51 favorites]


In the absence of more jobs, a lot of people will settle for other people they don't like not having jobs either.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:24 AM on January 19, 2017 [32 favorites]


I thought Trump was going to bring us more jobs, not eliminate the middle class jobs we already had?

To Trump's flavor of the Right, government jobs don't really exist. They're just a place for people who aren't good enough to make it in the Real World to leech blood from the Job Creators.
posted by Etrigan at 6:24 AM on January 19, 2017 [23 favorites]


It's not even just government jobs. Those agencies give grants to working scientists, educators, artists and researchers all over the country. Any college or university town runs on that money.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:27 AM on January 19, 2017 [53 favorites]


Guys maybe we all died and we're in hell now

Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:28 AM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.

Crap. A close family member works for the NEH.
posted by octothorpe at 6:28 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


He also forgot to disclose the $906,556 worth of artwork held by his children."

There's always so much talk about welfare, food stamp, and SSDI fraud but it turns out it's actually much easier to scam your way into a cabinet position than it is to get public assistance of any kind.

Trump's writing pad, as predicted by Babylon 5.

I was picturing Stephen J. Cannell except with just all blank paper.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:28 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Any college or university town runs on that money.

Even worse.
posted by Etrigan at 6:29 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Those agencies give grants to working scientists, educators, artists and researchers all over the country.

It's also signalling that it's going to be a hostile environment for any sort of renewables industry (and for those involved in art and humanity), so there's a good chance even businesses with no income from the bodies and grants involved will move somewhere more clement.

[also, linked to the wrong supercomputer above, was meant to be the forthcoming exascale one: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-exascale-super-supercomputer]
posted by Buntix at 6:32 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Even worse.

Tell that to the people who run the restaurants the student and faculty eat at. Or the maintenance workers who clean the buildings. (Oh snap, those are union jobs. Okay, well fuck them.) The bus drivers who transport people to campus.

These people are so short-sighted. I literally don't understand how they could be this evil. My entire worldview is centered around humans being generally fairly awful and I still can't wrap my mind around it.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:33 AM on January 19, 2017 [45 favorites]


The Legal Services Corporation funds just about every legal non-profit in the country.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:33 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


It's not even just government jobs. Those agencies give grants to working scientists, educators, artists and researchers all over the country. Any college or university town runs on that money.

It's an old fashioned patronage campaign; the promise of jobs was to people who voted for him, not college towns and DC and its suburbs. Whether he'll deliver manufacturing jobs to the rust belt remains to be seen, but he can definitely take away jobs from the people who opposed him.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:33 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


How can he/his cronies be so evil? It's mind-boggling
posted by aka burlap at 6:33 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


haha, jinx, soren_lorensen
posted by aka burlap at 6:34 AM on January 19, 2017


The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.

DIZ-NEE
HISTORICAL PARK
SORRY, BUT THERE'S
PROFIT TO BE HAD.

posted by Talez at 6:35 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


These people are so short-sighted. I literally don't understand how they could be this evil. My entire worldview is centered around humans being generally fairly awful and I still can't wrap my mind around it.

Trump's cabinet is literally the Legion of Doom.
posted by Talez at 6:37 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Those agencies give grants to working scientists, educators, artists and researchers all over the country. Any college or university town runs on that money.

Yes, and undermining their viability as potential points of coalescence for any resistance to come is entirely intentional.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:37 AM on January 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


Eliot Cohen, L.A. Times: Should the U.S. still carry a ‘big stick’?

In his unique way, Trump is forcing a question that probably should have been up for debate 25 years ago: Should the United States stay a global power that maintains world order — including by force of arms, what Theodore Roosevelt famously called “the big stick”?…It is worth keeping some history in mind as we decide whether to reject the posture that the United States has maintained abroad for more than half a century.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:37 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I owe my reasonably comfortable middle class childhood to the NEH. (Ironic considering my dad is a libertarian, but he happily takes the research grants.)

Though maybe if the US hadn't been a favorable environment for higher education and research, we would have stayed in Canada and I'd be cringing from across the border instead right now.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:38 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's an old fashioned patronage campaign; the promise of jobs was to people who voted for him, not college towns and DC and its suburbs. Whether he'll deliver manufacturing jobs to the rust belt remains to be seen, but he can definitely take away jobs from the people who opposed him.

They're governing as an occupying army, their enemies are liberal constituents.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:38 AM on January 19, 2017 [44 favorites]


Yes, and undermining their viability as potential points of coalescence for any resistance to come is entirely intentional.

Well, it'll be giving people a whole lot more time to protest without having to work out the PTO ahead of time.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:39 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Any college or university town runs on that money.

Yes. That's the point.

Full disclosure: I just got paid for reviewing proposals by the NEH. I'm donating my honorarium to Planned Parenthood.
posted by spitbull at 6:41 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Oh yeah the cut to LSC is huge, if it happens. The help funding legal non-profits gets disabled people benefits, it keeps people in their houses; it's another area where a cut will probably result in people dying for a fairly trivial amount of savings.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:41 AM on January 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


This is scary. Ostensibly on trade and jobs and whatnot.

A bit about the workers. Granted, it’s not all workers, not all Americans, but definitely a segment of workers hurt particularly by China trade. And I just don’t think policymakers were thinking about them. What could we have been doing to help those workers? What could we be doing now to help those workers deal with that trade shock?

As you mentioned a couple of minutes ago, kind of what works to the benefit of the individual workers and to their communities and to the economy as a whole is when you lose your job in a factory because it shuts down as a result of competition with China that you kind of quickly find a job somewhere else. And if there’s not a job in your local area, maybe you move. So why hasn’t that happened?

You can think about a set of policies that the United States has in place that work against labor mobility. One is long-term unemployment insurance. And I don’t want to sound like I’m arguing against unemployment insurance, but you’ve got to keep in mind that what long-term unemployment insurance does is it allows you to stay out of the labor market for an extended period of time. Instead of the usual six months that unemployment insurance provides when the economy is undergoing a particularly tough time, that can get extended out to 24 months. What we know from abundant research in labor economics is the longer you spend out of the labor force, the harder it is for you to find a new job.

So there – you want to find a way of helping workers who have been hit hard compensate for their lost income, but there’s a perverse impact of long-term unemployment insurance in terms of the scarring effects of being out of work.

Now, think then about other policies we have in place, Social Security Disability Insurance. You say, well, what does that have to do with being unemployed? When we had welfare reform in 1996 and the U.S. made many of the means-tested entitlement programs have a lifetime cap, what we had in effect was the workers began to use Social Security Disability Insurance as something like part of the safety net. When individuals lose their jobs, they’re more likely to take up SSDI. When communities are hit harder by trade with China or other adverse shocks, you see larger increases in the share of workers who are on disability insurance.

What a lot of research has shown is that once workers go on disability, they tend to stay on disability for the rest of their working lives. And that means, as I just mentioned, the longer you’re out of the labor force, the harder it is for you to be reincorporated.

So those are two policies right there which are operating as kind of part of the US social safety net which are working against labor market adjustment. And then we can add lots of things to the list – the increasing in dual income households, the fact that many of the communities that are hit hard by the China shock are going to see declines in housing prices; and with more households underwater in their mortgages, moving may be more complicated. All those work to inhibit mobility.

posted by infini at 6:41 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Remember when Obama reached out to Republicans in 2008? Remember when all the media talked about was whether Democrats could get bipartisan buy in from Republicans?

You don't hear a word of that now, there's no suggestion that Republicans must get bipartisan agreement from the 53% of the country that didn't vote for Trump.

The very idea that Republicans would ask what Democrats want is laughable on its face. They don't care. They're going to enact a punitive agenda specifically designed to hurt Democrats as much as possible, personally, individually, every Democratic voter in the country. And it's OK, no one in the media says a damn word, because they're our rightful rulers no matter how extreme, short sighted, self defeating, destructive to the country and divisive their agenda is.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [65 favorites]


Oh, my God. I just remembered one of my failed writing projects from ten years back. (Never found a publisher.) It was a kid's book about an all-powerful despot named Crump. (Really, a coincidence. I have written satires of Trump, this was not one of them.)

It began:

On a peak above Goodsville, in a hat on a stump,
There once lived a grump named Oliver Crump.
From on top of his hat with his thing-a-ma-probe
He would peep in on people all over the globe.

Then from out his loudspeaker he squeakily squawked;
To those down below, he said, "Frankly, I'm shocked."
"Good people of Goodsville," exclaimed the news bearer.
"I've the tallest of truths!" The folks shook in terror.

This sounds like Trump tweeting from his tower. My wife made up some nice illustrations. . . I'll have to look them up.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


MacKenzie poem possibly a hoax? (Written by a friend, the inconsistencies are possibly worth chasing down.)
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:46 AM on January 19, 2017


Ultimately, this country will be less competitive if we gut research funding. People don't understand this. They think "oh, well if we don't have government funding it, industry will step in". That's totally wrong.

Industry relies indirectly on universities and research institutes for basic science research - where you are trying just to understand something, not to turn it into a treatment or a product. Basic science research requires having a number of people looking at a thing. Some of their research won't go anywhere. Most of it will never be easily monetizable. Funding many labs doing indirectly profitable stuff isn't what industry is ever going to do, not least because it's really fucking expensive.

Industry relies on a pool of trained scientists. Those people get their research experience in the university system. No grants, no research; no research, no training. Corporations can eat a certain amount of training costs, but part of what they're assuming is that someone who has their PhD, postdoc, etc has had comprehensive training in their area - the kind you get at a university from the very start of your undergrad, with lab rotations, access to seminars, journal clubs, etc.

It's not even clear that industry has the money to support a comparable research infrastructure. Buildings and support staff and research safety and all that stuff are expensive. Corporate labs do this stuff on a much smaller scale because they can lean on the large research entities to do most of it.

NIH and NIDCR went through this "let's be all translational, basic is for losers" phase up until a couple of years ago where the emphasis was on proposals for treatments and clear moves toward treatments. What happened? After a few years of this, they had to change their approach because so little basic research was getting proposed and that meant that they'd, you know, run out of things to translate in the future.

This all leaves aside the fact that state supported research is disinterested (more or less) in a way that corporate research never will be, at least not at scale. (Small corporate contracts are a bit different, especially materials science ones, because they really do want to know if, eg, an implant is going to fall out of a tooth after three months.)

It's just dumb. Basic sciences research (and the types of translational and clinical research conducted in universities) are essential to industry.

People are dumb as shit and I am starting to feel like whatever, humans don't deserve the world. It's hard to fix all the world's problems, but it's not hard to ameliorate a good percentage of them. The world could easily be not perfect but basically bearable, but people are dumb as shit and mean as shit, and I know that I'll go down in flames when society does but I am getting resigned to that.
posted by Frowner at 6:48 AM on January 19, 2017 [107 favorites]


And it's OK, no one in the media says a damn word, because they're our rightful rulers no matter how extreme, short sighted, self defeating, destructive to the country and divisive their agenda is

I mean, I don't want to say that it's because of the perception of the parties' core racial / socioeconomic identities, but ... I don't want to not say that, either.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:49 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


MacKenzie poem possibly a hoax? (Written by a friend, the inconsistencies are possibly worth chasing down.)

This was never real. Scroll up to the discussion about it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:50 AM on January 19, 2017


If the AEI free-market zealots go after SSDI and push policies that tell the underemployed of middle America that no, they won't get jobs delivered to their door... well, there are a lot of ardent redhatters on SSDI, who've been radicalised by living on a pittance with a lot of free time and the internet at their disposal. And guns.
posted by holgate at 6:54 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


What a lot of research has shown is that once workers go on disability, they tend to stay on disability for the rest of their working lives.


Yes. BECAUSE THEY ARE DISABLED.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:58 AM on January 19, 2017 [44 favorites]


Yes. BECAUSE THEY ARE DISABLED.

So, this is a variable. I have a friend who was receiving SSI disability benefits for a mental health problem. She is doing a lot better now, and is able to work full-time, without the need for these benefits. Which is great. We should do a better job of helping people get off disability where available. Many times, it's not possible.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:00 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


The changes they propose are dramatic.

This 9/11 will stretch out over a couple of years.

Y'all are praying, right? Because outside of ill-advised self-medication that may be the final station.

I talked with a guy from DC
He said _rump wouldn't matter to me
"He'll get et by the works,
An ocean of quirks"
But this weekend he's planning to flee.
posted by petebest at 7:00 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


One of Donny's great sources of bitterness seems to be that "Old Money" America never accepted him because he was a vulgar nouveau riche. Old-money WASPs are actually pretty cool with new money these days and hang out with the likes of Bill Gates or Mark Cuban.

Like so many other things, Trump's conception of the old-money Establishment sneering at him seems stuck somewhere around 1965, 1970 at the latest. The lockjaw East Coast WASP Establishment mode of power long ago yielded to the neoliberal meritocracy — which, if equally hegemonic in its economic effects, is at least demographically more diverse.

This elite has no problem making room for hip-hop stars, celebrity filmmakers, and (as you point out) various ascendant Silicon Valley types, so long as nothing they do challenges the regnant neoliberal consensus. To me, it truly is one of the scariest aspects of Trump's interiorscape that so many of the sources of his fear and loathing faded from the scene long ago, and yet he'll burn everything we hold dear to the ground in the futile attempt to score a point on them.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:04 AM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


They're absolutely coming after SSDI, they are already. It's "back door welfare". Theres rules coming into effect already that will dramatically curtail how easy it is to get approved, and all new funding is earmarked for reviewing cases to see if people are still disabled and kicking them off the rolls, not reducing the million person long line of people filing for the first time. It's going to get worse and worse the longer Republicans are in charge.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:05 AM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


this is a variable

I realize this but my point is, the vast majority of people who ever get approved for SSDI (which is different than SSI) in the first place are really disabled. They stay on it because they are actually disabled, not because SSDI is a sweet, free ride.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:11 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


So this has been stuck in my head for the past year as anthem for YouKnowWho, courtesy of Mr. Steve Earle.

Snake Oil

Ladies and gentlemen, attention please
Come in close so everyone can see
I got a tale to tell
A listen don't cost a dime
And if you believe that we're gonna get along just fine

Now I've been travelin' all around
I heard trouble's come to your town
I've got a little somethin'
Guaranteed to ease your mind
It's call snake oil y'all
It's been around for a long, long time

Well your crops will burn if it don't rain soon
Ain't seen a drop since the tenth of June
Well I can open up the sky
People have no fear
If you ain't impressed yet, tell me what you want to hear

Well you lost your farm so you moved to town
Get a job, they shut the factory down
Now you sit around all day long feelin' sad and blue
You need snake oil y'all, tell you what I'm gonna do, step right up

I can heal the sick and I can mend the lame
And the blind shall see again, it's all the same

Well ain't your President good to you
Knocked 'em dead in Libya, Grenada too
Now he's taking that show, a little further down the line
'Tween me and him, people, you're gonna get along just fine, hup

It's called snake oil y'all
Snake oil y'all
Ah snake oil y'all
Called snake oil y'all
It's called snake oil y'all
It's been around for a long long time
posted by yoga at 7:16 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


maybe if the US hadn't been a favorable environment for higher education and research, we would have stayed in Canada and I'd be cringing from across the border instead right now

Where will be a favourable environment for higher education and research among the English-speaking countries now? UK HE is screwed thanks to Brexit. Australia has been cutting back for years. The US is about to eliminate federal bodies that have been handing out research grants for half a century. Canada, New Zealand and Ireland can't carry the entire English-speaking world.

If the prominent role of the English-speaking world in knowledge-creation suffers, learning English is going to look a lot less attractive, as the rest of the world turns its attention elsewhere. Yet another sign that Trump and his allies are handing China the status of Top Nation on a plate. It's a fillip for the EU, too, if it can ride out the next few years of Brexit/Trump disruption.
posted by rory at 7:16 AM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


I've been thinking a lot about this passage from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas lately:

"So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

Until very recently I never really thought of any period in my life as a "high-water mark" for the sorts of things I value and believe in, but I have a feeling that I will be able to look back on Trump's election as the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back, leaving a lot of wreckage in its wake.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:18 AM on January 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


I have a really hard time with crowds, but thanks to this new level of ATROCIOUS HORRIFIC PEOPLE- and COUNTRY- and PLANET-HATING BULLSHIT I'm no longer on the fence about attending the march on Saturday.

I'm an atheist, but: God help us.
posted by argonauta at 7:20 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


It's going to get worse and worse the longer Republicans are in charge.

But what about my Universal Basic Income?!?
posted by petebest at 7:23 AM on January 19, 2017


I have a friend who was receiving SSI disability benefits for a mental health problem. She is doing a lot better now, and is able to work full-time, without the need for these benefits. Which is great. We should do a better job of helping people get off disability where available.

I receive (non-goverment) disability because of mental health problems, and assertions like this one mean that I can never truly feel ok. I can't work not because I'm sad and useless all the time, but because I can't tell when the next sad and useless spell is going to render me sad, useless, and unable to function. So steady employment is beyond me, and disability means I won't drag down my family as much with my sadness and uselessness. But I know I'm not alone in being the only depressed person who, in some ways, feels worse when I feel better because then I wonder if I'm just lazy instead of disabled.

Fortunately, another depressive spell usually comes along soon after, so yay benefits!
posted by bibliowench at 7:24 AM on January 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


Joe Lieberman is now a Trump lobbyist. Because of course he is.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:24 AM on January 19, 2017 [26 favorites]


Am I supposed to be upset at the possibility of China becoming a dominant world power?

Because in my view the sooner the US gets out of that business, the better.


It's a bit upsetting in that Chinese hegemony will probably be even worse
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:26 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


and assertions like this one mean that I can never truly feel ok.

I don't mean to be fighty, but one person's experience is not another's, and I wasn't asserting that my friend is like you, or that you are like her. Some people can and do need temporary disability. Temporary is sometimes a decade. Others can't go back to work full-time.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:26 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh fuck him. (uh, liberman that is)
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:27 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Were the moment not so fraught with high political drama, it might have felt like a college reunion. Lieberman was returning to his old stomping grounds on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon to offer what bipartisan cover he could for Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary.

“I’ve known Joe a long time,” Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, told me on Wednesday. “He’s a good guy. We served together.”

Lieberman was there to serve as a bridge across the aisle. He’s now a lobbyist, who works for a law firm retained by Trump.
Haha.

FML.
posted by notyou at 7:27 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Joe Lieberman is now a Trump lobbyist. Because of course he is.

it-it- the f - it -flam - flames

FLAMES

on the side of my face

breathing-breathl- heaving breaths. Heaving breaths... Heaving

posted by delfin at 7:28 AM on January 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


But what about my Universal Basic Income?!?

UBI was always a neoliberal project. If it ever gets implemented anywhere, watch how much of the stipend is immediately reabsorbed by the private sector as fees for basic services that used to be a matter of public provision by right and custom.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:29 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Elijah Cummings: ‘If the public knew what Congress knows’ they would boycott the inauguration too

It is too bad nobody in Congress wants to be a leaker.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:29 AM on January 19, 2017 [34 favorites]


I looked, but didn't see it posted, but just in case you missed it:

Pod Save America interview with Obama.

I have a feeling I'm going to be listening to this a lot over the coming days/weeks/months/years.
posted by Tevin at 7:29 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


I wonder if anybody has asked Obama how he has been sleeping lately.
posted by notyou at 7:31 AM on January 19, 2017


But what about my Universal Basic Income?!?

What I want to know is what about my job building the wall Trump promised me during the campaign?
posted by mikelieman at 7:39 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's a bit upsetting in that Chinese hegemony will probably be even worse

On the one hand not even lip service to freedom, on the other hand they actually seem to live in the real world as regards climate change and science and stuff.
posted by Artw at 7:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


MacKenzie poem possibly a hoax? (Written by a friend, the inconsistencies are possibly worth chasing down.)

As above, it's certainly not true that there is any official connection to the inauguration, but...

The stuff about Mac/Mc being Scottish/Irish just isn't true. Mc is just an abbreviation (and apparently one often applied for people coming through Ellis Island to save ink). The highland/lowland capitalisation thing strikes me as a bit dubious as well, the official (as used by the clan) form is with the lower 'k' regardless of which branch of the family. My hunch is that if it was changed it was to 'Scottify' it more (as MacK would technically be correct as it's son-of-Kenzie).

Also, there's links to some of this other works on the actual page for the inaugural one (most popular section - bottom right), e.g. http://classicalpoets.org/for-elizabeth-and-other-poetry-by-joseph-charles-mackenzie/.

Be nice to think it was just a massively well crafted and backstopped troll. But suspect he really is just that bad.
posted by Buntix at 7:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Following up this...

They probably want a bigger room so that they can hold press briefings (not press conferences) like Putin's annual ones.
posted by rory at 10:55 AM on January 16


Keith Olbermann: Trump wants to mimic Putin and turn White House press briefings into chaotic circus
posted by rory at 7:45 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


My opinion on Lieberman remains utterly unchanged.
posted by Artw at 7:48 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


> “It seems as if the Republicans are sort of letting President-elect Trump sort of just move forward with regard to the conflict of interest issues [and] this whole hacking issue,” the Maryland Democrat noted. “And I’m really concerned that we as Democrats have to push harder on Republicans to do something so that our standards are met and that he gets rid of these conflicts and he also deals with the hacking.”

Why in God's name would this guy or anyone else expect Republicans to do something - anything - regarding this shit once Trump is President and the party controls all three branches of government? But yes, it's nice that he's "really concerned" that "Democrats have to push harder."
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:52 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]



UBI was always a neoliberal project


cite? I'm getting lost on what neoliberal is even supposed to mean anymore.
posted by zutalors! at 7:52 AM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'm getting lost on what neoliberal is even supposed to mean anymore.

It's either "something I like that someone I don't like likes" or "something I don't like that someone I like likes".
posted by Etrigan at 7:53 AM on January 19, 2017 [19 favorites]




"Gold standard" transition, says Sean Spicer.

Instead of Baghdad Bob we've got South Lawn Sean.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:54 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


"Gold standard" transition, says Sean Spicer.

Let's hope he's talking about the West Wing and not Fort Knox.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:59 AM on January 19, 2017


> Rick Perry: "After being briefed on so many of the vital functions of the Department of @Energy, I regret recommending its elimination."

I'm sorry, I know I should have a clever response to this, but,

FUCK YOU, CLOWN! FUCK YOU!
posted by RedOrGreen at 7:59 AM on January 19, 2017 [37 favorites]


Rick Perry: "After being briefed on so many of the vital functions of the Department of @Energy, I regret recommending its elimination."

AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAsobsobsobsob
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:00 AM on January 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


Would Congress be required to vote on the budget cuts the POTUS is making?
posted by pxe2000 at 8:01 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


“He’s been great, he considers himself a friend of the president-elect, but it’s not the venue. It’s going to be typically and traditionally American, and Kanye is a great guy, we just haven’t asked him to perform. And we move on with our agenda,” Barrack continued. (Video)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:02 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'll truncate the derail after this — you're more than welcome to hit me up via email if you'd like more detail, as I have a whole bit in my new book about this, but:

cite? I'm getting lost on what neoliberal is even supposed to mean anymore.

In modern times, the notion of a universal basic income has its roots in a Nixon Administration effort called, I shit thee nay, FAP, or Family Assistance Plan; there's a decent piece on it here. More recently, while the UBI also has some support on the social-democratic and accelerationist left, the recent experiments by the Dutch city of Utrecht and the Finnish national government have appeared under the market-liberal VVD party and Juha Sipilä's center-right coalition, respectively.

It's not hard to see why, either: in the absence of robust public provisioning of healthcare, education, transportation and housing, the UBI stipend is swiftly recuperated as user fees for all of these things, benefitting the private sector first and foremost.

(FWIW, I use "neoliberal" in the usual sense, to mean a mode of governance where the state has been reduced to its military and police functions, the law pared down to that kernel necessary to enforce contracts between private individuals, and most services outsourced to private actors.)
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:04 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


typically and traditionally American

Oh, so ... jazz, blues, hip-hop ... purely American stuff, right? That's what you mean?
posted by uncleozzy at 8:05 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


It's taking a while to adjust to 'Barrack' as not a mis-spelling of Barack. I almost wonder if it's intentional.
posted by birdheist at 8:05 AM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Seen across Twitter: "Give me the confidence of a white dude who wanted a department abolished, didn't know what it did, and is now going to run it."
posted by holgate at 8:08 AM on January 19, 2017 [49 favorites]


Rick Perry: "After being briefed on so many of the vital functions of the Department of @Energy, I regret recommending its elimination."

Well, I guess Trump's going to be looking for a new nominee, then.
posted by dirigibleman at 8:11 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


UBI was always a neoliberal project

cite? I'm getting lost on what neoliberal is even supposed to mean anymore.


UBI is something advocated by economists who believe in the magic of markets. The idea is to eliminate targeted transfers for the needy and welfare payments and replace them all with a single universal income for everyone which would quickly be converted into rent payments of various sorts. So we let the market sort out poverty, instead of trying to solve it through rational decision making about who is needy and what they need.
posted by dis_integration at 8:13 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


The first thing I do when I'm applying for a job is to Google the place to see what they do. That's because I don't want to look stupid when I'm interviewing and I want to have some idea what I'm getting into. How could you have gotten so far in life without having the slightest curiosity about anything? Or any fear of looking stone stupid. I just don't understand.
posted by octothorpe at 8:13 AM on January 19, 2017 [32 favorites]


After a wee bit more digging, it looks like "Joseph Charles MacKenzie" may be a pen-identity of one Kenneth Kyntale, who has quite a bit of previous form for writing abysmal bigoted poetry https://www.facebook.com/kenneth.kyntale for his Tea Party buds. So, it's not so much a hoax (in terms of being a troll) as much as a fake (puffed up) identity being used to market the work of an existing "poet".
posted by Buntix at 8:13 AM on January 19, 2017


Yes, Congress would vote on it.
posted by notyou at 8:13 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's either "something I like that someone I don't like likes" or "something I don't like that someone I like likes".

It's Thatcher-Reaganism, the replacement of human society with markets governed by a state which answers to capital and keeps the masses in line. The "lol neoliberalism doesn't mean anything it's just a lefty sneer term" nonsense is noxious and glib as hell.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:13 AM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


Would Congress be required to vote on the budget cuts the POTUS is making?

Congress passes the budget. The president's proposal is just a proposal. Obama made responsible proposals for fully funding the government almost every year, which were summarily laughed out of the Republican Congress without so much as a read in committee. They're not interested in making the government work. They want to destroy it completely.

But, Trump's budget is essentially just the Republican Study Committee's budget, an even more extreme version of the Ryan budget that they've been pushing for since 2010. Some version of it will form the basis of the actual 2017-18 federal budget that is voted on in congress. Not all of it is likely to pass, at least not at first, because even Republicans recognize that, you know, doing stuff is good and important to people who rely on it getting done. And Democrats will be able to save some things from the chopping block. But not everything, and not nearly enough. The final cuts will be draconian, stupid, self-defeating, and punitive towards anything remotely identifiable as important to liberals or a cause that Obama talked about with approval.

Because they're not in the business of the government solving problems, only spiteful revenge and looting the public coffer.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:16 AM on January 19, 2017 [21 favorites]


How could you have gotten so far in life without having the slightest curiosity about anything? Or any fear of looking stone stupid. I just don't understand.

Perry's Razor: Never ascribe to any other cause that which can be adequately explained by profound stupidity. Maybe he just really is that fucking dumb.
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:19 AM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


A friend of mine just posted a FB selfie of her in a car on the way to DC for the march. The comments are full of "Smash the patriarchy! Kick ass! Yeeaahhh!!" and then one lone dude apparently completely earnestly: "What is happening in DC this weekend?"
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:19 AM on January 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


How could you have gotten so far in life without having the slightest curiosity about anything? Or any fear of looking stone stupid. I just don't understand.

I wonder about this. Do people like Perry and DeVos feel shame or embarrassment when they expose themselves as ignorant and/or stupid?
posted by diogenes at 8:21 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Paddy Power offer several betting markets on the POTUS inauguration tomorrow. Hmmm; Mango Tango or Carrot?
posted by Wordshore at 8:21 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


It's either "something I like that someone I don't like likes" or "something I don't like that someone I like likes".

It's Thatcher-Reaganism, the replacement of human society with markets governed by a state which answers to capital and keeps the masses in line.


Ah, yes, I remember when Thatcher and Reagan pushed so hard throughout the 1980s for universal basic income.
posted by Etrigan at 8:23 AM on January 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


The first thing I do when I'm applying for a job is to Google the place to see what they do. That's because I don't want to look stupid

In RickPerry's defense, it's not like the guy who nominated him knows what the President does.

(I also coined a new title for the whole ****show: donaldtrump & the Terrible, Horrible, No Good,Very Bad Presidential Cabinet.
posted by NorthernLite at 8:26 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


UBI has had several surprising proponents, including Milton Friedman, one of the godfathers of that sort of thought. Among people who want markets to rule everything but also recognize that some sort of social aid is necessary, some version of "just pay everybody $X and be done with it" is the dominant proposal.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:26 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Ah, yes, I remember when Thatcher and Reagan pushed so hard throughout the 1980s for universal basic income.

One of the keys to neoliberalism's astonishing tenacity is its protean quality, its ability to take on new forms and to refine its methods as circumstances on the ground evolve. The UBI is in many ways a necessary response to (and way to undermine) the upsurge in energy that followed the 2008-2012 crystallization of consciousness expressed in the movement of the squares, Occupy, 15M etc.
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:27 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Gary Larson offers us a way out of this mess. It's time to go home, Donnie.
posted by Servo5678 at 8:29 AM on January 19, 2017 [30 favorites]


President Obama: "It's a long-standing tradition for the sitting president of the United States to leave a parting letter in the Oval Office for the American elected to take his or her place. It's a letter meant to share what we know, what we've learned, and what small wisdom may help our successor bear the great responsibility that comes with the highest office in our land, and the leadership of the free world." (More here)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:30 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]




So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 8:31 AM on January 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


On the one hand not even lip service to freedom, on the other hand they actually seem to live in the real world as regards climate change and science and stuff.

I've been doing some reading about China in Africa, which so far I've found difficult because I'm encountering a whole lot of new and unfamiliar sources so sorting out where the various bias lay has been a challenge. A lot of contradictory out there with propaganda from different points of view at play. From what I can suss out so far though with my limited knowledge base is that it reminds me of how the Romans ran their empire, economic ties, influence, and control but with a lot of live and let live culturally and social wise. It's interesting as it appears it's based more on quieter and more subtler ways of control and influence. They appear to be more about soft power then hard power that demands a bending knee.

I'm sure other people know much more. I'm going to do askme on the best sources and info to learn and understand China I think. It's an area that I'm personally not up on at all. Seems like it's more important now.
posted by Jalliah at 8:32 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


So basically my decision to study Mandarin in college was a wise one? Noted.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:33 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


The Best of the Worst of Rick Perry (1m37s video by Progress Texas)
posted by argonauta at 8:34 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Rick Perry: "After being briefed on so many of the vital functions of the Department of @Energy, I regret recommending its elimination."

Police heard the man say, "I didn't think it was loaded."
posted by wenestvedt at 8:35 AM on January 19, 2017 [22 favorites]


The Earned Income Tax Credit, which was passed by Ford and expanded by Reagan, might be looked at as a kind of Ur UBI.
posted by notyou at 8:39 AM on January 19, 2017



On the UBI front. I live here and only found out about this last week when I saw the print out of a survey, on the reception desk of the learning center I'm taking a class at. Note that it's coming from a Conservative POV.

Ontario pilot project puts universal basic income to the test

The Canadian province of Ontario is pushing forward with plans for a trial run of universal basic income, making it the first government in North America in decades to test out a policy touted as a panacea to poverty, bloated bureaucracy and the rise of precarious work.

In the coming weeks, the provincial government is expected to announce consultations to hammer out the details of a C$25m pilot project, with the aim of formally launching it in spring 2017.

The government’s foray into basic income began earlier this year when it tasked Hugh Segal, a Conservative political strategist and longtime advocate of the idea, with exploring potential directions for a pilot project.

“This is not something which is in any way, in my view, the precinct of the left,” Segal said in an interview. “It is in fact the precinct of rational people when looking to encourage work and community engagement and give people a floor beneath which they’re not allowed to fall.”


Here is the discussion paper on the Ontario Government website.

Here is the public survey for any Ontarians here.
posted by Jalliah at 8:41 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


So we let the market sort out poverty, instead of trying to solve it through rational decision making about who is needy and what they need.

The problem with that rational discussion is that it doesn't seem to work well either, at least at the scale of international trends like deindustrialisation. Such things are really difficult to understand, let alone model accurately over the generational timescales they work themselves out over. And if you take a really top-down approach that strives to build that model based on the most macro of macro-social mechanisms, a la Marx, that doesn't seem to work well either.

To some extent - yes, you must concentrate on the needs of those who cannot participate in whatever market drivers are making the running right now, because if your game is making things better for people by removing the evils of poverty, despair, ignorance and sickness, then these things apply right now to real people more strongly than any abstract distillation. And to some extent, the market is the motivator that will provide an environment within which you can effect change - but that doesn't have to be, in fact absolutely cannot, be according to the rules the market would set itself if it were given free rein. A universal basic income without an eeconomic base capable of supporting it is the fiscal equivalent of a free energy machine, and unless you have a brand new theory of money physics you're not going to get good things happening.

So you do things piecemeal, and you make mistakes, and you work within the possibilities, but you try to keep the discussion going and the debates at a high level and engaging as many people as possible in thinking things through, and you always steer by the lights of taking people out of victimhood, and out of the places where the chances for victimhood are high, and freeing them to live whole lives that encourage that engagement. And you spend time and energy in leading all that and fighting the temptations you and others will feel to unbalance such equations.

That for me is progressive liberalism.
posted by Devonian at 8:43 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


octothorpe: The first thing I do when I'm applying for a job is to Google the place to see what they do. That's because I don't want to look stupid when I'm interviewing and I want to have some idea what I'm getting into.

If memory serves, we discuss the cabinet posts in the Boy Scout "Citizenship in the Nation" merit badge. *clickety-click* Yep, right there on page 28 of the booklet, it says that DoE was created in 1977.

Hmmm.... Say, how old is Perry? *clickety-click* Wikipedia says he was born in 1950, so when he got his Eagle Scout -- for which CitInTheNation is a required badge -- DoE didn't exist yet.

Say, maybe there is something to this notion that all your opinions are formed early in life, and you stop learning as you age...or maybe he's just an incurious muttonhead?
posted by wenestvedt at 8:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]




Meanwhile...

Jeremy Corbyn says he will tell Labour MPs to vote in favour of starting Brexit

Everything is so fucked right now.
posted by Artw at 8:47 AM on January 19, 2017 [17 favorites]


That for me is progressive liberalism.

And a worthy thing to discuss and debate! But maybe somewhere else? I feel guilty for having bent the rails this far off-topic.
posted by adamgreenfield at 8:48 AM on January 19, 2017


WaPo Republicans will not rein in Trump corruption. Can anything be done about this? Yes!
Is there anything that principled individual Members of Congress — in either party — who want such oversight can do about this? Can individual Democrats or Republicans take steps to compel more oversight, if GOP leaders refuse to exercise it?

It turns out there are some things that individual Members can do. And it isn’t that crazy to imagine that they might make some kind of difference.[...]

One can imagine a scenario developing in which a handful of Democratic and Republican senators team up to try to hold up legislation until Trump provides a full accounting of how that legislation might impact his companies. The press loves stories about bipartisan “gangs” of Senators, and this kind of tactic could get some attention. And by the way, if the press uncovers new and increasingly grisly conflicts that draw more public attention to Trump’s continued flouting of our norms, individual Senators or small groups of them might suddenly find themselves more inclined to make additional trouble for him.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:49 AM on January 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


Yes, you're right. I just felt the need to be positive for a moment...
posted by Devonian at 8:49 AM on January 19, 2017


70 skipping
posted by petebest at 8:54 AM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


70 skipping

This should carry over to the SOTU. Let the Republicans stand there in front of Trump with the Democratic side totally empty. That's the real state of the union. Rebellion.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:57 AM on January 19, 2017 [34 favorites]



China askme is up if anyone is interested.
posted by Jalliah at 8:59 AM on January 19, 2017


typically and traditionally American

Segregated, nostalgic, banal, anti-intellectual, and racist!
posted by spitbull at 9:01 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Exactly 24 hours left of Barack Obama's term as POTUS.
posted by Wordshore at 9:01 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


What a lot of research has shown is that once workers go on disability, they tend to stay on disability for the rest of their working lives.

Oh man. This is actually one of the things I hate worst, when Trump says something that is actually correct, but you know he's going to use it to tie somebody to the train tracks.

Because yeah, there are actually huge problems with how disability works in this country, and it absolutely disincentivizes work, because SSDI in particular accepts only "100% disabled" and "0% disabled", and there's no provision for "75% disabled, but I can take some short term work and improve my situation and be better in a lot of ways" or "50% disabled, but I can work in an environment that allows me flexible hours". If you work, you lose your SSDI, even if you're still in the stage of "I'm just trying to find out if I even CAN work!"

But I'm pretty sure that Trump's suggestion is not "so we need to reform SSDI to work a lot more like the VA works, with gradiated disability ratings", but rather "burn it with fire."
posted by corb at 9:02 AM on January 19, 2017 [37 favorites]


Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Get Rabbinic Pass to Ride in Car on Inauguration Shabbat

... because if they couldn't get to the Inauguration balls they'd just die.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:04 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


From the "you can't make this shit up" file: Trump advisers: President dancing with Caitlyn Jenner at inauguration would ‘heal’ the LGBTQ community
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:05 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Because yeah, there are actually huge problems with how disability works in this country, and it absolutely disincentivizes work, because SSDI in particular accepts only "100% disabled" and "0% disabled", and there's no provision for "75% disabled, but I can take some short term work and improve my situation and be better in a lot of ways" or "50% disabled, but I can work in an environment that allows me flexible hours". If you work, you lose your SSDI, even if you're still in the stage of "I'm just trying to find out if I even CAN work!"

This also isn't even close to true.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:06 AM on January 19, 2017 [22 favorites]


One can imagine a scenario developing in which a handful of Democratic...

Go on, I'm listening.

...and Republican senators team up

You lost me.
posted by Drastic at 9:06 AM on January 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


If you work, you lose your SSDI...

This also isn't even close to true.


Oh, snap!
posted by diogenes at 9:09 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


This also isn't even close to true.

That's great to hear! (Link pointed to an explanation of the Social Security Work Incentives program) I'll have to look at it more closely. If it's fairly robust, then I think we have an information problem - because I've worked as a social worker with clients who were often on those programs, and what I was always told by my supervisors was that people with SSDI couldn't work or they would lose their benefits - not to even steer them to job programs because it would be disadvantageous to them.
posted by corb at 9:11 AM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


President Obama's final newspaper column:
Many Americans are upset right now. To millions, the outcome this past November seemed like a step backward for the United States, and people are understandably worried about where our nation might now be headed. But my fellow citizens, now is not the time to give in to pessimism or defeatism, because the future—and I’m talking, like, 35,000 years in the future—is still bright.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


I just started watching the Mnuchin confirmation hearing livestream. He is coming across a super sneering. Just incredibly offputting.
posted by prefpara at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Link pointed to an explanation of the Social Security Work Incentives program.

The fourth fucking header is "SSDI & SSI Work Incentives."
posted by diogenes at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2017


Because yeah, there are actually huge problems with how disability works in this country, and it absolutely disincentivizes work, because SSDI in particular accepts only "100% disabled" and "0% disabled", and there's no provision for "75% disabled, but I can take some short term work and improve my situation and be better in a lot of ways" or "50% disabled, but I can work in an environment that allows me flexible hours". If you work, you lose your SSDI, even if you're still in the stage of "I'm just trying to find out if I even CAN work!"

But I'm pretty sure that Trump's suggestion is not "so we need to reform SSDI to work a lot more like the VA works, with gradiated disability ratings", but rather "burn it with fire."


This is really the key here to understand why the research shows what it does. All in or all out systems like this are horrible. Last year I was on my provinces worker compensation program due to a head injury. They worked with me to get me back to work. I was actually shocked at how flexible it was and how up my caseworker was on how head injury recovery can progress. I was completely off, then worked part-time, then ended up having to be off for another couple of weeks and then they allowed a gradual work schedule back to full time.

Where there is a will there is a way.
posted by Jalliah at 9:13 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'll have to look at it more closely.

To speed you along:

Under the "SSDI Work Incentives" heading, click "Trial Work Period."

The trial work period allows you to test your ability to work for at least 9 months. During your trial work period, you will receive your full disability benefit regardless of how much you earn as long as your work activity has been reported and you continue to have a disabling impairment. The 9 months does not need to be consecutive and your trial work period will last until you accumulate 9 months within a rolling 60-month period.
posted by diogenes at 9:19 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


From the "you can't make this shit up" file: Trump advisers: President dancing with Caitlyn Jenner at inauguration would ‘heal’ the LGBTQ community

They really do have no clue whatsoever how most people work do they. Take your 'brilliant' ideas and shove them where the sun don't shine.
Hey shitheels not everyone is as fucking gullible as people if your fricken base seem to be, especially LGBTQ who have been experiencing this base level pandering their whole fricken lives.

My only consulation in the mess is that running things based on the idea that everyone in the entire country, or the world for that matter is a bunch of completely gullible morans is not going to work long term.

Sorry, I'm mad.
posted by Jalliah at 9:21 AM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


To speed you along

When I said "I will need to look into it to see if it's robust", I mean, because these are programs that deeply affect people's lives, and as I am involved on advising people how to maximize their opportunities in their lives, it would be extremely unethical for me to change what I am recommending based on a Metafilter comment and a quick perusal of Social Security's public-facing webpage. I need to see not only "what happens for nine months" but "what happens afterwards, if this has ever been used against clients, etc." Disability organizations are particularly known for not being transparent and clear about their process, and if other social workers with more time and experience than me are suggesting one thing, I need to at least investigate why.
posted by corb at 9:26 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Where there is a will there is a way.

This might be deleted as a derail, but . . .

That's not how it works.
posted by bibliowench at 9:26 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


My local news station sent out the call via our city's hashtag for US citizens to interview on came about the impending administration. Guess who volunteered? They've asked me to also watch inauguration for my impression afterwards but that might be too far.
posted by Kitteh at 9:28 AM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


I'd be a little more interested to see Pence and Caitlyn...
posted by armacy at 9:31 AM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Some good points about the proposed budget cuts. They, like every other Trump plan, are basically illusory. The big number is $10.5 trillion over 10 years, but the actual programs they list for elimination run a grand total of $6 billion a year (one is actually revenue positive, so cutting it costs half a billion).

So the whole thing is trolling Democrats with eliminating NEH/NEA and CPB and such, while only specifying less then a percent of what they'd have to cut to actually hit their goal (and actually hitting that goal would be devastating). But reporters will eat it up and pretend it's a serious detailed proposal.
posted by zachlipton at 9:33 AM on January 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


What do we think the odds are that Russian hackers interrupt the inauguration broadcasts to play the pee pee tape
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:34 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


The rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouched toward DC but ditched his press pool.
posted by rewil at 9:34 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


What do we think the odds are that Russian hackers interrupt the inauguration broadcasts to play the pee pee tape


Nah. They wanna make sure people see the tape when they release it.
posted by avalonian at 9:36 AM on January 19, 2017 [21 favorites]


From the "you can't make this shit up" file: Trump advisers: President dancing with Caitlyn Jenner at inauguration would ‘heal’ the LGBTQ community

Oh god, I missed the first few words of this and thought it was satire, but it's [real], folks! It's actually fucking [real]!
posted by corb at 9:36 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


What do we think the odds are that Russian hackers interrupt the inauguration broadcasts to play the pee pee tape


Nah. They wanna make sure people see the tape when they release it.


Super Bowl would be too much to ask, wouldn't it?
posted by rocket88 at 9:38 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


NYMag calls out the NYT over the "Rick Perry didn't know what DOE does" story: The Times May Have Launched a False Rumor About Rick Perry

They point out that the attribution for the first few paragraphs is super undefined and weird and that Perry's own statement in December did mention "safeguarding our nuclear arsenal."

I'm not sure why it matters though. It's still not really incompatible with the story to conclude that Perry had no real idea what the job involved even if he knew it did at least some nuclear stuff, and the guy himself admitted this morning that he ran a national campaign to eliminate an agency when he didn't understand what all it did.
posted by zachlipton at 9:41 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


If aired during the Super Bowl, many viewers might mistake it for the halftime show, and miss the tape when they head to the kitchen/bathroom for half an hour.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:41 AM on January 19, 2017




What do we think the odds are that Russian hackers interrupt the inauguration broadcasts to play the pee pee tape

A friend noted last night that he certainly hopes that G. H. W. Bush gets well and lives many more years, but if this turns out to be his appointed hour, he could do one final public service by timing his passing for the day of the inauguration. Beginning the Reign of Trump with a state funeral would seem awfully fitting.
posted by anastasiav at 9:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


From the "you can't make this shit up" file: Trump advisers: President dancing with Caitlyn Jenner at inauguration would ‘heal’ the LGBTQ community

Oh god, I missed the first few words of this and thought it was satire, but it's [real], folks! It's actually fucking [real]!


Anyone have an emergency supply of evens?
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:46 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


President dancing with Caitlyn Jenner at inauguration would ‘heal’ the LGBTQ community

This is real. The sheer gall of it. This is nothing but transparent, hollow pandering, and they know that. I'm willing to bet Jenner does, too (I know Jenner's a Republican, so her participation is depressing but unsurprising).
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 9:48 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Beginning the Reign of Trump with a state funeral would seem awfully fitting.

I'm greatly enjoying how the weather pretty much everywhere across the U.S. is going to suck for the Inauguration and then turn suddenly glorious-for-January for the Women's March.
posted by Etrigan at 9:49 AM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Anyone have an emergency supply of evens?

They don't make 'em anymore
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:52 AM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


Trump slapped a 35% tariff on evens imports
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:56 AM on January 19, 2017 [35 favorites]


The bad weather's nothing if appropriate. It feels like something out of Scar's takeover of Pride Rock in The Lion King.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 9:56 AM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


> It has been asked: https://www.thenation.com/article/have-you-ever-seen-donald-trump-laugh/
On this matter, I admit I’m a Mirther, someone who fervently believes that Donald’s refusal to laugh in public reveals something dark and disturbing about him. Unless he can produce a long-form belly laugh, not once but many times, and prove its authenticity to my satisfaction, I’m afraid, folks, that I’ll have to send my people to look into this more closely. And they probably won’t believe what they find.
posted by homunculus at 9:57 AM on January 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


I've worked as a social worker with clients who were often on those programs, and what I was always told by my supervisors was that people with SSDI couldn't work or they would lose their benefits

As a social worker, this is incredibly wrong. As someone who has been denied for disability multiple times, the truth is that when you are trying to get disability you can't work at all in any way or you will be denied. Any kind of work when you are applying for SSDI basically restarts the clock on your disability and greatly decreases the likelihood of getting benefits.

But once you HAVE SSDI, you can work up to a certain amount of hours/income. Once you have exceeded the allowed income for a certain period, like 18 months or something, then you may have your benefits taken away. I had a client who got full SSDI and full time income for about two years before his SSDI was cancelled. (Rightly, because obviously he was able to work, although his disability was very real.)

SSI on the other hand is different, and any income you receive is deducted from your payments or that money can be retroactively taken away if you don't report income. SSI and SSDI are very different in their rules.
posted by threeturtles at 10:01 AM on January 19, 2017 [31 favorites]


Trump slapped a 35% tariff on evens imports

Good lord, the man doesn't even respect the difference between even and odd.
posted by Etrigan at 10:04 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


It's Thatcher-Reaganism, the replacement of human society with markets governed by a state which answers to capital and keeps the masses in line. The "lol neoliberalism doesn't mean anything it's just a lefty sneer term" nonsense is noxious and glib as hell.

I am fully on board with this definition of neoliberalism, but it's not the sense in which I usually see it used. On social media I generally see "neoliberal" used by young people who are not well-grounded in any kind of political or economic theory to disdain any politician who is not Bernie Sanders.

And it is true that many Democrats (and Sanders himself) support or have supported programs that are public/private partnerships to solve problems that I would prefer to see solved by the government without private sector participation (the ACA, for example).

But in this election the Republican platform was aimed at dismantling the help and protection the government gives the people, and the Democratic platform was aimed at preserving and expanding it. So it has been frustrating to see, as I frequently have, Democrats characterized as neoliberals who are not worth supporting based on things like John Lewis not being sufficiently reverent of Sanders' contributions to the Civil Rights Movement.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 10:04 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


if other social workers with more time and experience than me are suggesting one thing, I need to at least investigate why.

I don't doubt that reality is murkier and more complicated than a paragraph on the SSDI web site implies. But I don't see how you can categorically say "If you work, you lose your SSDI." Either that's not true, or the SSDI web site is straight-up lying to me.
posted by diogenes at 10:04 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]




WRT the proposed North Dakota law legalizing murder of protesters, I had a thought....

In 2014 the Supremes ruled that, unlike their own buffer zone, buffer zones around abortion clinics were unconstitutional because some protesters weren't protesters at all, they were "petitioners", an entirely separate category of people and that their right to free speech is not satisfied by merely being permitted to shout their slogans but rather can only be accommodated by forcing women to listen to them at close range.

Surely some of the BLM or Pipeline protesters could declare themselves to be petitioners and demand the same right to have a consensual, caring, conversation with people who wanted to drive past, right? Which means that, per the Supreme Court, petitioners would have a Constitutional right to stop cars because otherwise their free speech would be impeded, right?

Just a thought.
posted by sotonohito at 10:08 AM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Everyone knows about the Women's March on Saturday. But tonight (1/19), particularly for the theater/arts communities there's a thing at 5:30pm outside many theaters across the country called the Ghostlight Project:
ON JANUARY 19TH, 2017 AT 5:30PM IN EACH TIME ZONE ACROSS THE COUNTRY
WE WILL GATHER OUTSIDE OF THEATERS TO CREATE A "LIGHT" FOR DARK TIMES AHEAD,
AND TO MAKE, OR RENEW, A PLEDGE TO STAND FOR AND PROTECT
THE VALUES OF INCLUSION, PARTICIPATION, AND COMPASSION FOR EVERYONE
REGARDLESS OF RACE, CLASS, RELIGION, COUNTRY OF ORIGIN, IMMIGRATION STATUS,
(DIS)ABILITY, AGE, GENDER IDENTITY, OR SEXUAL ORIENTATION
posted by dnash at 10:10 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


I had a client who got full SSDI and full time income for about two years before his SSDI was cancelled. (Rightly, because obviously he was able to work, although his disability was very real.)

I'm on SSDI. SSDI is based on your previous income and work credits. While on SSDI, you can make up to $1170 a month without losing your benefits. Which is a good thing, if you can work a little, because SSDI does not go very far when you're paying hefty medical expenses. You can make over $1170 for nine (consecutive or nonconsecutive months) WHILE getting your SSDI, but after the nine months, you're on your own. So you essentially have a nine-month ramp to get yourself stable and working again once you find full-time work. (If you get too sick again to work, SSDI will restart.)

If you're earning, you have to report your income every month to Social Security, and they can audit you to make sure you're not double-dipping.
posted by mochapickle at 10:11 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


If you're in Boston and can play the ukulele, I'm organizing a ukulele flash mob. I'm in need of a few more players and would love to have some MeFites take part.
posted by pxe2000 at 10:13 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Way way upthread, T.D. Strange mentioned something that's been bothering me a lot:

> Remember when Obama reached out to Republicans in 2008? Remember when all the media talked about was whether Democrats could get bipartisan buy in from Republicans? You don't hear a word of that now, there's no suggestion that Republicans must get bipartisan agreement from the 53% of the country that didn't vote for Trump.

Why isn't this a bigger issue? I mean, even George W. "I have a mandate" Bush had Norm Mineta in his cabinet as his Transportation Secretary. Obama nominated three Republicans to his cabinet, including Gates to Defense. But I get the feeling that this Wikipedia list of cross-party appointments (starting with Thomas Jefferson - Jefferson will pay for his behavior!) is not going to expand at all this time round.

Why is this OK? How is an absolute minority government allowed to run rough-shod over all norms of decency? We're really that much at the mercy of norms and traditions? Who came up with this stupid system? (Oh, right.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:14 AM on January 19, 2017 [36 favorites]


Where will be a favourable environment for higher education and research among the English-speaking countries now?

My family and I would like to know this too; let me know if you can think of something. As it is, if I stay in science I am vacillating on whether to pick up German, French, or Swedish first.

My grandmother was telling me last night that our family has served in American politics since the days of Taft. I wonder how she will take it when we have to leave.
posted by sciatrix at 10:16 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Those of us who have had Perry as governor had no trouble believing he didn't know what the department did.
posted by emjaybee at 10:17 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


From the "you can't make this shit up" file: Trump advisers: President dancing with Caitlyn Jenner at inauguration would ‘heal’ the LGBTQ community

In actuality, Jenner will sit alongside that fucking upside-down flag as a bit of political theater used by gays for Trump.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:19 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


“And all we did for that fucker over the years, and he turns around and does this? Well, he can forget about coming back here again, the sweaty bollix”

"Waterford Whispers News is a fabricated satirical newspaper and comedy website published by Waterford Whispers News."
posted by jedicus at 10:19 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


They don't make 'em anymore

I ran out of evens a week after my last "surely this" gave out.
posted by drezdn at 10:25 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


538: The Real Story Of 2016, in which Nate Silver engages in some sober analysis and rips "traditional political journalists" a new one for their coverage and for drawing the wrong conclusions about what went wrong in their pre-election analysis. He lays out three broad elements to how Trump won:
  • "First, the background conditions were pretty good for Trump" (would have been a third term for Democrats, economy, "generic Republican vs generic Democrat" models looked pretty good for Republicans, etc...)
  • "Second, demographics gave Trump a big advantage in the Electoral College" (Lots of white voters without college degrees in a handful of key swing states, the Clinton coalition ran up the score in states like CA, which gets you nothing in the Electoral College.)
  • "Third, voter preferences varied substantially based on news events, and the news cycle ended on a downturn for Clinton" (Emails. Emails. Emails. Comey. There were a ton of late-breaking voters and they went hard for Trump)
This is an uncomfortable story for the mainstream American press. It mostly contradicts the way they covered the election while it was underway (when demographics were often assumed to provide Clinton with an Electoral College advantage, for instance). It puts a fair amount of emphasis on news events such as the Comey letter, which leads to questions about how those stories were covered. It’s much easier to blame the polls for the failure to foresee the outcome, or the Clinton campaign for blowing a sure thing. But we think the evidence lines up with our version of events. And if almost everyone got the first draft of history wrong in 2016, perhaps there’s still time to get the second draft right.
There will be additional stories in the series, which is being explicitly around the reporting of the political desk of the New York Times and its "conventional wisdom" assumptions during the general.
posted by zachlipton at 10:30 AM on January 19, 2017 [32 favorites]


Alexandra Petri asks the hard questions, What is keeping bears out of our schools?
Look, DeVos acts as if she’s in favor of school vouchers, but she does not even consider the impact this has on bear access to education. I guess you could argue that keeping guns in schools has worked to keep bears away, but not having guns in school has worked to keep bears away from a much larger number of schools. My point is, the science is not settled yet.

Until it is, we should think carefully. Do we want to allow this threat to our public schools? And also, what about these bears?
posted by zachlipton at 10:34 AM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Why is this OK? How is an absolute minority government allowed to run rough-shod over all norms of decency? We're really that much at the mercy of norms and traditions? Who came up with this stupid system? (Oh, right.)

democracy: the minmaxing
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:35 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Remember when Silver was bullish on Trump just to drive up clicks? That 538 was inflating his numbers to get more traffic?*

Those were simpler days.



*I never bought into that fantasy
posted by Tevin at 10:35 AM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Daniel Dale has started tweeting about the people coming to the festivities and why they support Trump.
posted by nubs at 10:37 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


I just have to say— I work and live in downtown DC (a few blocks from the WH). You have probably heard about how the city is a ghost town right now, and that’s true— I would say 90% of my coworkers are out of the office right now to avoid this part of the city.

But today is especially eerie, because I keep hearing helicopters roaring overhead. Over and over and over.

All I can think about is all of these rich and powerful people flying over me in their choppers, exultant, thrilled at their coming payday, laughing at all the misery they are planning to cause. It makes me feel sick and cold. It feels like an invading army is entering the city, except all of the people who were supposed to defend us just gladly stepped aside and handed them the keys and the weapons and the everything. It feels like the guards at the gate knocked on the Trojan horse and said “hey, is anyone in there planning to kill us?” and the response was “yes, but you can’t turn down a present, it would be rude!” and everyone had a good laugh before rolling it into the city.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:38 AM on January 19, 2017 [72 favorites]


Oops. I should have mentioned that Waterford Whispers is a satirical news site. Sorry. However the news is not fake. The sweaty bollix is performing.
posted by night_train at 10:38 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]



I think the civil servants are going to end up coming out as the heroes in the mess of an admin. Those that manage to stay or have the stomach to stay that is.
posted by Jalliah at 10:39 AM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


The thing about the SSI and SSDI and the 9 months and then maybe you might lose your benefits or maybe not or it might be held against you or not is that it is confusing and you can't be sure that no matter what it says on paper, some clerk might cancel your benefits. It often takes years to be approved and the appeal process can take years. The confusion and the risk are disincentives to trying to change things.
posted by kerf at 10:40 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]



Daniel Dale has started tweeting about the people coming to the festivities and why they support Trump.


well. that's a very white group there.
posted by zutalors! at 10:41 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Which is a good thing, if you can work a little, because SSDI does not go very far when you're paying hefty medical expenses. You can make over $1170 for nine (consecutive or nonconsecutive months) WHILE getting your SSDI, but after the nine months, you're on your own.

It's true that payments will stop after completion of the 9 month trial work period, but there's also up to 36 more months of extended eligibility, where payments can be restarted without a new application if work falls below substantial gainful levels (where the $1170 comes in).
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:41 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


The sweaty bollix is performing.

What's more "traditional" than some plastic paddy fiddle-de-dee?
posted by holgate at 10:44 AM on January 19, 2017


So we let the market sort out poverty, instead of trying to solve it through rational decision making about who is needy and what they need.

I think it's just attacking the problem from the other direction. Instead of assuming that most people will be fine on their own and providing help to those that need it, we assume that most people DO need some help, give that help to everyone, and then making rational decisions about who has to pay it back.

I view UBI as a more efficient welfare system. Rather than try to figure out what specific help people need and then provide that help, we just give everyone cash and let them spend it on what they need. Eventually, the robots will be smart enough and good enough to replace humans in every job. During that transition, the number of people who count on their UBI would increase until it's nearly everyone.

I'd just give everyone a $25,000 refundable tax credit every year (or some other amount that makes sense) and then rework the tax rates so that taxes start to eat that up as the income increases. For those in poverty, they can submit a form to have their credit paid out monthly or just base it on their past year's income taxes. That way, upper-middle class folks like me, end up paying a fairer share of taxes but it's not a huge change for me, it doesn't really feel like you're paying the money back since you're just getting a smaller refund, and those really in need have an easy path to getting that income monthly instead of annually.

There are a lot of other details that would have be dealt with by people a lot smarter and with more data than me but I think it'd be pretty easy logistically. It's not a silver bullet by any means but I think your take is a lot more cynical than the concept deserves.
posted by VTX at 10:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


The confusion and the risk are disincentives to trying to change things.

Absolutely. It's overly complicated, largely as a result of congress' never ending belief that all disabled people can actually work, they keep tacking on new work incentives that even the agency can't understand or administer correctly half the time, like Ticket to Work. If you wanted to simplify the work incentives, and make the process just generally less terrible, that would be a fantastic policy goal. No Republican has ever wanted to make it easier or less terrible.

Also, SSI and SSDI are absolutely two different things, with wildly different rules for working.
posted by T.D. Strange at 10:47 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Daniel Dale has started tweeting about the people coming to the festivities and why they support Trump.

"A man of his word", "Always willing to admit he was wrong", "admires his honesty", "man of faith"

How...what...but...aaaaaargh

Tempted to smash the 'emergency evens' cabinet here.
posted by TwoWordReview at 10:47 AM on January 19, 2017 [32 favorites]


Trump's Second Mirror - every Trump supporter sees themselves in Trump.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:50 AM on January 19, 2017 [26 favorites]




actually, i'm currently in an evens deficit, but if gop rhetoric is true in any form, deficits don't matter during gop administrations


ooh sick burn alert
posted by zutalors! at 10:50 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Trump has proposed eliminating the strategic evens reserve as part of his budget cuts plan.
posted by zachlipton at 10:50 AM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Don't worry, there will be a massive airlifting of evens, especially to the press, if ever a Democrat comes near any lever of power. For now, deficit even usage is fine!
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:51 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]



Trump is nominating a GIF of Capt. Picard putting his face in his hand as Secretary of Evens.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:55 AM on January 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


"A man of his word", "Always willing to admit he was wrong", "admires his honesty"

Trump's Second Mirror - every Trump supporter sees themselves in Trump.


Sees what they wish they were, perhaps.
posted by Etrigan at 10:55 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Wow. Every time I read a Trump supporter explaining why they like him it reminds me afresh that they live in a fact free universe. Look at some of that. They support him because he's honest. They support him because he admits his mistakes. They support him because he's going to bring Godliness back.

The only one who had a reason that wasn't completely the opposite of the actual, objective, facts was the one who said they supported Trump because since he had such a big ego they thought he'd work hard to succeed. I disagree with their conclusion, but at least the premise is rooted in reality.

But it distresses and disheartens me to see so many Trump supporters who are either horribly ignorant of his actual behavior, actions, and personality. Or who have, for whatever reason, decided to lie either to themselves or to others, about Trump.

It baffles and confuses me, I have no idea if they really and truly believe this stuff (in which case they'd be either insane or at best uninformed), or if they're gas lighting us because their real reasons are socially unacceptable. I don't know which is worse.

I get how a person could listen to Trump and conclude that they support him because they're white and Trump is going to hurt POC and other minorities to help white folks. Such a person would be a racist, but they'd be an honest racist.

I don't get how a person can listen to Trump and conclude that he's godly or keeps his word.

Despite his frequent lying I think I understand how a person could believe Trump is honest, if they're meaning "honest" in the sense of "says bigoted things I believe to be true but are socially unacceptable to say aloud so I don't". Honest in the sense of calling Mexicans rapists, honest in the sense of calling Muslims dangerous, that I can see. It's wrong, but it makes sense if we start from a bigoted point of view.
posted by sotonohito at 10:56 AM on January 19, 2017 [68 favorites]


I will say that in situations where I have to talk to Trumpites, they are far more open and detailed about their contempt for liberals and Obama than why they like Trump, but they do seem to live in a Bizarro universe where they see Trump as honest and honorable compared to those weaselly Clintons.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 10:56 AM on January 19, 2017 [22 favorites]


guys i've switched from evens to bitshits for a while now and it's way better. i know not everyone is comfortable with cryptofucks to give but i feel like it's really going to pay off sooner than later
posted by Tevin at 10:56 AM on January 19, 2017 [58 favorites]


You get an allotment of evens every month for 9 months, but if you seek more evens, Social Security cuts you off.
posted by mochapickle at 10:56 AM on January 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


America has long been an engine run on ambition, even if that ambition is often misplaced, but that also means it can become a Death Star powered by delusion.
posted by holgate at 11:00 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Tempted to smash the 'emergency evens' cabinet here.

My current strategy is to take a few deep breaths and file it coldly and unemotionally into 'This is just bits of data that give examples of the type of thinking that we're up against. It's just data points.'

Mostly works.
posted by Jalliah at 11:01 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


sotonohito, you said what I feel in my heart after I read those tweets.
posted by INFJ at 11:02 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


ballooning deficits down the road.

You should be ashamed of devoting that much setup to that punchline.
posted by Etrigan at 11:03 AM on January 19, 2017 [46 favorites]


You get an allotment of evens every month for 9 months, but if you seek more evens, Social Security cuts you off.

Trump will appoint one of his Steves, let's call him Even Steven, to come directly to your home and seize your supply
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:04 AM on January 19, 2017 [21 favorites]


> Even Steven

Sigh. Do we get a new thread for the Inauguration horror show? We must, right?
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:08 AM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


sotonohito, you said what I feel in my heart after I read those tweets.


Yeah that was pretty much a direct translation of my stuttering above.

My current strategy is to take a few deep breaths and file it coldly and unemotionally into 'This is just bits of data that give examples of the type of thinking that we're up against. It's just data points.'


But what worries me is that I have literally no idea how to fight that. I haven't the foggiest idea where to start. All these accumulating datapoints do is lead me to despair at the sheer scale of what we're up against.
posted by TwoWordReview at 11:08 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Despite his frequent lying I think I understand how a person could believe Trump is honest, if they're meaning "honest" in the sense of "says bigoted things I believe to be true but are socially unacceptable to say aloud so I don't". Honest in the sense of calling Mexicans rapists, honest in the sense of calling Muslims dangerous, that I can see. It's wrong, but it makes sense if we start from a bigoted point of view.

For me it also makes more sense if I add in the understanding that many people just don't understand consciously that their view even is bigoted. They do not think of their views this way at all it's just 'real world thinking' and that they one of a group of people who actually 'see things as they as they actually are and Trump sees it too'.
posted by Jalliah at 11:08 AM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


I gave up trying to figure out how anyone--literally anyone over the age of 8--could look at Donald Trump and not see an imbecile, a pathological malignant narcissist, a virulent bigot, and a boor. Like, what sort of people do these folks associate with on a daily basis that they look at this guy and think, "Sure, he sounds nice and normal and down to earth." Are they just 24/7 surrounded by unrepentant assholes, so every other unrepentant asshole looks totally unremarkable to them?
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:09 AM on January 19, 2017 [51 favorites]


Every time I read a Trump supporter explaining why they like him it reminds me afresh that they live in a fact free universe.

I think to a lot of people Trump is a hero outlaw. He's Jesse James or Ned Kelly to them, that's part of the bikers for Trump appeal. He can do no wrong by them, so every complaint about them man and every attack on him gets turned into something to celebrate and embrace.

And I mentioned Jesse James and Ned Kelly because they were bank robbers that legend turned into Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Except neither of them ever gave anything to the poor, all they did was stick it to the man which is good enough. I fully expect every cry of corruption and self-dealing by Trump, his family and his cabinet will be celebrated by his voters. They'll see him as sticking it to the man like they would if they were in his place. They will even mythologize his actions and pretend they're getting a cut of the profits.
posted by peeedro at 11:09 AM on January 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


What are the odds he tries to balance the federal budget, temporarily, by selling off all of America's actual strategic reserves?

This is analogous to what Congress already is doing. The federal government owns a lot of land, and a lot of that land is put to various productive uses like grazing and drilling for oil and logging and such. That results in billions of dollars a year in royalties to the treasury. And so if the feds were to transfer some of that land to a state or local government (which might then, in turn, auction it off privately), that's money the federal government isn't getting anymore. And under the previous rules, the GAO would account for that by scoring the proposed land transfer as a loss to the government, meaning that Congress would have to accept that giving away revenue-producing land isn't free.

Except now Congress is changing the budget rules to just declare that giving away land totally free of costs. So they can ignore the costs.
posted by zachlipton at 11:12 AM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


could look at Donald Trump and not see an imbecile, a pathological malignant narcissist, a virulent bigot, and a boor.

They do see it. There are people - Normal everyday could be your next door neighbor people - who value these traits in him.
posted by INFJ at 11:14 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


But what worries me is that I have literally no idea how to fight that. I haven't the foggiest idea where to start. All these accumulating datapoints do is lead me to despair at the sheer scale of what we're up against.

I get this it's hard. I regularly fail at keeping it siloed so to speak.
posted by Jalliah at 11:14 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I gave up trying to figure out how anyone--literally anyone over the age of 8--could look at Donald Trump and not see an imbecile, a pathological malignant narcissist, a virulent bigot, and a boor

Right? It makes me physically uncomfortable to watch him exist, let alone speak, regardless of what he's doing or saying. It's like being at a timeshare hard sell: bald desperation and blustering puffery. I would guess that the people who look at Amway (ahem) or Herbalife and think, yep, sounds like a great business opportunity, are the same people who can't smell the bullshit leaking from his pores.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:14 AM on January 19, 2017 [22 favorites]


In the position of someone with a preexisting condition who is currently trying to apply for Social Security to help me pay for grad school, and who needs every cent I can get, Paul Ryan's plans to dismantle it are terrifying.

I truly think these people care for no one but themselves and their friends in their one-percenter bubble. Not people, not wildlife, nobody. Everyone else can suffer and die as long as they're safe and in power. And the fact that a human being can think like that, and so many people who would be harmed by that worldview cheer it on, horrifies and sickens me.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 11:15 AM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


In the position of someone with a preexisting condition who is currently trying to apply for Social Security to help me pay for grad school, and who needs every cent I can get, Paul Ryan's plans to dismantle it are terrifying.

I'd tell you to call Paul Ryan and ask him for tips on paying for college, but he wouldn't get the irony.
posted by Etrigan at 11:17 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


You start by listening.

We will make no progress, we will get nowhere, we will be fighting shadows forever if we refuse to find a way to honestly sit and listen to these people.

Listening is not agreeing, it's not equivocating, and it's not excusing.

But our message isn't getting to them. For some people, it's because their prejudices are too ingrained to ever pay attention to any message that doesn't explicitly reinforce those prejudices. But I don't believe that everyone who voted for Trump shares those prejudices and I'm planning to spend the next year in my community actively engaging with all the Trump voters around me to hear what they're saying and really understand how to speak to those who are willing to listen.

That's how I'm fighting, anyway. To each their own.
posted by Tevin at 11:18 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


ballooning deficits down the road.

i am dog
i red yer pun
so on behav
of evryone

i will now bark
laf if u pleas
i mak no sound
i bark th bees
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:19 AM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


Online Music Festival To Stream Against Trump’s Inauguration Ceremony

Not that I imagine there's much overlap between Trump supporters and the jam band community (although I have met a few), but more competition is always good.
posted by downtohisturtles at 11:19 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]




I gave up trying to figure out how anyone--literally anyone over the age of 8--could look at Donald Trump and not see an imbecile, a pathological malignant narcissist, a virulent bigot, and a boor.

My four-year-old knows that Trump is "mean" and Clinton is "nice."
posted by kirkaracha at 11:20 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Online Music Festival To Stream Against Trump’s Inauguration Ceremony

Oh jam band names, never change.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:24 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


I will say that in situations where I have to talk to Trumpites, they are far more open and detailed about their contempt for liberals and Obama than why they like Trump, but they do seem to live in a Bizarro universe where they see Trump as honest and honorable compared to those weaselly Clintons.

I have yet to interact with a single Republican who will defend Trump or claim to like him, even though they voted for him in the general. (I don't happen to know anyone who voted for him in the primary, apparently.)

They always, always, always pivot to how horrible Hillary supposedly is. Or to abortion, and how we have to save the babies even if it means electing someone kinda yucky.

I actually consider this a very good thing, because it means that they are leaving themselves room to say later that actually they hate Trump and always have. This will give the Republican party the political cover they need to impeach him.

When they change the subject to "But Hillary!" or "But babies!" I don't press the original point about Trump. Like I say, "How can you defend the way he's setting himself up to make a profit out of the presidency?" and then they start talking about the Clinton Foundation and Hillary's speaking fees, and I'm like "Yeah, conflicts of interest are really dangerous." (Or else I go ahead and debate them about the Clinton Foundation, and they will change the subject again, most likely.)

Or they say, "I don't like him either, but I believe abortion is murder, and I couldn't ever vote for a pro-abortion candidate." I'll start talking about how abortion rates tend to fall more under Democratic presidents or whatever, but once they say "I don't like him either," I will NOT press them to defend Trump any further.

Because if I back them into a corner where they have to defend Trump, it will be much harder for them to turn on him later. Once people have publically taken a stand like "Trump is not corrupt" it's humiliating for them to turn around and say he is, later, so I try not to press people into taking that stand.

I have decided that in political arguments with Republicans, having them change the subject is the victory condition for me. It means they can't refute my argument, which means they might take it home and chew on it a little. That's the most I can hope for, since no real human being ever admits they were wrong in the course of a single conversation (not even me, probably.)

I'm trying to keep this rhetorical advice in mind as I gather my courage to argue with strangers on the internet, in accordance with my new theory that trolls and the troll-like have to be fought rather than ignored. If the subject is changed, I win, and the argument is over. At that point I should just move on.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:26 AM on January 19, 2017 [65 favorites]


My kid carpools with a neighbor kid to school and a few weeks ago when it was my turn to drive, I fell out laughing when the neighbor kid announced that Trump is a Christian. A big, snorty, incredulous guffaw. At a 12 year old. Whoops. So I scrambled to collect my thoughts and said that perhaps he is trying to improve himself and we are all flawed, but he's been very unkind to many different sorts of people and he is not who I think of as a good Christian role model. If I hadn't laughed first, I probably could have started a better dialogue and asked her some questions, and I know it's awful to laugh at kids who are telling you what they think. I just couldn't stop it.
posted by danielleh at 11:27 AM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


(Of course I don't actually say "Haha, I win!" or even point out that they changed the subject. That would be counter productive.)

(Also, even if they don't change the subject, if the argument they produce to refute mine is really weak in my opinion, I will mentally declare victory and go home. Their original stupid statements will not have gone unchallenged in the eyes of any future readers, and that's the real goal, not producing a "mea culpa" from an idiot.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:28 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


@AnniseParker - The few LGBT folks who supported Trump should get Lysistrata treatment until he leaves office.

Lol I didn't realize there was a polite way to say "If you go home with somebody, and they voted for Trump, don't fuck 'em!" I love my former mayor.
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:29 AM on January 19, 2017 [24 favorites]


They always, always, always pivot to how horrible Hillary supposedly is. Or to abortion, and how we have to save the babies even if it means electing someone kinda yucky.

Case in point: http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/local/maryland/2017/01/19/inside-mind-quiet-trump-supporter/96734490/
posted by Buntix at 11:30 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


My four-year-old knows that Trump is "mean" and Clinton is "nice."

I went into the local music shop with my two-year-old over the weekend looking for a set of banjo strings. The owner was having an animated conversation with a couple of customers when I came in. I asked for banjo strings. She couldn't find them up front, so asked her husband, who was working on an instrument in the back room, to look for them, and told me to hang out, they'd find some.

While I waited, I was treated to a rant from the owners about Obama letting in a flood of immigrants that she didn't want to support, loud agreement from the other boors in the shop, and a concession that it would be okay if they were immigrants from Canada. "Oh," said the owner, "I'm from Canada" (I wish I were making this up).

My two-year-old asked me why we left without buying anything. Because the lady was mean, I said. "Why is she mean?" Because her parents didn't raise her right, I said. "Why did her parents not raise her right?" I don't know, I said, because some people are just broken I guess.

Then we had a discussion about how it's nice when people are kind to you, and you should endeavor to be kind to everybody, because everybody needs kindness.

The upshot is that I don't have to feel bad about not shopping there more often.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:32 AM on January 19, 2017 [38 favorites]


Amway. Televangelists. Prosperity preachers. Get-rich-quick infomercials. Miracle "cures" your doctor won't tell you about. It's always been there, taking different forms.

There was a long-running comedy in the UK about a small-time trader with big-time ambitions, living in public housing with his brother and grandad (and subsequently his great-uncle). One of the recurring lines was "This time next year, we'll be millionaires", invariably after a scheme had gone farcically wrong. They finally stumbled into being millionaires; it wasn't as funny afterwards.

One American version of that is Of Mice and Men. Another is... this.
posted by holgate at 11:33 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wow. Every time I read a Trump supporter explaining why they like him it reminds me afresh that they live in a fact free universe.

If you are fortunate enough to at least be surrounded by "Blue" family friends, neighbors - or even better, to live in some other sane country, it'd be instructive to read Dale's tweets. You'll understand what it's like for those of us who have to hear crap like that from people we know/love/like/used to love or like. (To the point that someone like me, after a lifetime of it, has finally cut many ties to such people.)

But even after all these decades, I wish I'd find out that my family, ex-friends, others who think this way have all been infected by some virus that's eaten their brain. At least *that* would be a logical, scientific explanation for so much illogical, cruel, horrendous thinking.
posted by NorthernLite at 11:34 AM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Like I posted upthread (last thread? somewhere): The flyer posted at my son's Catholic community center daycare switched from "DON'T VOTE FOR HILLARY/DEMOCRATS THEY KILL BABBIEZ!!!" to "CONTACT AND SHAME THESE [REPUBLICAN] CONGRESSPEOPLE FOR WANTING TO AX SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE!!!!" pretty much over night.

Well, gosh. Who could have predicted this?
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:35 AM on January 19, 2017 [49 favorites]


tell me again about the rabbits george
posted by entropicamericana at 11:35 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


It's always been there, taking different forms.

Y'all should listen to Reply All this week.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:36 AM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


You start by listening.

Honestly I've done (and I still do) that, and it's kind of exhausting. It takes so much energy to have these long conversations (and in my experience they have to be long conversations to feel like either of us have gained anything) and at the end of it all, maybe we understand each other a little better and we realize some areas of common ground, and some areas where we'll never agree. And maybe I've challenged their worldview and given them something to think about (and likewise for me) and maybe we shifted the needle just a little bit (almost imperceptibly). But it often feels like standing in front of the rising tide with my hand out yelling 'stop'.

If the only way I have to change things better is having these one-on-one conversations and encouraging my friends to do the same and play this game of inches, then so be it, but I wish there was something more effective I could be doing.
posted by TwoWordReview at 11:39 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


The flyer posted at my son's Catholic community center daycare switched from "DON'T VOTE FOR HILLARY/DEMOCRATS THEY KILL BABBIEZ!!!" to "CONTACT AND SHAME THESE [REPUBLICAN] CONGRESSPEOPLE FOR WANTING TO AX SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE!!!!" pretty much over night.

Oh man, am I conflicted about Catholicism and what its values should and do imply right now! My kid is applying for school, and we have to answer what both I and her have done lately to help the world, and I really want to be like "SHE HELPED ME BE A DELEGATE SO I COULD TRY TO STOP TRUMP" but then I have to wonder: wait, are they Trump voters? They have an explicit mission to help and serve, but what if they think Trump means that anyway? And then I despair and just want to cuddle my dog for a while, because Trump is really like the most anti-Catholic ever. Or should be. You know.
posted by corb at 11:42 AM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Ultimately, this country will be less competitive if we gut research funding. People don't understand this. They think "oh, well if we don't have government funding it, industry will step in". That's totally wrong.

And that's a big part of why I'm terrified. Basic science research in the US is already not doing all that great for a bunch of reasons (funding issues, lack of full-time and long-term research positions that _aren't_ professor/PI, lots of perverse incentives in postdoc/grad student training, etc.) We're already seeing the damage to public university systems under Republican control in states like Wisconsin; under the incoming administration, it seems all too plausible that we'll see that on a national scale (hitting private as well as public universities, as NIH/NSF/DOE/USDA/etc. cuts inevitably will, and ultimately impacting industry as well for all the reasons you described).

My family and I would like to know this too; let me know if you can think of something. As it is, if I stay in science I am vacillating on whether to pick up German, French, or Swedish first.

Yeah, I am seriously considering European postdocs, both for stability in the next few years, and as a hedge against going on the American academic job market under catastrophic conditions in a few years. I'm close to fluent in German and have started poking at Swedish on Duolingo. But... frankly, I'm not that sanguine about political stability in Europe over the next 5-10 years either.
posted by ubersturm at 11:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Do we get a new thread for the Inauguration horror show?

Too lazy to link to a video, but remember the "Just Don't Look" song from the Simpsons Halloween episode with the mascots run amok?

Just don't look. If Trump stops the motorcade to grope someone or visibly shits himself while speaking, you will be able to watch the video of it later. But odds are nothing interesting will happen, so Just Don't Look.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:44 AM on January 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


> If the only way I have to change things better is having these one-on-one conversations and encouraging my friends to do the same and play this game of inches, then so be it, but I wish there was something more effective I could be doing.

You can take what you have learned and 1) campaign for someone 2) organize a local politics group 3) run for office yourself! It's still a war by inches, but you do have agency to effect the world around you.

Everyone at the top would like us to believe we don't have any real power. That's only true if we believe them. That sounds hella corny but I'm going to preach that message until I die.
posted by Tevin at 11:49 AM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]



Too lazy to link to a video, but remember the "Just Don't Look" song from the Simpsons Halloween episode with the mascots run amok?


I have been remembering that song since Trump and Melania rode the elevator down and called Mexicans rapists.
posted by zutalors! at 11:50 AM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


, I just don't see Trump voters ever really chewing on what they did wrong and how they fucked themselves and everyone else over in the worst possible way.

As morally satisfying at it would be to hold people accountable and force them to admit they were wrong in the past, I care a lot more about getting them to agree that he should be impeached in the future. This is about political tactics. If you want to save a lot of innocent people from suffering, you might have to let some "guilty" people off the hook, as unfair as that seems. (For the most part they were ignorant and deceived anyway.)
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:52 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


But... frankly, I'm not that sanguine about political stability in Europe over the next 5-10 years either.

Fairly sure Scandinavia will remain ≳ as stable as anywhere else on the planet. For one thing, I've heard rumours that with Russia potentially getting expansionist again all new Finnish baby boxes come with Baby's First Sniper Rifle. [fake]
posted by Buntix at 11:52 AM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


> My four-year-old knows that Trump is "mean" and Clinton is "nice."

My sister explained why she doesn't like Trump to her seven year-old daughter by telling her he "hurts a lot of people's feelings and doesn't say sorry," which pretty much sums it up.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:53 AM on January 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


You can take what you have learned and 1) campaign for someone 2) organize a local politics group 3) run for office yourself! It's still a war by inches, but you do have agency to effect the world around you.

Everyone at the top would like us to believe we don't have any real power. That's only true if we believe them. That sounds hella corny but I'm going to preach that message until I die.


This is increasingly my view. I'm looking into what it takes to start a tiny non-profit virutally-officed law firm to run some FOIA campaigns (or whatever else I can think of). I know at least a few other pissed off, underemployed liberal and/or progressive lawyers.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:53 AM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


Bloomberg: Russia Fears That Trump Won’t Be Such a Great Deal After All
Russia is giving Donald Trump the kind of fawning television coverage usually reserved for Vladimir Putin, with its most popular propagandist hailing the president-elect this week as “a man of his word.”

But inside the Kremlin, the initial euphoria over having a Putin admirer in the White House is giving way to skepticism that any meaningful detente with the U.S. can be achieved, according to four senior officials in Moscow.
The article does posit the insane that it's come to this yet totally plausible theory that "Russian officials could be deliberately talking down expectations from Trump, of course, in an effort to undermine suspicions they secretly aided his campaign."
posted by zachlipton at 11:54 AM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


If the only way I have to change things better is having these one-on-one conversations and encouraging my friends to do the same and play this game of inches, then so be it, but I wish there was something more effective I could be doing.

I haven't had to deal with a problem this immense and overwhelming but I've found with other things, that when something happens things talking about how things are connected can help. It has to be non-judgmental and sometimes involves acting just as surprised or horrified at the consequences. "Well I guess this is the consequence of X policy that boss implemented last month. Sucks" So many people don't seem to have a real understanding of how stuff that happens 'up there' is connected to 'down here'. In a workplace it's easier to see because it's closer. Gets harder as it expands outward.
It's helping people understand how systems work.
Person: I like fishing but now my favorite place has way less fish. grumble grumble
Me: Oh that's because of that damn they built last year. Yeah totally sucks. Screwed up the water flow that the fish you like need. *shrug*
Me in my head: Holy hell. We fricken told you what that bloody damn was going to do to the fish. How could you not of seen it? What you do upstream effects the downstream, ITS SO OBVIOUS.

It's surprising not obvious which is the problem.
posted by Jalliah at 11:57 AM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Catholicism is a big tent. I had to hide one of my FB friends because they are super deluxe religious Catholic, pro-life, and a lefty revolutionary to the point where I was like, okay I get enough of this at home from my husband, I do not need it on my FB too, yes I GET IT HILLARY WAS TERRIBLE BERN IT ALL DOWN TO THE BARRICADES enough.

I went to a Catholic school unofficially run by liberation theologists so I'm always a little caught off guard when I meet Republican Catholics.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:58 AM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


cjelli Thanks for giving me something new to worry about. I can totally see Trump selling off long term important stuff for short term gain. It's practically the standard way US business operates.

It also, I think, might be the motivation behind his bizarre obsession with ending NATO or shaking down NATO partners. In the short term it'd save money or even make money depending on how well his mob protection racket plan works. In the long term it'd be disastrous, but he doesn't think long term.

It really is "running America like a business". All about profits this quarter, nothing about profits five years from now. That's how Blackberry went from the number one smartphone in the world, and the only one anyone serious ever used, to being not merely a has been but an almost totally forgotten has been in just a few short years.

peedro Re: Trump as an outlaw hero. Yeah, I suppose I can see that too. It's bullshit and lies, but it's the sort of mythological thinking that has a deep emotional grip on people.


OnceUponATime I have yet to interact with a single Republican who will defend Trump or claim to like him, even though they voted for him in the general. (I don't happen to know anyone who voted for him in the primary, apparently.)

I have spoken with several people who actively support and defend Trump, as well as people who voted for him in the primary. Mostly they seemed to believe a lot of counterfactual or mythic stuff about him.

The recurring theme they have is that he's smart (usually "much smarter than you and me") because he's rich. And because he's rich he's a good businessman, and what America really needs is a good businessman to run things.

They also tell me that his talk about minorities, women, immigrants, and all the other groups Trump hates, is either bold telling it like it is, speaking truth to PC power, or just good ole' boy talk and I need to get a thicker skin if that sort of ribbing gets me. The latter group insists he doesn't actually mean any harm to the groups he insults and belittles, he's just fighting back against PC bullshit and he'll be the best thing that ever happened to women/minorities/POC/whatever. Because he's a good person.

How do we know he's a good person if we can't trust his words? Because he's rich. There's a definite prosperity gospel air to the way his defenders talk about him even if they aren't Christian or never explicitly mention prosperity gospel teachings.
posted by sotonohito at 12:01 PM on January 19, 2017 [33 favorites]


I get a little irritated at the "look for the helpers" Mr. Rogers quote after each tragedy (because it gets sappy/insincere), BUT: in this case, I recommend it when the pro-Trumpers get you down. Not stay in your bubble--in fact, keep seeking outside your safe spaces for others who share your beliefs, who are doing things that help. Join up when you can. Pass help along. Grow your bubble.

The other part to remember is that, from the high-altitude view that is all we really have of this government (made more fuzzy by the fact that lots of stuff has not yet happened), we don't see the weaknesses and opportunities. That doesn't mean they aren't there.

They may be rich and powerful, but they are human and humans screw up. Possibly humans who have never truly had this much work to do because of wealth/being surrounded by sycophants will screw up more, or get distracted. Especially humans who don't even know how to hire the people that DO know how to do the things that need doing. Those are cracks in the facade, opportunities to resist and interfere and push back. We have to be ready for those opportunities--to protest, to call, to donate, to go on strike, to publicize, to vote, whatever we have to do.
posted by emjaybee at 12:03 PM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


The institutions give no more ground for believing in them. At the same time, it is easy to lose faith with one's fellow man when the invective flies. Perhaps there is something to glean from this conjunction. I'm gonna adopt a position I'll call Rational Humanism (RH), which combines a belief in the merit of using reason to settle arguments, and a commitment to the dignity of the individual person as the moral centre. I think pretty much everyone here might subscribe to some shade of this, and it might be useful to use as an appellation rather than "the left", which has so much useless baggage, and fails to either unify us or define a coherent "other".

So the institutions, having failed, do not work well with RH, though they got us this far. Many people in the nasty world we now face do not share any RH commitments. Which means that we need to relativise our stance, recognising, not that we are wrong, but that we can't act as if the others shared our belief.

The Hindu philosopher, Adi Shankara, had a most wonderful effect on the society of his time. Surrounded by many many cultural/religious/tribal groups, each with different rituals and practices, he provided an exquisite philosophical framework, Advaita Vedanta, that provided a common intellectual centre for these many groups, mostly of Shiva worshippers, allowing them to disagree about things like God, the afterlife, the correct rituals and holidays, etc. It marked out a spot in a territory such that others could rationally occupy other spots (monist, dualist, theist, atheist, vegetarian, meal lover).To this day, the largest pilgrimage in the world, the Kumbh Mela, draws together, not believers who share beliefs, but people who share common ground for setting out their differences, allowing them to co-exist.

We need a larger framework, within which we can be, and remain, RH, but that will allow us to engage, where it matters, in the reparation and reform of the institutions, with those who are not of the RH group.
posted by stonepharisee at 12:03 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Remember when we lived on the shiny side of the looking glass....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/19/trump-toasts-his-nominees-by-far-the-highest-iq-of-any-cabinet-ever-assembled/

This wouldn't even be true if he was talking about Ikea cabinets...
posted by Buntix at 12:04 PM on January 19, 2017 [24 favorites]


How do we know he's a good person if we can't trust his words? Because he's rich. There's a definite prosperity gospel air to the way his defenders talk about him even if they aren't Christian or never explicitly mention prosperity gospel teachings.

It's the Just World thing again. Prosperity gospel stuff is only a subset of that - the general belief is very, very popular even without weird religious underpinnings.
posted by mordax at 12:07 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


I've tried talking to Trumpites, and it's been a hard, exhausting battle. A lot of them don't even try to listen.

Like the Trumpites in my therapy group who don't want government healthcare even when I explained why I, someone in their circle, would personally suffer without it, the woman I met in a local supermarket who thought Obama was a traitor, even when she couldn't say why, and the numerous people who get defensive over their beliefs rather than questioning them or giving mine a fair hearing.

My biggest success was explaining the concept of privilege and why some people will suffer under Trump more than him to a Johnson voter. The entrenched Trumpites don't let me get that far.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 12:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


tell me again about the rabbits george

I was reading the discussion in this thread about Trump's speech patterns yesterday (which may have already been a couple of days old by then) and so badly wanted to post that when you put his speech in print, he reads almost exactly like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. I didn't because the thread had moved on. So thanks for giving me that entree.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


It also, I think, might be the motivation behind his bizarre obsession with ending NATO or shaking down NATO partners. In the short term it'd save money or even make money depending on how well his mob protection racket plan works. In the long term it'd be disastrous, but he doesn't think long term.

I do think this is part of it. Money is his focus. I also think that part of his motivation is that Trump at his core doesn't like to be told what to do, by anyone or anything. He will only do it if he is absolutely forced and then come up with some reasoning which makes it his idea. He's transferring this to the US as a whole. NATO has the power to 'tell the US what to do'. Trade agreements that he didn't make, ditto. EU, China, allies, ditto, ditto, ditto.
All of these things didn't come from him, or his 'deals' therefore they are suspect and automatically wrong at their core.
No one is going to tell me what I can or cannot do is a rule he lives by.
posted by Jalliah at 12:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


*shouts from the rooftops* BUT HEEEEEEE'S NOOOOOOT RIIIIIIIICH, HEEEE'S BROOOOOOKE
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [43 favorites]


the future—and I’m talking, like, 35,000 years in the future—is still bright.

I'm only in my 50's, but I've come to the sobering realization that things are almost assuredly going to suck for the rest of my life. I guess I was just lucky with the early part.
posted by bongo_x at 12:13 PM on January 19, 2017 [27 favorites]



But it distresses and disheartens me to see so many Trump supporters who are either horribly ignorant of his actual behavior, actions, and personality. Or who have, for whatever reason, decided to lie either to themselves or to others, about Trump.

I live in place that voted 80%+ for Trump.

Yes, they are horribly ignorant, because they are (generally speaking) isolated and naive. These are people who, as a whole, rarely leave their county, let alone their state. As a whole, they have lived their entire lives in one place. They watch one news network. The people they work with are the same people they go to church, school, and family reunions with. It is insular, and, as a whole, a really predictable and mostly good place.

So, when they see media portraying these bad guys — it is literally unbelievable. They have no experience with large scale anything. The nearest “big city” has a population just over 20,000. The percentage of citizens with a college degree is less than 25%.

And yes, almost everyone they know is Christian and white. They still have faith in the system. Their families have spent many, many generations believing in the ethics of hard work.

They are (mostly) not bad or dumb people - just really isolated and naive.

They live in a bubble where they cannot possibly conceive of the real horrors and evils of the world.
posted by slipthought at 12:14 PM on January 19, 2017 [21 favorites]


It's never been about long-term thinking for him. It's always been about deals. Leveraging these properties to build this one. Getting himself in the paper for some quick news hit. Telling everyone what he thinks they want to hear because he doesn't care he'll be saying the opposite thing tomorrow. He has no idea how to look ahead five minutes at the consequences of his actions let alone 30 years from now, 100 years from now, 10,000 years from now.

And we're all screwed as a result.
posted by zachlipton at 12:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]



They live in a bubble where they cannot possibly conceive of the real horrors and evils of the world


Yes. They are the ones in the bubble, not us. I'd prefer they didn't dictate how the rest of us should live.
posted by zutalors! at 12:19 PM on January 19, 2017 [45 favorites]


Trump advisers: President dancing with Caitlyn Jenner at inauguration would ‘heal’ the LGBTQ community

Only if Trump does too - and goes first.
posted by scalefree at 12:19 PM on January 19, 2017


A GOP Senator Told A Democrat To Lighten Up During A Confirmation Hearing. It Didn’t Go Well.

The Kansas senator opened the hearing by offering anti-anxiety drug valium to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), after he delivered a lengthy opening statement detailing the shady business history of Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s pick to lead the Treasury.

Wyden wasn’t game for the joke. He reminded Roberts that there were many senators on the committee waiting to ask Mnuchin questions. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) followed up angrily, saying that he hoped the comment didn’t set the tone for the committee’s work this year.

posted by futz at 12:20 PM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


It's the Just World thing again. Prosperity gospel stuff is only a subset of that - the general belief is very, very popular even without weird religious underpinnings.

These people are being very selective about the Bible, because when I read it years ago for Sunday school I got a completely different message, and even as a cynical agnostic I am 100% sure Jesus had very harsh words for people like Trump.

*points to the "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" quote, everything Jesus says about helping the poor and suffering, everything about hypocrisy, the emphasis on humility, and the parable of Lazarus and the rich man*
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 12:21 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


They live in a bubble where they cannot possibly conceive of the real horrors and evils of the world

Yes. They are the ones in the bubble, not us. I'd prefer they didn't dictate how the rest of us should live.


Actually, that's exactly how they see it, too.
posted by slipthought at 12:25 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I have angrily IM'd my lovingly patient friends a good number of screeds about how the mainstream American church are playing the role of the Pharisees that Jesus is constantly preaching against in the Gospels. Trump, to me, feels like the culmination of Pharisaical culture.
posted by Tevin at 12:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


More on incoming HHS Secretary Price's roadmap for health insurance: he wants to do away with employer-paid insurance.
posted by scalefree at 12:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


So, sorry if I am ruining the joke, but there actually is / was a national strategic helium reserve, and they actually did decide to try and recoup a piddly amount of the national deficit by selling it off. The decision was made during the Clinton administration, largely implemented during the Bush admin, but was at least slowed down under Obama such that the US still has some amount of helium in reserve.

And this is actually concerning because all "used" helium (like when you pop a balloon) literally floats off into space. And the only way that more is made is by very very slow radioactive decay of various metals - so there is no helium "cycle" the way there is with almost any other useful element or compound on earth.

So, yeah. Strategic helium reserve. Sold off in privatization plan, leading to more-or-less permanent reduction in amount of helium available to humanity.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 12:27 PM on January 19, 2017 [25 favorites]


thedarksideofprocyon I think it is far, far, too soon to try to talk sense to Trumpites. They're still in triumphalist, we won you lost it'll all be awesome, mode. They will tend to see anything we say now as just us being sore losers.

Give it six or eight months, let the first scandals start hitting, let the glow of his shiny wear off and the fact that he didn't just magically make everything better become apparent, then they might be open to reason.

Also be prepared for them to decide that things **DID** get magically. Currently they're busy pretending that, all evidence to the contrary, the economy sucks, the military is a shambles, and the world is laughing at us because we're weak. One thing Trump is going to do is claim credit for every single good thing Obama has done, and now that there's a white man in office his followers will admit that things are actually not all that bad in America. So they likely will see a sudden, magical, Trump caused "everything is fixed" sort of moment.

Like the people interviewed in this article. These people know damn well the economy is better, but they are ideologically incapable of admitting that Obama fixed it. So they're waiting for Trump to get into office so they can finally admit the truth.

And I dunno how to deal with that.
posted by sotonohito at 12:32 PM on January 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


If you get rid of employer-based coverage, most people would go without (get sicker, and die sooner)--meaning a huge hit for the insurance companies. Employer plans are what keep them afloat; individual plans are a nightmare of paperwork and very low returns. I mean, there's no telling with these folks and their love for killing off sick people, but I have to think some very large insurance companies would find this very upsetting.
posted by emjaybee at 12:35 PM on January 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


Nervousness in Taiwan (WSJ, $$):
“This statement makes it clear that he approaches foreign policy in the same way he approaches a business negotiation, which means that any issue can be dealt with as a bargaining chip to be traded. This approach leaves no room for universal values, and it means that there are no eternal friends or enemies,” its editorial said.
Looking at Daniel Dale's vignettes, as well as the performers, you can make jokes about the inauguration being Branson on the Potomac, but attendees will be collectively enacting an idea of Real America that corresponds to their hometowns, right down to having maps of the bits of DC to avoid.
posted by holgate at 12:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


One of the few items of good news in 2016 was the discovery of a big new helium deposit in Tanzania.

Not that it's a reserve you really want to go selling off, although there would be some irony if it was to Germany
posted by Buntix at 12:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Getting rid of employer based insurance without replacing it with universal insurance would be me moving back to Canada so fast heads would be spinning like tops.
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Not that it's a reserve you really want to go selling off,

Why not? If you've gutted scientific research and health and your industry is facing tariff war meltdown, you probably won't need that much He anyway.
posted by Devonian at 12:43 PM on January 19, 2017


The Trump transition: how it will play out (original Twitter thread here).

I'm not happy about this whole "beachhead" thing. Creates "fact on the ground" of unconfirmed nominees meddling in departments & deemphasizes confirmation process, possibly leading to delegitimizing it as unnecessary.
posted by scalefree at 12:44 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


They're still in triumphalist, we won you lost it'll all be awesome, mode. They will tend to see anything we say now as just us being sore losers.

The gloating's actually been one of the hardest things to stomach, especially when I'm trapped in a position where I have no choice but to listen to it. My therapist's a fanatical Trumpite, and him crowing in my post-election group session was horrible.

You'd think a licensed MD would understand the importance of health care and protections for the sick and disabled, but no.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 12:47 PM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


Employer based healthcare is an awful concept, TBH. Though what would they replace it with?

The goal of the conservative approach, according to Urban Institute health policy scholar Linda Blumberg, is "to move away from more sharing of risks and towards more segmenting and separation of risks."

Oh, I see. Death panels.
posted by Artw at 12:47 PM on January 19, 2017 [39 favorites]


The whole "death panel" thing was ridiculous from day one. "We don't want government bureaucrats deciding who lives and dies! We want private sector bureaucrats with a profit motive doing that!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:48 PM on January 19, 2017 [32 favorites]


The basic question I'd ask is: what do we do when someone spends their UBI on when they need, and yet still does not have enough to meet their needs?

I don't mean for this to sound as blunt and dismissive as it does but, if that's happening with regularity, you need to increase their income.

So I guess I support the "UBI as a total replacement for welfare" approach. I think one of things you gain with UBI is that you get rid of all the bureaucracy and infrastructure around the myriad social services programs and reducing those programs to their most basic state, giving people in need money. And, by doing it through a refundable tax credit, you're mostly using the existing infrastructure and bureaucracy of the IRS.

But really, the "supplant welfare" approach is a platonic ideal that isn't really achievable in the real world so it's really just a matter of using UBI to being minimizing other forms of the social safety net. You're right that are always going to be edge cases but the point of UBI is to minimize those edge cases. To me, UBI is something that you can slowly phase in, over decades if need be, as a solution to the inevitable replacement of humans by robots in the workforce.

If a robot/computer/AI or what have you can do a better job in every way, shape, and form than a human, there is no reason for anyone to have a job. That can't sustain an economy for long so we're going to need a way to cover that transition and that transition may well take decades. In a sense, it's a path we started on the first time we used a tool to make a job easier. Most of the job losses over the last few decades has been due to automation right? To me, that's just the early history chapter of a future textbook about the history of automation.

Which, to bring this back around to something more or less on topic, is why this focus on jobs, especially from a supply-side approach, seems like a waste of time to me. All the jobs are going away and at 36 years old, I'm really not sure if it will happen before I retire. I'm nearly certain that I'll live to see it. Focus on people, society, infrastructure, etc and you set the stage for short term job growth and increased innovation that accelerates that automation while helping to move all of us into a post-labor society.

Trump's plan to deal with jobs lost to robots would be to restrict the jobs that robots are allowed to perform. Like most of his plans, he tries to ignore reality and try to get it to bend to his idea of things are "supposed to be".
posted by VTX at 12:49 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


The model is "pay as little tax as you can while becoming a 1%er so you can get a lump-sum discount for half a million dollars of cancer treatment. Also, get regular blood transfusions from teenagers."
posted by holgate at 12:50 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


These people are being very selective about the Bible, because when I read it years ago for Sunday school I got a completely different message, and even as a cynical agnostic I am 100% sure Jesus had very harsh words for people like Trump.

Oh, me too. Non-theist, but I went to Catholic school as a boy. I should've been more specific: this sort of thinking doesn't come from twisting the Bible around, it's *why* they twist the Bible around. Well, that and shocking, callous laziness.

I mention this mostly because it's important to remember that this kind of thinking will come from non-theists too, it'll just be couched differently.
posted by mordax at 12:51 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


So, yeah. Strategic helium reserve. Sold off in privatization plan, leading to more-or-less permanent reduction in amount of helium available to humanity.


And you can ask anyone who's operated an MRI machine why that's a crime against humanity.
posted by ocschwar at 12:52 PM on January 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


scalefree The confirmation process is already just a rubber stamp, at least as long as the President has a majority in the Senate. The Senate Democrats killed the filibuster for cabinet posts, they had to and I don't have any gripe about that, but it does mean that there is literally nothing the current Senate Democrats can do to stop or even slow down Trump's appointees.

I'm far from convinced that the Democrats are actually achieving anything by showing up to the confirmation "hearings" and that they might have done better to simply boycott the whole shitshow.

Every single one of Trump's awful nominees will be confirmed with an absolute minimum of 52 votes, and regrettably a large number of Vichy Democrats voting aye as well. In a normal situation you could argue that getting them on record for various topics might serve at least a useful PR function or be fodder for campaign ads, but I don't think it'll make any difference at all in this political climate.

I'd like to see Democratic unity and not one single Democratic vote for any of Trump's nominees, I also know I'll never get that because the Senate Democrats are filled with DINO scumbags.

But really there's no point in pretending that the whole sorry lot of them won't be confirmed. It's as inevitable as gravity.
posted by sotonohito at 12:53 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Trump picks NY Jets' owner as UK ambassador

Isn't the NFL trying to gain a foothold in the UK?
posted by futz at 12:53 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


So, yeah. Strategic helium reserve. Sold off in privatization plan, leading to more-or-less permanent reduction in amount of helium available to humanity.

And you can ask anyone who's operated an MRI machine why that's a crime against humanity.


They need to put more in. Those things are fucking heavy.
posted by Etrigan at 12:54 PM on January 19, 2017 [25 favorites]


right down to having maps of the bits of DC to avoid.

Did I miss this and can someone repost it so I know exactly where is safe for me to drink this weekend? I doubt the #MAGA hats will make it to H Street or Petworth, but I'd like to know.
posted by T.D. Strange at 12:54 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


More like Death Pools.

The thing is, this is shitty for everyone. Young healthy people will find their barebones healthcare inadequate if they do get sick. Older sicker folks will be unable to afford insurance, and will just...die. Or go bankrupt THEN die. Will hospitals even benefit? If no one can afford to use them, and there's no insurance paying them...don't they go out of business? Or just turn into QuickCare clinics, where you can go into hock for a broken leg but only rich people can get open-heart surgery? It's like replacing all banks with payday loan centers. You can make some money, but not the kind you were making before, surely?

I am trying to find a "not just evil, also profitable" motive to this and failing. Getting rid of everything but individual plans would be an economic disaster. This seems to be a purely kill-the-poor ideological idea.
posted by emjaybee at 12:54 PM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


And you can ask anyone who's operated an MRI machine why that's a crime against humanity.

Under Trumpcare, 99% of people won't be able to afford getting an MRI. Problem solved!
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:56 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


My therapist's a fanatical Trumpite

Which means they should be able to recognise his NPD, and how dangerous it makes him.

[Also was I the only one didn't know that Charles Krauthammer was involved in writing the DSM-#?]
posted by Buntix at 12:56 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]






My therapist's a fanatical Trumpite

How is that not a hard and fast disqualifier for that profession?
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:02 PM on January 19, 2017 [44 favorites]


Isn't the NFL trying to gain a foothold in the UK?

Possibly, but Dan Rooney got the Ireland ambassadorship under Obama, so there's precedent (alas) with these appointments. (Was Randy Butts not available?)
posted by holgate at 1:06 PM on January 19, 2017


The thing is, this is shitty for everyone. Young healthy people will find their barebones healthcare inadequate if they do get sick. Older sicker folks will be unable to afford insurance, and will just...die. Or go bankrupt THEN die. Will hospitals even benefit? If no one can afford to use them, and there's no insurance paying them...don't they go out of business?

Yes, and as I've said before when it's come up, I'm really really hoping that medical industry associations & insurance companies are pushing hard on Republican lawmakers behind the scenes. They're the ones who have campaign money, and so they're the ones that GOP reps will listen to.

This won't just harm the unemployed & working poor who depend on expanded Medicaid or subsidized ACA coverage, it will upset the delicate and complex (or jerry-rigged, you could say) system of paying for medical services. Which is something like a sixth of the US economy.

It's as if (actually worse than if) the government decided overnight to withdraw from NAFTA, not recognizing that without the just-in-time system that allows the auto industry to move products between Michigan and Ontario, the whole industry would fall apart. of course, they would do this if they could.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:06 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


The confirmation process is already just a rubber stamp, at least as long as the President has a majority in the Senate.

But there's still something to be said for using the microphone & spotlight to highlight their unsuitability & tie them to explicit support for unpopular &/or unworkable plans to hobble their ability to do damage. As you go further down the org chart the effectiveness of that weakens but if we just allow the vast majority of them to start working without any confirmation at all that seems even worse than an impotent callout at inauguration.
posted by scalefree at 1:07 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Can you imagine Trump taking the time and effort to personally review the details of even one case, let alone three hundred and thirty? Among the many things I will miss about the Obama presidency is his personal sense of duty and obligation to the job; his approach to that work treats the job of the president with the respect it deserves.

I hope no one tells him that he (not quite) literally has a "get out of jail free" card that he can give to anyone he likes. Because he definitely wouldn't misuse that absolute and unchecked little bit of power, nope.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:11 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]



Inside Trump’s shadow national security council


Oh lord ugh. Just another reminder of something I have been avoiding. I realized a while back that in order for me to gain a better understanding of what 'the hell is going on' is to do a deep dive into these guys worlds beyond what has been discussed here and beyond snippets contained in news articles. It's just what I do and have had to do before. So far I've been skirting the around the outer rings because honestly Bannon's world is just horrible and disgusting. I've had to explore deep into his type of world years ago and frankly I'm not looking forward to re-visiting it.

I will though. Know your enemy sort of thing. Not looking forward to it one bit.

Without derailing too much if anyone already know of sources of insight memail would be great.
Might as well stop avoiding it.
posted by Jalliah at 1:12 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


How is that not a hard and fast disqualifier for that profession?


I've been asking myself much the same thing. All I know is he's a licensed MD, he's incredibly pro-Trump, and he brings his politics into sessions, which I'm pretty sure isn't kosher.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 1:13 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Fortunately, the line about the power to pardon is several paragraphs in to the Constitution so I'm presuming Trump will never get there on his own.
posted by tivalasvegas at 1:13 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Because he definitely wouldn't misuse that absolute and unchecked little bit of power, nope.

Would he have to actually pardon Bernie Madoff to let him advise on Social Security, though, or could he just do it from prison?
posted by uncleozzy at 1:13 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


So far I've been skirting the around the outer rings because honestly Bannon's world is just horrible and disgusting

If only there were condoms for one's brain for such circumstances
posted by emjaybee at 1:22 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sounds like Bernie's already got a gig as a financial consultant in prison:

Apparently, the guy is also a star in prison and in demand for financial advice. “He stole more money than anyone in history, and to other thieves, this makes him a hero,” said Fishman, who said Madoff “fits” in prison.

The fucking tone of that article. "He bankrupted a lot of people, caused untold pain and suffering and his sons committed suicide and got cancer during the fallout of his conviction...but wow, he's got moxie!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:24 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Fortunately, the line about the power to pardon is several paragraphs in to the Constitution so I'm presuming Trump will never get there on his own.

Someone (who has broken the law or wants to break the law) will tell him. And then we'll get a press conference where he says "The president's friends can't commit crimes. I just learned that. Crimes don't apply to the president's friends. Did you know that? I just learned that."
posted by OnceUponATime at 1:25 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


You'd think a licensed MD would understand the importance of health care and protections for the sick and disabled, but no.

Someone many many threads ago talked a little about why MDs tend to be so conservative, and it turns out that they practically teach conservatism in med school. If you look at the list of donors to R candidates you will see a LOT of doctors.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 1:28 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Someone (who has broken the law or wants to break the law) will tell him. And then we'll get a press conference where he says "The president's friends can't commit crimes. I just learned that. Crimes don't apply to the president's friends. Did you know that? I just learned that."

They can murder whoever they want so long as they do it by shooting the person from the other side of the state line.
posted by Talez at 1:30 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Fortunately, the line about the power to pardon is several paragraphs in to the Constitution so I'm presuming Trump will never get there on his own.

Khizr Khan offered him a copy that was just the right size for his tiny hands.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 1:32 PM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


I'm far from convinced that the Democrats are actually achieving anything by showing up to the confirmation "hearings" and that they might have done better to simply boycott the whole shitshow.

Indeed. Why don't they just abandon DC and go home or something? They could take to their beds and produce highly principled and outraged YouTube videos.

If you read what I wrote, I'm not saying that your tactic is necessarily wrong. I'm saying that I can't support it.

While managing to persuade someone that they hold a belief that is wrong is always ideal, at this moment merely annoying the shit out Trumpistas is a perfectly valid strategy. Negging and needling are likely to be valuable skills to have in the coming months.

My therapist's a fanatical Trumpite

I would get a new therapist. And if that isn't possible, then I'd watch One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest repeatedly.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:38 PM on January 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


As someone who did home health care sales for a [not] short [enough] stint, I can tell you, at least in the south Texas world, the doctors I visited didn't get into it to help others. They're in it for the money and the prestige. You also have to consider that private practice doctors are often small business owners of their practice. They're usually men. Their employees are almost all women. Their friends are almost all other doctors.
posted by avalonian at 1:40 PM on January 19, 2017 [18 favorites]


ER Doctors, and those outside private practice, I'd imagine they're much different. At least I want to imagine.
posted by avalonian at 1:40 PM on January 19, 2017


One of the things I've learned in the election's fallout is that it's okay to cut people off for crossing certain moral lines without guilt or shame, and who I give my time and energy to is ultimately my decision. And proudly supporting Trump is a moral line for me.

On the one hand it isn't always an easy decision to make, but on the other it's an empowering realization.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 1:45 PM on January 19, 2017 [26 favorites]


Well even conservative doctors can figure out what will happen to their practices if health insurance goes away.
posted by emjaybee at 1:46 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Winter is Coming or How I Channeled My Frustration Today
posted by carmicha at 1:48 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Someone many many threads ago talked a little about why MDs tend to be so conservative, and it turns out that they practically teach conservatism in med school. If you look at the list of donors to R candidates you will see a LOT of doctors.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 4:28 PM on January 1


Surgeons are conservatives. Psychiatrists are democrats.
posted by yoga at 1:51 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Mean, small me hopes that the pee-pee video drops on the internet 15 minutes before the swearing in.
posted by Lyme Drop at 1:55 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


I did just spot one Black person in the audience of the inauguration concert. So, there's that.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:55 PM on January 19, 2017




You also have to consider that private practice doctors are often small business owners of their practice. They're usually men. Their employees are almost all women. Their friends are almost all other doctors.

This describes my father pretty well. Owned a private practice. Male. Everyone working for him was female. And yes, yes, he's a Republican. I've thought for years that a big part of his creepy misogynist thinking comes from the fact that at work he was the boss and the women in the office worked for him. So he views the whole world through a prism of "Men are in charge. Women serve the men".
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


You also have to consider that private practice doctors are often small business owners of their practice. They're usually men. Their employees are almost all women. Their friends are almost all other doctors.

Ditto for dentists. They are almost universally horrible employers too. As I often say (after stealing it from a comment here in some thread), "You should only start a business to 'do what you love' if the thing you love is starting a business. If it's anything else, you should find someone to hire to do that."
posted by VTX at 2:01 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Surgeons are conservatives. Psychiatrists are democrats.

Go figure that I somehow have the exception.

octobersurprise: I'm seeing him because of a family situation (the reasons are complicated and personal), not my own decision, so I don't really have a say in the matter for as long as I live with my parents. So I guess it's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for me.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 2:04 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


If you get a chance, check out the last episode of the West Wing Week. At about 2:56, the Obamas are visiting the swing set which they donated, and the little kids screaming, "BARACK OBAMA" is just the best. Bring tissues.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:05 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Ugh, I am having SO much trouble getting through to Senator Schumer's office. It's been 40 minutes trying his DC line on my landline and NY line on my cell - absolutely zero success. Luckily, while I am fully out of evens, I have a pretty deep supply of YOU WILL HEAR MY VOICE.
posted by prefpara at 2:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


That was an anti-jinx, I got through.
posted by prefpara at 2:15 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]




I'm going to miss Obama, even more so because his replacement is such a nightmare.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 2:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


At Trump Hotel in Washington, Champagne Toasts in an Ethical ‘Minefield’
Perhaps more than any other location in Mr. Trump’s far-flung real estate empire, [the Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office Building in DC] epitomizes the convergence of Donald Trump the global businessman and Donald Trump the president-elect. ... “That building is symbolic of the minefield that President-elect Trump has decided to walk through,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, who is the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is charged with investigating any potential wrongdoing by government officials. “We are going now from the hypothetical to reality — and I myself am not sure where it is going to lead.”

A nice rundown of the conflicts of interest that become real tomorrow at noon, starting with the hotel lease violation but ticking through the foreign government payments, the hotel employees trying to unionize in front of a Trump NLRB, visas for foreign hotel employees from a Trump Department of Labor, policy decisions that affect Deutsche Bank, his hotel financer, etc.

It's going to be utterly unprecedented.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:20 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


So basically all those appointments are WH comms staff. He has a whole communications team and basically no other staff in the entire government. If it's true that personnel is policy, that should give you an idea his policy is all around bloviating and not around governing.
posted by zachlipton at 2:21 PM on January 19, 2017 [29 favorites]


It would be one thing if he was passing the baton to Hillary, who I would trust to maintain his policies, but Trump's people are slavering to dismantle everything good he did and not even bothering to hide it. So seeing him and what he represented go is incredibly depressing.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 2:23 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Live video of the pre-inauguration performances.

It appears that 3 Doors down is playing atm
posted by kuatto at 2:23 PM on January 19, 2017


The thing is, this is shitty for everyone. Young healthy people will find their barebones healthcare inadequate if they do get sick. Older sicker folks will be unable to afford insurance, and will just...die. Or go bankrupt THEN die.

I am neither old nor young, wedged somewhere in the middle. I'm not much better off. Tonight I get to decide between a shitty Bronze plan with gigantic deductibles or a moderately less shitty Silver plan that I really can't afford until I'm working again, but I need SOMETHING until I'm working again. (I say "tonight" because I feel that waiting until Trump is Officially In There to make final enrollment would be A Bad Plan. Also I finally got my finalized W2 numbers so I can punch in the right figures for subsidy eligibility.) If Congress pulls a stunt and wipes the ACA off the books completely somehow, I have no idea what to do and less recourse.

But at LEAST those BAD, BAD, OH SO NAUGHTY EMAILS got PROPERLY PUNISHED.
posted by delfin at 2:27 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Live video of the pre-inauguration performances.

Why aren't there more flags? There should be a sea of flags.

Sad!
posted by mochapickle at 2:32 PM on January 19, 2017


Whatever is going on on the stage right now, I don't think Donald gets it. He keeps saying, "Wow."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:34 PM on January 19, 2017


Ha! One performer just yelled WE ARE BETTER TOGETHER!
posted by mochapickle at 2:34 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


After so many bands and musicians took a stand against Trump, even if some only really did it because of fan pressure, I was sorry although not totally surprised to see some break ranks. I won't be listening to 3 Doors Down again in the future, and frankly they aren't much of a loss.

But it's appropriate that one of the only named bands he could get to perform was a pretty washed-up one. Says it all, really.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 2:34 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also I finally got my finalized W2 numbers so I can punch in the right figures for subsidy eligibility.)

Just FYI, the healthcare.gov application asks about your household's expected 2017 income, not your 2016 income -- so estimate it out using your unemployment benefits, if applicable, not your previous income. And if your current monthly income is below $1366/mo ($1842 if you're married, more if you also have kids), you may qualify for Medicaid which is free, if you live in a state that expanded it.
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:34 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


*opens envelope* And this year's "Best Use of Milton in an Election Thread" award goes to . . . . . . octobersurprise!
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


This is what I will be playing on repeat the next 48 hours.
I will be keeping a latch open for if someone succeeds in exposing Trumpf as the Manchurian candidate, but mostly, I will work on preserving my mental health.
After the weekend, I promise, I'll get back to working for world peace and more equality.
posted by mumimor at 2:37 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Pod Save America: Obama's Exit Interview

Wow, pretty good get, guys, even for the home team.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:41 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Mike Huckabee's daughter, @SarahHuckabee, is principal deputy WH press secretary. And other new DJT appointments

I don't see Meredith on this list. Where is he hiding her?
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:42 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Also (two minutes in), PLEASE PLEASE let me hear Barack Obama's first post-presidential public cussword here. PLEASE.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:43 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Meanwhile at the pre-inauguration concert, some guy in a grey coat and really, really white teeth is singing a song where the lyrics are, in their entirety, "Whoa-oa-oa... It's gonna be OK" over and over.

It's not very reassuring.
posted by mochapickle at 2:43 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


This is what I will be playing on repeat the next 48 hours.

My next four years are basically Social D's "Ball and Chain" 24/7.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:44 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm normally lukewarm on Terry Gross, but today's Fresh Air with Norm Eisen and Richard Painter is scorching, a meticulously constructed tour of the ethical vacuum we're somehow, surreally, about to enter. Well worth a listen.
posted by informavore at 2:45 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


The military, which traditionally works closely with the presidential inaugural committee, shot down the request, the source said. Their reason was twofold. Some were concerned about the optics of having tanks and missile launchers rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue. But they also worried that the tanks, which often weigh over 100,000 pounds, would destroy the roads.

“I could absolutely see structural support being a reason [not to use tanks],” a Department of Defense official said. “D.C. is built on a swamp to begin with.”


Ha. HA. How epic would it have been if one of the missile fucking launchers just fully broke the road and started sinking into the DC mud in the middle of the inauguration parade?

Surely that.
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:47 PM on January 19, 2017 [17 favorites]


I'm normally lukewarm on Terry Gross, but today's Fresh Air with Norm Eisen and Richard Painter is scorching, a meticulously constructed tour of the ethical vacuum we're somehow, surreally, about to enter. Well worth a listen.

Oh goody. Norm Eisen was just a merciless force of nature on Pod Save America last week. I love this man.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:48 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Meanwhile at the pre-inauguration concert, some guy in a grey coat and really, really white teeth is singing a song where the lyrics are, in their entirety, "Whoa-oa-oa... It's gonna be OK" over and over.

It's not very reassuring.


No, Grey Coat Guy, things are not going to be okay.

For you, maybe, but not for me, not for my friends, and not for most of the country.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 2:49 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I had no idea how the creeping dread would mount today. And all I can think is:

THE PEOPLE
UNITED
WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED
posted by mynameisluka at 2:49 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Toby Keith looks rough. Shocking, y'all.
posted by mochapickle at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Just FYI, the healthcare.gov application asks about your household's expected 2017 income, not your 2016 income -- so estimate it out using your unemployment benefits, if applicable, not your previous income. And if your current monthly income is below $1366/mo ($1842 if you're married, more if you also have kids), you may qualify for Medicaid which is free, if you live in a state that expanded it.

Yep, I'm on all of that. I waited until the new year to start Unemployment benefit processing so it wouldn't complicate my 2016 tax return; plus, I had a job interview that would've been Really Really Nice to land that would've solved the problem. Alas. So wife's income + my UBs = about a $220/mo floor on plan costs. A little subsidy but not a great one, and y'know what? That's okay. I'm still doing well enough that great ones can be saved for those who do desperately need them.

My job now is to keep from sticking barbecue forks into the people who are all "I voted for Trump but I never thought that he'd [x]" because we may need some of them eventually. ...Forks, that is. Never waste a good barbecue utensil.
posted by delfin at 2:51 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


So the Ravi drums guy on the live broadcast right now is literally some C list act that I have seen hired to play sales conventions. This is the guy that meeting planners hire when they want to add excitement and some ethnic color to their sales meeting for big pharma companies. That's the level of talent we are dealing with here, SMH.
posted by nolabasashi at 2:51 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I thought that the Pod Save America interview with Obama was pretty disappointing, actually. It was a pretty fluffy and nonspecific discussion with a lot of personal nostalgia. Felt like a wasted opportunity.
posted by prefpara at 2:53 PM on January 19, 2017


THE PEOPLE
UNITED
WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED


It's got a good beat; you can dance to it.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:53 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


“I could absolutely see structural support being a reason [not to use tanks],” a Department of Defense official said. “D.C. is built on a swamp to begin with.”

That's fake news, bro.
No, D.C. isn’t really built on a swamp
Washington, D.C., was not actually built on a swamp
Why do people say the National Mall is built on a swamp?
DC Mythbusting: Built on a Swamp?
posted by peeedro at 2:53 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


My next four years are basically Social D's "Ball and Chain" 24/7.

I get you. Never been much of a rock person myself, but my personal guideline is: "don't push me, 'cause I'm close to the edge.."

I'm just taking the weekend off, like Obama.
posted by mumimor at 2:54 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Toby Keith just sang a song about being a soldier and working hard and doing your duty, at a concert for a draft dodging rich kid who intends to take half of his first day in office off.
posted by cortex at 2:54 PM on January 19, 2017 [70 favorites]


I'm not his target audience for this song, but Kendrick Lamar's "Alright" has buoyed my spirits several times this past week. I don't really think we're all going to be alright - quite the opposite in fact. But hearing him say it is reassuring to me.
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:56 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm just taking the weekend off, like Obama.

... And Trump. As I posted earlier in the thread, Trump has apparently decided to take his first weekend off. His first weekend. As President of the United States. Off.
posted by Justinian at 2:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Well, while this is the first time we've had a figurehead for a Republican President, an allegedly charismatic figure with a background in an entertainment industry, put into office to be a loud and visible distraction while his appointees undermine American society, drain billions away to be handed to corporations and billionaires, and cause irreparable harm to common decency...

...wait.

Why does this sound so... familiar...
posted by delfin at 2:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


At the end of his second song, Toby Keith holds up a red Solo cup, the most American of symbols.
posted by mochapickle at 2:57 PM on January 19, 2017


I thought that the Pod Save America interview with Obama was pretty disappointing, actually. It was a pretty fluffy and nonspecific discussion with a lot of personal nostalgia. Felt like a wasted opportunity.

Hey, no spoilers! (kidding) Bummer, but I sort of knew it was overly optimistic of me to hope he'd sit down with the 1600 kids, fire up a Marlboro Red, and say, "Fellas, let me tell you what I really think about this fucking asshole. . . ."
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


3 Doors Down and Keith aside, I'm impressed and relieved that so many musicians made a point of sitting this one out. It shows.

My post-inaugural jam is "Bad Moon Rising". Sums my feelings up nicely, it does.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 2:58 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I stopped off at an office to pick up a package this afternoon and usually the light white noise music is something Top 40 pop, but today it was a marching band playing what sounded like the Russian national anthem. I looked around for the source and found a TV tuned to CNN. The chyron read "The Inaugural Concert" and that's when the latest shudder of despair hit me that this is really happening.
posted by Servo5678 at 3:04 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


"What????? Obama's last mic drop???": BREAKING: "El Chapo" being extradited to the U.S.; is in the air right now, spokeswoman for the Mexican Attorney General confirms to @ABC.

Hopefully Peña Nieto tweets something to the effect of "There's your wall payment"
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:05 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Apocryphon: I think it'll probably be a "silent revolt of the paper-pushers", where civil servants quietly continue what they were doing previously, en masse, humoring the ignorant figureheads who are in charge. Whether they'll do the right thing, without leadership or oversight, is up in the air.

FWIW, two smart people I know in Washington finance staff positions are looking at various Plan B strategies, as some of their colleagues have already headed for the door. Remember those inquiries into who attended which climate-related conference? Yeah, it seems that it had a chilling effect across many branches of government, even if current management said "hell to the no" to that request.

But I did want to bring my friends some symbolic wooden shoes, to encourage them to become quiet saboteurs.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:06 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Trump has apparently decided to take his first weekend off. His first weekend. As President of the United States. Off.

Fine by me, that means we get a few more days of everything not being 100% horrible.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:06 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Fine by me, that means we get a few more days of everything not being 100% horrible.

Unless you know something happens in the world that might require the immediate and informed attention of the President of the United States
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:08 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Wayne Barrett, a great investigative reporter and Village Voice journalist of 20 years who followed Trump for decades and literally wrote the book on him, has died. He continued to report on Trump even while ordered to bed rest by his doctors.

It's as if he couldn't bear to see it happen tomorrow.
posted by zachlipton at 3:08 PM on January 19, 2017 [49 favorites]


We saw during the Bush administration how many people were ready to give away all principles, and also who totally inexperienced but ideologically pure people were given senior positions. Don't hope.
posted by mumimor at 3:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Fine by me, that means we get a few more days of everything not being 100% horrible.

Except there will be nobody in charge of our country. At all. For two and a half days.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


jenfullmoon: Whether or not Trump would quit: I don't think he ever will because quitting is for losers. I think we've not only got him for 8 years (thanks, gerrymandering and other crooked voting laws), we may end up with him being president for life and going after the Constitution to make sure he can.

1) That sounds like a lot of work, when I imagine he's more intent on short-term gains (he bankrupted fooking casinos - this is always my frame of reference for _rump), and 2) it's a brighter picture than one painted by a co-worker, who is of the mind that there will be some significant terrorist event that will result in national Martial Law, and everything that comes with that - no elections until peace is restored, things like that.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Our president-elect is speaking now, recapping the campaign and making a point to say there are no empty seats.
posted by mochapickle at 3:12 PM on January 19, 2017


Trump gets inaugurated on Friday at noon. And he's apparently planning to take the weekend off. He's planning to start working as President of the United States on Monday.

He'll go down for the most record-breaking president of the US - most hated president before coming into office, highest ratio of protesters : supporters at his inauguration, fewest days actually doing any work (to beat GWB).
posted by filthy light thief at 3:13 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]




Singing battle hymn of the republic to fireworks.
posted by dis_integration at 3:16 PM on January 19, 2017


Trump Asks Some 50 Senior Obama Appointees to Stay On (autoplaying video, ugh)

President-elect Donald Trump has asked roughly 50 senior Obama administration appointees to remain in their posts after his inauguration to ensure continuity in government, his incoming White House press secretary said Thursday.

The officials include the highest-ranking career officials at key national security agencies like the Pentagon and State Department.

Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and America's third-ranking diplomat, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon, will serve as acting chiefs of their agencies until successors for the top jobs are confirmed by the Senate, Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer said.


posted by Devonian at 3:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Tomorrow, America goes to Johnny Rockets, even though no one remembers who suggested it, and Jan got diarrhea that last time.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Our president-elect is speaking now, recapping the campaign and making a point to say there are no empty seats.

I have mixed feelings about the liveblogging of this. On the one hand, I'm kind of curious what happens. On the other hand, I am very deliberately NOT watching, partly for my peace of mind, but primarily to deny him the audience and contribute to low ratings. Reading a liveblog feels like I'm compromising that already very minor act of protest somehow, if only because it means someone is watching, and I am still paying attention.

Obviously my opinion is just one opinion, but I might take a break from MeFi for a couple of days if we end up doing inauguration live-blogging in this thread.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Singing battle hymn of the republic to fireworks.

"Trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored," indeed.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


I'm finding it very hard to eat seeing him there in front of Lincoln.
posted by dis_integration at 3:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


making a point to say there are no empty seats

When you pay that much money out to seat-fillers, you want to make sure people notice.
posted by waitingtoderail at 3:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]



could look at Donald Trump and not see an imbecile, a pathological malignant narcissist, a virulent bigot, and a boor.

They do see it. There are people - Normal everyday could be your next door neighbor people - who value these traits in him.


Yeah. I discussed this in a much-earlier election thread, but I've kept one rapid Trump supporter on my FB feed out of morbid fascination, though, much like DJT, pretty much every post nearly brings me to a "surely this" momend of just defriend/blocking and moving on to a happier existence without this person even nominally in my life. The latest appaling behavior to me is that this person was complaining about the "disrespect" DJT received during his "press conference" and in the nomination hearings. This person has a disabled child. The fact that DJT's open mockery of a disabled person's disability--and the fact that De Vos isn't sure whether disabled children have a right to attend school!--do not matter to this person one iota.

Why not? Because they are deeply racist, and extremely rich, and can just buy a school for their kid and keep 'em in a protective bubble for heir entire life and are thus completely devoid of any fleeting sense of empathy for those who lack the protection of money. I'm not sure it could be a more pure distillation of the of "fuck you, I've got mine" Republican ethos.
posted by TwoStride at 3:20 PM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


Damn straight, Audra McDonald.

Atom Eyes, I've been chewing on your comment from yesterday reminding us that the President is "Commander in Chief of the military—not of civilians." And you're absolutely right when you say that he's not our Commander in Chief, and so nobody should say he's immune to criticism in that role.

But in another sense, he is our Commander in Chief, all of ours, in the sense that we've all collectively hired him, albeit against the objections of a majority of the people on the hiring committee, to perform that specific job. And this will be truly the first time in his life he's actually worked for somebody other then himself or a member of his own family. He works for us now. And to the extent we possibly can, we should never let him forget it.
posted by zachlipton at 3:22 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Unless you know something happens in the world that might require the immediate and informed attention of the President of the United States

That's not something that's going to be possible the next four years, the best case scenario is an absentee president. The worst is he nukes someone. There's only a range of less terrible outcomes in between, he's not going to be capable of improving any situation anywhere in the entire world, only ignoring it or fucking it up to a greater or lesser degree.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:22 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]




Reading a liveblog feels like I'm compromising that already very minor act of protest somehow, if only because it means someone is watching, and I am still paying attention.

Just be thankful we don't have inline images. My twitter feed is like poison right now with all the GIFs of That Person's stupid looking face.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:24 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Wondering what the DC brain drain will look like? These national security tech jobs have sat unfilled for a month and a half.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 3:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Battle Hymn of the Republic. A song written as an anthem for the Union, the side which opposed slavery. Written by a woman, ironically.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 3:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Yep, that's it for me for the liveblogging. I actually got indigestion watching it.

I'm making a point to stay offline tomorrow, and then Saturday I'm joining friends at the Colorado Springs march.
posted by mochapickle at 3:27 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump says no POTUS ever had inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial. But GWB, Obama both did. Why make a claim so easily disproved?

He said that he didn't know if anyone had ever done it before. He's just never seen an inauguration before.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:27 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


I'm finding it very hard to eat seeing him there in front of Lincoln.

I was just handing off to restless_nomad for the day and I told her I was watching and she said
WHY
and I decided that was a good point argued well so now I'm just catching up on i lik the bred poems and I heartily recommend it.

That said, if you're really feeling the inauguration livestream thing, I made a site for that.
posted by cortex at 3:28 PM on January 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


Trump Sought Military Equipment For Inauguration, Granted 20-Plane Flyover

Dude, do you even know how to American?
posted by kirkaracha at 3:29 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


I stopped off at an office to pick up a package this afternoon and usually the light white noise music is something Top 40 pop, but today it was a marching band playing what sounded like the Russian national anthem. I looked around for the source and found a TV tuned to CNN. The chyron read "The Inaugural Concert" and that's when the latest shudder of despair hit me that this is really happening.

At least they're not playing a taped performance of Swan Lake on continuous loop. Yet.
posted by indubitable at 3:30 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


When do they play the Volga Boatman?
posted by percor at 3:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Wondering what the DC brain drain will look like? These national security tech jobs have sat unfilled for a month and a half.

I can't speak for the job market in DC, but I suspect this may have as much to do with the requirement for active security clearance as anything else. The OPM investigation process is incredibly backed up, so they're likely trying to poach an increasing scarse commodity.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 3:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Trump press secretary turns press conference into infomercial for Trump’s D.C. hotel

During a pre-inauguration news conference on Thursday, Sean Spicer, President-elect Donald Trump’s soon-to-be press secretary, dismissed concerns his boss is using the power of the presidency to promote his Washington, D.C. hotel and thereby line his pockets.

With regard to Trump’s decision to dine at the hotel’s restaurant on Wednesday night — Trump also reportedly plans to eat there Thursday — Spicer said, “I think that’s pretty smart.”

“I think the idea that he’s going to his own hotel shouldn’t be a shocker,” Spicer continued. “It’s a beautiful place, it’s somewhere that he’s very proud of and I think it’s symbolic of the kind of government that he’s going to run.”

Spicer went on to encourage people to check out the place for themselves.

“It’s an absolutely stunning hotel. I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by,” he said.

posted by futz at 3:38 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


I can't speak for the job market in DC, but I suspect this may have as much to do with the requirement for active security clearance as anything else. The OPM investigation process is incredibly backed up, so they're likely trying to poach an increasing scarse commodity.

All I can say is that I've been getting increasingly urgent and desperate recruiting emails from these people since a few weeks after the election, and while I regularly get unsolicited job emails like this, I definitely don't get ones like this if you know what I mean.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 3:39 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


That said, if you're really feeling the inauguration livestream thing, I made a site for that.

I was really expecting this was just going to be a webcam pointed at a pile of rotting meat.
posted by 0xFCAF at 3:39 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


And you're absolutely right when you say that he's not our Commander in Chief, and so nobody should say he's immune to criticism in that role.
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
Teddy Roosevelt
posted by kirkaracha at 3:41 PM on January 19, 2017 [52 favorites]


“It’s an absolutely stunning hotel. I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by,” he said.

You know, it wouldn't be a bad idea for some Democrat to note that Trump won't be there forever, the GOP won't be in charge forever, and that firms, organizations, and nations who make use of Trump properties can reasonably expect those activities to be eventually investigated as attempts to illegally curry influence.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:43 PM on January 19, 2017 [31 favorites]


I was planning to go to there for Hillary with my daughters and son-in-law, and begging with all my political contacts for tickets. I thought it would have been a life-defining experience. I suppose the Trump election will be as well, but I won't pay for their attendance. They don't want to be there either.
posted by mumimor at 3:46 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


3 Doors Down

If they went Trumpist would we start to call them
An alt-right band
posted by nubs at 3:46 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


You know, it wouldn't be a bad idea for some Democrat to note that Trump won't be there forever, the GOP won't be in charge forever, and that firms, organizations, and nations who make use of Trump properties can reasonably expect those activities to be eventually investigated as attempts to illegally curry influence.

Five year statute of limitations for most scenarios, as far as criminal charges are concerned.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:51 PM on January 19, 2017


Man these photos comparing Trump's vs. Obama's inauguration crowds are cringe-inducing.

Low energy! No star power! Totally pathetic turnout! SAD!
posted by entropicamericana at 3:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


If they went Trumpist would we start to call them
An alt-right band


Even if they were playing the inauguration for the publicity and the gig more than politics (which is the most charitable interpretation and one I'm reluctant to give, since they have to know that it's an unpopular choice and the criticism they'll get for it) I think this decision looks bad on them. Several of my friends and I have no intention of listening to them again, and many people I know who liked their music have expressed disappointment. I won't be surprised if, washed-up as they are, they lose a good percentage of the listeners they have left over the Trump inauguration.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 3:59 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]



Man these photos comparing Trump's vs. Obama's inauguration crowds are cringe-inducing. If it was literally any other person in the world besides Trump I would feel bad for them.


What time did the concert start? I love a good mock and all but the Trump photos are from before 5pm.
posted by Jalliah at 4:06 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


It started at 4 p.m.
posted by mochapickle at 4:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Republican Lawmakers in Five States Propose Bills to Criminalize Peaceful Protest

On Saturday, The Women’s March on Washington will kick off what opponents of the incoming administration hope will be a new era of demonstrations against the Republican agenda. But in some states, nonviolent demonstrating may soon carry increased legal risks — including punishing fines and significant prison terms — for people who participate in protests involving civil disobedience. Over the past few weeks, Republican legislators across the country have quietly introduced a number of proposals to criminalize and discourage peaceful protest.

...The anti-protesting bills have alarmed civil liberties watchdogs.

“This trend of anti-protest legislation dressed up as ‘obstruction’ bills is deeply troubling,” said Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, who views such bills as violations of the First Amendment. “A law that would allow the state to charge a protester $10,000 for stepping in the wrong place, or encourage a driver to get away with manslaughter because the victim was protesting, is about one thing: chilling protest.”

posted by futz at 4:10 PM on January 19, 2017 [34 favorites]


Oh my god. It's been right there in front of us this whole time.

Love: Trump's Hate
posted by hapaxes.legomenon at 4:12 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


I am interested in more crowd comparisons like the link above. Anybody have links?
posted by futz at 4:15 PM on January 19, 2017


Seriously, the first few times I heard that slogan I wasn't sure which candidate it was supposed to be boosting. Too clever by half.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:16 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Like, what sort of people do these folks associate with on a daily basis that they look at this guy and think, "Sure, he sounds nice and normal and down to earth." Are they just 24/7 surrounded by unrepentant assholes, so every other unrepentant asshole looks totally unremarkable to them?

Men. Privileged White Men. People who have been surrounded all their lives with that toxic type of masculinity and have been told that behaving like that means strength. For some people Trump acts like their father, their husband, their friends, and thus they respond to his crass dominance games.

I mean, we really need to recognize that a lot of men in this country act like assholes most of the time, and not only get away with it but get rewarded for it. And this IS a problem that is worse in rural areas, in social circles with less education, in blue collar jobs.
posted by threeturtles at 4:16 PM on January 19, 2017 [25 favorites]


Trump has more people they are just very small people so they take up less space.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:16 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Trump has more people they are just very small people so they take up less space

He needs a much larger crowd if their tiny hands are going to make much noise, though.
posted by TwoStride at 4:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


can they shut down the large hadron collider or something so we can back to the not darkest timeline?
posted by localhuman at 4:20 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Is someone going to put up a new thread? It seems really weird to be discussing tomorrow's inauguration at the bottom of a week old, 3000 comment long thread.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 4:25 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]




Is someone going to put up a new thread? It seems really weird to be discussing tomorrow's inauguration at the bottom of a week old, 3000 comment long thread.

I don't know, it seems appropriate to me.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:29 PM on January 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


I agree we probably need a new thread just logistically, but damn does he not deserve one.
posted by zachlipton at 4:30 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


BREAKING: "El Chapo" being extradited to the U.S.

Well, maybe this will undo Trump's cabinet as the first in 30 years without a latino.
posted by p3t3 at 4:30 PM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


I say we have the new thread when the next unexpected new horrible thing happens.
posted by Artw at 4:31 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Spicer went on to encourage people to check out the place for themselves.

“It’s an absolutely stunning hotel. I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by,” he said.


24 hours later & he'd earn an ethics violation for saying that.
posted by scalefree at 4:31 PM on January 19, 2017


next unexpected new horrible thing happens.

That's a new thread every 15 minutes. Doesn't seem fair to cortex.
posted by mochapickle at 4:33 PM on January 19, 2017 [11 favorites]


It started at 4 p.m.

Okay then. ha ha
posted by Jalliah at 4:33 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


They aren't even pretending there aren't conflicts of interest, but they know as well as we do there isn't a damned thing that can be done about it.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 4:35 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Republican Lawmakers in Five States Propose Bills to Criminalize Peaceful Protest

Trump: 'There used to be consequences' for protesting (from last March)

They want an America where the Civil Rights Movement could never have happened, like in contemporary Russia or China or the dictatorships of the same era.
posted by XMLicious at 4:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


Major Fake News Operation Tracked Back to Republican Operative

Cam Harris, a recent college graduate hoping to build a career as a political consultant, received an unwelcome email from a New York Times reporter this month. As the reporter, Scott Shane, recounted on the front page of Thursday’s Times, he had discovered that Harris was the publisher of a fake news site dedicated to smearing Hillary Clinton.

So Harris did what came naturally. He started to spin. First, he admitted that he had written the hoax news articles casting Clinton as a criminal on his site, ChristianTimesNewspaper.com. Eight of his stories attracted enough attention on social networks to merit debunking by Snopes, the fact-checking site and one of them, published a month before the election, attracted six million readers with the headline, “BREAKING: ‘Tens of thousands’ of fraudulent Clinton votes found in Ohio warehouse.”

...What Harris failed to mention to The Times, however, is that during the entire time he was spreading lies about the Democratic presidential candidate, he was employed as a legislative aide and campaign manager for a Republican member of the Maryland state legislature, David Vogt III.

Harris also concealed from The Times that when he sat down to create his anti-Clinton fiction, “at the kitchen table in his apartment,” he was living in Vogt’s basement in Brunswick, Maryland. As Maryland’s Frederick News-Post reported on Wednesday, an FEC filing related to Vogt’s failed race for Congress earlier this year listed the same home address for both the state lawmaker and his young campaign manager, Harris.


Here is the NYT article that the above is based on
posted by futz at 4:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [21 favorites]




Twitter's Felix Biederman, Alex Nichols, and Virgil Texas annotate The Daily Beast's "How Putin Played the Far Left" for News Genius.
Alex Nichols: You know you have a good article when the bulk of your evidence is that people called you a little shit and told you to fuck off when you asked them “do you still beat your wife” questions on social media
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:38 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Republican Lawmakers in Five States Propose Bills to Criminalize Peaceful Protest

do you want violent protest? because that's how you get violent protest
posted by entropicamericana at 4:39 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


I bet they *do* want violent protest, yes.
posted by uosuaq at 4:42 PM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable - JFK
posted by futz at 4:44 PM on January 19, 2017 [35 favorites]


That would be the Gov. Perdue whose drought plan was praying for rain outside the state capitol.

God always answers your prayers. Sometimes the answer is no.
source: The Effects of the 2007 Drought on Georgia's Water Supply
posted by kirkaracha at 4:47 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


The attempted lockdown on protests is supremely disturbing, whether it's to block civilian resistance or insulate Donald from people who don't agree with him. They are trying to silence anyone who opposes them by any means possible. The right to protest is an important freedom, and one they were all too happy to use in the Obama days.

These people are incredible, disgusting hypocrites. Freedom of speech is all well and good...until someone who isn't them uses it.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 4:50 PM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


Give it six or eight months, let the first scandals start hitting, let the glow of his shiny wear off

Six or eight months? You are incredibly optimistic.
posted by bongo_x at 4:51 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Give it about two seconds!
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:52 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


The general consensus around here was that the A looked more like an R in fireworks display. There was much, much laughter that Trump was celebrating the USR (in other words USSR-lite or what the country could turn into if a Putin puppet somehow ended up in power).
posted by sardonyx at 4:55 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Some advice from Patton Oswalt:
Leave your TV tuned to a channel like Turner Classic Movies or National Geographic or any channel that will have zero inaugural coverage. Then turn off your phone. Then shut down your computer.

And then -- IF you can afford it -- go find a struggling theater company and pay to see whatever play they're putting on. Or a struggling art gallery or music club or museum. Leave 'em money and see what they're about. Go see an indie film that's got stellar reviews and no audience. Or a new restaurant or other small business that needs friends and customers. Download a new band. Go to an independent bookstore and buy something from a small press. Go to an open mike. Or see any comedian. Tip your barista or barkeep a little extra.

In other words, do all of the cultural and aesthetic things that Trump thinks are worthless. Make a whole big chunk of existence suddenly spike in importance. And then keep doing that, if you can.
I heard the TV tip on a Podcast today-- tune it to another channel and leave it on. The "shop local, shop independent" is good advice all the time.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 4:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [54 favorites]


Even Bush didn't have the immunity to scandal that Trump has gained, which is incredibly surreal, especially since Trump's nominees are even more rapacious, more nakedly vile, and less restrained than Bush's were, which is saying something.

I'm not sure what can crack his armor, if anything can.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 4:58 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I don't believe that TV thing is true, but we are going to see a Broadway play tomorrow night.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:58 PM on January 19, 2017


Is there a practical point in a TV boycott for anyone who's not a Nielsen family?
posted by Rhaomi at 5:02 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm going to see a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

(Not H.M.S. Pinafore, which in the current state of things with an unqualified cabinet would just be depressing.)
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 5:02 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


I linked to this yesterday: Trump transition team asks CNN to retract story about Tom Price

Looks like the trump team just admitted it was true because they had their lawyers withdraw the lawsuit: In retraction request to CNN, Trump team confirms CNN story

Law firm withdraws retraction request to CNN over Price story
posted by futz at 5:05 PM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Iolanthe? Because that one has some pretty choice things to say about an incompetent and useless legislature?

Or perhaps The Mikado? Because it's full of racial stereotypes?

Or Pirates? Because it's got a gang of pirates who run around taking things to benefit themselves?
posted by zachlipton at 5:07 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Trump says no POTUS ever had inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial. But GWB, Obama both did. Why make a claim so easily disproved?

Because he pays no significant cost for doing it. The value of self-aggrandizing is much greater than the cost of being called on it later on.
posted by scalefree at 5:12 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Mic [via Facebook Live]: Police Responding to Antifascist Protest Outside Deplor-A-Ball
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:12 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I guess it's officially no longer Too Soon: Rudy Giuliani Kicks Off Inauguration Lunch With 9/11 Sex Joke (Warning: Intercept)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:14 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


> Republican Lawmakers in Five States Propose Bills to Criminalize Peaceful Protest

The pullquote alludes to it somewhat, but in case it's not clear, the North Dakota bill is particularly odious: In North Dakota, for instance, Republicans introduced a bill last week that would allow motorists to run over and kill any protester obstructing a highway as long as a driver does so accidentally.

As if murdering pedestrians with motor vehicles wasn't already basically legal in a practical sense, now you're basically giving free reign to every dickhead with a lifted pickup truck to mow people down.
posted by indubitable at 5:14 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Looks like the trump team just admitted it was true because they had their lawyers withdraw the lawsuit

Does that make it fake fake news?
posted by valkane at 5:15 PM on January 19, 2017


You know, it wouldn't be a bad idea for some Democrat to note that Trump won't be there forever, the GOP won't be in charge forever, and that firms, organizations, and nations who make use of Trump properties can reasonably expect those activities to be eventually investigated as attempts to illegally curry influence.

I appreciate your idealism. But what makes you think they have any plans to lose GOP control in their lifetimes? Single party governments can go on for decades, until things go completely to hell.

If you look at the countries they're aiming to emulate, you can't assume they'll ever allow Democrats into power again. And amen they finally lose power, in the best case scenario, we won't be looking at an ethics investigation, but a Truth and Reconciliation commission.
posted by happyroach at 5:16 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Looks like the trump team just admitted it was true because they had their lawyers withdraw the lawsuit

The Trump team didn't admit it was true (and it wasn't a lawsuit, just a letter). The Trump team's lawyers admitted they royally screwed up by being adverse to CNN while they represented CNN on other matters, which is a significant legal ethics violation and the kind of things firms normally are supposed to make sure never happens.
posted by zachlipton at 5:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Is there a practical point in a TV boycott for anyone who's not a Nielsen family?

Not that I can tell. If you watch a web livestream that could get its actual viewership published but not cable TV broadcasts. Don't think there's any technological limitation stopping them, just nobody does.
posted by scalefree at 5:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Trump team's lawyers admitted they royally screwed up by being adverse to CNN while they represented CNN on other matters, which is a significant legal ethics violation and the kind of things firms normally are supposed to make sure never happens.

"Dear CNN: we dragged Randy off the golf course, showed him the accounts and since we'd need to pick a side on this one, er, we're good, right?"
posted by holgate at 5:23 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


There's an archived thread from a little while back about the current state of Nielsen's people meters. I looked it up when I had the same confusion on seeing the facebook memes.

There's a few reasons cable and satellite operators don't do this, from what I could surmise: you'd be trusting the networks to handle the ratings data for their own programming, it's hard to tell when someone's actually watching with a set-top box (Nielsen's have some kind of sensors), and whatever monitoring data they satellite and cable co's do collect is put to proprietary uses -- sat/cable operators don't want to tell each other these things.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


i can heartily recommend watching here.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 5:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Is there a practical point in a TV boycott for anyone who's not a Nielsen family?

That depends on if you consider your own sanity practical
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:28 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


THERE. Now, once the insurance company says "yes, we will take your money now," I am officially on Obamacare.

Somewhere, my ultraconservative mother just shrieked like the sound of a mid-sacrifice goat and threw blood at everyone near her. So it's a typical Thursday night at her house.
posted by delfin at 5:29 PM on January 19, 2017 [26 favorites]


If you want a gauge of Trumpist turnout, the night before the inauguration, there's no Uber surge pricing in effect right now. A normal Friday night is in surge from around 9-930 till midnight, and every single day at evening rush hour. July 4 gets up to 8x surge.
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:29 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Somewhere, my ultraconservative mother just shrieked like the sound of a mid-sacrifice goat and threw blood at everyone near her. So it's a typical Thursday night at her house.

Now that's cooking with spirit!
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:30 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Even Bush didn't have the immunity to scandal that Trump has gained, which is incredibly surreal, especially since Trump's nominees are even more rapacious, more nakedly vile, and less restrained than Bush's were, which is saying something.

I'm not sure what can crack his armor, if anything can.


Think of it the other way around: even the vastly more popular Bush lost the confidence of his base when the results of policies they once cheered him for turned out to be just as disastrous as we said they would be. Conservative golden child with massive crossover appeal to political kryptonite. And Trump starts from a much lower approval position with many many more things ready to pop off around him and start the buyer's remorse. Trump wants us to think he's untouchable and he's doing his damndest to act like it, but we can't do his job for him by internalizing it!
posted by jason_steakums at 5:33 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


there's no Uber surge pricing in effect right now.

I'll assume the algos are just doing algo things, but I wouldn't put it past Travis Bickle Kalanick putting his thumb on the scale.
posted by holgate at 5:34 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


If you want a gauge of Trumpist turnout, the night before the inauguration, there's no Uber surge pricing in effect right now.
I would love to see a venn diagram of Uber users and Trump voters. I could be totally wrong, but I bet there's not much overlap.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:35 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


I won a Barrymore award for lighting, for either The Mikado or Marat Sade, I don't remember which. But it's all theater. Should we be denigrating theater at this point in time? I think not.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 5:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Is there a practical point in a TV boycott for anyone who's not a Nielsen family?

Cable channels always know their ratings, there is a weekly list that comes out so they must be monitored somehow and I'm sure it is not limited to Nielsen families. Much of the negotiations for reality TV stars depends on their ratings so if it 700,000 or 1,200,000 makes a big difference to them.

I'd be hard pressed to think of a less useful form of protest than Oswalt's advice of turning your TV to an oldies channel.

Remember how much Trump bragged about the ratings for the debates? He will be watching those numbers very carefully. I can't do it because I don't have cable but 451 (protest show) was recommending it. It doesn't take any effort and it might make him crazy-- so there's that.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:39 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]




Trump Sought Military Equipment For Inauguration, Granted 20-Plane Flyover

Dude, do you even know how to American?


That could make a very large missing man formation.
posted by ZeusHumms at 5:39 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'd be hard pressed to think of a less useful form of protest than Oswalt's advice of turning your TV to an oldies channel.

You could call your rep's office and start talking about how you love Trump and his policies, but keep winking the whole time.
posted by contraption at 5:42 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I know that this is completely delusional, but I was daydreaming this afternoon that the people in the ultra lux wood-paneled smoked-filled rooms aren't feeling really concerned (ie., lack of cabinet appointees) because they have figured out how to take him down.

Right now, he's technically just another citizen. Not much they can do to him. Hell, why not give him the presidency and his pathetic little celebration - just to make taking it all away hurt even more.

As soon as he swears in, emoluments kicks in and he can be impeached and neutralized from actually doing anything. Once impeachment is on the table, then all the treason stuff and fraud stuff can be slowly brought to light.

If they took him down now, he's just hang around and whine and complain and be a general pain in everyone's backside for years.

Doing it this way burns him to the ground and serves to send out a message that no-one messes with the deep establishment.

/daydream
posted by porpoise at 5:44 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


OK that sex joke is so gross it's unbelievable
“In the same car with me was my fire commissioner, Tom Van Essen,” Giuliani said. “And Tom had lost what turned out to be 343 firefighters. And President Bush recognized him from seeing him on television the prior two days. And he leaned over to Tom, grabbed his arm, and said to him, ‘Tom, I’m so sorry. How are things going?’ Tom looked at him and said, ‘Much better now. My wife came home last night and I got lucky.’”
So either the Tom is complete jackhole who brags about sex with his wife to the President of the United States after having had 343 men die on the job or Guiliani is a complete jackhole for making it up.

Trump Sought Military Equipment For Inauguration, Granted 20-Plane Flyover

I was thinking about this and his stated desire to have more military parades. I was wondering if he would go so far as to make himself a psuedouniform to wear as Commander-in-Chief. Something "classy" with plenty of gold braid.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:44 PM on January 19, 2017 [22 favorites]


Tomorrow, I'm playing Bow Wow Wow's "Giant-Sized Baby Thing." (Never thought ol' Bow Wow Wow would get it so on the nose, did you?) Then, after work, I'm going to drink a freshly tapped Russian Imperial Stout in acknowledgement of our new overlords, then to see a local favorite band, and, then, if I'm still standing, to cheer our buses leaving for the front.
posted by octobersurprise at 5:45 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Covering yourself with unearned titles, uniforms, and medals is the kind of thing megalomaniacs do, since they almost never risk their hides themselves. So yeah, wouldn't be surprised at all.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 5:48 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]




Trump paid them to show up at the final debate, probably just did it again.
posted by scalefree at 5:51 PM on January 19, 2017


As soon as he swears in, emoluments kicks in and he can be impeached and neutralized from actually doing anything. Once impeachment is on the table, then all the treason stuff and fraud stuff can be slowly brought to light.

I've actually wondered about how much Paul Ryan wants to be President. OnlyTrump and Pence stand between him and the Oval Office. Pence could easily be brought up on charges of collusion or something after Ryan was made VP. Don't forget, Gerald Ford ended up President and DJT is trickier than Nixon.

I listened to the Fresh Air podcast mentioned above on the Ethics of a Trump administration and they brought up something I had not thought of. Any business that feels they have been hurt by DJT operating the DC Hotel will have grounds for a lawsuit stating that DJT used the power of his office to direct traffic to his own property. This is probably going to be the administration buried by lawsuits.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:53 PM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


“It’s an absolutely stunning hotel. I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by,” he said.

Has anybody officially nicknamed this guy Shameless Sean Spicer yet? Yes, the same could be said of literally everyone on the entire Trump team, but still, gotta like the alliteration in this case:

"The President-Elect's press secretary, Shameless Sean Spicer, claimed that . . . . . ."

"Is it time for the presser to start yet?"
"Uh huh, look, here comes Shameless Sean."
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:53 PM on January 19, 2017


Gaddafi in uniform: but with way more gold braid, more sunbursts.
posted by glitter at 5:54 PM on January 19, 2017


This is a bold statement from someone in the Mexican Government:
A Mexican official told The Washington Post that the Thursday evening transfer, on the last full day of the Obama administration, was meant as a “farewell gift” to Obama and not as an overture to President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office Friday. Trump has sharply criticized Mexico and vowed to make it pay for a U.S. border wall.

Even though Mexico’s newly appointed foreign minister, Luis Videgaray, developed close contacts with the Trump team during the campaign, the extradition of Guzmán was intended to send the signal to Trump that not all negotiations with Mexico would be so easy. The message to Trump, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about government deliberations, is that “nothing is for free.”
I'm not 100% how it sends such a message, but ok.
posted by zachlipton at 5:55 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Huh. Tomorrow night I'm going to a benefit for my local reproductive health clinic/ abortion provider. I didn't focus on the fact that it was scheduled for the same night as the inaugural festivities, and now I'm wondering if that was intentional. Anyway, I guess I can feel smug about unintentionally boycotting something that I would never have watched anyway!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


You all are the best. The literal best. I've been a member here since 2000 or so and you all have helped me through some very dark days. These have been some of the darkest and you all have helped me parse and make sense of these very fucked times. I spent my morning photographing a former undersecretary of health for the Obama administration. Brilliant guy who literally helped create the Affordable Care Act. We commiserated and I asked him to please show me the ray of light on the eve of the inauguration of President Fuck Face and while he was hard pressed he implored me to keep an open mind and let the chips fall where they may. He knows we're in trouble and yet he was comforting. Did I mention he helped write the ACA? Fuck. These threads are inspiring but also cause me to spiral into despair and so I'm going to take a break from them.

Good luck and god speed folks. Stay safe and sane and keeping speaking truth to power.
posted by photoslob at 6:01 PM on January 19, 2017 [74 favorites]


I'm at an Irish bar in Indiana drinking Guinness and silently toasting the Obamas, Biden, Hillary, Bernie, you guys, sanity, goodness and puppies. This is depressing as fuck. And yet I am hopeful. It's a glimmer of hope but I think this pile of shit lemons can be turned into shit lemonade.
posted by ian1977 at 6:03 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


i'm watching whatever is happening in DC right now, and i love you all too much to try to liveblog this but

"eric, why aren't you campaigning?"
posted by waitangi at 6:07 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


As dark as 2017 gets, I'm going to cling to small reasons to keep standing - my interests, graduate school, library work if I get it, the convention I'm going to in two months' time for my favorite movie, new and old friends (including all of you guys!). I'm going to be vigilant and watchful and stand for what's right, but I'm also not going to let Donald break me or my spirit, because I need every glimmer of light and goodness I can find.

To paraphrase one of my favorite songs, I am going to make it through this year and the next and the next if it kills me.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 6:07 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


^^

he said this. in this speech. wtfomgbbq is going on with his words???
posted by waitangi at 6:09 PM on January 19, 2017


Livestream of the Deploraball and protests outside
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:11 PM on January 19, 2017


I think this pile of shit lemons can be turned into shit lemonade.

If life gives you poop...make poop juice. :)

May this 23 year old Red Meat be our guide and totem in the dark era ahead.
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:12 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I was thinking about this and his stated desire to have more military parades. I was wondering if he would go so far as to make himself a psuedouniform to wear as Commander-in-Chief. Something "classy" with plenty of gold braid.

He could take inspiration from Chief Justice Rehnquist's special Clinton impeachment trail outfit "(a design he'd come up with years earlier, it was reported, and that he'd modeled after a robe he had seen in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe)."
posted by notyou at 6:13 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


(warning - commentary is by alt-right media)
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:15 PM on January 19, 2017


Some of you may enjoy: the leading Illinois statehouse blog called for readers (mostly Illinois politics geeks and Illinois politicians) to share stories of early Obama -- funny stories, stories of when they first met him, etc. -- from back when he was a lowly statehouse guy.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:15 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Er, to disinter the lede, which robe he later donated to the Smithsonian, while, in Ur Trumpian fashion, also pocketing a $30K tax deduction, according to the link above.
posted by notyou at 6:16 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


So DJT is going to keep his established twitter account but Melania is going to start tweeting as FLOTUS... Gah! I can't take any more, I'm going to bed.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wow, TD Strange, look at all them awkward crackers.

I'm going to continue with my Game of Thrones rewatch. It's easier to look at.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:20 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm wearing a Clinton/Kaine shirt to bed.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:21 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


I'd be hard pressed to think of a less useful form of protest than Oswalt's advice of turning your TV to an oldies channel.

Or National Geographic, was the other part of the suggestion.

BET is actually showing a documentary about Obama's election and inauguration right now, though my cable guide isn't showing it scheduled for tomorrow. It would be awesome if another president's inauguration got higher ratings than Trump's, during Trump's inauguration.
posted by XMLicious at 6:24 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh hey, the NYT thought it would drop in on the party. U.S. intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and data for links between Donald Trump's associates and Russia
American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.
I'm not seeing a ton new here since we already know about the existence of a FISA warrant, but there's clearly an effort to press the issue out of fears the new administration gets involved: "some said they were providing information because they feared the new administration would obstruct their efforts."
posted by zachlipton at 6:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


COME. THE. FUCK. ON. INVESTIGATION. You're letting time run out. What the fuck are you doing?
posted by Brainy at 6:28 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Ahem. Sorry.
posted by Brainy at 6:29 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hear hear!
posted by petebest at 6:30 PM on January 19, 2017


I have been following Dan Rather, and I thought he said that the newly appointed team would be taking over the investigation into Russian influence. I mean, how is that even possible, that his own people get to take over the investigation of him? Maybe someone can tell me I have misunderstood. If I have not misunderstood, then who is it exactly that has any power whatsoever to stop him, emoluments clause-parody-level ethics violations-Russian influence be damned? Is there anyone but the vanishingly few Republican congresspeople who may have a few ethical dregs left in them?
posted by Glinn at 6:33 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


In an interview,, Mr. Page expressed bewilderment about why he might be under investigation. He blamed a smear campaign that he said was orchestrated by Mrs. Clinton for the news media speculation about the nature of his ties to Russia.

“I did nothing wrong, for the 5,000th time,” he said. His adversaries, he added, are “pulling a page out of the Watergate playbook.”


Didn't ... weren't ... is he saying Nixon was not a crook?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:35 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Talk about letting the foxes guard the henhouse.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 6:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


I listened to the Fresh Air podcast mentioned above on the Ethics of a Trump administration and they brought up something I had not thought of. Any business that feels they have been hurt by DJT operating the DC Hotel will have grounds for a lawsuit stating that DJT used the power of his office to direct traffic to his own property. This is probably going to be the administration buried by lawsuits.

According to this article the legal theory that could enable this "has been repeatedly embraced by advocates for stricter immigration policies, including a group affiliated with Trump backer and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and by Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio" so that would be some poetic justice.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:38 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


A Mexican official told The Washington Post that the Thursday evening transfer, on the last full day of the Obama administration, was meant as a “farewell gift” to Obama and not as an overture to President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office Friday.

It says something pretty ugly about the Mexican government when they consider a human being in shackles to be "a gift" for a foreign leader rather than, say, the normal course of the judicial process as governed by law.
posted by indubitable at 6:38 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


65% chance of rain (at noon) for the Great Bewailing. I am thrilled that it might pour rain on His Orangeness (!!!) but I just had a thought...

What if a ray of sunlight bursts through the clouds and shines on his head? Or a rainbow in the background? The rainbow could at least be interpreted as a "sign" against hate. The "heavens" opening up and bestowing a ray of light on PEE-OTUS is a photo op that I do not want to see.

Maybe an eagle will swoop down gank a chunk of hair and scalp. Maybe some cicadas will break free from their slumber and bumbly fumbly fly smack into his face and crawl up his nostrils. A girl can dream. Ohh, maybe ball lightning will ignite his Aqua Net and *POOF*!
posted by futz at 6:39 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


If the odds were right I'd put a little down that Trump gets arrested in the next couple of days, or 2 weeks at the outside. Not saying it's gonna happen, I just wouldn't be shocked.

It needs to happen now though if Ryan wants to be President instead of Pence.
posted by bongo_x at 6:41 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Or a tiny little sparrow flits about and lands on his podium. But instead of cutely sitting there a la sanders, it has a massive diarrhea attack and flutters and frets and tries to fly out the soulless windows that are donnies eyes. And Trump reacts exactly as charmlessly and monstrously as you'd expect him to, swatting and backing up and making a 'I don't want that' icky face. Then the bird gets its bearings and grabs his toupee and flies off and screeches 'One love!'
posted by ian1977 at 6:44 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Poor bird would probably get stuck in his hair flap and panic.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:45 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]




And get bird poop on his immaculate, tiny hands? No. He's already sort of touching an old bible already. Yeesh.
posted by petebest at 6:52 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


POLITICO -- How the Senate's Russian meddling probe almost blew up: Democrats threatened to boycott an Intelligence Committee investigation after a top Republican said Trump's campaign would be off-limits.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:52 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Is there anyone but the vanishingly few Republican congresspeople who may have a few ethical dregs left in them?

hahahahaha, #neverTrump!

No.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:54 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Gaddafi in uniform: but with way more gold braid, more sunbursts.

The Donald and the Dictator
Donald Trump tried to raise money from the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi two years before a 2011 revolution toppled the brutal leader, according to four people with knowledge of the effort. Trump even tried to set up a meeting with the tyrant himself, three of the sources say, to explore business ventures — despite the Libyan leader’s notorious sponsorship of terrorism that killed scores of Americans.
Trump also made "a lot of money" for letting Qaddafi pitch his tent on Trump's Seven Springs estate.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:55 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Mod note: Folks, we do not revel in the prospect of people dying horribly here. At least not out loud. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 6:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


From Cory Robin:
It's truly great that Betsy DeVos is getting grilled like this before the Senate, and being exposed for the laughingstock she is. Let's not forget, however, that what she says here is identical to what Georgia Democrat and civil rights hero John Lewis said during the primaries against Bernie Sanders and in defense of Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders: "Will you work with me and others to make public colleges and universities tuition free though federal and state efforts?"

Betsy Devos: "Senator I think that's a really interesting idea and I think it's really great to consider and think about, but I think we also have to consider the fact that there's nothing in life that's truly free. Somebody's going to pay for it."

Here's what Lewis said about Bernie's plan for free college back in February: "I think it’s the wrong message to send to any group. There’s not anything free in America. We all have to pay for something. Education is not free. Health care is not free. Food is not free. Water is not free. I think it’s very misleading to say to the American people, we’re going to give you something free.”
From Jacobin:
DeVos will not have to completely reverse the Department of Education’s course in order to fulfill her agenda. Obama’s 'Race to the Top' policy — the brainchild of former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, past CEO of Chicago Public Schools — allocates scarce federal resources to those states most aggressively implementing education reform measures, particularly around charter schools.
From Politico:
The Democrats’ desolation is staggering. But part of the problem is that it’s easy to point to signs that maybe things aren’t so bad. After all, Clinton did beat Trump by 2.8 million votes, Obama’s approval rating is nearly 60 percent, polls show Democrats way ahead of the GOP on many issues and demographics suggest that gap will only grow. But they are stuck in the minority in Congress with no end in sight, have only 16 governors left and face 32 state legislatures fully under GOP control. Their top leaders in the House are all over 70. Their top leaders in the Senate are all over 60. Under Obama, Democrats have lost 1,034 seats at the state and federal level—there’s no bench, no bench for a bench, virtually no one able to speak for the party as a whole.
and (mercifully!)
Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, seen by many as a rising liberal leader of the Senate, makes a slightly different argument. The lesson from Trump’s win, in his eyes, is how sick voters are of the status quo and pragmatism. Murphy is all for saying no to Trump, but he argues that Democrats need to come up with their own proposals, however unrealistic, and say yes—big league. Entitlement reform? Forget it, Murphy says: Now’s the time to talk about expanding Social Security, not shrinking it. “A lot of Democrats laughed at Bernie Sanders when he proposed free college. First of all, that’s not impossible,” Murphy says, but more to the point, “it’s a way to communicate a really important issue in terms that people will understand.”
posted by Joseph Gurl at 6:58 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Welp, I'm getting drunk on an empty stomach (or started to, anyway, fud has been had by now) and am pre-blogging links for tomorrow while knitting another pussy hat. Woo drunk.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:58 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang
Have you heard it on the news
About this fascist groove thang
Evil men with racist views
Spreading all across the land
Don't just sit there on your ass
Unlock that funky chaindance
Brothers, sisters shoot your best
We don't need this fascist groove thang
Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

History will repeat itself
Crisis point we're near the hour
Counterforce will do no good
Hot you ass I feel your power
Hitler proves that funky stuff
Is not for you and me girl
Europe's an unhappy land
They've had their fascist groove thang

Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan Trump's president elect
Fascist god in motion
Generals tell him what to do
Stop your good time dancing
Train their guns on me and you
Fascist thang advancing

Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

Sisters, brothers lend a hand
Increase our population
Grab that groove thang by the throat
And throw it in the ocean
You're real tonight you move my soul
Let's cruise out of the dance war
Come out your house and dance your dance
Shake that fascist groove thang
(Shake it!)
posted by kirkaracha at 7:00 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh, and if fucken' Cory Booker is the Dems' flag bearer, we're fucked:
Perhaps the most effective advocate of school choice is New Jersey senator Cory Booker, who many Democrats are touting as the party’s savior in the post-Obama era. Liberals swooned when Booker opposed his Senate colleague Jeff Sessions, the right-wing racist Trump tapped to be the next attorney general. But however laudable, Booker’s actions didn’t take much in the way of courage.

Booker’s funders — hedge-fund managers and pharmaceutical barons — don’t care about such theatrics. They’re more concerned that he vote Big Pharma’s way and keep up his role as a leading member of Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-privatization group. They want to make sure he continues attacking teachers’ unions, the strongest bulwark against privatization.

Their aim is to undercut public schools and foster union-free charter schools, freeing the rich from having to pay teachers as unionized public servants with pensions.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/betsy-devos-public-schools-teachers-unions-charters-privatizations-democrats/
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:01 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


Oh, oh, OH! This has been a glorious night for me. I learned that my Trump leaning parents both wrote in Bernie. We live in Rhode Island, so it didn't matter, and I can breathe easily knowing they didn't vote Trump. My dad, a "give him a chance"er posted on FB today begging the Republicans not to confirm DeVos. My parents and I had a civil Facetime conversation tonight. They signed a petition!
posted by Ruki at 7:02 PM on January 19, 2017 [35 favorites]


[Folks, we do not revel in the prospect of people dying horribly here. At least not out loud. Thanks. ]

at least now i know i'm not the only one...
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 7:02 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


You're right. Exploding in a comedic pile of goo is too dignified for some people.
posted by ian1977 at 7:04 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


But instead of cutely sitting there a la sanders

I was totally thinking of Birdie Sanders when I wrote that.

Trump grabbing the sparrow and saying "Look, I'm stronger than this bird!" while crushing it in his fist and grinning broadly

But not before asking the bird for its immigration papers, blaming Mexico for letting the bird cross borders, and giving himself a medal for preventing the bird from entering Canada where it might continue to do bird things such as tweeting. More projection from donnie.
posted by futz at 7:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]



I always listen to CBC when I'm in my car. Of course they were talking about tomorrow. They interviewed the President of Conservative (something or other) from a University who is very excited about Donald. It's a new course we need for the world, end of and era blah blah. He was focusing on economics and not surprisingly he got things just wrong on that front. The screaming at the radio started when the interviewer asked him about social issues, you know the demeaning things about women, racism that Donald said and used in his campaign. Bit of a pause and then, 'well look that is concerning but Donald supports LGBT (don't think he used Q) issues more then the last President is the most supportive President of LGBT in modern times."

In what reality can someone think this? Where does this idea even come from? I can sorta get people seeing some of the other things they think are great about him. It's bullshit but I can at least see where they get it from. But this? How?

HOW?
posted by Jalliah at 7:10 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oh, and if fucken' Cory Booker is the Dems' flag bearer, we're fucked:

If so, it's this defeatism that's going to make it happen. Even in the context of school privatization and "vouchers" and all that crap, here's the thing: a Democrat pushing for that stuff at least is susceptible to pressure from a teacher's union. A republican like DeVos would happily tap-dance on the unions' graves. Make no mistake: it's better to have a democrat implementing a shitty policy than a republican, because you might be able to shame the democrat into an only half-shitty policy.

I'm not saying Cory Booker is our savior, and if someone else wins the primaries in 2020, I will stand behind that person. But if someone like Booker does win the primaries, then a whole lot of lefties better line up and PRESSURE HIM FROM THE LEFT like they did with Hillary (and it WORKED in terms of the Democratic platform and her personal policy advocacy), and then push that left-pressured, only-half-shitty fucker over the finish line. If you don't see how necessary this is now... you will in 4 years.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 7:11 PM on January 19, 2017 [42 favorites]


Ugh. Here comes COINTELPRO 2: It's all automated web-sniffing tools now and drone murders.
posted by constantinescharity at 7:11 PM on January 19, 2017


Make no mistake: it's better to have a democrat implementing a shitty policy than a republican, because you might be able to shame the democrat into an only half-shitty policy.


Ok here's a crazy idea: Democrats that support democratic ideas
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:14 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Booker is a good person and an excellent Senator. Nobody who lives in New Jersey was surprised that he votes with the many pharma companies that employ New Jerseyans.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:15 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]




Don't fall for that Boo-Booker bullshit. It's troll urine.
posted by petebest at 7:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


I think this poem is in keeping with the times.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 7:17 PM on January 19, 2017


Ok here's a crazy idea: Democrats that support democratic ideas

Yes! Bring them! Get out the vote and support them in the primaries! I was responding to a defeatist comment trying to set up purity tests 4 years too early.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 7:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [18 favorites]




They live in a bubble where they cannot possibly conceive of the real horrors and evils of the world

Yes. They are the ones in the bubble, not us. I'd prefer they didn't dictate how the rest of us should live.

Actually, that's exactly how they see it, too.


I know this was a while ago but I want to respond.

I get that it's the done thing right now to report in from Trump Country and say they are essentially great people who think the same things about us so whatever we say can be thrown back at us and "aren't we so divided."

But the people you described are mostly homogeneous, not a group of PoC/women/men/white/LGBTQ/disabled/etc and so "no, you're the bubble!" doesn't fly, sorry.


I live in one of the most diverse cities in the country and people are not afraid of each other for the most part. We celebrate our diversity. We are not the bubble. We are objectively a diverse group and they are scared white people who are voting to keep out immigrants who aren't even in their communities.

Your Trump people are the bubble.
posted by zutalors! at 7:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [28 favorites]


When a at Trumpican says they support gay rights, what they mean is that they hate Muslims. ×coughcoughtheyalsohategaysbisandtransgenderscoughcoughcough× but they hate Muslims more, so in their sick calculus it makes sense.
posted by Yowser at 7:20 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yes! Bring them! Get out the vote and support them in the primaries! I was responding to a defeatist comment trying to set up purity tests 4 years too early.

How is it defeatist to say that Cory Booker's support for "education reform" disqualifies him as the Democratic standard-bearer? I don't understand why support for teachers' unions and the notion of public schooling is a purity test too far.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:24 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Can we wait until 2020 to fuck the country up with this bullshit again?
posted by Justinian at 7:25 PM on January 19, 2017 [24 favorites]


Booker has long been a supporter of charters. This isn't new. He supported them when he was a mayor in Newark.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:26 PM on January 19, 2017


Mod note: No primary fights tonight, people. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 7:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]




there’s no bench, no bench for a bench

This is just silly claptrap. The losses at the state legislative level are bad and don't bode super-great for 15 years from now, sure. But stopping to think about who might run in 2020 or 2024 leads to an embarrassingly long list of qualified, capable Democrats, even if many are rather to the right of Metafilter.

virtually no one able to speak for the party as a whole

Party's split right now and Sanders needs to stop splitting it. Motherfucker can't get inside the same cubic parsec as the concept of race without putting his foot in his mouth or inspiring others to do so. And if you think the Democrats have some problems now, they are fucking dead without and active and energized black population.

Here's what Lewis said about Bernie's plan for free college back in February

Like that. Hey, let's talk shit about John Lewis, who is obviously just as bad as Betsy DeVos. That's how to win Democrats over! Because that shit from the Sanders camp on MLK Day about how Dr. King was *really* all about class and not race wasn't enough. Next up: Thurgood Marshall and his long-standing and deep concern for rural Pennsylvania whites, and a new expose called Rosa Parks: Worse Than Hitler.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:28 PM on January 19, 2017 [48 favorites]


I don't want to go back to the 'primary fights', and excuse me if I'm being dense, but aren't there 46 Democratic Senators other than Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders? And some of them are even WOMEN.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:28 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


Can we wait until 2020 to fuck the country up with this bullshit again?

I think this debate can be held on a general-interest forum without the country, or even just the Democratic Party, going down in flames. If the party's left wing waits until 2020 to get its act together and primary its center out of the running, then it'll lose.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:33 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Feeling a little despondent tonight, but then my sixteen yr old niece sent me something out of the blue which gave me goosebumps. I'm taking her on Saturday, with a couple of her friends, to the Women's March in Topeka. She wanted to show me how she's preparing for it.

So very proud of her right now. I know protest signs aren't all that meaningful on their own, but still, this little bit of defiance so close to home gives me hope.
posted by honestcoyote at 7:34 PM on January 19, 2017 [26 favorites]


CNN: The Pentagon announced Thursday that four more inmates were transferred out of the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, marking the final such transfer under President Barack Obama and leaving the facility's population at 41.
posted by gatorae at 7:38 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Like that. Hey, let's talk shit about John Lewis, who is obviously just as bad as Betsy DeVos.

I'm not sure we're operating with the same definitions when "reading back words the man has said" qualifies as talking shit.
posted by indubitable at 7:38 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


When you say that someone is as bad as Betsy DeVos, you are talking shit about them.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:39 PM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


41 too damn many.
posted by zachlipton at 7:40 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


A bit of better news.

Judge blocks Texas from cutting off Planned Parenthood funds


AUSTIN, Texas — Texas was temporarily blocked Thursday from ousting Planned Parenthood from the state's Medicaid program over secretly recorded videos taken by anti-abortion activists in 2015.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks adds Texas to the list of Republican-controlled states that have been thwarted in efforts to cut off Medicaid dollars to the nation's largest abortion provider. But Texas could still prevail — the court order is not a ruling but effectively a delay that buys Planned Parenthood at least a few more weeks.

Planned Parenthood would have lost the funding Saturday had Sparks not intervened. Faced with that tight deadline, Sparks postponed the ouster until Feb. 21, giving him more time to decide whether Texas can exclude about two dozen clinics that serve about 11,000 low-income women.

posted by Jalliah at 7:41 PM on January 19, 2017 [16 favorites]


Ugh. Here comes COINTELPRO 2: It's all automated web-sniffing tools now and drone murders.

Any journalists reporting on this yet?
posted by Coventry at 7:44 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


So the threat to EPA climate data is a very real thing & it's being met with a major effort to preserve the information. Rogue Scientists Race to Save Climate Data from Trump.
posted by scalefree at 7:47 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Were those the faked Planned Parenthood videos by known scammer James O'Korrupt?
posted by Yowser at 7:48 PM on January 19, 2017


If you look at what DeVos said:
Betsy Devos: "Senator I think that's a really interesting idea and I think it's really great to consider and think about, but I think we also have to consider the fact that there's nothing in life that's truly free. Somebody's going to pay for it."
And what Lewis said:
Here's what Lewis said about Bernie's plan for free college back in February: "I think it’s the wrong message to send to any group. There’s not anything free in America. We all have to pay for something. Education is not free. Health care is not free. Food is not free. Water is not free. I think it’s very misleading to say to the American people, we’re going to give you something free.”
Unless you think Lewis is also opposed to healthcare and food and water, it's pretty clear he's not saying the same thing as Betsy DeVos on education. They both agree that it's not really free, and that's true, DeVos and Lewis are both right on that point and it is disingenuous for someone to say it's "free". But Betsy DeVos obviously doesn't believe in funding good things with taxes, and John Lewis obviously does, and that makes all the difference, there's no conflating the two of them.
posted by jason_steakums at 7:49 PM on January 19, 2017 [43 favorites]


I'm not sure we're operating with the same definitions when "reading back words the man has said" qualifies as talking shit.

Except it does when people should be able to figure out that these two people are coming from entirely different places and different world views. There words typed out may look similar as in F.R.E.E but they don't necessarily have the same meaning or base understanding.

Besides Lewis is not at all wrong in what he said, free college education is not 'free' in the sense that it magically appears from somewhere. I'm in Canada and we have 'Free Healthcare'. People call it that all the time. But everyone damn well knows that it's not magic and it's not 'free'. Why because when our 'free' healthcare came to fruition the argument for it was based on what it actually is and not that it's something we got for free.
posted by Jalliah at 7:56 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Well, let's get this party started then:

Jan 18, 2017: CIA releases 13m pages of declassified documents online

The records include UFO sightings and psychic experiments from the Stargate programme, which has long been of interest to conspiracy theorists.

While much of the information has been technically publicly available since the mid-1990s, it has been very difficult to access.

The records were only available on four physical computers located in the back of a library at the National Archives in Maryland, between 09:00 and 16:30 each day.

A non-profit freedom of information group, MuckRock, sued the CIA to force it to upload the collection, in a process which took more than two years.

At the same time, journalist Mike Best crowd-funded more than $15,000 to visit the archives to print out and then publicly upload the records, one by one, to apply pressure to the CIA.

posted by petebest at 7:58 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


@Coventry:

No, not that I know of. It's one thing I've not really seen discussed that I'm particularly afraid of. America already has a history of literally murdering the political opposition, and that was COINTELPRO. American administrations have a track record of killing black activists, of harassing activists into suicide, of blackmailing activists, etc. While it hasn't been rampant in the recent past, as it was in the 60's-80's, an unpopular administration led by dying oligarchs might think it necessary for shoring up their position. It would certainly be a first step in a soft, modern long-game coup.

Another thing I've been thinking about:
This is the richest, oldest, whitest administration in a long time. One has to wonder if the lack of sub-apex appointments is meant to preclude an upper echelon of functionaries who would usually be there to monitor and object to such policy. Can't have conscientious objectors if you're intentionally sabotaging the function of any given department. A bureaucracy in disarray is also that much easier to loot.
posted by constantinescharity at 7:58 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


John Lewis: let's be honest that it isn't free; the money for tuition will come from taxes.
Betsy Devos: let's be honest that it isn't free; I ain't paying for that shit.
posted by gatorae at 7:59 PM on January 19, 2017 [50 favorites]



John Lewis: let's be honest that it isn't free; the money for tuition will come from taxes.
Betsy Devos: let's be honest that it isn't free; I ain't paying for that shit.


Thanks that pretty much sums up my long winded comment.
posted by Jalliah at 8:02 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


And really, Democrats shouldn't ever frame these things as "free". It makes us look like we're afraid to stand for our policies, or like we're running for student council and promising free pizza at lunch. And it's not like we're fooling anyone anyways. We should be saying yes, this will come from tax money, and it's an investment in ourselves, and it solves existing problems X Y and Z in ways that our opponents' proposals, if they even bother to have them, do not. Hiding from the truth of our own proposals makes us look inauthentic and naive. While Bernie shouldn't have said he'd provide "free" anything he was actually really good at this on one major point: he wore that "socialist" label with pride, and told you why he was proud of it, and it earned him respect from surprising places. No matter how frustrated I am with Bernie on some points, he'll forever have my gratitude for standing up and owning Democratic socialism and getting as far as he got doing it.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:07 PM on January 19, 2017 [34 favorites]


Capital area federal employees get the day off tomorrow for the Coronation of the Orange Reich. Current cocktail plans starting at 11am:

The Illegitimate Twit
3 parts pineapple juice
2 parts bourbon
More orange bitters than Trump pays in taxes
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


I missed this tidbit in the NYT article:

Since his election on Nov. 8, Mr. Trump has had little interest in the minutiae of his transition, saying it was “bad karma” to get too involved, according to a person who spoke with him at the time. At one point, he wanted to halt the planning altogether, out of superstition, the person said.

Sleep well, everyone.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:12 PM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


"My daughter Ivanka ... I sort of stole her husband ... If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can." (video)

Is it just me, or did the President-Elect just make an implicitly anti-Semitic remark about his own son-in-law?
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:15 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]




Is... is there any american citizen that believes "free healthcare" or "free college" mean no one ever has to pay for them, ever


No, but the Republican message is that Democrats are idiots who believe in the magic fairies so I don't think it's so terrible or cumbersome or whatever for politicians to talk about practicalities, especially as long as Republicans are controlling the message, which they most certainly are right now.
posted by zutalors! at 8:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Is... is there any american citizen that believes "free healthcare" or "free college" mean no one ever has to pay for them, ever? Are these people under the impression that magic fairies appear to tend their wounds and diagnose their diabetes? I thought we were all operating under the understanding that "free" is a convenient shorthand for "not directly out of my pocket at the point of use".

From my observation there are cultural issues in the current American political climate that makes using 'free' as a short hand problematic because yes many people do think that things happen by some sort of weird political magic, good and bad. For a large number of Americans the concept of 'free' and other people getting things for 'free' equals bad.
posted by Jalliah at 8:18 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


Is it just me, or did the President-Elect just make an implicitly anti-Semitic remark about his own son-in-law?

And a simultaneous dominance play on his daughter. Extra points for difficulty.
posted by scalefree at 8:20 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


For a large number of Americans the concept of 'free' and other people getting things for 'free' equals bad.

If you tell the White Rust Belt that black people are getting anything for "free", that's only going to drive them more to Trump. They care about make sure those people don't get anything for free, far more than what they're getting themselves.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:21 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Random thought: The reason Pence seemed like he was running an entirely separate campaign is because he was. The RNC needs him to be squeaky clean of all Russian taint for when they inevitably get sick of the Donald's lunatic shenanigans and move to impeach him. Pence is their ace in the hole to avoid a complete constitutional crisis and he needs to be, literally, unimpeachable. He was purposefully kept in his own separate containment unit.

Sleep tight, everyone!
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:22 PM on January 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


Yeah, I mean for the last eight years Republicans have been griping about Obama supporters wanting "free stuff" ie healthcare, loan forgiveness, etc. Which to me seems like an appropriate government benefit while "free stuff" sounds like iPads and Lexuses.
posted by zutalors! at 8:22 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thank goodness forever war is free.
posted by gatorae at 8:23 PM on January 19, 2017 [17 favorites]


Is it just me, or did the President-Elect just make an implicitly anti-Semitic remark about his own son-in-law?

No. At least not this time. That's his "job" (as much as anti-nepotism laws allow it to be his "job")
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:24 PM on January 19, 2017


Metafilter: squeaky clean of all Russian taint
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:24 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Just to be clear I am 100% behind the idea of universal funding of healthcare and post-secondary education. In my student activist day I advocated for the idea.
posted by Jalliah at 8:26 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Are these people under the impression that magic fairies appear to tend their wounds and diagnose their diabetes?

Yes.

--

But this is an excellent point; calling something "free" and something that "everybody chips in to pay for."

Free is a 4 letter word and is kind of an easy concept to understand. Whereas "everybody chips in to pay for (especially by those who can afford to, and less so to those who can't, but hey, it benefits everybody even those who chip in)" is harder to explain/rephrase into a "gut"-directed message.

Similar thing to the "pharm drugs from Canada" idea; Canada manages to get lower prescription drug costs down by being a sole negotiator, instead of multiple state who can be pitched against one another. There's also the idea that the USA gives US pharm companies lots of money incentives to do R&D and in return, they get to charge higher prices for patent-protected medicines. It gets even more complicated when you factor in the education pipeline that lets pharm companies hire educated and competent workers. Pharm companies aren't just management and scientists - pharm companies employ a lot of technicians who actually do the day-to-day research and the day-to-day manufacturing of the drugs and the day-to-day (hopefully) oversight that insures that the life saving drugs are produced safely and are safe to take. Each and every pill.

Do many pharm companies make large amounts of money unethically? Absolutely. But there are also a lot of pharm companies who are just working within the regulatory framework. The reason why PharmaBro Skreli was so high profile was because he was SUCH A HUGE sack of shit. The only way out is to change the structure through which scientific research through to medical treatment is currently a hostage of how late-stage capitalism is progressing; The United States of America kick started and sustained intellectualism and science for a good long while, but their rival gave up and became a cretin.
posted by porpoise at 8:29 PM on January 19, 2017


Mr. Trump has had little interest in the minutiae of his transition, saying it was “bad karma” to get too involved, according to a person who spoke with him at the time. At one point, he wanted to halt the planning altogether, out of superstition, the person said.

Is he also consulting an astrologist like Nancy Reagan did? Or a Karma Consultant?
posted by futz at 8:29 PM on January 19, 2017


Hair Furor does not talk shit. He talks Freedom Feces.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 8:29 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]



I mean, I guess Republicans are controlling the message if every time they say "free doesn't actually mean free!" Democrats break down into a nodding chorus of handwringing Neil Degrasse Tyson-esque pedantry like "you're right you're right technically money is used to facilitate the transfer of labor"


This is a pretty far goalpost move from "do people just believe in magic money fairies" but I guess we'll just agree to disagree even though I think we agree for the most part?
posted by zutalors! at 8:32 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Intellectually, I know Trump becomes president tomorrow, but I still can't shake the sense that someone (who, I don't know) should have swooped in and stopped all of this by now. I can only glance at it from the sides, in my peripheral vision, because when I consider it directly, I have to put my head down on the table and sob. The oddest things keep making me cry. For example, last Sunday the executive director of the Colorado ACLU, who is also a community affiliated minister with Jefferson Unitarian Church in Denver, came and preached at my UU church. I kept it together when he got choked up during his remarks, when he said that it was Obama's last Sunday in office, but I broke down when we sang "How Can I Keep From Singing?" as the closing hymn. Particularly the verse "When tyrants tremble in their fear, and hear their death knell ringing, when friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing?" because I suddenly remembered we had sung it the Sunday before Obama's first inauguration and I remembered how very different that felt. I was grateful for the kind hand of the woman standing behind me who reached out to clasp my shoulder. This morning, it was the retrospective of Michelle Obama's dresses on Tom and Lorenzo. Moved my coffee mug and put my head down to cry for a moment, because she has been nothing but graceful and amazing and it is devastating that she won't be FLOTUS after tomorrow.

I thank all of you who have gently, and not so gently, given reminders that we are the ones who must look out for each other. No one is coming to save us. So, I'm a little ashamed of this, I guess, that I was comfortable enough before now to stay home, but I'm going to my first protest march on Saturday. I won't be watching the inauguration.
posted by danielleh at 8:32 PM on January 19, 2017 [45 favorites]




Is he also consulting an astrologist like Nancy Reagan did? Or a Karma Consultant?

This sorta interesting if he does have some belief in karma. Might as well use it. Donald says he's going to do X awful thing. "That's bad karma Donald. Really bad karma." "Donald you're messing up your karma". Next time I tweet the guy it's going to be 'bad karma".
posted by Jalliah at 8:36 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Chinese billionaire Jack Ma says the US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure

And both parties were all for it.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:38 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


No. At least not this time. That's his "job" (as much as anti-nepotism laws allow it to be his "job")

Yeah, I get that it's Kushner's job [one he's immensely unqualified for, just like Dad-in-Law, yay!] But there's some icky subtext to the "if he can't do it, no one can" part. Or maybe I'm just trained now to automatically look for gross and revolting connotations (or denotations) of everything Trump says since they're there 94% of the time.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:39 PM on January 19, 2017


Free is a 4 letter word and is kind of an easy concept to understand. Whereas "everybody chips in to pay for (especially by those who can afford to, and less so to those who can't, but hey, it benefits everybody even those who chip in)" is harder to explain/rephrase into a "gut"-directed message.

Universal.
posted by Jalliah at 8:40 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


It's true that free college wouldn't be literally free. It would take a sacrifice. Like other rich countries, though, we could accomplish it by sacrificing some of our billionaires' wealth reserves with a genuinely progressive tax plan.

Problem is, the billionaires aren't for that, and, well, they run things, including the Democratic party as currently constituted.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:43 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


I absolutely agree, Jaliah.

But 'universal' includes, you know, those people.
posted by porpoise at 8:45 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's weird because we only apply the label "free" to things we want to make government-backed, never the things that already are. We don't talk about "free roads" (unless we're talking about doing the opposite and privatizing them) or "free crosswalks" or "free police" or "free border patrol" or "free prosecutors" or "free national defense" or "free people who make sure my air and water aren't toxic" or "free experts who try to make sure my bank won't fail" or "free prompt cleanup of the pile of hypodermic needles I reported to the city last week." Heck, we rarely even describe public schools as "free."

And that makes it a weird term because when we say we want to make college or healthcare free, we're really just saying we want to move it into the same category as all that other useful stuff we take for granted except for when it doesn't work. But we never talk about how the other things are free in the same sense too.
posted by zachlipton at 8:46 PM on January 19, 2017 [38 favorites]


I absolutely agree, Jaliah.

But 'universal' includes, you know, those people.


Can we not do the ironic racism again?
posted by zutalors! at 8:48 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


That isn't ironic racism; it's how the other side considers things.
posted by porpoise at 8:51 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


This sorta interesting if he does have some belief in karma.

That goes counter to absolutely everything we know about him. He has admitted to be very superstitious however. I think that's what he means, that it's bad luck.
posted by scalefree at 8:52 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


it's how the other side considers things

I'm aware, but we've had many discussions on this site about how "that's what THEY say" makes people feel.
posted by zutalors! at 8:53 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


That's what "ironic racism" means porpoise. And as for "the other side," well, from where I'm sitting, there are (at least) two "other sides," one of which is clearly the Dems (as currently constituted).
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:53 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Mad props to "free prompt cleanup of the pile of hypodermic needles I reported to the city last week" btw. Much appreciated service.
posted by zachlipton at 8:55 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh hai. Here's something else to be angry over. Obama Treasury official Senate GOP refused to confirm is among those Trump asked to stay on
Adam Szubin spent the past two years acting as the Treasury Department's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence while Senate Republicans refused to confirm him and other Obama administration nominees.

On Thursday, the incoming Trump administration named Szubin as one of the officials asked to stay in his post—while attacking Democrats for not supporting nominees in recent weeks in the Republican-controlled Senate.
It's almost as if all that obstructionism had more to do with who was in the White House than what they believed was best for the country.
posted by zachlipton at 8:58 PM on January 19, 2017 [32 favorites]


But 'universal' includes, you know, those people.

It does and that's not bad.That's what you want. In order to get these types of policies enacted there has to be a cultural social foundation that supports them. That's what is being fought for at the core.

The point is to get across the concept of 'everyone' 'all-together' 'all-encompassing' that what your trying to change. That's why I do think using words like universal would work better because it represents the core of what it's all about. Free as a word and definitely how its' popular perception in the current political climate doesn't doesn't do that. 'Free' is more easily connected with an individual.

I'd love to say just use socialism but that's problematic for obvious reason though Bernie was awesome because brought it back to where it could gain wider acceptance again.

In Canada we got the cultural concept of universal, everyone, this is for all people because people fought for it to happen. Nasty, nasty horrible fight it was too. I'd say one of the most brutal political and social battles in Canadian history.
posted by Jalliah at 8:58 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


(um...First Nations something something...)
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:00 PM on January 19, 2017


(um...First Nations something something...)

Please notice the qualifier. I said 'one of' on purpose.
posted by Jalliah at 9:02 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


Sorry for being unclear, Jalliah. I meant that "universal" hasn't generally seemed to include FN folks.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:04 PM on January 19, 2017


Of course, one major Republican goal is to pull the billionaires away from giving any support to the Democrats. Which, considering how little that massive campaign money has helped Democrats lately, may turn out to be a positive thing.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:05 PM on January 19, 2017


Refugees: These people need extreme vetting!! We need to put a hold on this until we know what the hell is going on!
Cabinet nominees: Stop asking them questions! Just shut up and let them in!
posted by gatorae at 9:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Sorry for being unclear, Jalliah. I meant that "universal" hasn't generally seemed to include FN folks.

Okay. Thanks for clarifying. I do agree with this statement 100%. Canadians as a whole tend to be terrible in their understanding and acceptance of First Nations in relevance to any other group of people.
posted by Jalliah at 9:11 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


One of the things standing in the way of meaningful progress on many issues is the fact that a great many rich and powerful people benefit (or think they will benefit) from things staying the way they are, or actively turned back. And they have the money, reach, and resources to do a disturbingly good job of convincing people who would benefit from progress that they would benefit more from things staying the way they are, whether through exploiting and feeding already-existing racist spite or telling them lies or feeding them years of propaganda. Trump is the culmination of that.

And in the age of the Internet it's a lot easier to spread a lie and turn it viral than it is to debunk it, and puts the ball constantly in our court (hence why the Gish Gallop is such a common technique among people who have no serious evidence or arguments - if the opponent is constantly on the defensive, an argument may look more convincing to uninformed outsiders than it actually is, and the lies are a smokescreen for the Galloper's lack of substance).
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 9:12 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]




In an interview,, Mr. Page expressed bewilderment about why he might be under investigation.

Because you look like a security asset, act like an asset, and even have a fucking name pulled from a spy novel.
posted by holgate at 9:13 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


Is... is there any american citizen that believes "free healthcare" or "free college" mean no one ever has to pay for them, ever? Are these people under the impression that magic fairies appear to tend their wounds and diagnose their diabetes? I thought we were all operating under the understanding that "free" is a convenient shorthand for "not directly out of my pocket at the point of use".

Republicans apparently believe that liberals believe in actual magic fairy free. That's what I've heard more than one Repub attack Sanders on. "Stupid liberal, don't you know my rich ass will be the one paying for your free shit?" "Yes, actually," I respond, "because you are so much richer than me you should be embarrassed."

But yanno, basically that just leads to everyone being really pissed off at each other. "Free" is a vector of attack for Conservatives to make liberals sound like pie-in-the-sky out-of-touch dreamers even though no liberal actually believes free means free. Publicly funded secondary education would do just fine. How about "College Choice Vouchers"? Since conservatives love the word vouchers and choice.
posted by threeturtles at 9:14 PM on January 19, 2017 [14 favorites]


Stupidest Man on the Internet to Join White House Press Pool.

Seems a bit like a conflict of interest, since he's going to be President at the same time.
posted by IAmUnaware at 9:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [19 favorites]


Stupidest Man on the Internet to Join White House Press Pool.

This is President Bannon's work methinks.
posted by Jalliah at 9:18 PM on January 19, 2017




SMOTI is Jim Hoft's nickname among liberal bloggers for his impressive record in getting stories wrong, falling for hoaxes & being incompetent at fixing them when they're exposed.
posted by scalefree at 9:20 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


How about "College Choice Vouchers"? Since conservatives love the word vouchers and choice.

Spin it right around. Love it.
posted by Jalliah at 9:20 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


We are not the bubble.

Everyone is in a bubble. It might be that in recent decades one of the bubbles was large and central enough that the claim "not the bubble" could make sense, but I think nowadays it's just ... different bubbles.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 9:21 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


This evening I ended up in a bar conversation with a perfectly pleasant, Rand Paul-variety all-gubmint-is-evil libertarian doctor and tried my best to point out that the free market will not pay for the somewhat expensive early-intervention treatment he seeks for his patients if it is not on the hook for the even more expensive late-intervention treatment required if the early-intervention treatment is not covered, and the logical consequence of that is that you need a healthcare system that has some kind of institutional continuity and investment that spans the timeline between paying X amount now and paying 10X later, and that the free market is not actually going to deliver that kind of continuity.

Well, I tried.
posted by holgate at 9:22 PM on January 19, 2017 [23 favorites]


the realest mother fucker alive

At least he's honest and to the point.

" Why did you start this fire?"

" Cause I felt like it and I'm just saying screw our President"
posted by Jalliah at 9:24 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


the realest mother fucker alive

Well shit, I realize it's Fox News but don't we just look like a bunch of assholes.
posted by Talez at 9:25 PM on January 19, 2017


In an interview,, Mr. Page expressed bewilderment about why he might be under investigation.

A previous story in the Guardian said there were four Trump associates being monitored. NYT names three: Page, Manafort & Stone. Speculation is high that incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is the fourth.
posted by scalefree at 9:28 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


So tonight, we have this announcement, we've been in contact with the Trump administration, they're going to do some things different, and we've got their word that the Gateway Pundit is going to have a White House correspondent this year, and his name is Lucian Wintrich.

Ok so the good news here is I'm pretty sure magic is real because there's no possible way a guy named Lucian Wintrich isn't a Death Eater
posted by jason_steakums at 9:31 PM on January 19, 2017 [24 favorites]


We are not the bubble.

Everyone is in a bubble. It might be that in recent decades one of the bubbles was large and central enough that the claim "not the bubble" could make sense, but I think nowadays it's just ... different bubbles


I'm not saying the left/anti Trumps have no room to be introspective but I had been responding to something that someone posted from Trump country saying that trumpers are well meaning naifs who are "isolated" and "live in a bubble where they cannot possibly conceive of the real horrors and evils of the world."

Yet they are visiting horrors and evils on the world.
posted by zutalors! at 9:31 PM on January 19, 2017


Holgate: Next time give the guy a break with a period or a semicolon or something and see if he catches up.
posted by notyou at 9:33 PM on January 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


No bubble. You're the bubble.
posted by scalefree at 9:34 PM on January 19, 2017 [28 favorites]


I don't have any confidence in any of these alleged investigations. It's too late. This shit had to come out before the election, or in the last 7.5 weeks since. All of them stop dead at 12:01pm tomorrow.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:42 PM on January 19, 2017 [6 favorites]


Just to catch everybody up, the NYT is saying the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ, FinCEN & ODNI are surveilling 4 close friends of the incoming President & names 3 of them. It's quite likely the fourth is his National Security Advisor. And here's the reason we've been told about it today instead of tomorrow:

"Of the half-dozen current and former officials who confirmed the existence of the investigations, some said they were providing information because they feared the new administration would obstruct their efforts."

Just catching you up.
posted by scalefree at 9:42 PM on January 19, 2017 [15 favorites]


notyou: he gets the semicolons in anatomy class, so, y'know.
posted by holgate at 9:42 PM on January 19, 2017 [5 favorites]


Well, it's happening.
I just updated my Facebook profile image to The Scream.
Tomorrow, we march. Me here in town, my wife on a bus to DC.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:05 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


RobotVoodooPower: I missed this tidbit in the NYT article

Since his election on Nov. 8, Mr. Trump has had little interest in the minutiae of his transition, saying it was “bad karma” to get too involved, according to a person who spoke with him at the time. At one point, he wanted to halt the planning altogether, out of superstition, the person said.

Trump involved in ‘every detail’ of upcoming inaugural festivities

Donald Trump may be the future president, but that doesn’t mean he’s above choosing the place settings and tablecloth fabrics for this week’s inaugural festivities.

“He’s into every detail of everything,” Presidential Inaugural Committee Chair Tom Barrack told The Post. “I beg him all the time to go back to running the free world and let me focus on setting the tables.”


So (as I have mentioned before above) he appears to be more concerned with the details of his inaugural dinner than anything else, like ya know, filling vacancies in his new administration. He has absolutely terrible decorating taste. Gaudy, gross Fantasy Island levels of gaucheness. Ugh.

But I digress. I don't think that he gives one shit about governing, it is all a show. A fucking embarrassing shitshow. He is a clueless, vapid, vacant, inept tries-too-hard to emulate what he thinks "rich" looks like. He desperately wants the approval from the famous people who have shunned him.

That's all he is. A pretender. A man who doesn't like to be belittled or embarrassed who now has waaaay too much power and who is most comfortable when he is fucking setting the table for the people he hopes will worship him but will never show up.

Because those people have shunned him he is now in full fuck you mode like a spoiled child who didn't get a pony for his birthday party. He told everyone that the pony would be there, kids laughed at him when it wasn't and now he lashes out like a big baby bully but still carefully chooses the napkin rings in the hopes that the pony will still show up.
posted by futz at 10:11 PM on January 19, 2017 [39 favorites]


I feel like I'm watching a horror movie and helplessly screaming "LOOK OUT! HE IS GOING TO KILL YOU!" I never really understood the plight of Cassandra until the last few weeks. Now I dwell on it.
posted by gatorae at 10:16 PM on January 19, 2017 [20 favorites]


> Problem is, the billionaires aren't for that, and, well, they run things, including the Democratic party as currently constituted.

I've been trying to be hopeful, but my greatest fear right now is that this kind of broad-brush painting that can't distinguish between "hundreds of GOP billionaires and an Infotainment Industrial Complex wired for Republican ideas" and "George Soros, maaaaaaaybe Jeff Bezos if you squint at him the right way on the right day, and a bunch of fledgling Democratic think tanks" is going to be the death of the anti-Trump resistance. Like, seriously, Bernie Sanders can distinguish different shades of evil within the billionaire class -- why can't we all follow his lead?
posted by tonycpsu at 10:22 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


I feel like the one character in every horror movie who knows exactly how dangerous the monster is and is trying to warn everyone to stop pretending there isn't a problem, it's real and dangerous and getting worse and something's very seriously wrong. And then the monster usually eats them first.
posted by thedarksideofprocyon at 10:22 PM on January 19, 2017 [12 favorites]


Or A Series of Unfortunate Events, where terrible, thieving deceptions happen and the adults in the story do nothing. At worst, they don't see it, and at best they remind you sternly that saying something is impolite.
posted by mochapickle at 10:27 PM on January 19, 2017 [10 favorites]


So (as I have mentioned before above) he appears to be more concerned with the details of his inaugural dinner than anything else, like ya know, filling vacancies in his new administration.

There was a video from the RNC where he was, to be more generous than I ever will be to him before or after, sweating the small stuff -- fonts and looks and whatever -- with an articulacy that I have not heard in any other fucking context in the intervening. He's a fucking kitsch shitshow party planner and that is fucking it. Well fucking done, America. If we make it out of this alive, the point has been made that your collective judgement (within the stupid fucking antiquated system you cling to) can never be trusted again. Come up with a new fucking constitution if you can to deal with this.
posted by holgate at 10:32 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


So (as I have mentioned before above) he appears to be more concerned with the details of his inaugural dinner than anything else, like ya know, filling vacancies in his new administration.

Good lord, he's the living embodiment of the bike-shed effect.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:39 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


I think I've decided to go out first thing tomorrow, get breakfast from McDonalds and a bunch of booze. Then it's back home to my couch and huddle under a blanket. I'll watch Grey's Anatomy from the beginning, (or some show like that) drink all day and read Metafilter.
posted by Jalliah at 10:42 PM on January 19, 2017 [9 favorites]


tonycpsu - I see what you're saying, but 39% of billionaires gave more to Dems this time around.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:42 PM on January 19, 2017


> tonycpsu - I see what you're saying, but 39% of billionaires gave more to Dems this time around.

From your own link:
While there are roughly equal numbers of billionaires that contribute more to liberal causes than conservative ones, the sheer size of the conservative-political warchest is extraordinarily lopsided: 82% of all donations from the Forbes 400 come from conservative-leaning billionaires ($46M vs $10M).
Like I said, distinguishing different shades of evil is all I'm asking for here.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:45 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


> the realest mother fucker alive

Well shit, I realize it's Fox News but don't we just look like a bunch of assholes.

Unless he burned someone else's stuff, it's what many Trump supporters do on the Fourth of July (and everyone else) except that it's actually patriotic.
posted by XMLicious at 10:46 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


distinguishing different shades of evil is all I'm asking for here.

Yeah, I guess that's cool. To me, they're more "different flavors of diarrhea," though, in which case the differences may be real but they offer no real consolation.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 10:50 PM on January 19, 2017


Yeah, at this point, with Trump naming people for only 28 of 690 positions requiring Senate confirmation, it sure does look like he just has no interest in even pretending to be President. So I give it outside odds, maybe 10-15%, that he's going to stay President long enough to repeal a bunch of Obama's executive orders and lift all sanctions against Russia* before resigning for 'health' reasons.

(Right now, I'm also at about 20% chance of charges before noon tomorrow. I know, wildly optimistic.)

*Not just the recent 12/29/16 sanctions on Russia, but also the really tough 2014 sanctions in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which blocked the $500 billion deal between Rosneft and ExxonMobil to open up the Arctic Circle to oil and gas production (a deal written by--you guessed it--Rex Tillerson). Trump told us he was going to do this, in a WSJ interview last weekend, but everybody was too busy being outraged on behalf of John Lewis and stuff to notice:
"If you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things?"
It's always about the money; Trump is just really, really good at distracting us.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:50 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


I know it's a bit upthread, but one of the reasons Dems get suckered into saying 'free health care' or 'free college' is because they're afraid of saying 'public' or 'socialized.'
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:50 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


Good lord, he's the living embodiment of the bike-shed effect.

Pretty much. He's completely uninvolved & above it all until some detail catches his eye & then he obsesses about it with a laser-focus intensity. At one point he talked about starting with a parade down 5th Ave, catching a helicopter on the roof of his Orthanc of NY & landing on the White House lawn just for the spectacle. Now that his deep unpopularity's been revealed & he gets that nobody's showing up the whole thing bores him.
posted by scalefree at 10:52 PM on January 19, 2017 [3 favorites]


...when fascism comes it will not be in the form of an anti-American movement or pro-Hitler bund, practicing disloyalty. Nor will it come in the form of a crusade against war. It will appear rather in the luminous robes of flaming patriotism; it will take some genuinely indigenous shape and color, and it will spread only because its leaders, who are not yet visible, will know how to locate the great springs of public opinion and desire and the streams of thought that flow from them and will know how to attract to their banners leaders who can command the support of the controlling minorities in American public life. The danger lies not so much in the would-be führers who may arise, but in the presence in our midst of certain deeply running currents of hope and appetite and opinion. The war upon fascism must be begun there.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:57 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


Goodnight and goodbye, America. It's been nice knowing you.

See you all tomorrow in the next thread from hell. I've picked out my funeral wear and pussy hat :P
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:03 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


This is fine.
posted by mazola at 11:05 PM on January 19, 2017 [8 favorites]


I'm watching the 3 Doors Down performance from earlier today and man is it bleak. Shitty, depressing music being played to a small unenthusiastic crowd with Trump frowning and nodding. How the fuck did we even get here? Bizarre isn't even the word for what this whole spectacle promises to be.
posted by R.F.Simpson at 11:05 PM on January 19, 2017 [4 favorites]


porpoise: Free is a 4 letter word and is kind of an easy concept to understand. Whereas "everybody chips in to pay for (especially by those who can afford to, and less so to those who can't, but hey, it benefits everybody even those who chip in)" is harder to explain/rephrase into a "gut"-directed message.

"Crowdsourced".
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:09 PM on January 19, 2017 [2 favorites]


> Yeah, I guess that's cool. To me, they're more "different flavors of diarrhea," though, in which case the differences may be real but they offer no real consolation.

They do to anyone who recognizes axes of justice other than the purely economic. If those peoples' concerns aren't at least a tiebreaker for you, then I'm afraid no productive conversation is possible between us.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:17 PM on January 19, 2017 [7 favorites]


Also, with regards to 'everyone knows that nothing is free': I recently saw a slogan that I think originated with the Tea Party or somewhere like that, and it pointed out that 'everything the government hands out, they've taken from someone else'. So obviously, at least some people think that this is something that needs to be said, a new perspective, an eye-opener even maybe.

From my European viewpoint, that sounds ridiculously self-evident. Where else would they get it from? It's not like the government makes any profit. They do not produce anything.
Handing other people's money out is what we hire them for, because it's much more efficient to centralize that shit; it's literally their job. Like, duh.
To me, that slogan is about as eye-opening as 'everything you pee out, you've taken from food and drinks'.

But apparently there are people who feel that this needs to be said.
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:48 PM on January 19, 2017 [13 favorites]


No. At least not this time. That's his "job" (as much as anti-nepotism laws allow it to be his "job")

Ok but, is it his job because he's qualified to do it, or because he's Jewish and Donald knows him?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:53 PM on January 19, 2017


I've been ugly sobbing off and on all night while also kinda pleading with the universe to send extraterrestrials now.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 12:08 AM on January 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


Someone on Twitter pointed to the term "sedevacantism".

You know how The Matrix never had any sequels? I mean, it would have been interesting to see what kind of sequels might have been made, but that never actually happened, so let's just appreciate the film as a one-off. A fine standalone not-part-of-any-broader-imaginative-universe thing.

That.
posted by holgate at 12:12 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


'everything the government hands out, they've taken from someone else'

The government doesn't take education away from people, or take their roads or healthcare and redistribute them. They produce those things; and their economies of scale make them vastly more efficient than private suppliers. The production is funded by taxes but that doesn't make it a confiscation-and-redistribution, which is what the slogan implies. If people have a problem with taxes they're free to move somewhere without them but I suspect that most people are willing to have some deal in which they receive government services. These guys just want to pretend that they're so self-sufficient that they are the ultimate source of all public goods, rather than one of a myriad contributors to public funds. That's not at all the same thing.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:13 AM on January 20, 2017 [28 favorites]


is it his job because he's qualified to do it, or because he's Jewish and Donald knows him?

A few people have observed that Donnie thinks in stereotypes. A woman for education, because schoolmarms. An African-American for HUD, because ghettoes. And so forth.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:17 AM on January 20, 2017 [9 favorites]


As I pointed out to RandPaulite Doctor, municipal water and sewer systems were a collective improvement on private standpipes and shitting in pots and tossing it out into the street, because of cholera and typhoid and stuff, and the celebration of individual liberty would still endorse shitting in a pot and tossing it out into the street.
posted by holgate at 12:18 AM on January 20, 2017 [21 favorites]


Courage guys. I'll be marching tomorrow in Auckland; the Women's Marches in New Zealand will be the first to occur in the world. I'll be a safety officer for the march which is one small way I can look after people in these dark times. If you need something to look at tomorrow while skipping the inauguration we can be found on social media under #WMNewZealand #WMAkl #SisterMarch and #WM_Global. There are anticipated to be about 1200-1500 people marching in New Zealand tomorrow across Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin. In our small country of 4 million people that's quite a large number, and it'll spread like a wave from here across the entire globe throughout the next couple days, so every hour you feel despair remember there's someone (or many someones) in the world out on the street supporting you. Even though they've never met you. Even though they may never have set food in America before. We're the majority, we're the future, and we will never stop reaching out for each other.
posted by supercrayon at 12:25 AM on January 20, 2017 [35 favorites]


There are anticipated to be about 1200-1500 people marching in New Zealand tomorrow across Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin.

And Wellington! Followed by a celebration of America in Civic Square.
posted by Pink Frost at 12:32 AM on January 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Trump helps hasten his own downfall;
http://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-tells-donors-time-win-fashioned/story?id=44905697
posted by bongo_x at 12:32 AM on January 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Made a thing last night, downloadable in various formats from Open ClipArt. Mentioning it here in case anyone would find it useful for a placard or wall stencil or whatever.
posted by valetta at 12:53 AM on January 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


They do to anyone who recognizes axes of justice other than the purely economic. If those peoples' concerns aren't at least a tiebreaker for you, then I'm afraid no productive conversation is possible between us.

You mean like the civilians of the countries on which Obama dropped 26,171 bombs? That's an "axis of justice"? Because that doesn't seem to bother the Obama or Hillary boosters--or the Democratic Party leadership--very much.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 1:08 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I do think hawkish vs. dovish / interventionist vs. isolationist foreign policy are valid axes on which to assess leaders, but I don't think a simple "number of bombs" metric suffices for such an assessment. I can't imagine any kind of metric that puts either major US political party close to the dovish or isolationist endpoints, at least not in recent decades, and certainly none that puts the Republicans so far ahead of the Democrats that it makes up for all of the harm that GOP social policies already do at the local and state levels, and will soon have a much higher chance of happening at the federal level with undivided GOP control of government.

If you'd care to make the case that I'm wrong, then I'm happy to engage further, but if you're still sticking to "both sides are diarrhea" and not disputing my point that the GOP is far worse on social issues, then you do actually have put forth a metric by which they're better than Democrats on something, or your math doesn't really work out.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:43 AM on January 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


This song was about Bush, but I think it applies now too.

Let The Monkey Drive
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:47 AM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Patton Oswalt: Leave your TV tuned to a channel like Turner Classic Movies or National Geographic or any channel that will have zero inaugural coverage.

Patton made a mistake there, because Turner Classic Movies is going to show something later this afternoon that will definitely remind you of the inauguration. The movie "A Face in the Crowd". I'll let this guy kind of explain.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:48 AM on January 20, 2017 [6 favorites]


tonycpsu

Dude. I explicitly said that they're different flavors of diarrhea. They're both so bloodthirsty and exploitative that neither is remotely acceptable as currently constructed. But let's see--I wouldn't be remotely surprised if Obama's record-setting disregard of sovereign territory and record-setting drone strikes are dialed back this time around.

Considering either one to be anything remotely close to a vector for "justice" is blind, and upholding one with such sanctimony and righteous indignation is laughable.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 1:51 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Considering either one to be anything remotely close to a vector for "justice" is blind, and upholding one with such sanctimony and righteous indignation is laughable.

Saying that Party X's policies are more just than those of Party Y does not mean that Party X is the perfect incarnation of justice on earth. It only means that their policies lead to more just outcomes, or to fewer unjust outcomes. If Trump continues the drone strike programme - which he will - and destabilises NATO and goes to war with China and institutionalises discrimination against Muslims in the US and brings back torture, that is in fact worse than Obama's combination of drone strikes killing civilians in Pakistan and not doing any of the other things. It is still very, very wrong to kill civilians using drones but it's absurd to pretend that it therefore doesn't matter if the new guy continues killing people using drones but also wrecks the world and violates rights in fifty other ways.
posted by Aravis76 at 2:27 AM on January 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


The security gates in D.C. have just opened, so a mod-approved post for The inauguration of the 45th President of the United States of America is now live.

May God/Cthulhu/Boromir/Aslan have mercy on us all.
posted by Wordshore at 3:02 AM on January 20, 2017 [29 favorites]


Cthulhu

Optimist.
posted by mikelieman at 3:41 AM on January 20, 2017 [13 favorites]


Lotta ifs there tony.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:36 AM on January 20, 2017


I'm pretty sure Obama believes he used drone strikes to prevent larger wars with larger causualty counts (including civilians). His foreign policy, like his domestic policy, is deeply pragmatic.

You can certainly argue that is doesn't work that way, and I would agree overall (because I think it's too hard to predict the results of killing someone -- who else is radicalized by that act, and by fear? -- and because it's so hard to be sure you're even killing the person you think you are) but making that argument means you have to cite some reasons to believe it doesn't, from international politics or history or military tactics or human psychology... really, I'm just asking, make an argument, any kind of argument at all, so we can talk about it.

Because I really care about this stuff, and I really struggle to understand our policies and their effects in the world, and it is just so frustrating for me when people make these assertions that seem to be founded on the assumption that everyone in the US government just likes bombing other countries for the fun of it! Or because they (even Obama?) hate anyone who is not white so much that they just launch missiles at randomly slected non-white people! (Never mind that most of the world isn't white, and never mind Kosovo or other places in Eastern Europe where we have intervened.)

Obviously Obama's drone strikes were not because he just liked killing people or just hates brown people. He had objectives he hoped to achieve. The question is whether those objectives were worth the cost in human lives (ie, did they include saving more human lives?) And whether they could be realistically achieved by non-violent means.

I would note that given our long war in Afghanistan and the porous border with Pakistan, it seems to me that the drone strikes in Pakistan might be, in Obama's mind, in leiu of an actual war with Pakistan, which would likely be provoked by sending ground troops in after these targets that Obama presumably believes to be real threats. (Of course we the people have no real way of knowing if they were real threats or not, and to me that is actually the biggest problem. Not that most of us are even paying attention.)

But when you are counting the costs of drone warfare, don't forget to include the people who are NOT being killed in conventional warfare because we did drone strikes instead... This is why it's unfair to compare Obama and Bush's drone strike numbers... Bush killed a LOT more people with conventional military tactics, and that's NOT better.
posted by OnceUponATime at 4:46 AM on January 20, 2017 [12 favorites]


Ohh, I need to start that I have a big whopping grudge right now against "axis" theory in a pluralist world because I've spent a good chunk of the last year being told that I can't talk about biphobia because that implies gays and lesbians are equally oppressive to bi people. Straights oppress gays and lesbians. They also oppress bisexual men and women. The reasons and dynamics are not all ways the same. (For that matter, I'm frequently skeptical of homophobia as a grand unified field theory of suck, but that might be because I'm a classic "splitter" and case-study guy who believes that the minutae of how things actually happen does actually matter.)

But I'm an economic voter as well. And yes, I will agree that the Democratic party does, in fact, suck in many ways on those issues as well. Just because the revolution there isn't going to happen through the electoral system doesn't mean that I'm going to sit with my thumb up my ass and make things harder for myself (in ways that get more people killed) by letting Republicans win. I hate playing calculus with human lives as a voter, but I'm still on the hook for it.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:47 AM on January 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


I hate playing calculus with human lives as a voter

Fuck that. We live in a fallen world (says the atheist). Calculus with human lives is what we do every day. There was no era in which one party was perfect, and there never will be, because morality is a moving target.

If you want to act all sanctimonious about the people the person I voted for would have killed, I hope you're willing to do the same with all your other life choices. I hope you live a life that Peter Singer would be proud of. Except on the points where he disagrees with Kant or any other moral philosopher, in which case I hope you will recite chapter and verse to resolve the contradictions and explain why you chose one over the other.

Because we live in a modern world, and that means that every decision we make will involve other people suffering. Do I take the medication I need to stay alive, or should I reduce my carbon footprint? Can I justify driving to work? What companies can I justify buying food from?

Conflating politics with anything other than pragmatic half-solutions is the work of fools with too little to do and those who want to tie others' hands. If there's anything I've taken out of this election, it's that there is not and will never be a third choice.

And I choose the one who wouldn't have grabbed diplomats by the pussy.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 5:44 AM on January 20, 2017 [19 favorites]


OMG, you guys. I just realized that I was secretly holding hope that something, anything, would stop what is about to happen. I think I hadn't given in to despair, because I was sure that deus ex machina would interfere. Perp walks, renunciations, giant meteor....anything.

But, it's not going to, is it? We're fucking doomed to live with this short fingered, dayglo, bombastically ignorant vulgarian and his fascist goons as they gleefully rip to shreds one of the most successful republics in modern history.

Education, pitiful as it is? Gone. EPA? Gone. NEA? Gone. NEH? Gone. NPR? Gone. Ethics? Gone. Sec of State caring about anything but oil profits? Gone. Justice department actually dispensing justice? Gone. Women's rights? Gone. Children's rights? Gone. Gilead, here we come.

I truly, and really believed, deep in my heart, that something would stop this. Nothing will. I'm suddenly devastated, as though every bit of heartbreak I've held since the election has suddenly washed over my brain, bathing it in terror and sadness.

I've been trying not to cry since I woke up and realized it was inauguration day, and no miracle had happened.

Fucking fuckity fuck fuck fuck. Just...fuck.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 5:51 AM on January 20, 2017 [18 favorites]


Dude. I explicitly said that they're different flavors of diarrhea. They're both so bloodthirsty and exploitative that neither is remotely acceptable as currently constructed. But let's see--I wouldn't be remotely surprised if Obama's record-setting disregard of sovereign territory and record-setting drone strikes are dialed back this time around.


I doubt it. Donald will demand to fly a drone himself. I'm only half joking. The guy wants military parades fashioned after places like Russia and North Korea. People that think he's not going to find a reason to use his new power and toys to tell other countries what, what's are living in a fantasy world. He'll find a reason or accidentally make a reason. He'll have no problem blowing people up because he's a sociopath. I have absolutely no doubt that if he thinks that he wouldn't have a problem ordering drones to go after Americans on American soil. He has no conscious and thinks he's genetically superior to most everyone else alive. He also is a walking example of 'Might is right'. It's one of his guiding principles.


Obama's drone use and military was a big problem I agree but I see it somewhat differently. For one it's technological. It's only record breaking because this is weapon the technology of war has advanced to. Other Presidents would have used drones. They just didn't exist like they do today. They're a 21st century weapon. So this record breaking thing really only references one other President (who did use them). There are no real records to break because no records existed before.

The more mega issue is US foreign policy and history as a whole. The US is the most powerful military state on the globe and it's entire economy and I would argue a whole lot of it's culture is based on this fact. There has been no President in recent memory that has not done something I considered f-uped when it comes to exerting that power. It's the dark side of what 'America' is known for.

The problem for any sort of progressive, say like a Bernie who may get into power and who doesn't want the US to be this way is that it's not something you can just stop without causing instability and depending on the region major instability. Why? Because the geo-political order of the world has ordered itself around the US's exertion of it's power. It's a pickle of a situation really.
Personally I would love to see the US scale back and move away from the cliche 'The Worlds' Police man' but I also recognize that if that's not done in some sort of methodical and careful way it will lead to thousands if not millions of deaths.

Would a Bernie use drones? Maybe, maybe not. A Bernie wouldn't want to I have no doubt. A Bernie might have to though or at least find themselves in a situation where they had to make a choice where there is no real good one. Do A and a few people die, do B and other people die, do nothing and people die.

It's the curse of empire.
posted by Jalliah at 5:57 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Bernie Sanders supports the drone program.
posted by zutalors! at 6:04 AM on January 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


Bernie Sanders supports the drone program.

Well there ya go then.
posted by Jalliah at 6:08 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


And both parties were all for it.

Fire bad?
posted by petebest at 6:09 AM on January 20, 2017




When you calculate the horror of killing hundreds of civilians in an assassination program of dubious effectiveness, you have to factor in the horror of killing thousands of civilians in a ground war of obvious ineffectiveness. These are the only two options. Anyone saying otherwise believes that the US government is staffed by silent-movie villains who spend their free time tying Iraqis to train tracks.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:35 AM on January 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Fuck that.

Fuck metafilter shit-quoting single sentences out of paragraphs to mean something nearly opposite of what was intended.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:38 AM on January 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


If you believe that the ineffectiveness of drone strikes and other military actions is "dubious" or "obvious" then go ahead and make that case. But remember that "effectiveness" can only be judged relative to a particular purpose, so that argument will need to include a description of what you think the purpose is.
posted by OnceUponATime at 6:50 AM on January 20, 2017


I explicitly said that they're different flavors of diarrhea. They're both so bloodthirsty and exploitative that neither is remotely acceptable as currently constructed.

And this is a big reason why we're going to lose in 2018. And 2020. And 2024. Enjoy the next 20 years of Republican rule while you're on your self-righteous kick; I'll check back in 2036 to see how you're doing.
posted by happyroach at 7:14 AM on January 20, 2017 [9 favorites]


If you believe that the ineffectiveness of drone strikes and other military actions is "dubious" or "obvious" the go ahead and make that case. But remember that "effectiveness" can only be judged relative to a particular purpose, so that argument will need to include a description of what you think the purpose is.

The purpose of the assassination program is to prevent another spectacular terrorist attack on America like 9/11 by destroying the leadership of such groups as might plan and execute one. Secondarily, the purpose is to do so with less risk to American life than ground operations would entail. There hasn't been another spectacular terrorist attack on America like 9/11. I suppose you could say this prevention of civilian death in America justifies the civilian death abroad.

Other military actions have other purposes: For instance, American support for Saudi Arabia's war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen serves to solidify America's alliance with that country and curb Iranian influence in the Gulf, which latter point makes no sense because the Houthis aren't Iranian pawns, but genuine rebels against a government which has mistreated them. The Saudi bombing campaign makes no distinctions among armed rebels, civilians, first responders, and funerals for the civilians and first responders, but since Iran must be stopped at all costs, it's fine that America fuels Saudi bombers and stocks Saudi armories.

In general, the American War on Terror has done nothing but create chaotic failed states where no one is really free and where the threat of terrorism has not abated, but grown, justifying the extension of the war, but obviously failing in its aim.

There's my view. If you want to make the case for these enterprises, please do so.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:23 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


The biggest detractors of the drone program have all been people who have been strongly anti-Clinton and to a certain degree pro Trump/Russia, so it'll be interesting to see how much we hear from them now.
posted by Artw at 7:40 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


People that think he's not going to find a reason to use his new power and toys to tell other countries what, what's are living in a fantasy world.

Yeah, I've seen articles that suggest "the classified briefing given to every incoming president that explains how he can order a nuclear attack" will be a sobering moment.

Tonight: "The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!"
posted by kirkaracha at 7:43 AM on January 20, 2017


And this is a big reason why we're going to lose in 2018. And 2020. And 2024. Enjoy the next 20 years of Republican rule while you're on your self-righteous kick; I'll check back in 2036 to see how you're doing.

Can I ask that people cut this shit out?
posted by maxsparber at 7:44 AM on January 20, 2017 [9 favorites]


The biggest supporters of the drone program have all been people who have been strongly pro-Clinton/Obama and to a strong degree anti-Trump, so it'll be funny to see them suddenly realize killing civilians abroad is actually horrific.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 7:45 AM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Man y'all I don't know that I have the spare energy or attention today to try and wrangle another drone fight right now, so if you can at least try to keep shit on the cool side in here I'd appreciate it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:49 AM on January 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


It'll be interesting watching Greenwald et al in general even outside of that. Of course we already know which way Wikileaks has gone.
posted by Artw at 8:05 AM on January 20, 2017


The purpose of the assassination program is to prevent another spectacular terrorist attack on America like 9/11 by destroying the leadership of such groups as might plan and execute one. Secondarily, the purpose is to do so with less risk to American life than ground operations would entail. There hasn't been another spectacular terrorist attack on America like 9/11. I suppose you could say this prevention of civilian death in America justifies the civilian death abroad.

I think then that we agree the drone strikes in Pakistan are a mostly continuation of the war in Afghanistan, attacking people who have retreated behind the border. Preventing another 9/11 by proving that America cannot be attacked with impunity is certainly one of the major purposes of that war, but I think it also has to do with the other people who are threatened by Al Quaeda and its associates like the Taliban, who allied themselves with Bin Laden... and who ruled Afghanistan with a brutality which was especially targeted at women, before 2001.

It's not just Americans -- these groups are more successful, and just as ruthless, at killing civilians in their own countries. Do we and should we care about those dead civilians when it's not us killing them, but when we might have the ability to stop the killing?

I would say the campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban seems to have been successful in preventing terrorist attacks in America, but we have not stabilized the region, so Afghani civilians, while no longer subject to the Taliban's oppressive regime, are not much better off... living in a never-ending war zone. We backed the wrong horse with Karzai (as with Chalabi in Iraq.) But Obama didn't really make those decisions. He didn't pick those guys, exactly (and it's not clear that there were better leaders available to back), and he didn't pick those wars.

To pull out of Afghanistan or Iraq faster than he did would've made the situation worse for civilians there, leaving them at the mercy of war lords and terrorists. (And yes, potentially putting us at greater risk of an imminent terrorist attack as well. As opposed to staying and maybe creating a lower imminent risk but prolonging the risk over a longer time...)

I think Obama more or less made the best of a bad situation with the wars he inherited. I think his reasons for staying had a lot to do with actually caring about what happens to the civilians in the countries were were occupying. I think Bush should've had a much better plan for "nation building" before he went in.

Other military actions have other purposes: For instance, American support for Saudi Arabia's war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen serves to solidify America's alliance with that country and curb Iranian influence in the Gulf, which latter point makes no sense because the Houthis aren't Iranian pawns, but genuine rebels against a government which has mistreated them.

I won't attempt to defend this. Our 70 year relationship with Saudi Arabia is kind of a mystery to me. I do think our support for Saudi Arabia is as much about maintaining that alliance, for whatever strategic value it has these days, as opposing Iran. But it seems to me that the things the Saudis have done in Yemen are pretty much indefensible. I will say that at least the Obama administration has expressed disapproval and withdrawn most military aid for the Saudis operating in Yemen. I think we launched a few missiles of our own at the Houthis when they attacked US forces, but otherwise our support for Saudi Arabia has been shrinking to almost nothing as they have becoming increasingly brutal in this war.

The Saudi bombing campaign makes no distinctions among armed rebels, civilians, first responders, and funerals for the civilians and first responders, but since Iran must be stopped at all costs, it's fine that America fuels Saudi bombers and stocks Saudi armories.

I agree, we should stop supporting them. Although there will be consequences to that. Imagine if our relationship with Saudi Arabia ends up as strained as our relationship with Iran... That puts the region and the world at greater risk of a major war. So stopping should be done carefully. Or if the Houthis win... they aren't fans of the US. But we can't support those brutal tactics. We just can't.

In general, the American War on Terror has done nothing but create chaotic failed states where no one is really free and where the threat of terrorism has not abated, but grown, justifying the extension of the war, but obviously failing in its aim.

I generally agree with this too, but for Obama specifically, given that the "war on terror" started before he got there, I'm not sure how he could have ended it in a way that fixed these problems. The failed states and the chaos were already there. The question is whether he could have helped clean them up faster or more successfully. Or whether he should have just abandoned them, chaotic and failed as they were. It is much easier to get into a war than to get out.

There's my view. If you want to make the case for these enterprises, please do so.

You make a really good case for a less interventionist foreign policy, but not, to my mind, a case for judging Obama to be a murderous monster on the basis of his drone strike count.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:13 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think Bush should've had a much better plan for "nation building" before he went in.

Bush shouldn't have gone into Iraq at all; I need to read more on the subject, but I suspect Afghanistan didn't actually need to be occupied. On the other hand, Libya was never occupied, and the intervention there has similarly resulted in changing a terrible place to live into an even more terrible place to live, so it's possible that a more limited intervention would have been bad as well.

It's not just Americans -- these groups are more successful, and just as ruthless, at killing civilians in their own countries. Do we and should we care about those dead civilians when it's not us killing them, but when we might have the ability to stop the killing?

This is a good point, but I don't think America has the ability to stop these groups, particularly when American military intervention led to the very circumstances in which they form death squads and kill indiscriminately - think of all the groups in Iraq which billed themselves as a resistance to Western occupation.

You make a really good case for a less interventionist foreign policy, but not, to my mind, a case for judging Obama to be a murderous monster on the basis of his drone strike count.

I think it's fair and right to judge him harshly for personally signing off on assassination attempts which often miss and which often kill more civilians than "legitimate" targets, just as it will be fair and right to judge Trump harshly for doing the same. It's good that he relied on the strategy less as he went, but now assassination has bipartisan institutional legitimacy that will be hard to erode.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:49 AM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


oh god it's happening.

Going with a pure populist anti-Washington message, not a conciliatory one.
posted by Miko at 9:07 AM on January 20, 2017


"I think Bush should've had a much better plan for "nation building" before he went in."

Bush shouldn't have gone into Iraq at all;


Oh, I definitely agree with this. I just meant that Obama's inability to extricate us from that war quickly is largely because of the Bush administration's fantasies about how we would be greeted with flowers and the war would be over in six months...

They didn't have any kind of plan for how to deal with the chaos that would come after Hussein was deposed, so Obama just inherited chaos. There was no Marshall Plan for Iraq. We were not prepared to occupy it the way we did Japan. There was no legitimate government waiting in the wings to take over. There was no tradition of trust in the process of democracy. There was just a war of all against all, a mess we made, which I think we did have some responsibility to clean up... If we could. Obama came into office six years after the war in Iraq started. He couldn't go back in time and prevent it from happening. All he could do was try to tame the chaos so that we didn't leave the region worse off than it was before we came, if possible.

I agree with most of the rest of that comment too, but I'm inclined to give Obama more benefit of the doubt. I don't know what I would do if I were in those hair raising briefings, if I were given that grave responsibility. I know what Obama ended up doing seems to be different from what he thought he would do when he was campaigning. And I know that Trump's isolationism seems so rooted in xenophobia that I can't help questioning my own isolationist impulses these days. But other than that additional benefit of the doubt I'm willing to extend, I guess we're on the same page.
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:20 AM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Can I ask that people cut this shit out?

No. As long as Progressives are more interested in attacking the DNC and civil rights leaders than working on forming a coalition, We. Will. Lose.

Calling a civil rights leader no different than Kelly Ann Conway? Comparing him to diarrhea? WE WILL LOSE. Get it through your fucking heads people, scoring points like that means we will lose.
posted by happyroach at 9:49 AM on January 20, 2017 [11 favorites]


Several sites are reporting that the climate change section of the WH webpage have been removed and replaced with "Sign up for updates from President Donald J. Trump!".

Also donnie's twitter background pic is now of Obama's inauguration.

Here we go. The clowns are in control.
posted by futz at 10:36 AM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


dangerous clowns...
posted by futz at 10:39 AM on January 20, 2017


And this is a big reason why we're going to lose in 2018. And 2020. And 2024. Enjoy the next 20 years of Republican rule while you're on your self-righteous kick; I'll check back in 2036 to see how you're doing.

Can I ask that people cut this shit out?


I've already stated things are probably going to suck the rest of my life. This was part of that equation.
posted by bongo_x at 10:42 AM on January 20, 2017


Can I ask that people cut this shit out?

No. As long as Progressives are more interested in attacking the DNC and civil rights leaders than working on forming a coalition, We. Will. Lose.


Look, there are already enough conservatives saying "this is why you lost." I don't need to hear it from liberals as well.

We lost because there are still enough frightened white folks in this country, there was enough voter suppression, there was enough outside interference, there was enough gerrymandering, and there was enough outside interference to tip the balance in favor of the less-popular candidate, and that wouldn't have happened but for archaic voting rules that favor former slave states.

That's it. That's why we lost. If you're concerned about winning, work on those issues. We had three million more votes. We have to fix the system that made a winning candidate into a losing one.

If you don't like the behavior of other liberals, that's fair. There's a lot of shitty behavior liberals do. Call them out.

But the "we lost because" structure is a conservative structure, blaming liberals behavior for something that was actual the product of entrenched disenfranchisement. It's a shitty rhetorical technique, really a bullying one, and we should stop it.
posted by maxsparber at 11:11 AM on January 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


That's it. That's why we lost. If you're concerned about winning, work on those issues.

You have to win before you can fix most of those issues.
posted by rocket88 at 11:52 AM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


That's not true. Most of these changes have been made in the courts in the past -- that's usually where challenges to voter suppression play out. There are organizations doing that work right now that need our financial support.
posted by maxsparber at 11:55 AM on January 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


I think I'm going to fuck off on the perpetual "we lost because" bullshit and apprentice myself to a church lady. Republicans understand politics is total war, which is why they throw their weight behind congregations, charities, and service organizations. The church ladies I know passed the plate for Southern Poverty Law Center on sunday, marched on monday, are in DC for tomorrow, and have a date on the calendar for the soup kitchen and criminal justice programs next month. They know what's up.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:00 PM on January 20, 2017 [16 favorites]


> Lotta ifs there tony.

The comment you're flippantly responding to wasn't even written by me. Please take a breath and try to engage in good faith.

Aside from hand-waving about Obama's "record-setting drone strikes" -- yes, the first and so far only President capable of wielding that much unmanned force does in fact hold the record, just as Harry S. Truman held the record for atomic bomb strikes in 1946 -- you still haven't offered anything other than a wishful hypothetical that Trump isn't as bad with respect to targeted assassinations. Such a roll of the dice may seem worth it if you know you'll never have to bear the brunt of Trump's other policies, but this is not just an abstract game theory issue to those of us who will, and I'd ask that you respect them as you casually talk about there being no differences between the parties.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:11 PM on January 20, 2017


You have to win before you can fix most of those issues.

That's not true. Most of these changes have been made in the courts in the past -- that's usually where challenges to voter suppression play out.


Who appoints the judges?
posted by Etrigan at 12:13 PM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


All right. If it is literally impossible to change the voting system without winning, and it is impossible to win without changing the voting system, I guess we're fucked.
posted by maxsparber at 12:21 PM on January 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


http://hastrumpbeenimpeachedyet.com/
posted by Evilspork at 2:26 PM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Fuck metafilter shit-quoting single sentences out of paragraphs to mean something nearly opposite of what was intended.

Dude, I was agreeing with you. My point is, don't apologize for being pragmatic. Maybe that's what we did wrong-- attempt to appease Berniebros instead of just telling them to shut up and eat their choices.

Speaking of which: we have an uphill battle when it comes to winning. That doesn't mean we can't, but it DOES mean that anyone who talks about both sides being terrible isn't on our side. It DOES mean that moral purity isn't just something we shouldn't demand but something we should actively push against.

That goes double in an age where outrage can be cultivated by liars just as easily as by true believers. "Is this narrative serving the Republicans?" is a question people need to ask from now on. It's a shame we have to do it, but, if people had been more paranoid during the election, maybe we wouldn't have to.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 3:49 PM on January 20, 2017 [7 favorites]


> Wayne Barrett, a great investigative reporter and Village Voice journalist of 20 years who followed Trump for decades and literally wrote the book on him, has died. He continued to report on Trump even while ordered to bed rest by his doctors.

Matt Taibbi: Remembering Trump Biographer and Reporter Wayne Barrett. Iconic 'Village Voice' muckraker and mentor to many journalists died this week.
posted by homunculus at 6:05 PM on January 20, 2017


We. Will. Lose.

There is no "we." Liberals have no use for the Left, and the DNC even less so. I supported Hillary, but I won't be fooled by "America is Already Great" Wall St. centrism posed as "pragmatic" incrementalism again. This is the year I finally gave up on that shit, which had snowed me for decades and never, ever made good on of its promises.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:02 PM on January 20, 2017


You do understand that Sanders and Warren (and maybe, now, Obama? Not yet, that's for sure) are also working against that sort of business-as-usual Democratic Party "pragmatism"?
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:15 PM on January 20, 2017


And wait--what'd Sanders get for his troubles? Actively sabotaged by the DNC. Hmm. Makes ya think.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:20 PM on January 20, 2017


There is no "we." Liberals have no use for the Left,

There's part of your problem. In the current state of American politics 'Liberals' are 'The Left'. No one on "The Right" is capable of making any sort of real distinction and what is a "liberal' vs 'the Left' has been so muddied because of polarization that there is no cohesive distinction to what those words mean anymore.
posted by Jalliah at 8:07 PM on January 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


What you're describing--and accepting?--is precisely my problem. The Dems have had the good fortune of the support of the actual left for too long and have shown (me at least) that they don't deserve it. Watch them cave over and over again to Trump, as they caved to Bush. Their "America is Already Great" head-in-the-sand policies and campaign failures have lost the House, the Senate, and Governors' races, and it's time for them to feel some real pressure from what I believe is a re-invigorated actual left.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:17 PM on January 20, 2017



No that's not what I'm describing or accepting.
posted by Jalliah at 8:26 PM on January 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


what is a "liberal' vs 'the Left' has been so muddied because of polarization that there is no cohesive distinction to what those words mean anymore.

Perception aside, there is a difference, and it was very wide this year. Can Keith Ellison help? Will he get the chance? I dunno.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:30 PM on January 20, 2017


The Dems have had the good fortune of the support of the actual left for too long and have shown (me at least) that they don't deserve it.

What support? The only thing I heard from Internet Leftists was whining about Hillary doing meetings with Goldman Sachs, and tortured explanations for why her emails were worse than Trump committing child rape and being a Russian agent.

And now, what are the plans? Is it going to involve being out there protesting? Marching? Lobbying? Or is it going to be sitting on one's oh-so-morally superior ass muttering about how both sides are equally awful, while people are getting hurt and dying?

Make no mistake. People are gong to die. People are going to be arrested, attacked, injured and murdered in the next decade resisting the system. So I don't have any fucking time for anybody who wants to mansplain about their morally superior position of "We don't need anybody."

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a fucking march tomorrow I need to prepare for.
posted by happyroach at 9:11 PM on January 20, 2017 [15 favorites]


Is it going to involve being out there protesting? Marching? Lobbying?

Yes, of course. And much more.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:16 PM on January 20, 2017


There is no "we." Liberals have no use for the Left, and the DNC even less so

Yes, you're right. We don't. You've spent the past election playing into the Republicans' hands, poisoning the general election and promoting a third party candidate who was ALSO (very probably) compromised by Russia. You've lost all perspective.

Damn right, we have no use for you.

Care to mention anything else? That kids these days don't read Marx or look up to Mao?
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:17 PM on January 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


poisoning the general election

Find me a shred of evidence that voters on the left hurt HRC in the election at all. Hell, I supported her in the general.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:24 PM on January 20, 2017


Not only do I believe the Russians were pushing the "alt-Right" I'm starting to believe the theory that they were pushing the alt-Left as well. They had the same goals.
posted by bongo_x at 9:28 PM on January 20, 2017 [11 favorites]


Mod note: Joseph Gurl, knock it off. You've been banging this drum for quite a while, and everyone's heard you.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:32 PM on January 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


okay, r_n. I'm fine with that.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:35 PM on January 20, 2017


> You do understand that Sanders and Warren (and maybe, now, Obama? Not yet, that's for sure) are also working against that sort of business-as-usual Democratic Party "pragmatism"?

Yes, from within the Democratic caucus -- Sanders was invited to compete for the party's nomination for President, even, and has been given a leadership role in the 115th Congress even though he retains his (I) status. Warren, likewise, has been put at the forefront of the party when it comes to messaging. Those sound like pragmatic decisions on all sides -- both the party and the Senators know they're better off hanging together than hanging separately.

> And wait--what'd Sanders get for his troubles? Actively sabotaged by the DNC. Hmm. Makes ya think.

Yes, it makes me think when I consider that even after that, he realizes that the best host organism for progressive change is the Democratic party. He could have taken his ball and gone home, but he wants to influence the party to make it better, so he works with it. He will likely vote or all Democrat-supported bills, especially now. If there's a bad bill, I expect him to vote against, and to use his leverage as a caucus leader to make it better or kill it.

> The Dems have had the good fortune of the support of the actual left for too long and have shown (me at least) that they don't deserve it

"Deserve" means nothing. This is about power. The party has power, a single Senator has much less. He knew this when he ran for President, and he knows this as the Chair of the Senate Democratic Outreach Committee.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:38 PM on January 20, 2017 [10 favorites]


Russia has been trying to inflame both the left and right for years now. Back in 2008 during the financial crisis, RT had on all kinds of "blame the bankers (cough *jews*" programs on, to stir up left wing resentment. Most of the stuff they said were real problems with the system, but the answer was always defeatist or pure paranoid fuel, not anything useful. Putin has been prepping for this for a looooong time.
posted by benzenedream at 7:15 PM on January 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


Yep, and there's a good chance Putin learned that from us.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:56 PM on January 21, 2017




Yep, and there's a good chance Putin learned [to use financial institutions as rhetorical hooks to hang antisemitism on] from us.

A dialogue:
- So yeah, America's to blame for all the evils in the world
- Isn't that just a type of American exceptionalism?
- No, it's just that America caused all the bad things in the world
- Really, any examples?
- Well, what about [premise of one of Shakespeare's most important plays]?
posted by ambrosen at 7:41 AM on January 22, 2017 [6 favorites]


There's a conversation in one of the Discworld books that often comes to mind here, in which (paraphrased) another character tells Vimes (a cynical guardsman) to be truly fair and allow people from other countries to be as power-hungry and ruthless as he allows his own to be.

Relatedly, I think, I have to wonder: if the left is *so* aware of this history of manipulation on the part of the US government, why couldn't they spot it when another country played the same tricks on them? The same people who are shouting "we did it first!" are the people who, four months ago, spread the lies and half-truths started by RT. They're the ones who shouted EMAILS when those of us poor deluded liberals told them to ask where the emails came from. They're the ones who pushed a "greater good" candidate with ties to Putin and a cynical narrative that it didn't matter if we elected HRC, because $small_issue wouldn't change.

If this is a trick the US taught Putin in any meaningful way, then shouldn't the left have been the first to notice?

You were played. Pointing to American history makes your blinders look bigger, not smaller.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 10:01 AM on January 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


That's a completely bullshit paraphrase, ambrosen, and don't put words in my mouth.

Here's a better one:

Yep, and there's a good chance Putin learned [to interfere in foreign elections] from us.


steady-state strawberry: Do you think the Left voted for Trump in the general? Or even cost HRC any electoral votes? Because the evidence of either of those suggestions is zilch, nada, afaik.

"America is Already Great," after all!
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:30 PM on January 22, 2017


Do you think the Left voted for Trump in the general? Or even cost HRC any electoral votes? Because the evidence of either of those suggestions is zilch, nada, afaik.

No, of course not. Don't be silly.

It's not like there's any evidence that the one of the effects of the Bernie bros was to force Clinton supporters to keep fighting the primaries while they should have been fighting the general election. Or that it prevented Democrats from fully unifying. Or that the reason the Bernie bros were so effective was because the left kept insisting that Wikileaks was somehow a useful source of information.

It's not like the Green Party's votes were well within Trump's margin of victory in Wisconsin and Michigan, and not like they're pretty much equal to the revised numbers for Pennsylvania. It's not like every single Bernie bro I talked to said that, if Trump won, they'd be "sending the Democrats a message," nor that they spent every waking day before the election spouting nonsense about how others would tots be responsible for Trump's win. They couldn't bring themselves to dirty their precious little hands with a vote for a contaminated Democrat, after all.

(The only one I spoke to just after the election denied that he said that to my face, then had a mansad when he realized I "wasn't his friend" anymore. Somehow -- on a day where I was so numb that I wouldn't have shed a tear if my mother had died, faced with something I'd have sacrificed my family and my cats to prevent -- he expected me to care about *him*. I haven't spoken to him since. I hope he does lose his health insurance.)

It's not like there's any evidence that any of this was Putin's doing, either. Not like there was anything written prior to the election about how strange it was that Jill Stein expressed foreign policy positions that sounded like Putin's.

But please, Joseph, go ahead and give us all nonsense about how "the Left" (which you distinguish from *liberals*) didn't hurt Clinton.

The funny thing is, everyone except you knows why you're defensive. Because you know exactly what you and your ilk did, and you know exactly what it led to. And very few men -- and "the Left" (the real left) is full of men -- know how to deal with guilt. So instead, we're stuck with an entire group of people who spent the general election shitting on everyone in sight now throwing a fit because they can't handle their nagging guilt.

But go ahead. Dismiss my statements. Your guilt isn't fooling anyone.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 7:11 PM on January 22, 2017 [18 favorites]


Mod note: Joseph Gurl, take a break.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 8:41 PM on January 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


> Good article about a formerly blue county in Wisconsin and what's happening in the midwest:

That is indeed a good piece, and one that reveals what some folks really mean when they talk about their "way of life" being under attack. Far too often this phrasing is used to lump together people who lose their agricultural / industrial jobs to automation with the people quoted in the article who want to force the gay pie shop owners to "stay in the closet" and who try to defend their Confederate flags as "heritage, not hate" despite having no cultural connection to the South.

I'm sure there are some not bigoted (or not measurably more bigoted than average) people in these rural areas who really just are anxious about their economic standing and occupational / industrial change, but once "culture" and "way of life" are used as cover terms, it becomes impossible to have an honest conversation. Farming and hunting and riding ATVs are all valid things to want to keep ding, and for the most part, nobody's saying they can't do those things. The only thing under attack is their social and cultural hegemony over others in their community. If that's what they're trying to protect -- which is clearly the case with many of the interview subjects in that piece -- then I have no sympathy for them.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:59 PM on January 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


I felt like that article went into contortions to bend itself into the headlined quotation. What happened is the precise opposite of a 'red state moving to you.'

The only population shift the article discusses is affluent, aging, liberal urbanites moving to more rural areas and fostering economic and cultural resentment among their formerly Democratic neighbors.

I don't think Trump became President because some Twin Cities retirees got into it with established locals about ATV trails, while opening fancy homo pie shops and art galleries, regardless of what Folksy Neighborhood Man in Bar said to the reporter.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:38 AM on January 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


Snopes on the McKenzie poem: "This poem was not commissioned by Donald Trump nor intended to be the official poem of his 2017 inauguration."
posted by larrybob at 2:19 PM on January 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


Joseph Gurl, I'm sorry that I put words into your mouth. It was accidental. However, it's worth remembering that Putin has 15 years served in the KGB, while I don't think any American president's ever been in the CIA. There's nothing exceptional about CIA tactics, even if they're exceptional in their resources.
posted by ambrosen at 4:17 PM on January 23, 2017 [3 favorites]




Almost everyone I know on the left voted for Hillary in the general election (as I did), and a good chunk of them volunteered as well. And isn't the current fashion post-election among Bernie bros to point the fingers at feminists, BLM, and LGBTQ activists for "poking the right with a stick" and "focusing on boutique issues?" Is it really the left if you're subsuming patriarchy, racism, and heterosexism under a milquetoast platform of jobs and vague anti-corporatism?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:43 AM on January 24, 2017


The Oil Drum would be digging into the context of "America First" and the later comment at the CIA about Iraq Oil.
posted by rough ashlar at 5:50 AM on January 24, 2017


Almost everyone I know on the left voted for Hillary in the general election (as I did),

it's not that I want to relitigate this (thanks to Kellyanne Conway for reintroducing that word into our regular parlance), but we do have to talk about how we can work together in a unified manner going forward. I think the difficulty is that by that time, the damage had been done by an astoundingly extended, and rancourous, primary period. The primary battle amplifed and embedded many GOP messages against Clinton, and that affirmed them in the minds of many, and made a difference to otherwise swayable voters, as I saw happen in my own family, which developed a "two evils" contingent in part because of this. It's not just what happens on 11/8, but the rhetoric (some of it really ugly and personal) leading up to it, that hurt the cause and helped put us into this fioul stew.

Is it really the left if you're subsuming patriarchy, racism, and heterosexism under a milquetoast platform of jobs and vague anti-corporatism?

Definitely not. I have made a personal commitment to get very involved with my local Democratic party. I don't see any percentage in vilifying it or fighting old battles. The party changes if we change it, and its future lies in a progressive coalition, a generational shift, and an insistence on the interconnection of all the issues related to human thriving - not just jobs and the economy and student debt, but all of it. We can all probably agree on that in theory. The inevitable problems on the left arise when some issues advance because they have room to, while others stall because the alignment isn't right, and we can't be patient enough - or the stalling is a cover for some type of bias or failure to recognize the importance of these issues. I think we need to be involved. we need progressive women, POC, disabled, LGBTQUIA, immigrants and those who live and work with them, veterans, etc., etc., in this coalition to ensure that our moves are more strategically agreed to instead of head-pattingly set aside for another day. It still me mean we don't progress evenly on every issue - that can never happen, it's not possible. And that will frustrate us. But we need to keep our eyes on the prize while at the same time acting as fairly and transparently as possible. I don't see how that can happen if we sit on the sidelines of the Party and complain about it, and vote for it only grudgingly. I also know it can never happen if we just take personal refuge in some more-tightly-aligned third party, at least not without a few more decades of party-building. This seems to be the left's best strategic bet. The Boomers are retiring and passing on. This is the moment to email your town Democrats, go to their regular meetups, get involved with the county and state committee or women's or LGBTQ caucuses, donate to and stump for good candidates, give to EMILY's List, and be present. Be present in this party for those who can't make meetings because they don't have the time or money. Be present in this party to redirect it and make certain it becomes an unequicovally progressive party.
posted by Miko at 9:55 AM on January 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


it's not that I want to relitigate this (thanks to Kellyanne Conway for reintroducing that word into our regular parlance), but we do have to talk about how we can work together in a unified manner going forward. I think the difficulty is that by that time, the damage had been done by an astoundingly extended, and rancourous, primary period. The primary battle amplifed and embedded many GOP messages against Clinton, and that affirmed them in the minds of many, and made a difference to otherwise swayable voters, as I saw happen in my own family, which developed a "two evils" contingent in part because of this. It's not just what happens on 11/8, but the rhetoric (some of it really ugly and personal) leading up to it, that hurt the cause and helped put us into this fioul stew.

I don't know that there was a consensus on the left going into the primary either. But no candidate should be above criticism, including the criticism that the candidate we're voting for (and advocating that others vote for) is the better of two choices that do not reflect our deep-seated moral and religious principles. Part of that coalition includes recognition that our criticism of Democratic policy comes out of fundamental moral and religious values with decades or centuries of history in American political thought, and not just the reframing of GOP talking points or plants by Russian agents. Those values must be openly voiced if you're going to have a coalition and not just a party machine.

But we need to keep our eyes on the prize while at the same time acting as fairly and transparently as possible. I don't see how that can happen if we sit on the sidelines of the Party and complain about it, and vote for it only grudgingly. I also know it can never happen if we just take personal refuge in some more-tightly-aligned third party, at least not without a few more decades of party-building.

It depends a lot on what you mean by the "prize." My prize is change from the very foundations of our culture. And one of the things I seem to share with Rev. Barber is the view that people of moral conviction and faith will never be satisfied. I think that also entails a view that there are no sidelines. I've said this before, but there's a profound lack of recognition that politics is total war and not just the actions of people wearing a party t-shirt, it's the church ladies, showing up for MLK holiday, showing up for the support groups, and quiet talks with friends and relatives.

There's no need to relitigate third parties here. We're both Democratic voters after all.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:04 AM on January 24, 2017


no candidate should be above criticism

Of course not, but ultimately, you are either supporting a campaign or not.

My prize is change from the very foundations of our culture.

That sounds so great, but if you don't see the deep a level of change on the table, are you signing off or refusing to take actions that support more widely shared goals? Because if you define your prize as an ideal outcome, and the reality falls short of the ideal, not only will you never get your prize, but no one else will get even the most foundationally shared, more immediately achievable goals met either. I believe in having ideals and striving continuously toward them. But I also know that progress never, never takes the form of a single clean leap from "here" to "ideal." We can agree with Rev. Barber and still embrace that concept.
posted by Miko at 11:36 AM on January 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


recognition that our criticism of Democratic policy comes out of fundamental moral and religious values with decades or centuries of history in American political thought

I'm happy to recognize that preferring Sanders may well have come out of personal values. I cast my vote for him in the primary myself.

But that doesn't mitigate the reality that somehow a lot of criticism of Clinton ended up having a significant overlap with two decades of talk radio character assassination and muddy information leaks that also appear to have links to a russian disinformation campaign. How did that happen? Why? You certainly don't need to think Clinton was flawed, problematic, terrible, whatever in order to vote for Sanders -- I saw the primary as a contest between two rather good candidates and still picked Sanders as having some nice edges.

Like Miko, I'm personally acquainted with many Sanders supporters who didn't and maybe couldn't approach it that way, enough I think that's one of the margins on which the election may have been handed to Trump. And on a more concrete level, the number of some third-party voters in swing states is larger than the margin of Trump's victory.

If we're reckoning, it seems like these are things that need to be reckoned with. Maybe it is that politics can't be a job interview for some people, it has to be total warfare, even between Democrats, but if that's the case, we're in bigger trouble than we think we are.
posted by wildblueyonder at 11:41 AM on January 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


Yeah I'm not sure about "total warfare" as a metaphor either, though I am on board with the last part of that sentence - the church ladies, the volunteers, the fundraisers, the people who consistently show up and do the work - slow and steady wins the race. The right's example of having nearly totally overtaken control of our political process in four decades seems to support that. It was "total warfare" only in that a set of paramount shared objectives were agreed upon. it wasn't the scorched-earth, Karl Rove ratfucking that won it, it was school board by school board, town council by town council, state legislature bill by state legislature bill. The system works if you work the system.
posted by Miko at 12:02 PM on January 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Of course not, but ultimately, you are either supporting a campaign or not.

What I'm hearing here is that voting for a candidate, advocating for a candidate, and funding a candidate doesn't count as "support" if we disagree with that candidate in any area.

Note that the rhetorical question you cut out of context and answered in the previous post was specifically addressing "bernie bros" who dismiss "identity politics." Again, there was no consensus among the left for any candidate in the election, either in the primary or the general.

I generally develop ideas over paragraphs, so I really dislike it when you quote individual sentences and raise objections that were already answered. Idealism has never been a barrier to change. Idealism, in fact, enables change because it provides us with a guide for any decision, great or small. The ideal of protecting LGBTQ people from abuse cannot be entirely achieved at the city, state, or national level. The ideal of preventing HIV transmission and providing care for HIV+ persons cannot be achieved without people working in schools and streets.

"Total war" came about because very election we fixate on how we should have gamed the electoral college when Republicans own the congregations, the schools, the city councils, and the state houses. We cannot finesse our way to the White House and congressional majority. We need to engage on the local level.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:22 PM on January 24, 2017


I'm happy to recognize that preferring Sanders may well have come out of personal values. I cast my vote for him in the primary myself.

I'm a radical queer who didn't have much of a preference for Sanders. My original question is why are we crediting "bernie bros" as "the left" given their antipathy for feminist, queer, and civil rights politics? Again, I don't agree that there was a consensus on "the left" for either Sanders or Clinton, and there absolutely was not a consensus to go third-party.

What I suspect is going on is the old bias that internet conflict serves as a megaphone for cranks. My tree-hugging peacenik kin who were willing to vote for Clinton (because the presidency is just one part of a larger political struggle) just fade into the background.

It all hinges on definitions. Of course Clinton and Sanders were problematic and flawed. So am I, and so are you. That's just saying that water is wet. Surely we can disagree on issues without blanket accusations of post-Soviet adgitprop or dittoism. Especially when those disagreements apply even more strongly to all of the Republican candidates. Is disagreement really beyond the pale?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:11 PM on January 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


From a related discussion, there's this quote from Sarah Schulman who was involved in both Lesbian Avengers and ACT UP:
One of ACT UP’s most important principles was simultaneity of action. ACT UP never worked by consensus, never demanded the full agreement of all its members for any individual action to go forward. If you wanted to get arrested doing needle exchange as a way of bringing attention to the necessity of clean-needle programs, you could do that. If someone else wanted to interrupt mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in order to protest the Catholic Church’s campaign to keep condoms out of public schools, she could do that. As long as the gestures were concrete, members didn’t try to stop one another from addressing the crisis however they felt was right.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:37 PM on January 24, 2017 [6 favorites]


The Lesbian Avengers Handbook remains a great organizing tool.
posted by larrybob at 2:00 PM on January 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


What I'm hearing here is that voting for a candidate, advocating for a candidate, and funding a candidate doesn't count as "support" if we disagree with that candidate in any area.

No, this is a polarizing exaggeration of what I said and lacks nuance.

there was no consensus among the left for any candidate in the election, either in the primary or the general.

Right; that's the problem. We had a nominee who won the primaries, and many withheld support nonetheless.

I totally agree with your points about how wins happen from the local level up. The thing is, you can't apply the morally pure ideals to every candidate throughout every election cycle. At some point, you need to join a strategic coaltion which is capable of winning.

Surely we can disagree on issues without blanket accusations of post-Soviet adgitprop or dittoism.

It would be easier not to make those accusations, though, if those things had not actually happened.

The ACT UP strategy worked well for raising attention on a single issue, and it had one goal: raising attention. IT's not feasible to elect a Presidential candidate like that. The Lesbian Avenger resources are great for organizing individual actions, but not for organizing a coherent campaign. I don't even think that strategy worked well for Occupy, and it isn't going to work well against the Trump administration. We have more than the "power to refuse" and we need to use the full range of political powers we have.
posted by Miko at 6:23 PM on January 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


No, this is a polarizing exaggeration of what I said and lacks nuance.

You polarized the conversation with this ultimatum:

Of course not, but ultimately, you are either supporting a campaign or not.

So, in what way does 1) advocating for Clinton, 2) funding Clinton, and 3) voting for Clinton not constitute support? You keep chasing intangibles about disagreement in order to indict "the left" when most of us are doing the same things in elections. So it's starting to feel like an ideological purity test on the other end. That all our actions are for naught if we disagree on policy with the candidate or platform.

How many withheld support? I don't know a single person who admitted to voting for Sanders or Stein in the general, and not a single person who stayed home for ideological reasons. Are we not part of the coalition?

I totally agree with your points about how wins happen from the local level up. The thing is, you can't apply the morally pure ideals to every candidate throughout every election cycle. At some point, you need to join a strategic coaltion which is capable of winning.

We already have a consensus on these three points in this discussion. Why are you not supporting that consensus?

It would be easier not to make those accusations, though, if those things had not actually happened.

And there's the "we have a coalition BUT ..." statement. For someone who doesn't want to relitigate things, you're doing an awful lot of relitigating our support of Clinton.

The ACT UP strategy worked well for raising attention on a single issue, and it had one goal: raising attention. IT's not feasible to elect a Presidential candidate like that. The Lesbian Avenger resources are great for organizing individual actions, but not for organizing a coherent campaign. I don't even think that strategy worked well for Occupy, and it isn't going to work well against the Trump administration. We have more than the "power to refuse" and we need to use the full range of political powers we have.

Which is missing the point on two fronts. The first is that electing a President may be your goal. It isn't mine, the Presidency is a means to a goal. If we're going to have a coalition, we need to accept that people have different goals. Otherwise we run the risk that critical social justice work gets subsumed under the demands of the electoral process.

The second is that many different forms of activism are needed. Electing the President doesn't staff the soup kitchens, run the HIV testing clinics, or rebuild local youth services. We need all the help we can get. If you want to have a say in that activism, you need to show up to the meetings and not throw ultimatums from the sidelines of metafilter.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:45 AM on January 25, 2017 [2 favorites]


The first is that electing a President may be your goal. It isn't mine, the Presidency is a means to a goal.

Sounds great! You don't achieve the goal without ensuring the Presidency and, equally or perhaps more important, Congressional leadership. You can support other goals, and meanwhile we will keep electing terrible Presidents, Senators, Reps, governors, state legislators who then defund, undermine, and directly attack the soup kitchens, clinics, and youth services. I agree all those things are very important. But I assert that unless we move past the political naïveté that regards all forms of action as equally valuable and productive and refuses to prioritize policy, which is of course shaped by the leadership we elect, we will continue to place our own causes in constant jeopardy and fail to adequately fund and administer them.

By the way, you don't seem to realize that I am extremely active in political, charitable, and other voluntary organizations, my career is working in cultural nonprofits that provide educational services, and I just finished a book on connceting activism to cultural nonprofits, so please discard this utterly unfounded "sidelines" ad hominem and sneering implications about "showing up." I get it. My life in activism is exactly why I have come to understand that the political environment is probably the single most important factor in achieving progress toward universal full human rights.
posted by Miko at 5:01 AM on January 25, 2017 [7 favorites]


Miko, of course I know all that. That is why that comment was explicitly limited to your actions here on metafilter. You are an author. You know how to properly quote. You know how to properly paraphrase. Your habitual refusal to do so is engaging in bad faith argumentation.

I suspect that if we were to attend each other's meetings, we would be in broad agreement. We already have a consensus in this discussion that supporting Democratic candidates is important. There's no reason to attack me on my support of Clinton with votes, advocacy, and dollars. There's no reason to attack me on my support of future Democratic candidates with votes, advocacy, and dollars. If you want to discuss that support, or anything else on the agenda, you need to travel down here and attend our meetings. That's an invitation, not a challenge. It's the only way for someone to understand (partially at that) the social justice needs and politics here.

With respect to activism priorities. I disagree on the basis of scientific knowledge and experience. We have nearly a century of work in the can regarding how people adopt new ideas, and the scientific consensus is that the adoption of new ideas requires cultural change from the bottom. Absolutely nothing in my experience says we should reject Rogers as a model for how that happens, whether we're talking about handheld computing devices or votes. The radical change in LGBTQ policy over the last 25 years has happened because of community-level advocacy and cultural change. President Obama openly endorsed that activism including protests of the government as part of the change process.

Regardless, can we agree to agree on the fact that activism is necessary and saves lives regardless of whether we have the backing of the government?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:58 AM on January 25, 2017


Sounds great! You don't achieve the goal without ensuring the Presidency and, equally or perhaps more important, Congressional leadership. You can support other goals, and meanwhile we will keep electing terrible Presidents, Senators, Reps, governors, state legislators who then defund, undermine, and directly attack the soup kitchens, clinics, and youth services. I agree all those things are very important. But I assert that unless we move past the political naïveté that regards all forms of action as equally valuable and productive and refuses to prioritize policy, which is of course shaped by the leadership we elect, we will continue to place our own causes in constant jeopardy and fail to adequately fund and administer them.

First, I support Democratic candidates with advocacy, dollars, and votes.

But, there's so much here in this paragraph that's deeply ethnocentric and scapegoating. I also put in a lot of work documenting biphobia and supporting LGBTQ-centric culture and publishing. Those are activities that should be primarily by LGBTQ people for LGBTQ people. Are we really taking the position that LGBTQ activism for LGBTQ people elects Republicans? I can't imagine the argument that the work put into minority communities jeopardizes elections.

But I suspect a central point of disagreement is you're coming at this with a market competition perspective, while I'm coming at this from a systems perspective. Our communities are coalition partners, not competitors.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:48 AM on January 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can't imagine the argument that the work put into minority communities jeopardizes elections.

Come to think of it, I can, because that's exactly what I've been getting from some bernie bros over the last two months.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:50 AM on January 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


Your habitual refusal to do so is engaging in bad faith argumentation

This seems really silly to me. I'm under no obligation to quote lengthy paragraphs when I want to respond to only a single point or piece of language.

the adoption of new ideas requires cultural change from the bottom

That's nowhere near a settled question. Legal change just as often produces cultural change by shifting norms, structures, and funding. These two exist in constant conversation; it's not a one-way flow of force. It is possible also to have one without the other (social change without legal change, leaving people vulnerable to the vagaries of the political system; legal change without social change, as we've seen in many issues where a court victory or legislation has changed the legal structures, but a large component of the general public remains hostile to the change or to the population itself. I personally feel that legal change is essential, offering the most permanent vehicle to creating social change, establishing precedent, building on existing Constitutional and legal structures, etc.

Are we really taking the position that LGBTQ activism for LGBTQ people elects Republicans?

Yes, it does when that activism and its ultimate product lacks an electoral dimension. That doesn't mean every individual needs to work on the electoral dimension, but it does mean that without an electoral element linked to the cause, effort or campaign, the surrounding landscape will not change.
posted by Miko at 7:32 AM on January 25, 2017


the work put into minority communities jeopardizes elections

There's a real sense in which Bernie Bros actually exemplify work put into a minority community, and it jeopardized elections.
posted by Miko at 7:39 AM on January 25, 2017


Miko, you are arguing straw men with a Clinton supporter using unnecessarily hyperbolic and hostile language. I'm done.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:56 AM on January 25, 2017


Two things: first, this is how they win, when we all, in our powerlessness and frustration, turn on one another and start tearing each other down.

Second, yes, Jill Stein appears to be totally bought by Putin, and she very successfully took a Green Party that was really nascently becoming a serious party through the GWB years, and made it a clown-car laughing-stock of privileged, pseudo-liberal concern trolling. Deftly and on purpose.

Please, everyone, remember your daily mantra: This is not normal. We did not choose this. This is not normal. All of us are victims here. This is not normal.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:14 AM on January 25, 2017 [13 favorites]


Respectfully, I don't think how they win is by us tearing each other down. It's by us not organizing together to support an electoral agenda. That is going to take strategy, setting priorities (which is tough) and the difficult situation of seeing one's own priorities farther down that list than we'd like. I know this is uncomfortable. But I don't think we are going to get anywhere without talking about how that will look and feel, and how we plan to get through the process of agenda setting and coalescing with our identities intact.

I read something interesting in a think piece about last weekend's protests: that the agenda of Individisble and other anti-Trump groups is entirely defensive, and that liberals cohere best against a common enemy, since we have trouble agreeing on a common agenda - advancing the view that we need a Trump in order to find any common cause. In my view, that will continue to curse us unless we deal with it.
posted by Miko at 9:18 AM on January 25, 2017


That is going to take strategy, setting priorities (which is tough) and the difficult situation of seeing one's own priorities farther down that list than we'd like. I know this is uncomfortable. But I don't think we are going to get anywhere without talking about how that will look and feel, and how we plan to get through the process of agenda setting and coalescing with our identities intact.

I'm not sure I understand what exactly you mean here. Can you perhaps be more concrete about what kind of priority setting you're talking about here and what form you propose this conversation take?
posted by en forme de poire at 10:32 AM on January 25, 2017


Yes, [lgbtq activism] does when that activism and its ultimate product lacks an electoral dimension. That doesn't mean every individual needs to work on the electoral dimension, but it does mean that without an electoral element linked to the cause, effort or campaign, the surrounding landscape will not change.

Ma'am, we have organizations that do electoral activism. We have members of our community that run for office. For you to rhetorically erase that as part of yet another exercise in "Miko is right" is deeply ignorant and offensive. For you to rhetorically scapegoat LGBTQ activism for Trump or the Congress is deeply homophobic and transphobic. We have a substantial minority among Democrats pulling this bullshit. Don't perpetuate it.

Respectfully, I don't think how they win is by us tearing each other down. It's by us not organizing together to support an electoral agenda.

We already organize together to support an electoral agenda. We also organize separately to work on our own community needs. That's how coalitions work.

That is going to take strategy, setting priorities (which is tough) and the difficult situation of seeing one's own priorities farther down that list than we'd like. I know this is uncomfortable.

We do what we do because LGBTQ people die. We do what we do because more will die if we stop. That's not open for negotiation.

Now if that's not your calling, go in peace and we'll meet on Sunday for fellowship and Wednesday for organizing. But, we are a coalition. You don't get to dictate the terms of how we organize on other days of the week.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:36 PM on January 25, 2017


Also, demanding that individual service organizations include an "electoral dimension" is a creep in scope that would limit funding, add work tangential to the organization's mission, and limit accessibility. But by all means, electing Democrats is more important than improving lives on the ground.

Gods, I should add politics to the list of things I don't discuss on metafilter along with religion and my weight. At the bottom of the thread, it's all Democrats yelling at Democrats that we're pressing the touchscreen ballot with the wrong kind of flourish.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:55 PM on January 25, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ma'am, we have organizations that do electoral activism.

I am not talking about these organizations, which is why I specifically said when [activism] lacks an electoral dimension.

I give up, though. Not enough goodwill. I still think that unless we have this discussion, we're not going to be able to work together elect leaders that create a favorable ground for social progress, but apparently, we aren't going to be able to have it here and now. At least, I'm done wanting to for now. Another time, en forme.
posted by Miko at 2:23 PM on January 25, 2017


I am not talking about these organizations, which is why I specifically said when [activism] lacks an electoral dimension.

You were quite clear, and even clarified when directly asked that LGBTQ activism for LGBTQ people (including ACT UP, Lesbian Avengers, and The Trevor Project) elects Republicans. You don't get to weasel around this slander by saying that our service and advocacy groups elect Republicans but our electoral groups do not.

And would this claim even be made if we were talking about an organization like West Broad YMCA, which offers certified childcare and urban gardens in a majority black neighborhood, the Jewish Community Centers that got bomb threats, or even the organization of our own congregations? I put in many hours over 10 years in the classroom as part of an LGBT Speaker's Bureau. Are you still arguing that an organization that had great success at one job with no budget and two dozen volunteers elected Republicans?

I give up, though. Not enough goodwill.

Of course not. To start with, you're backing up a statement that is not only an anti-LGBTQ slander, it's idiotically hyperbolic. With that on the table, you don't get goodwill.

Curiously, we're already having these discussions. Not with you, and perhaps you need to consider how refusing to stay in your lane might be a problem here. I would not presume to tell you how to run your actions.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:10 PM on January 25, 2017


You were quite clear, and even clarified when directly asked that LGBTQ activism for LGBTQ people (including ACT UP, Lesbian Avengers, and The Trevor Project) elects Republicans.

Yes. All activism has the effect of electing Republicans when it lacks an electoral dimension.

And yes, I make this claim about any and all activism that has no electoral dimension. The urban gardens? Those are among the kinds issues I work on. I love getting out there and teaching gardening to people and learning new plants form them and growing my own and trading seeds and seeing poor and immigrant and senior and brain-injured people feed themselves and sharing food with them. Yet a single small policy change to our farm subsidy program to include "speciality crops" (vegetables) would feed a lot more people a lot more rapidly than a thousand urban gardens. This is the kind of issue I am trying to talk about.

I can sit here while you continue to tell me about the virtues of your actions. I can see they are wonderful. And they have many positive outcomes. Not all positive outcomes - like the social bridging I get through gardening - is going to come from electoral politics. But most of the most crucial ones do, and after 27 years of fighting in small, grassroots corners as an uphill battle against the massive tide of conservatism and divestment in the public good, and watching orgs burn out, die out, fail, or just continue to struggle without gaining ground, I no longer think the work in grassroots corners is sufficient.

not only an anti-LGBTQ slander, it's idiotically hyperbolic

This kind of thing is just BS. That's the problem we're having with goodwill; not that I don't agree with you about the value of small-scale, grassroots efforts in creating broad social change, or the necessity of coalition work, but that you can't have the conversation without accusing me of statements, attitudes, and characteristics that are just unsubstantiated. I mean, you just called me an idiot there, as well as a liar, a well as a bigot, in exactly so many words, no interpretation required. Why would I want to keep talking with you? It's not selling me on a notion of you as a successful grassroots coalition builder.
posted by Miko at 6:57 PM on January 25, 2017


Miko, you attacked the LGBTQ community with a statement that's contrary to facts, ridiculously hyperbolic (a potted plant elects Republicans by this standard), and blatantly homophobic. No interpretation needed. And rather than acknowledge any of those objections, you complain about your precious feels being hurt.

Now I've been dealing with the argument that LGBTQ activism harms Democratic politics for over 20 years now as a Democratic voter. I'm not going to budge on rejecting statements that unironically compare the community structures that helped me survive to 45 to Republican activism. When called out on a homophobic statement, perhaps you need to reconsider the statement rather than complain about your feelings.

Now no, I don't think you're a bigot. I think that at the bottom of the thread, you're highly invested in Miko being right and choosing to defend a statement that was a bad idea to start with.

How to move forward? I think "electing Republicans" should be reserved for activism that:

1) advocates for Republican candidates
2) funds Republican candidates
3) votes for Republican candidates.

The statement that ACT UP or community gardens "elect Republicans" is such a tenuous casual claim that it goes right into woo. It's a post hoc ergo propter hoc. (Obvious rebuttal: they also elected Obama and Clinton.) We can probably have better discussions of activism efficacy without the value judgement that activists are supporting our own ideological enemies.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:56 PM on January 25, 2017


We're really at peak circular firing squad here if we're even entertaining the notion that ACT UP elects Republicans. And I'm about a week overdue for an internet fast to get away from this kind of bullshit.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:08 PM on January 25, 2017


We're really at peak circular firing squad here

Pretty hard to top Clinton get booed throughout her speech at the DNC.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:37 AM on January 26, 2017 [7 favorites]


How to move forward? I think "electing Republicans" should be reserved for activism that:

1) advocates for Republican candidates
2) funds Republican candidates
3) votes for Republican candidates.


I disagree with you. I am trying to suggest a larger analysis of the choices people on the let make when they work for social change, and that means looking at indirect as well as direct results. You are arguing that only the direct action matters, but we have all the evidence of the 40-year rise of electoral domination by the right, despite a few windows you cite of Democratic leadership which were eventually all completely hamstrung by more electoral domination by the right, to convince us that our choices aren't working to elect Democrats.

But again, I really think your ad hominems here are crossing a line of civil discussion, though. We could talk about this without going into your personal contempt for me, but you repeatedly have to bring that in and call names, then try to pull back. The effect of your approach here is that though your argument hasn't convinced me, I don't want to talk with you any more.
posted by Miko at 6:07 AM on January 26, 2017


We're really at peak circular firing squad here

Pretty hard to top...


Well, that's the most MetaFilter thing I'll read all day.
posted by Etrigan at 6:30 AM on January 26, 2017 [5 favorites]


Metafilter: Well, that's the most MetaFilter thing I'll read all day.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:50 PM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


[craven, pathetic attempt to get favorites]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:52 PM on January 26, 2017 [8 favorites]


Metafilter: [craven, pathetic attempt to get favorites]

is this meta-meta-meta-metafilter at this point?
posted by sciatrix at 7:04 PM on January 26, 2017 [11 favorites]


Metafilter: is this meta-meta-meta-metafilter at this point?
posted by jaduncan at 2:54 AM on January 27, 2017 [2 favorites]


m5filt.er
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:03 AM on January 27, 2017


m5filt.er: $WEBGUY, fix your site, you have to! Spoiler: site doesn't get fixed
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:20 PM on January 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


« Older Knife-cleaning   |   Unicycle Polo Match Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments